Public Enemy No. 3

When Dr. David Livingstone wandered through the wilds of Mozambique a century ago, he found only "wretched forts full of military convicts with bugles and kettledrums." Today the forts are far from wretched. Big, solidly built, and bristling with guns, they are manned by thousands of tough young Portuguese soldiers who have no illusions about their job. "Africans are pleasant people." said one trooper recently, "but we need cheap labor. If the Africans challenge this, we will have to suppress them."

And the challenge is bound to come, for Mozambique ranks just behind South Africa and Portuguese Angola on the list of "public enemies" drawn up by the Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity. With its upper half locked in the vise of militant black Africa, and the newly independent nation of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) jutting like an assegai into its heart, Mozambique is in a precarious position. Larger in area than Texas, the torrid, subequatorial nation is run by 163,000 whites and Asians who are outnumbered 40 to 1 by blacks. Yet Portugal's Dictator Antonio Salazar, who sits in a Lisbon palace 5,000 miles away, insists that Mozambique is not a colony but, like Angola, an integral part of metropolitan Portugal.

A Bullet for the President. Salazar himself has never visited Mozambique --a fact that most white Mozambicanos resent. But last week his puppet President, Rear Admiral Americo Deus Rodrigues Tomas, concluded a two-week swing through the country in an effort to prove that Lisbon really cares. From the Indian Ocean port of Lourenc,o Marques (where he reviewed 5,000 troops and 200 Alsatian, Doberman, boxer and Labrador guard dogs) to the villages of the Limpopo River Valley, the sprightly, 69-year-old President met with rousing receptions and blizzards of confetti. But for all the outward signs of welcome, Tomas was taking no chances. "One bullet for the President now will be worth 25,000 later." was the terrorist slogan, and Tomas was accompanied everywhere by 58 security cops armed with machine pistols. Last week, as the President cruised along the reed-grown shores of Lake Nyasa and contemplated the 20-mm. Oerlikon cannon at his vessel's bow, he aptly expressed his nation's position. "I find great pleasure," Tomas proudly told his naval aides, "in crossing these Portuguese waters."

A major stop on the President's tour was the vast $34.2 million Limpopo settlement scheme in southern Mozambique, into which Portugal hopes to lure 1,000 immigrant families from the homeland, as well as 500 more from Mozambique itself. Each new farmer will receive up to 25 acres of irrigated land, a new house, furniture and tools, as well as two bullocks, a milk cow, two pigs, five chickens and a rooster. The 14-village project serves two purposes: it takes the pressure off the government at home, where poverty and discontent are mounting, and it strengthens Mozambique's white population against the day when the "freedom fighters" decide to move.

Blunting the Spear. That day is still far off, for Mozambique's rebels are currently divided against one another. The largest of the groups--Frelimo (for Frente da Libertac,`ao de Moc,ambique} --is led by mild-mannered Dr. Eduardo Mondlane and claims 9,000 members both inside and outside the country, as well as 500 freedom fighters training at secret camps in Tanganyika. Frelimo's major rival is an organization called Udenamo, which claims that because Mondlane has a white American wife, his group is nothing more than a U.S. spy outfit that would never kill white Portuguese. Lesser, localized rebel gangs abound, but most of them are confused and ineffectual. One group boldly proposed a war-canoe raid on a Portuguese "slave island" off the coast. But it gave up when it could not find the island.

Just in case the rebels ever do get coordinated, Portugal is taking steps to blunt their most dangerous spear: the salient of Malawi, which provides 700 miles of mountainous, bush-grown border through which freedom fighters could filter at will. To prevent Malawi from becoming a rebel launching pad. Portugal is pressing a shotgun courtship with its black African Premier, Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda. Actually, Banda has very little choice but to be friendly with Mozambique: Malawi's 3,900,000 landlocked people are helplessly dependent on the Portuguese-run railroad to get their vital tobacco and tea exports to the Mozambican port of Beira, the only available shipping outlet. As Banda himself observed: "We need the Portuguese as much as they need us. We can be as friendly with them as the British are with the Russians." Though the policy would hardly win Banda any friends among African nationalists, it would at least keep his economy perking during the crucial months of initial independence.

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