Countdown to Independence

In Lourengo Marques' city hall square, workmen last week began chipping away at the great stone statue of Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a 19th century Portuguese governor who led a bloody campaign against rebellious blacks in 1895. After 300 years under Portuguese rule, Mozambique is finally becoming independent on June 25, and officials are anxious to remove the more obvious reminders of the country's colonial past before then.

In many ways, the past may be easier to deal with than the future. Since the 1974 Portuguese revolution, when

Lisbon decided to free its African territories, hundreds have died in racial clashes. As many as 50,000 whites (out of 220,000) have fled the Indian Ocean country, and planes and boats are fully booked until independence day. Not all of them have left for racial reasons; some fear that the all-black administration that will replace the joint Portuguese-Mozambique transition government will become a left-wing dictatorship.

With 300,000 unemployed at home, Portugal has not encouraged the colonials to return. The flight of the whites has left Mozambique with a severe shortage of technicians, teachers, civil servants and other professionals. One estimate is that only 100 doctors are left to serve a population of 8 million blacks, 170,000 whites and 60,000 Asians.

The transition period has been calm in comparison with that in oil-rich Angola (see following story). Portuguese officials have worked well with Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), the black liberation movement that led the ten-year fight against colonial rule, in the transition government. Explains Rear Admiral Vitor Crespo, the Portuguese High Commissioner: "We are both--Frelimo and Portugal --victims of the colonial and capitalist systems. We are now on the same side of the barricades."

Frelimo gets high marks--even from expatriate businessmen--for dedication and organizational ability. But there is fear that the movement will drift away from the African socialism that it now espouses toward authoritarianism.

That fear was heightened by a new law that permits the regime to jail people for up to eight years for the vague crime of "sabotaging decolonization." There is uncertainty over the policies that will be followed by Frelimo's top men--notably Samora Machel, 42, the Peking-oriented commander in chief, and his deputy, Marcelino dos Santos, 44, who is said to lean toward Moscow.

Political Awareness. There is also concern, at least among whites, that once the Portuguese presence is gone, old tribal differences may assert themselves. To offset this danger, Frelimo officials have been conducting a political awareness campaign all over the country, 90% of whose people are illiterate. Teams of young recruits have scoured bush villages to advertise Frelimo's political and social doctrines--no drunkenness, only one wife, equal rights for women (Frelimo has women soldiers and one woman Cabinet member).

Frelimo officials have also ended the numerous strikes that disrupted the economy at the beginning of the decolonization period. In some cases, ballooning wages have been cut back to former levels to keep companies from going bankrupt.

Mozambique's economic future will depend heavily on whether the new government can come to terms with Rhodesia and South Africa, its white-ruled neighbors. Though black African governments will urge Frelimo to join the embargo against Rhodesia, that would mean a substantial loss to Mozambique, which collects rail revenues for goods passing to and from landlocked Rhodesia. On the other hand, power from the giant $500 million Cabora Bassa dam on the Zambezi River, due to be producing by independence, is expected to bring Mozambique $44 million a year from South Africa by 1980.

Stable Future. There is also vast potential wealth in the country's huge untapped deposits of coal, iron ore, copper, gold and natural gas--and legions of would-be investors waiting to tap them. But first they want reassurances of the new government's direction and stability. As a recently returned Portuguese engineer put it last week: "It is not enough simply to say 'We want you here.' We need some guarantee that the future will be stable and that our families will be safe." That may be a difficult order for Frelimo to fill.

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