South Africa's dirty hands recovered from the wreckage of Samora Machel's fateful last flight. The evidence of the guilt of the apartheid regime is death on Mozambican society and suggests that our solidarity needs to be stepped up. nuing role in the devastation being wrought in Mozambique. More, importantly, this shift enabled the mr bands to build up their attacks on some of the most populated and richest areas of the country in Zambezia and Nampula provinces, and along the Zambezi valley in northern Sofala and southern Tete provinces. The gravity of Mozambique's situation now is reflected in the figures of almost four million people officially at risk of starvation, one and a half million of these displaced by the war; of mines, tea, cotton, coco-nut and sugar plantations and mills paralysed or destroyed, and Mozambique's
'the gravity of
Mozambique's situation is
reflected in the almost four
million at risk from starvation' annual foreign exchange earnings plumetting from a meagre us $250 million to a miserable $90 million over the past three years.
The intensification of South Africa's campaign against Mozambique is also reflected in the escalation of the propaganda war from Pretoria in the weeks prior to the Mozambi-
president's threatening Mozambique, and Machel himself, with dire consequences for purportedly having bro-
en the non-aggression pact by allowing th
NC to allegedly set up land-mine attacks 1 South Africa near the Mozambique border. More significantly, the South African government stepped up its economic pressures on Maputo by forbidding further migration of Mozambican workers into the South African mines, with serious consequences for Mozambique's shrinking foreign exchange earnings and its general economic
South Africa is now making Mozambique the prime target of its aggression as the struggle of the oppressed population within South Africa deepens, and the international campaign for effective sanctions grows. An important part of South Africa's counter-
strategy is to hold the countries around it in the firm grip of economic dependence...or force them into compliance. Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana are already in this situation. Namibia is being held captive for the same purpose.
Mozambique, carrying an oil pipe line, roads and, above all, railway lines to its Indian Ocean ports, could enable Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and even distant Zaire to end their dependence on South Africa's transport system and harbours. Angola's Benguela railway could similarly play this role, which is why it too is a major target o direct aggression by South Africa, and destabilisation through its UNITA surrogates.
It is Mozambique, however, that is both strategically crucial as well as the most vul -nerable of the front lines states facing South Africa, owing to geographical proximity as well as the particularly distorted way in which it was 'developed' under Portuguese colonialism linked into the South Atrican economy•
However much Frelimo's own socialist development strategies talled to break Mozambique out of that dependence; and however much its current survival measures are deepening Mozambique's dependence on Western emergency food aid and government 'development' aid (and even 'partnership' deals with capitalist investors such as Tiny Rowlands); and even as we witness Mozambique's impending surrender to the IME's economic strictures to qualify for international loans - anti-apartheid campaigners and socialists have an important responsibility to Mozambique.
The world must recognise that the Mozambican people are fighting and dying in their tens of thousands in the struggle against the South African regime, side by side with the oppressed people of South Africa itself. We have to do all we can to ensure that Mozambique (and indeed the other countries in the region) can survive and fight back in the deepening crisis in southern Africa, and that the hopes -- and forces — for a socialist future for Mozambique — and South Africa itself — are secured in the coming years of struggle against the apartheid-capitalist system dominating the entire region.
INTERNATIONAL No 7 November/December 1986
on