Paper short abstract:

Looking at Frelimo- ZANU military cooperation, this paper analyses the solidarity relationship developed between Frelimo and ZANU fighters on the battlefield. Revealing, thus, the kind of solidarity that shaped the liberation struggle on the battlefield and the exchanges it produced.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the contexts and the mechanisms through which Frelimo supported ZANU’s liberation armed struggle militarily. Solidarity relationships between Frelimo and ZANU were substantial, influential and took many forms. Soon after the proclamation of Mozambique's independence in June 1975, the Frelimo government strengthened the relationship developed with ZANU during its liberation struggle on the Tete Front. It started a process of directly supporting the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, first by allowing the transfer of ZANU headquarters from Zambia to Mozambique, creating ZANLA guerrilla bases inside Mozambique, and setting up Zimbabwean refugee camps on Mozambican soil. Frelimo also established military cooperation with ZANU by covering the movement of soldiers from the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA, the armed wing of ZANU), establishing military forces at the main border with Rhodesia and sending Mozambican soldiers to fight alongside ZANLA inside Rhodesia. The paper aims to explore what happened in the joint military cooperation between Frelimo and ZANLA fighters in the operational areas. It is based on archival material, interviews with Zimbabwean and Mozambican war veterans, and published memoirs.

I contend that although the multitude of military training and ideologies played out in the war, creating frictions between Frelimo soldiers and ZANLA on the battlefield, this had a minimal impact on the development of the war itself, in the sense that more than creating tensions and disrupt the course of the war, these differences allowed military exchanges and shaped specifically military solidarities and legacies.