Front For The Liberation Of Mozambique

   The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique—FRELIMO) came to power on Mozambican independence in 1975, having spent the first 13 years of its existence in a protracted guerrilla struggle against Portuguese colonial occupation. After the creation of the People’s Republic of Mozambique, under the guidance of President Samora Machel FRELIMO sought to apply the Marxism–Leninism that had informed its liberation struggle to the wider state, collectivizing production, affirming its single-party status and disseminating its ideology across the country through “dynamizing groups” of party cadres. In 1977, FRELIMO declared its status as a vanguard party, increasing the size of the Central Committee and moving closer to the Soviet Union. However, the party’s leaders acknowledged the necessity of applying Marxism to the concrete conditions surrounding them, acknowledging the primacy of agriculture and the peasantry over industry and the proletariat. As a result, FRELIMO allowed rural private enterprise to continue, an economic necessity given the ruinous civil war in which it was engaged with the anti-communist National Resistance Movement (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana—RENAMO). By 1989, with widespread recession and a heartfelt desire to bring about an end to the civil war, at its Fifth Party Congress FRELIMO renounced Marxism–Leninism, and moderate leader Joaquim Chissano moved the party toward social democratic status. The distinctly non-Marxist FRELIMO has formed continuous government ever since.