Frelimo's policies fail to lift Mozambique economy

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TANZANIA ZAIRE MALAWI ZAMBIA MOZAI ZIMBABWE •BOTSWANA Maputo Indi.

SOUTH Oce.

AFRICA •SWAZILAND LESOTHO Africa MOZAMBIQUE Since independence, Mozambique has never known any peace. Some 42 percent of its budget (more than 11 percent of the Gross Domestic Product) is absorbed by the war effort. In nine of the country's 10 provinces, Frelimo is threatened by the RNM.

Ending South African support for the RNM guerrillas was the quid pro quo officially accepted by Pretoria in return for a clampdown on the ANC [African National Congress] operations based in Mozambique.

These provisions were part of the non-aggression pact signed between Samora Machel and P.W. Botha on March 16, 1984, on the bank of the Nkomati River-not far, as it happens, from where the Mozambiquan president's plane went down.

Mozambique kept its pledges, expelling most of the ANC representatives within two weeks of signing the agreement. It reduced the ANC's local listening post to a few individuals.

South Africa was far from so scrupulous. Documents seized at general headquarters of the RNM, which was briefly occupied by Mozambiquan and Zimbabwean forces, showed that the flow of aid from Pretoria never dried up.

Nkomati was only the inevitable con -clusion of the nine preceeding years...In 1984 Mozambique was exhausted by paying for the mistakes of the regime and The plane crash last October that cost the lives of President Samora Machel and other top leaders of Mozambique complicates a situation in that country that is being described as catastrophic.

Agriculture, the country's principle resource, has been hard hit by drought and by falling world prices. Industrial and agricultural production have declined by about 50 percent since 1981, according to government figures.

Ports, roads, and railroads used by both Mozambique and its neighbor Zim -was in a trajectory leading it back toward an orientation toward the Western countries.

Frelimo takes power

Caught by surprise by the Portugese "Revolution of the Carnations" on April 25, 1975, Frelimo had no idea that it was so close to taking power. It had about 12,000 members. It was to find itself obliged to assign about one third of those to the state apparatus after independence.

The departure of the Portuguese colonists became a serious drain on the country. Between September 1974, when the transitional government was set up, and the end of 1985, the white population fell from 230,000 to 25,000.

At a stroke, Frelimo gained control of the country, without having to go through the civil war that the MPLA did before it could consolidate its government in Luanda [Angola]. Thus the Mozambiquan front did not take power in the course of an upsurge of social struggles—with the exception of an economic strike of dockers. And no lasting forms of self-organization arose.

The relations between Frelimo and the Mozambiquan masses were therefore determined by substitution of the party for mass action. The constitution of Mozam -bique expressed the reality quite well: "Power belongs to the workers and peasants united and led by Frelimo."

Regime denounces strikes

The existing mass structures were emptied of their substance, and those set up were primarily transmission belts for the party's line. The Grupos da Dinamizacao [Sparkplug Groups] that appeared with the installation of the transitional government lost precisely their spark, and adopted the slogan: "Unity-Vigilance—Work."

At the founding conference of the Workers Organization of Mozambique [a government-sponsored "socialist union] in October 1983, Samora Machel said, "Its babwehave been severely affected by terrorist operations of the Renamo (RNM, National Resistance Movement of Mozambique), which is backed by South Africa. The war has cost 100,000 dead and $5 billion in damage to the economy, government officials state.

Mozambique's difficulties have been compounded by confused and misguided policies of the ruling party, Frelimo. Recently, the government took steps to increase support to the private sector, break up state farms, and sell off about 30 nationalized factories.

task is not to make demands." It is hardly surprising that such a structure-set up by a regime that had denounced strikes as actions manipulated from abroad-has not gained the enthusiastic adherence of the workers.

Toward the rural population (80 percent of the total), Frelimoif not its leaders, at least its apparatus-used methods that fueled the serious discontent it is facing.

In the aftermath of independence, the land was nationalized. But the practice of forcibly regrouping the population in communal villages after 1979 and the exactions perpetrated by Mozambiquan soldiers, who held the people in ransom in order to feed themselves, had a repellent effect.

Leaders get special privileges Is Frelimo a party cast in the East European model? There is no lack of correspondences, as Frelimo maintains an orientation of special links with the Soviet Union. Socially, there are indeed features of the "nomenklatura system," with its train of privileges for the party leaders (such as special stores) and scarcity for the population at large-along with widespread corruption.

Moreover, the leadership consciously chose to fuse Frelimo with the state. The party was set up as a single party. In 1977, the Third Congress of Frelimo opted for "Marxism-Leninism" and declared the advent of the stage of "people's democracy."

If the regime chosen for the party was "democratic centralism," this was also to be the rule imposed on the People's Assem -blies, "the supreme organs of state power at every level."

The 1977 congress marked out a path inspired by the Soviet Union, at the time one of Mozambique's few allies: "Taking agriculture as a base, industry as a locomotive, and the construction of heavy Mozambique's increasing pro-Western stance is likely to be continued by the new president, Joaquim Chissano, the former foreign minister. The Washington Post notes that Chissano "was the favored candidate of western governments" for the presidency.

Frelimo's policies are described further in an article by Jean-Jacques Laredo that appeared in the Nov. 10 issue of International Viewpoint. We reprint portions of the article below.—The editors industry as the decisive factor, we will break free once and for all from poverty and dependence, and we will build an advanced economy in the service of the people."

The nationalizations that followed in -dependence extended beyond land to small and medium industry, as well as trade, health services, and education. But they did not affect big industry, the mines, energy, or the plantations that belonged directly to Western companies or were technically or commercially dependent on them.

Even though the state sector came to embrace about 50 percent of enterprises in 1978, it could not serve as a basis for economic independence or as a springboard toward breaking from the capitalist market...After 1980, the developed cap -italist countries committed about $400 million to about 20 projects that reinforced the country's dependence.

Orientation toward the West Depite the restatement of a socialist goal, the period after 1983 was marked by a growing opening to the West. In June 1985, Mozambique did sign an accord with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the East Bloc aid agency, indicating that it was not breaking with the Eastern countries. But it was also to join the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

At present, more than 50 percent of Mozambique's commercial exchanges are with the developed capitalist countries. The East Bloc countries account for only a fourth of imports and purchase only 15 percent of the country's exports.

The Mozambiquan people have not reached the end of their travail, in particular since South Africa is on the lookout for opportunities to counter the blows dealt it by the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire and the fall of the Rhodesian white government.