Mozambican Independence
FRELIMO launched its armed campaign in 1964 and by the early 1970s had established control over parts of the north without ever threatening the colonial centre militarily. What ended the war was the collapse of the metropole's will: the cost of simultaneous conflicts in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau consumed nearly half the Portuguese budget and radicalised the officer corps, which overthrew the dictatorship in April 1974 and moved swiftly to divest. Independence was followed by the departure of almost the entire Portuguese settler population, which took with it most of the country's administrative, technical and commercial capacity, in some cases sabotaging equipment on the way out. FRELIMO declared a Marxist-Leninist state, and from 1977 faced RENAMO, an insurgency created initially by Rhodesian intelligence and subsequently sustained by apartheid South Africa. The resulting civil war lasted until 1992 and killed around a million people, most through famine and displacement rather than combat.
- Year: 1975 CE
- Category: Political
