CARNATIONS FOR MOÇAMBIQUE – from the perspective of a Johannesburger

 A quiet Wednesday in Lorenço Marques. 24th April 1974. Guests at the Polana Hotel ease into their day and others plan to visit the bullring to take in some blood sport that in Portuguese East Africa stopped short of granting the tortured beasts the coup de grâce. In the lazy clime of sub-Saharan Africa of the mid-1970s a trip to the beach would not be out of place in these last days of colonial hegemony. The calm waters of LM where waves idly peter out on the sandy shores belie the turbulence predicated by the social, economic and political fissures that ran through the populace. Lorenço Marques pavements served as a social meeting place for Portuguese men chatting and quaffing the rich variety of drinks on offer. Moçambique still reflected life in provincial Portugal as it purported to be – a province of the colonial power that had ruled this land since 1498 – be that as a concession or direct rule at various stages.

Ferdinand dos Santos was hard at work in his office at the factory his grandfather had started and the family had turned into a prosperous manufacturer of niche apparel. He was always up at the crack of dawn and contrary to the familiar flow of life in this distant outpost of what remained of the once mighty Portuguese seaborne empire, Ferdinand busied himself managing his business operation to the satisfaction of outlets both in Moçambique and in neighbouring African colonial remnants and fledgling independent states.

Half a world away, Portuguese dictator Marcello Caetano was about to be toppled and his Estado Novo consigned to history. Much of the groundwork for the revolution about to unfold took place outside of Portugal in the colonial settlements of Angola, Guinea Bissau and Moçambique – cooked up by young agitated army captains and majors deeply critical of the intransigent dictatorship. Portugal was itself a rather quiet backwater of the developed world with little hint of the turbulence to follow and no credible opposition to Caetano.

Unbeknownst to Ferdinand and his compatriots was that developments in Lisbon were poised to upend his frenetic business life as they would the leisurely pace of their lives. This would be the last day that the future would be as it always had been.

In the distant colonies the Portuguese had long been fighting a stubborn assortment of guerillas with no clear end in sight to the dying. These were expensive and unpopular campaigns the imperial country could ill afford – poverty pressing in Lisbon and every corner of the land. This was the era of The Scramble From Africa and other European powers had been shedding their colonies since the 1960s. The broader context was a Cold War in which the spectre of nuclear holocaust was a pervasive and constant threatening undercurrent. The USA was embroiled in the Vietnam saga and had no stomach for involvement in conflicts on other continents. Nato and the Warsaw Pact peered anxiously at each other over the Berlin Wall. Rhodesia had declared UDI in 1965 and was waging its own war against guerillas from the Frontline States. South Africa was clinging to South West Africa, a League of Nations mandate turned disputed territory when the South African government began to treat it as a fifth province. 

On the morning of the 25th Ferdinand’s radio sputtered a few garbled news items that were about to shake his world to its core. Trickling through were a few disturbing reports that would set in motion a train of events in his crumbling certainty that would plunge his family into crisis. Decisions would have to be taken on the trot to leave behind everything built up over three generations and save the skin on the backs of his family and shaken employees who had worked for the family brand for decades. 

Amid this turmoil the world over, Portugal woke on the 25th April to a bloodless coup in which the elite, including the wealthy Espirito Santo Silva banker family had fled and the ordinary folk were epitomised by Portuguese mamas placing carnations in the soldiers’ rifle barrels (hence the reference to the coup as a Carnation Revolution). General Antonio de Spinola, the relatively moderate supporter of the revolution lent it legitimacy as a nationalist, rather than a communist take-over. The people were just fed-up with the old order and over 100 000 strong socialist march past the United States Embassy led by Mario Soares, who had flown in from Brussels, gave a stamp of popular approval to the 5-man Junta of National Salvation.

Whereas all of these machinations were largely welcomed in Portugal, it was a portend of chaos in the colonies. Leading ragtag guerilla forces and running a country, even one as relatively unsophisticated as the Moçambique of the 1970s would be an entirely different proposition. A communist ideologue and academic emerging from the bush would have no inkling of running an economy in the modern world. Moçambique would be destined to rely on the good graces of the USSR and China, neither of which were being run with any modicum of efficiency. 

The United States feared that Nato secrets, to which Portugal as a founding member was privy, would leak to the Soviet Warsaw Pact, but these fears proved to be unfounded, as the Captains and Majors of the revolution were military, not political types and were merely insisting that Portugal get the hell out of her colonies. In the election which followed after decades of relatively benevolent dictatorship, the communists were routed and power passed firmly into the hands of a socialist and centre-right majority.

The colonies were, however, another matter altogether.

Moçambique especially was another matter.

As far back as 1962 Samora Machel had established Frelimo in Dar es Salaam to fight for Moçambiqan independence. The fight was, however, not only to secure independence from Portugal, but unabashedly to establish a communist republic and dismantle individualism. In the eleven years of guerilla fighting which followed the establishment of Frelimo, hardly any headway was made. Organised and well trained soldiers were just too competent to be rattled by the rag tag guerillas who were trying to overthrow a well established army and administration.

In three months the Coup in Lisbon accomplished what a decade of guerilla attacks could not.

Samora Machel was firm about one point when he negotiated the independence of Moçambique, namely, elections would not precede independence. Indeed elections were simply an irritating inconvenience to any dyed in the wool Marxist-Leninist. Mario Soares wanted nothing more than to rid the Portuguese government of the albatross of restive colonies. A swift handover to Frelimo, even if on Machel’s terms, was the most desirable outcome for Soares, and the Lusaka Accord did not so much as doff a hat towards any semblance of democracy. Moçambique would henceforth be firmly under the radical control of Frelimo and Machel’s ideology of puritanical Communism, slightly fudged by a nod to African Socialism.

The inflammatory utterances of Machel did little to allay the fears of business families like Ferdinand’s, or for that matter descendants of the Portuguese colonists of yore. Two paths beckoned: South Africa and Rhodesia. The border posts to both of these remnants of a rapidly fading past were starting to clog up as the flight began. Both had their own issues. A trickle of Rhodesians were themselves fleeing south in what was condescendingly named the “chicken run” but would soon become an “owl run” as those who saw the writing on the wall beat a wise retreat. The process would become a matter of buying time and staying just ahead of the machetes.

No sooner had power shifted than widespread looting was directed at the Portuguese population – in the skirmishes some 20 Portuguese and 70 black folk dying. The flight that started at Komatipoort border post now witnessed waves of Portuguese Moçambiqans increasingly convinced of the peril they were in, given the wild demagoguery of Machel.  He had crafted a new constitution giving Frelimo absolute power over government and, as President of Frelimo, Machel was President of Moçambique spewing out Maoist rhetoric. Words can be dangerous, and the destructive power of ill-conceived rhetoric directed at soliciting the support of illiterate masses must ne’er be underestimated.

Samora Machel’s raft of new laws were enough to drive for cover anyone who owned anything. Statements like - “The Land belongs to the people” and would by implication henceforth be controlled by the State; abolition of mission schools confirming communist antipathy towards religion; suspension of the private practice of Law as well as the private practice of medicine – did nothing to assuage fears of the “mulungo” (a pejorative used freely by Machel as an inflammatory reference to the Portuguese). Indeed, even in death Frelimo would not release its grip – mortuaries bizarrely came under state control. Even Portuguese formerly sympathetic to Frelimo were driven to the hills and a Portuguese population of 250 000 plummeted in weeks to about 80 000 diehards who remained willing to give the new regime a chance.

The influx of the fleeing “mulungos” into Johannesburg and Hillbrow was rapid. Cars packed to the hilt with any possession which could fit in or on, or dragged in a trailer, streamed in from the neighbouring state. All came with the clothes on their backs and their meagre packed possessions, little money and no shelter. Some were sleeping in their cars parked in the city, the sympathetic South African Portuguese community and with the many Johannesburgers who lent a helping hand. These poor folk had left their entire lives and livelihoods in Lorenço Marques, Beira and a myriad other places in this, now blighted, land. The empathy for their plight was palpable.

Of the families who fled their home – the only one most of them knew, having been born and brought up in Africa – there were successful businessmen, entrepreneurs, professionals, labourers, all classes now united in having been stripped of all they had. What they would bring to their new country would be only their wits and skills. Ferdinand brought with him the ability to start and run a business successfully. This skill had been handed down to him generationally and it would not be long before he who was eking out a living in the wake of the terror would once more run a hugely successful operation. He had not managed to continue his family business successfully because of an abundance of stupidity. The sweat of his brow and the acumen of a businessman with decades of experience was all that was required to lift himself up by his bootstraps.

Migration to his new country where he was welcomed, benefited not only Ferdinand, but scores of folk who would work for him for many years, and the economy of his new country. Almost half a century later Moçambique remains a poor backwater despite attempts to shrug off a legacy of mismanagement and graft. The country Ferdinand adopted went down its own destructive detours – fighting venomous wars, a brush with corruption and its own chaos, but still stopping short of the precipice lined up for it by the populists. Ferdinand’s family still run their business and have diversified and invested internationally and made them relatively impervious to the machinations of populists in a single state.

Kudos for the hard working dos Santos clan. Kudos for the nation that opened its doors to migrants. Carnations for Moçambique.

©Paul Haupt