THIRTY years ago this month young officers ended Portugal’s 40-year dictatorship with the bloodless carnation revolution that led to independence for its African colonies. Mozambique reacted to the events of 25 April 1974 with joy and apprehension. The victims of fascism and colonialism felt pure happiness, others had less obvious reasons for celebrating. Even colonial organisations welcomed the revolution. Five months later, far-right colonials in Lourenço Marques (as Maputo was called then) attempted a violent coup against the Portuguese-Mozambican peace agreement, which had been signed by Mario Soares and Samora Machel.
The joy was versatile. How could groups with such divergent, even conflicting, interests celebrate the same thing? The answer was that the regime had become a burden for almost all polit icians across the spectrum. The revolution was a crocodile’s egg; it could develop as male or female, depending on the ambient temperature.
The apprehension took almost as many different forms as the joy. The Junta of National Salvation (JSN) (1) included generals who had long resisted African liberation movements. Some, like Galvao de Melo, had been hawks in the Portuguese military apparatus. Others, like Antonio Spinola, saw themselves as the architects of a reformed colonial policy. They were not opposed to the regime; they merely disagreed with the tactics it had used to maintain the Portuguese presence.
The junta’s first declarations were ambiguous. On 29 April 1974 General Spinola promised that “what we have in mind is an acceleration of the process by which the African peoples will achieve self-determination under the Portuguese flag”. Even General Costa Gomes, much more leftwing, declared that “we intend to fight the guerrillas until they agree to our proposal to lay down their weapons and become political parties”. It took a long, hard fight by the revolutionary soldiers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) before the idea of (...)
