Dar es Salaam and Portuguese Decolonization in Africa: The Case of Mozambique

From the mid-1950s, TANU and then, after independence in 1961, the government of Tanganyika (from 1964 Tanzania) offered their support to the liberation of Africa from colonial domination and white-minority regimes. In this way Julius Nyerere intended to provide greater security to his country, and strengthen the political legitimacy of his government both at home and internationally. Tanganyikan/Tanzanian support for (Southern) Africa's decolonization made Dar es Salaam a key centre of international politics revolving around the national liberation struggles during the 1960s and 1970s. After analysing the particular diplomatic entanglements that developed around the institutions of the TANU and later of the independent government in Dar es Salaam, this chapter looks specifically at the role they played in relation to the liberation struggle in Mozambique. In particular, it examines the contested process of formation of FRELIMO in Dar es Salaam, the role played by Tanganyika/Tanzania and by the Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity in establishing FRELIMO as the only 'authentic' liberation movement in Mozambique against other Mozambican formations that had arisen in the meantime, and the dialectical relationship between the institutions of the 'state in the making' of FRELIMO (such as the Mozambique Institute) in Dar es Salaam and those of Nyerere's government. In doing so, this chapter highlights not only the confluence of interests between the Tanganyikan/Tanzanian institutions and those of FRELIMO, but also the contradictions of this relationship and its intertwining with the variety of international interests that converged in Dar es Salaam.