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Paper short abstract:

The process of armed struggle in Southern Africa was taken by soldiers who fought for liberation, with the support of ordinary people. The aim of my paper is to explore how Mozambicans in urban areas had supported the ZANLA soldiers in their struggle for independence

Paper long abstract:

The support to ZANLA soldiers can be seen from two angles. On one hand, this support was established from the rural area, where people had interacted more closer with the ZANLA soldiers, providing intelligence on the movements of Rhodesian forces, food and helped transport war materials to the Rhodesian border. At the same time that they were strengthen identity aspects, which tied together both Mozambicans and Zimbabwean (particularly those who live in the border areas). One the other hand, the support to ZANLA soldiers were taken by the urban area, where people showed their support through popular manifestations, songs and poetry. The objective of my paper is to analyse the kind of identities that forged the relationship between the ZANLA soldiers and Mozambicans in urban areas. My argument is that popular manifestations, songs and poetry underline the commitment that Mozambicans had with the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, in part moved by the identification of one cause to other, which was stressed by historical, economic and cultural relationship between Zimbabwean and Mozambican people, but also show the interference that the FRELIMO's ideology had in this process, by reproducing the FRELIMO discourse about the support to ZANU and also by fitting in a "vocabulary of the ready-made ideas" which extols the revolutionary process of building a politically and morally correct new man.