FRELIMO

FRELIMO (Portuguese pronunciation: [fɾɛˈlimu]; from Portuguese: Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, transl. Mozambique Liberation Front) is a democratic socialist political party in Mozambique. It has governed the country since its independence from Portugal in 1975.

Founded in 1962, FRELIMO began as a nationalist movement fighting for the self-determination and independence of Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule. During its anti-colonial struggle, FRELIMO managed to maintain friendly relations with both the Soviet Union and China, and received military and economic assistance from both. Independence was achieved in June 1975 after the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon the previous year. FRELIMO formally became a political party during its 3rd Party Congress in February 1977, and adopted Marxism–Leninism as its official ideology and FRELIMO Party (Partido FRELIMO) as its official name.

FRELIMO has been the ruling party of Mozambique since then, initially as the sole legal party in a one-party system and later as the democratically elected government in a dominant-party system. FRELIMO fought a protracted civil war from 1976 to 1992 against the anti-communist Mozambican National Resistance or RENAMO. RENAMO received support from the white minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa. FRELIMO approved a new national constitution in 1990, which ended one-party rule and established a multi-party system. FRELIMO has since become the dominant party in Mozambique and has won a majority of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic in every election since the country's first multi-party election in 1994.

After World War II, while many European nations were granting independence to their colonies, Portugal, under the Estado Novo regime, maintained that Mozambique and other Portuguese possessions were overseas territories of the metropole (mother country). Emigration to the colonies soared. Calls for Mozambican independence developed rapidly, and in 1962 several anti-colonial political groups formed FRELIMO. In September 1964, it initiated an armed campaign against Portuguese colonial rule. Portugal had ruled Mozambique for more than four hundred years; not all Mozambicans desired independence, and fewer still sought change through armed revolution.

FRELIMO was founded in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, on 25 June 1962, when three regionally based nationalist organizations: the Mozambican African National Union (MANU), National Democratic Union of Mozambique (UDENAMO), and the National African Union of Independent Mozambique (UNAMI) merged into one broad-based guerrilla movement. Under the leadership of Eduardo Mondlane, who was elected president of the newly formed organization, FRELIMO settled its headquarters in 1963 in Dar es Salaam. Uria Simango was its first vice-president.

The movement could not then be based in Mozambique as the Portuguese opposed nationalist movements and the colony was controlled by the police. (The three founding groups had also operated as exiles.) Tanzania and its president, Julius Nyerere, were sympathetic to the Mozambican nationalist groups. Convinced by recent events, such as the Mueda massacre, that peaceful agitation would not bring about independence, FRELIMO contemplated the possibility of armed struggle from the outset. It launched its first offensive in September 1964.

During the ensuing war of independence, FRELIMO received support from the Soviet Union, China, the Scandinavian countries, and some non-governmental organisations in the West. The mobilization of all, regardless of gender, motivated the initial inclusion of women into the war. Initially women were used to carry goods from Tanzania, but over time they were tasked with "making the first contacts with the population in a new area." Women were expected to engage with the locals and politicize them. This discourse helped legitimize female cadres as real revolutionaries.

Frelimo founded the Women's Detachment, a part of the Department of Defense, as a way to encourage the mobilization of women and enlarge Frelimo's support. Women cadres brought "a new and decisive force to the revolutionary struggle."