Mozambique - January 21, 2025
Huge mass revolt for bread
For the past three months, Mozambique has been shaken by a phenomenal revolt of the hungry masses who took to the streets following the consummation of a new electoral fraud by FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), the ruling party for almost 50 years.
FRELIMO has been in power in Mozambique since 1975, when it was part of the leadership that strangled the anti-colonial struggle that developed throughout black Africa from the second post-war period onwards. Imperialism managed to contain this anti-imperialist revolutionary upsurge with the key and essential collaboration of Stalinism. In the case of Mozambique (as in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, etc.), it was petty-bourgeois army-parties, led by various fractions of Stalinism, such as FRELIMO, that controlled the masses and subjected them to the bourgeoisie. Even in Mozambique, as in Angola, Stalinism used its forces internationally, as did Castroism, to prevent the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.
In this way, Stalinism, through FRELIMO, saved imperialism in Mozambique and for 50 years has been managing the business of the large transnationals that plunder the nation's enormous wealth in minerals, oil and gas, imposing unbearable living conditions on the masses (and amid dozens of corruption scandals). As in all of South Africa, this black bourgeoisie became millionaires in a sea of black slave workers who were brutally super-exploited.
Under these conditions, the presidential elections were held in Mozambique on October 9, 2024, where, in a true fraud, Daniel Chapo, the FRELIMO candidate, was proclaimed the winner with 71% of the votes. In second place, with 20% of the votes, was Venancio Mondlane, the main opposition leader, who ran for the Popular Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (PODEMOS), which was founded in 2019 by a breakaway from FRELIMO.
This new fraud was the trigger for the fury of the masses to explode in October and November with a spontaneous revolt, attacking the private property of the capitalists, first of all the banks. The exploited attacked them, carrying off banknotes in their arms, while mass marches, barricade battles, strikes in shops and markets, and roadblocks took place, including trucks blocking the border with South Africa (which the ANC government had to close), preventing all traffic through there.
The FRELIMO government unleashed a bloody repression with the security forces using lead bullets and shooting indiscriminately at the rebellious masses. There are even reports of the operation of government death squads and troops from the Rwandan Armed Forces, who had been operating alongside the Mozambican army in the northern region of the country in the province of Cabo Delgado. Since October until now, more than 300 exploited people have been killed (including children), thousands have been injured and 4,000 have been arrested.
The masses clashed with the repressive forces and also attacked police stations. One of them was set on fire and the masses took the weapons that were inside, while all the police officers fled. One of them stayed and began to shoot and the masses ended up beating him to death. In addition, a split began in the FFAA base.
The depth of hatred of the people below towards the government and the regime was expressed again in December, when mass actions resumed after the Constitutional Court of Mozambique reaffirmed the fraud and confirmed the victory of FRELIMO in the elections on 23/12. New attacks on banks, police stations, supermarkets, etc. followed. Public employees and health workers also took to the streets for wages owed for more than a year. All this while the union bureaucracies, which openly support the FRELIMO government, continued to look the other way!
At that time, the opposition leader Mondlane continued to ignore the election result and continued to call for protests on socialist networks, demonstrating a bourgeois rupture at the top where the masses had infiltrated.
But while the exploited left their dead fighting fraud and the government in the streets, Mondlane stated that he was willing to discuss the formation of a government of “national unity” with FRELIMO, seeking to close the gaps at the top, to try to control the struggle of the masses and with it the property of all of them, the bourgeoisie and their imperialist bosses.
So much so that now, after Daniel Chapo of FRELIMO assumed the presidency on January 15, in the midst of new mobilizations and brutal repression, Mondlane, with the excuse of “giving the government 100 days to comply with some demands,” has already openly called on the workers and exploited to leave the streets! At the same time, he stated that he is willing to join the murderous FRELIMO government “to resolve the current political crisis.”
The fundamental driving force of the mass revolt: the unprecedented hunger and suffering imposed by the FRELIMO government and the fierce imperialist plunder
The spontaneous revolt of the exploited in Mozambique is developing in the midst of a brutal economic chaos that is pushing the exploited into mass political struggle, dividing those at the top and leaving all the parties and institutions of domination in crisis, which is what both FRELIMO and the “opposition” Mondlane fear and therefore are now trying to prevent from developing.
The fundamental driving force of mass combat is hunger: In a country of 35 million inhabitants, 65% (20 million) live below the poverty line. Unemployment is over 70% and life expectancy is only 58 years.
80% (25 million) survive by cultivating a plot of land, (which was totally destroyed by the FRELIMO government and imperialist plunder) without investment, without inputs or tools, to which have been added recent natural disasters such as tornadoes, avalanches, etc. The latter leave not only the land unusable for the masses, but also claim the lives of hundreds of workers and peasants, as the latest cyclone “Chido” left 120 dead and more than 800 injured.
Around 11 million workers and exploited people have emigrated from Mozambique. Half of them went to work as slave labour in South Africa, in the mines or on the land, as is also the case with workers in Zimbabwe and other countries in the region.
In addition, 45% of adults are illiterate and the school dropout rate is enormous (less than half of children finish primary school), with a total destruction of education in the country. In the midst of the protests, the masses stopped a truck loaded with school materials and took chairs for their children because they take classes sitting on the floor in schools.
Not to mention health, which does not have resources or qualified professionals, with the proliferation of diseases such as malaria, cholera, diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition that plague the exploited. And it shows one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world (53 babies die for every 1,000 births while the world average is 38 per 1,000).
Added to all this is the problem of lack of housing and, due to various factors, it is very common for the exploited to have to move and go live in resettlement centres.
These unprecedented hardships are the result of imperialist plunder guaranteed by FRELIMO. Mozambique has enormous mineral wealth in coal, gold, limestone and precious stones that are taken away as gifts by the transnationals. In addition to tax exemptions, there is “free repatriation of profits and dividends, up to 100%”. The state only receives 3% of the net income of the mining companies.
In addition, a reserve of natural liquefied gas has been discovered in the province of Cabo Delgado, the largest in all of Africa, where the French Total and the American Exxon are about to resume their operations. In an area of the Rovuma basin of that province, investment agreements have already been signed with the Italian Eni.
In addition, Mozambique suffers from the strangulation of a ferocious external debt that amounts to 10.306 billion dollars (approximately 50% of the GDP) at the hands of the bloodsuckers of the World Bank, the IMF and other international creditors.
The brutal conditions endured by the oppressed in Mozambique demonstrate how imperialism and its lackey governments treat black workers throughout Africa: hunger, genocides like that in the Congo, endless super-exploitation and worker massacres, as we saw recently at the Stilfontein mine in South Africa.
Meanwhile, a handful of black millionaire henchmen like those of FRELIMO manage the slavery of the workers and poor peasants of black Africa on behalf of the transnationals of Wall Street, London, Paris, etc.
But against all of them, the indomitable black masses, as we see today in Mozambique, sought a thousand and one times to enter the path of open combat for the socialist revolution against capitalist barbarism or led open revolutionary offensives, which were betrayed and diverted by their leaders, or were crushed.
Long live the mass struggle of Mozambique! Only the alliance of workers and peasants will be able to carry through the national struggle to expel imperialism, resolve the land question and win the independence of the enslaved nations of Africa and end all the opprobrious governments and regimes.
The renegades of Trotskyism, who hide behind the upper strata of the labour aristocracy in the imperialist countries or in the bourgeois parliaments, subject to Stalinism, are very far from there, from the martyrdom and heroism of the black proletariat, which also knew how to fight in the imperialist metropolises by setting Paris on fire and in the USA by dragging the working class into combat against the first Trump government in 2020.
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
For black workers and those of the whole world to live, imperialism must die!
Workers Interntional League (WIL) of Zimbabwe, adherent to the FLTI |
