by – Bayano Valy – SANF 05 no 54
Thirty years ago, jubilant masses carried a lit torch from the Mozambican town of Nangade, on the border with Tanzania, to Maputo, some 3,000 km south — the march that culminated in the proclamation of Mozambique’s independence on 25 June 1975 by the ruling Frelimo party’s Central Committee.
As the march wound its way to Maputo, Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, addressed a series of victory rallies from Rovuma to Maputo (the rivers that mark Mozambique’s north and south boundaries).
The torch was then dubbed “the Flame of Unity” and was one the four symbols of the soon-to-be independent country, the others being a book, symbolising education, a hoe and a hammer, symbolising the worker-peasant alliance for development.
Nangade, where the march began, bears a strong symbolism in Mozambique’s struggle for independence. It was at Nangade that Frelimo established some of its earliest liberated areas. Furthermore, the guerrilla movement then set up “Base Beira” from which it carried out and coordinated military operations in the northern parts of Cabo Delgado, from the Tanzanian border to the Mueda-Mocimboa da Praia road.
Rather than enjoying the benefits of independence, Mozambique suffered a cruel blow when first the Ian Smith regime which ruled the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and apartheid-South Africa backed up the former rebel movement Renamo in its war of destabilisation against the government.
The war of destabilisation which lasted 16 years arrested the country’s development, and since 1992, when the Rome peace agreement was signed between the government and Renamo ending the war, the Mozambican authorities under the ruling Frelimo party have been consistently pursuing a development agenda.
The war, coupled with debt to rich creditor nations, severely crippled the country’s economy.
Statistics from 1994 at the first multiparty elections have shown that the country has been registering an impressive economic growth: a seven percent average Growth Domestic Product (GDP) for several years in succession. The world average GDP is two percent, and Africa’s is around one percent.
In 1994, GDP per capita stood at US$80 and it has now climbed to US$250.
The incidence of poverty has fallen from 69.4 percent in 1997 to 54.1 percent in 2003. Additionally, Mozambique’s state budget dropped from 60 percent foreign funding to 50 percent.
Thirty years on, the march is taking place under the theme “From Rovuma to Maputo: Together in the Struggle Against Poverty”.
The torch was ignited on 21 May to the sound of the national anthem, after which it was passed into the hands of Gen. Alberto Chipande, the man who fired the first shot that heralded the national liberation struggle, on 25 September 1964, and later became Mozambique’s first defence minister.
From Chipande the torch passed on to Marcelino dos Santos, veteran nationalist and poet, who handed it over to President Armando Guebuza.
Guebuza said that the flame was a “symbol of our history which would light the people´s path to the consolidation of independence and construction of their well-being.”
Handing the torch over to a youth born in the year of independence, he said that the gesture “symbolises our certainty that the combat we wage against poverty will be continued by our young people, guardians of our glorious political, historical and cultural heritage.”
On its journey south the “Flame of Unity” has passed through the hands of several groups in the country’s districts representing the cultural, social and political mosaic of Mozambique.
Television pictures show citizens in the small hours of the morning waiting for the torch to reach their towns, and accompanying it to the town square where a pyre is lit, symbolising that the people have responded to Guebuza’s call to see Mozambicans “galvanised by the desire to see Mozambique free of poverty, to [fill] themselves with enthusiasm, creativity and patriotism in the celebration of 30 years of independence.”
It is expected that the torch will reach Maputo’s Independence Square on the day of the country’s anniversary, 25 June. (SARDC)
