Mozambique

Pre-history

South East Africa including Mozambique is inhabited by ancestors to the San- and Khoikhoi people. Most people in the region live as hunters and gatherers. In around 300 BC, hunter-gatherers called the San acquired domestic stock in what is now modern-day Botswana. Their population grew and spread throughout the Western half of South Africa. They were the first pastoralists in southern Africa, and called themselves Khoikhoi (or Khoe), which means ‘men of men’ or ‘the real people’. This name was chosen to show pride in their past and culture. The Khoikhoi brought a new way of life to South Africa and to the San, who were hunter-gatherers as opposed to herders. This led to misunderstandings and subsequent conflict between the two groups.

The Khoikhoi used a word while dancing that sounded like ‘Hottentots’ and therefore settlers referred to the Khoikhoi by this name, however, today this term is considered derogatory. The settlers used the term ‘Bushmen’ for the San, a term also considered derogatory today. Many of those whom the colonists called ‘Bushmen’ were, in fact, Khoikhoi or former Khoikhoi. For this reason, scholars sometimes find it convenient to refer to hunters and herders together as ‘Khoisan’.

The Khoikhoi kept herds of animals such as goat, cattle, and sheep and had to move around to find enough grazing land for their animals. They moved according to the seasons and only stayed in one place for a few weeks. This meant that they had to be able to carry all their belongings themselves or load them onto the backs of their animals. The Korana or Kora was a nomadic Khoikhoi group that probably derived their name from a chief called Kora (or Gora), who was originally a leader of the Gorachouqua (`-qua’ meaning ‘people of’). This leader detached himself from this group with his followers and became the first great chief of the Korana. Others say that the name Korana could mean ‘the real thing’.

Maravi Empire

Beginning as early as the thirteenth century, the first signs of a large-scale migration of related clans entered the region of Lake Malawi. Traditional accounts indicate that these people originated in the Congo Basin to the west of Lake Mweru, in an area that subsequently formed part of the Luba Kingdom. The movement continued during the succeeding two or three centuries, but it appears certain that by the sixteenth century the main body of these people, known collectively as the Maravi, were settled in the Shire River valley and over a wide area lying generally west and southwest of Lake Malawi, including parts of present-day Zambia and Mozambique.

“Maravi” is, therefore, a general name of the peoples of Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and the eastern part of Zimbabwe. The Chewa language, which is also referred to as Nyanja, Chinyanja or Chichewa, and is spoken in southern and central Malawi, in Zambia and to some extent in Mozambique, is the main language that emerged from this empire. The Maravi Empire(Confederacy) was founded by the Bantu people immigrating into the valley of the Shire River (flowing out of Lake Nyassa) around 1480 AD. It prospered into the late 18th century, extending to reach what is now belonging to Zambia and Mozambique.

The members of the Confederacy were related ethnolinguistic groups who had migrated from the north into what is now central and southern Malaŵi. The Confederacy was ruled by a karonga (king), whose authority was passed down through the leaders of each clan. The main body of the Confederacy was settled in an area southwest of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malaŵi); two groups moved south into the Shire River valley during the 15th or 16th century, and other groups moved into territories now in Zambia and Mozambique. The Confederacy reached its peak during the 17th century, administering a large area that stretched north of the Zambezi River to the Dwangwa River, west to the Luangwa River, and east to the Mozambique coast.

Yao kingdoms

The Large Yao kingdoms came into being as Yao chiefs took control of the Niassa province of Mozambique in the 19th century. During that time the Yao began to move from their traditional home to today’s Malawi and Tanzania, which resulted in the Yao populations they now have. The most important result of the chiefdoms was the turning of the whole nation to Islam around the turn of the 20th century and after World War I. Because of their trade with the Arabs and Swahili, the Yao chiefs (sultans) needed scribes who could read and write.

The Islamic teachers who were employed and lived in the Yao villages made a significant impact on the Yao people because they could offer them literacy, a holy book, religious clothes, and square, instead of round, houses. Furthermore, the Yao sultans strongly resisted Portuguese, British, and German colonial rule, which was viewed as a major cultural and economic threat to them. The Yao chief Mataka rejected Christianity, as Islam offered them a social system which would assimilate their traditional culture. Because of the political and ritual domination of the chiefs, their conversion to Islam caused their subjects to do likewise. The Folk Islam which the Yao people have embraced is syncretized with their traditional animistic belief system.

The Yao originally lived in northern Mozambique (formerly Portuguese East Africa). A close look at the history of the Yao people of Mozambique as a whole shows that their ethnic-geographic center was located in a small village called Chiconono, in the northwestern Mozambican province of Niassa. The majority of Yao were mainly subsistence farmers, but some were also active as ivory and slave traders. They faced social and political decline with the arrival in today’s Niassa Province of the Portuguese, who established the Niassa Company and settled in the region founding cities and towns, destroying the indigenous independent farm and trade economy and changing it to a plantation economy controlled by themselves.

The Arrival of Portuguese

The expanding Portuguese Empire had established trading posts, forts and ports in East Africa since the 15th century, in direct competition with the diverse influential Muslim political forces: Somali, Swahili, Ottomans, Mughals, and Yemeni Sufi orders to a limited extent, and increasingly Ibadi influences from independent Southeastern Arabia. The spice route and Christian evangelization were the main driving forces behind Portuguese expansion in the region. However, later in the 19th century, the Portuguese were also involved in a large slave trade that transported African slaves from Mozambique to Brazil. The Portuguese Empire was by then one of the greatest political and economic powers in the world.

Portuguese-run agricultural plantations started to expand, offering paid labor to the tribal population. The Yao increasingly became poor plantation workers under Portuguese rule. However, they preserved their traditional culture and subsistence agriculture. As Muslims, the Yao could not stand domination by the Portuguese, who offered Christian education and taught the Portuguese language to the Muslim ethnic group. Currently, there are a minimum estimated 450,000 Yao people living in Mozambique. They largely occupy the eastern and northern part of Niassa province and form about 40% of the population of Lichinga, the capital of this province.

Although Portuguese influence gradually expanded, its power was limited and exercised through individual settlers and officials who were granted extensive autonomy. The Portuguese were able to wrest much of the coastal trade from Arab Muslims between 1500 and 1700, but, with the Arab Muslim seizure of Portugal’s key foothold at Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island (now in Kenya) in 1698, the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. By the early 20th century the Portuguese had shifted the administration of much of Mozambique to large private companies, such as Mozambique Company, the Zambezia Company and the Niassa Company, controlled and financed mostly by the British, which established railroad lines to their neighboring colonies (South Africa and Rhodesia).

Colonial Portugal

Portugal’s colonial claim to the region was recognized by the other European powers during the 1880s, during the Scramble for Africa, and the final boundaries of Portuguese Africa were agreed by negotiation in Europe in 1891. At the time Portugal was in effective control of little more than the coastal strip of both Angola and Mozambique, but important inroads into the interior had been made since the first half of the 19th century. In Angola, construction of a railway from Luanda to Malanje, in the fertile highlands, was started in 1885.

Work began in 1902 on a commercially significant line from Benguela all the way inland to the Katanga region, aiming to provide access to the sea for the richest mining district of the Belgian Congo. The line reached the Congo border in 1928. In 1914, both Angola and Mozambique had Portuguese army garrisons of around 2,000 men, African troops led by European officers. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Portugal sent reinforcements to both colonies, because the fighting in the neighboring German African colonies was expected to spill over the borders into its territories.

After Germany declared war on Portugal in March 1916 the Portuguese government sent more reinforcements to Mozambique (the South Africans had captured German South West Africa in 1915). These troops supported British, South African and Belgian military operations against German colonial forces in German East Africa. In December 1917, German colonial forces led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck invaded Mozambique from German East Africa. Portuguese, British and Belgian forces spent all of 1918 chasing Lettow-Vorbeck and his men across Mozambique, German East Africa, and Northern Rhodesia. Portugal sent a total of 40,000 reinforcements to Angola and Mozambique during World War I. After World War II and the first decolonization events, this system gradually declined. However, paid forced labor, including labor contracts with the forced relocation of people, continued in many regions of Portuguese Africa until it was finally abolished in 1961.

Mozambican War of Independence

The Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique was the last territory to start the war of liberation. Its nationalist movement was led by the Marxist-Leninist Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which carried out the first attack against Portuguese targets on September 25, 1964, in Chai, Cabo Delgado Province. The fighting later spread to Niassa, Tete in central Mozambique. A report from Battalion No. 558 of the Portuguese army makes references to violent actions, also in Cabo Delgado, on August 21, 1964.

On November 16 of the same year, the Portuguese troops suffered their first losses fighting in the north of the territory, in the region of Xilama. By this time, the size of the guerrilla movement had substantially increased; this, along with the low numbers of Portuguese troops and colonists, allowed a steady increase in FRELIMO’s strength. It quickly started moving south in the direction of Meponda and Mandimba, linking to Tete with the aid of Malawi.

Until 1967 the FRELIMO showed less interest in Tete region, putting its efforts on the two northernmost districts of Mozambique where the use of landmines became very common. In the region of Niassa, FRELIMO’s intention was to create a free corridor to Zambezia Province. Until April 1970, the military activity of FRELIMO increased steadily, mainly due to the strategic work of Samora Machel in the region of Cabo Delgado.

Rhodesia was involved in the war in Mozambique, supporting the Portuguese troops in operations and conducting operations independently. By 1973, the territory was mostly under Portuguese control. FRELIMO took control of the territory after 10 years of sporadic warfare, as well as Portugal’s own return to democracy after the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, and the failed coup of 25 November 1975.

Independent Mozambique

The new government under president Samora Machel established a one-party state based on Marxist principles. It received diplomatic and some military support from Cuba and the Soviet Union and proceeded to crack down on the opposition. Starting shortly after the independence, the country was plagued from 1977 to 1992 by a long and violent civil war between the opposition forces of anti-Communist Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) rebel militias and the FRELIMO regime. This conflict characterized the first decades of Mozambican independence, combined with sabotage from the neighboring states of Rhodesia and South Africa, ineffective policies, failed central planning, and the resulting economic collapse.

Mozambique held elections in 1994, which were accepted by most political parties as free and fair although still contested by many nationals and observers alike. FRELIMO won, under Joaquim Chissano, while RENAMO, led by Afonso Dhlakama, ran as the official opposition. In December 1999, Mozambique held elections for the second time since the civil war, which were again won by FRELIMO. RENAMO accused FRELIMO of fraud, and threatened to return to civil war, but backed down after taking the matter to the Supreme Court and losing.

Since 2013, a low-intensity insurgency by RENAMO has been occurring, mainly in the country’s central and northern regions. On 5 September 2014, former president Guebuza and the leader of RENAMO Dhlakama signed the Accord on Cessation of Hostilities, which brought the military hostilities to a halt and allowed both parties to concentrate on the general elections to be held in October 2014. However, after the general elections, a new political crisis emerged and the country appears to be once again on the brink of violent conflict.

Source:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mz.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozambique

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/ethnic-groups-of-mozambique.html

https://www.britannica.com/place/Mozambique/History

https://www.encyclopedia.com/places/africa/mozambique-political-geography/mozambique#HISTORY

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maravi-Confederacy

https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Agricultural%20Economic%20Fact%20Sheet_Pretoria_Mozambique_8-27-2015.pdf

https://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/agriculture-and-food-security

https://www.export.gov/article?id=Mozambique-Financial-Sector

https://www.africa.com/10-things-to-do-in-mozambique/

http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoikhoi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War

https://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/agriculture-and-food-security

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Mozambique