A few minutes past midnight on a rainy Wednesday morning in the Mozambican capital of Lourenço Marques, the Portuguese flag was lowered by an unsmiling Portuguese sailor, folded by a Portuguese airman and entrusted to a Portuguese soldier. Then three African soldiers in starched fatigues ran up the new flag of the People's Republic of Mozambique. As tribal dancers beat animal-skin drums and a 21-gun salute boomed outside Machava Stadium, the militantly Maoist President of the new state, Samora Moises Machel, 41, embraced Portuguese Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves. Thus ended 477 years of Lisbon's colonial presence in an African territory that until 15 months ago the Portuguese had vowed they would never surrender.
Bearded image. Machel, a one-tune medical orderly from Xai-Xai (pronounced shy-shy) in the southern province of Gaza, is now the unquestioned leader of Mozambique, and his bearded image can be seen everywhere. In 1963 Machel fled Mozambique to join rebels of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in neighboring Tanzania. In 1964, he led the first major Frelimo attack against a Portuguese military post. By 1966 he was Frelimo's army chief and by 1970 he was the official leader of the movement, succeeding Eduardo Mondlane, the American-trained sociologist who had been mysteriously killed by a book-bomb in 1969. A month ago, Machel re-entered Mozambique and visited all nine provinces before returning to Lourenço Marques early last week for the first time in twelve years. A crowd of 100,000, including many of the remaining whites, cheered.
As outlined by Machel in a six-page proclamation last week, Mozambique will be a Marxist, one-party state with Frelimo supreme over both government and army. Private property rights will be recognized, but only "if they are exercised in the interest of the state." In effect, most land will be nationalized. A constitution provides for a 210-member National Assembly with virtually all members appointed directly or indirectly by the party. Elections are promised within a year of "the convening of the third Party Congress," but no date has been set for that event.
Machel concluded his reading of the proclamation by shouting in Portuguese "A luta continual" (The struggle continues). That set off a wild shooting spree of celebration, reported TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, with Frelimo soldiers and police firing Kalashnikov automatic rifles, machine guns and even a few grenade launchers. By a miracle, only two people were accidentally wounded. Caravans of cars drove through the dark wet streets, horns blaring. A few people danced in the roadways, obviously having ignored Machel's repeated denunciations of "demon alcohol."