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Empty Pedestals. A parade and a state banquet completed the festivities in the capital, which is expected to be renamed Can Phumo, or "Place of Phumo," after a Shangaan chief who lived in the area before the Portuguese navigator Lourenço Marques founded the city in 1545 and gave his name to it. Most city streets, named for Portuguese heroes or important dates in Portuguese history, will have their names changed soon. Already missing from the capital's broad, flag-festooned boulevards are dozens of statues erected in colonial days to honor such Portuguese explorers of old as Lourenço Marques and Vasco da Gama, who brought the first Portuguese presence to Mozambique in 1498. Only the pedestals remain in place, while the stately stone and iron images of Marques, Da Gama and others stand in disarray in a junkyard.
The fate of the statues aptly symbolizes the plight of the remaining whites, who have been given 90 days to decide whether to stay and accept Mozambican citizenship or get out. In one residential area of the capital, fully half the houses once occupied by whites stand empty; remaining neighbors dutifully switch on lights in unoccupied homes every night to discourage looters. One apartment in every three in white areas is for rent or for sale, but there are no takers. Before the coup in Lisbon 15 months ago, there were 220,000 whites in Mozambique, including 80,000 troops; today the total white population is 85,000 at most, and the troops are gone. Of the approximately 55,000 white civilians who have fled, many were allowed to take with them only a single suitcase and $150 in escudos, leaving behind household goods. Machel has promised that Mozambique will be a multiracial state, but the remaining Portuguese have little doubt that black rule will be just about as one-sided as were the centuries of white rule. As one Portuguese farmer bitterly put it, "Black is not only beautiful but better."
As the Portuguese depart, both manufacturing and agriculture have sagged. Crop levels this year for tea, tobacco, cotton and cashew nuts have dropped sharply. At the port cities of Nacala, Beira and Lourenço Marques, efficiency is down 80% and pilferage has doubled in the past year. "What worries me," said a black civil servant, "is that Machel doesn't, seem to care if the standard of living falls here. In fact I think it fits in with his Maoist ideas. Maybe the camaradas [comrades] will take it in the countryside, but sooner or later he will have an urban revolt on his hands."
Machel has stressed sacrifice in his speeches. So has Prime Minister Joaquin Chissano, 36, who warned the people in a recent speech: "You must not think Frelimo will drop like a god from the sky to solve all your problems." Frelimo has forcefully put down the wave of strikes that followed formation of the transitional government last fall, and has even forced some salary rollbacks. There is also talk about dispatching armed soldiers to the docks to force greater efficiency, perhaps at gunpoint.