Rethinking the role of underground political work in the struggle for the liberation of Mozambique, late 1950s- 1970s

Abstract

Studies on underground (or clandestine forms of political struggle) remain largely unknown with just a few of them published. The study focuses on underground political work in southern Mozambique from the 1950s to the 1970s. The main argument that the study seeks to make is that despite the intensification of colonial exploitation for the benefit of the Portuguese capital, violent repression, imprison and systematic denial of the exercise of political rights for most of the Mozambican people, the people of southern Mozambique had already a period of active underground political growth, inspired by the international political environment (decolonization process after World War II) and after connected to FRELIMO and its platform.  Small cells, mostly connecting educated, assimilated people, civil servants, artists, writers, painters, self-employed and workers developed underground activities ranging from the political task of organization, to political awareness, propaganda and spying, to the military task of recruitment for training abroad and to provide the military. Therefore, they countered Portuguese state propaganda and articulated an alternative political agenda. The underground political work had connections and continuity with other forms of struggle, such as with the colonial resistance of the 1950s and the FRELIMO struggle. The study combines primary and secondary written materials and oral accounts with underground political activists/militants.