Mozambique

Before the visit by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498, coastal East Africa was occupied by the so-called Zenj (black) city-states, ruled by Arabs. These were soon displaced, and for the next century Portugal dominated parts of the region, until a weakened economy forced retrenchment. After that, Portugal retained only some of the coastal cities of present-day Mozambique. The Portuguese explored the interior in the 16th century, encountering many agricultural Bantu but finding little wealth. By the 17th century, the Portuguese slave trade had destroyed the Mutapa Empire, the most powerful Bantu state in the area. Little money was invested in Mozambique, and only a few hundred Europeans lived there. A colonization scheme was begun in the late 18th century to lure settlers through land grants. This  prazo (estate) system failed because the proprietors, deeply involved in the slave trade, became more African than European. Portuguese rule in the 20th century was autocratic, particularly during the dictatorship of António Salazar. Forced and contract labor and harsh treatment undermined African life. Portugal claimed that Africans could achieve equality with whites by assimilation into Portuguese culture, but the system produced few converts. Portugal's colonization policy, despite special incentives to whites, also failed. Only 65,000 whites were resident in Mozambique in 1965. Revolt against Portuguese rule began in 1964, when guerrillas of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, from Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) struck out of Tanzania. The ensuing war was ended when a coup in Portugal (1974) brought to power a government that withdrew from Mozambique; the country became independent on June 25, 1975. Frelimo, led by Samora Machel, then moved to establish a Marxist state, nationalizing industry and creating agricultural collectives. The exodus of most whites, who formed the technical and professional class, weakened the nation's economy. Mozambique aided guerrillas in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) but maintained relations with South Africa for economic reasons; the two nations signed a nonaggression treaty in 1984 and renewed it in 1987. For most of the 1980s, however, South Africa continued to aid the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo, or Resistência Nacional Moçambicana). In October 1986 Machel was killed in an air crash; he was succeeded by Joaquím Chissano, the foreign minister. Meanwhile, the spread of the brutal civil war caused the health and education systems to collapse and agricultural production almost to cease. Troops from South Africa, Zambia, and Tanzania were deployed to protect vital areas. By 1990, after an estimated 900,000 people had been killed and another 1.3 million had fled the country, Chissano announced plans for a multiparty government. A peace treaty formally ending the civil war was signed in October 1992; in December a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force was deployed but was hampered by poor organization and inadequate funding. In August 1993 the UN launched a program to repatriate up to 1.3 million refugees from Mozambique's violent and prolonged civil war. The first multiparty elections in Mozambique were held in October 1994. Chissano was elected president with 53.3 percent of the vote and his Frelimo Party received a majority in the assembly with 129 out of 250 seats. Renamo Party leader Afonso Dhlakama received 33.7 percent of the vote and the party garnered 112 seats in the assembly. Some 90 percent of eligible voters participated in the election. In early 1995 the United Nations withdrew its peacekeeping forces after monitoring the country's transition from civil war to the beginnings of a multiparty republic.