EFFORTPOST That time when Mozambique Commies burned down their Surveyor General's and Title Deed's Offices.

Greetings Dramatards, apparently we don't have many Southern African Marseys - this is problematic and 3rd World phobic. If someone can create a shitty marsey for any of the Southern african marseys, I'll pay 1k marsey bux.

Today I wanna talk about an event which I don't know qualifies for this site, but which I thought was pretty darn dramatic with its batshit insane consequences. I'm talking about that time when Mozambique socialists burned down the title deed's office so in order to end disproportionate ownership between white settlers and the indigenous populations. I've tried very hard to obtain online sources for this, but this is the type of specialist knowledge where you need to be in the industry to even be aware of the existence of such Buildings, especially from the eyes of laymen civilians. And because the Mozambique residents all write and speak Portuguese, I have no idea how to fricking find historical records to prove what I'm talking about isn't complete bullshit. I only know these events are truth because I have spoken to both Afrikaner and Porra surveyors whom had since moved from Mozambique, as well as indigenous people from Mozambique whom work in RSA, then go back to their families during holidays to give money back to their villages which confirm these events are actual facts, and not just urban legends.

You see, my vocation is a Land Surveyor, and I work with many people whom maintain what is known as the national Cadaster of the country, like lawyers, Town Planners, architects and other Surveyors. A Cadaster is a word used to describe the sumtotal record of all land ownership in a country - it's a complex registry which denotes all land parcels and their boundaries. Every developed nation on earth has a Cadaster, in which they basically determine whom owns what, be it Canada, America, ect. Every time a land parcel or farm is divided or combined or changes ownership through sale, then the Cadaster is updated, along with the associated Title Deed which proves ownership of that specific land parcel. It's complicated but what matters to dramatards is that these two offices - the Surveyor General's Office and the Title Deed's Office work in tandem tirelessly to ensure that land and home ownership records are kept updated continuously so that there can never ever be confusion as to what exact centimeter of earth belongs to whom. Some countries marry these two organizations and some have separate things, but they all perform the same function of recording land ownership. And there's pretty good incentives to keep these records running as we know that land can be very valuable or expensive, especially if say oil gets discovered beneath some burger's scrapland in Texas, suddenly whom owns precisely what is not just a matter of thousands of $ but billions of $.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambican_War_of_Independence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambican_Civil_War

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/mozambique-independence-and-dirty-war

To add some background context, we need to talk about how Mozambique obtained independdence. Because it was a shitshow.

Basically Mozambique had been a Colony of Portugal for 400 years, but post WW2 with the total devastation of Europe, even nations not directly involved with WW2 suffered tremendous economic heck as basically all of their pre-war trade partners were levelled to the ground, and the inter-war period saw an obvious sharp decline in international trading. For the smaller and poorer European states like Portugal this basically dried them out, and they did not have the capacity to maintain their overseas colonies as they once did anymore. Additionally, the Western world would begin to drastically liberalize their societies and taste for colonial rule declined, just as africans began to become drastically more educated and an awareness of freedom began to develop. Additionally the Cold War was in full swing and the Soviet Union intended to exploit every single fracture within the west they could - and supporting African colonial states politically and with material was an inevatable occurrence.

By 1964 many of the Mozambique indigenous people were fed up with the unfair treatment they received under Portuguese rule, and that Portugal exploited Mozambique resources not for the benefit of the inhabitants but the wellfare of Portugal itself. It would continue from September 25, 1964, and ended with a ceasefire on September 8, 1974, resulting in a negotiated independence in 1975. But it needs to be understood that the war for Mozambique began in Angola, all the way back in 1961 - when communist Cubans and Soviets armed the Angolans with weaponry and training, so that they might spread to all of Southern Africa and overthrow the Colonial White governments there and instate Soviet friendly Socialist governments on the tip of Africa. Angola was also a colony of Portugal incidentally, and when Mozambique locals saw their peers having a violent atrocity rich war against the Portuguese army there, they also became inspired to overthrow the Portuguese gov in Mozambique, especially after Cubans and Angolan veterans crossed Southern Africa to form guerilla groups on the Eastern Coasts.

At this point in time, Namibia was called Suid-Wes Afrika, Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia, and the Republic of South Africa was known as the Union of South Africa, and all 3 of them were under white minority rule from anglos and afrikaners. They were also hard right wing governments whom hated Socialism, and to see these communist movements all over Southern Africa spring up like wildfires was, both from natural grassroots movements by the locals as well as instigated by Soviet/Cuban instigators were cause of peerless alarm, for the Hard Right governments there. At this point in time Portugal was poor as dirt, and could not maintain a multifront series of wars for all its colonies the way France did post 1960. The South Africans and Rhodesians didn't want a black majority governments to successfully spring up right next to their borders, and thus aided Portugal materially and financially throughout the war.

Throughout this shitshow our Burgeland friends were also under deep controversy as to whom to support. In USA the mass equalization of black peeps there meant a rapid change in foreign policy with regards to their Colonial allies like Frogland and Britain. At the same time, the fervently anti-commie USA stared in abject horror as Soviet supported socialist parties sprang up in Africa to replace these toppling Colonial provinces. They desperately didn't want the Red Menace to spread like locusts, but they also didn't want to be seen as supporting African colonies or colonial overlords, as their new 30 million strong blacks voting block became a powerful minority voting group not to piss off too much. Fortunately for Burgerland they had the racist NP Apartheid government as a mini power at the South Point of Africa to do the dirty work on their behalf. America would never formally condemn SA until the very end of the Soviet Union, and fall of the Berlin Wall. The Union of SA was simply too valuable as a bullwark against communism to lose the strategic south point of africa.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/revista-de-historia-economica-journal-of-iberian-and-latin-american-economic-history/article/abs/financial-costs-of-the-portuguese-colonial-war-19611974-analysis-and-applied-study/31B3C7ADFAAB352A4D4EBAF0BFB7E3CA

I mention this about the USA because of how the Mozambique Independence war ended. By 1975 the Portuguese were basically dried up like a washing cloth. They simply didn't have the funds to keep an army funded half a planet away. Some economists estimated that by 1975 - 44% of the Portuguese budget was spent on fighting its colonial wars, it wasn't sustainable. Sentiment amongst the civilians populace in Portugal was also increasingly anti-war and anti-colonial rule. And the guerilla forces achieved their objective of making Mozambique too expensive to govern. Many People consider the Mozambique war of Independence, and the immediate followup Civil War to be one uninterrupted violent 30 year conflict. You see Burgerland believed that Mozambique would inevatably fall, and encouraged Rhodesia and South Africa to support anti-communist factions when the Portuguese inevatibly GTFO'd. But this meant that throughout the War of Independence, there was a quasi 3-way war between Portugal, the Soviet backed ocialist FRELIMO, and the South African & USA backed RENAMO. It's obscene to think that South Africa ended up sponsoring both Portugal AND RENAMO at the same time lmoa, but the policy was basically anti-commie no matter the cost or absurdity.

Post conclusion of the war for Independence, the political situation of Mozambique in 1975 was intensely unstable. Communists and anti-communist locals were beating each other up in the streets while the Portuguese were evacuating their army. Outside of the Afrikaners at the time in Mozambique whom had spread across all of Southern Africa in the 1800s from Cape Town, many of the Portuguese whites there had lived in Mozambique for multiple generations way back as 400 years ago, thus they were pretty drastically ingrained into Mozambique and their evaquation was traumatic. Within the 1st 2 weeks of Independance and overhanding of government control to the Mozambique socialists, 300 000 Portuguese all fled Mozambique after fear of the brutality in which colonial settlers were massacred in Angola. With the leaving of these settlers, Mozambique also lost much of its tradecraft and nation building experience. And unlike RSA there would be no teaching from white settler to black indigenous peeps at how to run the country later in 1990.

Anyways, after Independence, and after Portuguese fricked off, the violence and atrocities began immediately between the factions of FRELIMO (the commies) and RENAMO (the capitalists). Moscow blamed South Africa and Rhodesia for planting insurgents into Mozambique and destabilizing the new Democratic (not really the socialists were a one party rule) country. Rhodesia and SA blamed the Cubans and Soviets for planting insurgets to destabilize Southern Africa. Both were true and both sides were full of shit. For the next 20 years Mozambique would be proxy wars between the forces of communism and capitalism as the Soviets trained and armed FRELIMO and the South Africans & Rhodesians trained and armed RENAMO.

This war would be a contest of brutality, as brother culled brother, and father killed son. It would range from 1977 to 1992. The country of Mozambique would retrofit itself for war instead of economic wellfare. I"ndustrial and social recession, corruption, poverty, inequality and failed central planning eroded the initial revolutionary fervour. Single party rule by FRELIMO also became increasingly authoritarian throughout the Civil War." Over a million Mozambique locals would die in the conflict, either as casualties or from starvation as farming became impossible against the guerilla and counter guerilla raids between FRELIMO & RENAMO. Critical infrastructure left by the Portuguese like Hospitals and schools were destroyed with no ability for the population to rebuild them without tradecraft knowledge and no ability to learn engineering whilst under a state of warfare. The extensive Portuguese railways connecting villages deep from the ocean ports were destroyed, meaning new food could not be delivered to isolated places. The country became mined to oblivion. Farmlands would remain danger zones, until the very last landmines would finally be removed in 2015. And even then now and then a Mozambique girl loses their leg from a mine still obfuscated.

https://www.pressenza.com/2015/09/mozambique-removes-last-known-landmine/

This farce of human suffering would continue up until 1992 when the soviet Union collapsed, and both South African and their support for FRELIMO and RENAMO ended, respectively. The South African National Party government - the guys maintaining Apartheid, had used the Soviet Red Menace as a boogey man to upkeep the porpaganda for its own local Afrikaner populace - as not all of them were staunch apartheid supporters, and the lead narrative was that if the white race didn't corral their misguided black countrymen, then they'd fall to the evils of communism. I mention this because, it's a great sense of morbid irony that many afrikaner historians consider the fall of the Soviet Union to be the greatest cause for the fall of the Union of South Africa.

With no money from external Cold War enemies, the finances for bullets immediately dried up, and peace talks began between between the communist and anti-communist factions, as mediated by the Mozambique Grand Church, and the Italian Catholic Church. Tensions between the veterans still flare up today. As recent as 2015-2018 there was a short but brutal spat between opposing factions in the North of Mozambique. Although these are minor spats with casualty rates of like a few dozens, and not the apocalyptic hundreds of thousands from 1980s

https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/mozambiques-renamo-kills-three-on-highway-1698575#.U_rGxvmSxkZ

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2013-08-13-36-mozambique-soldiers-police-killed-renamo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RENAMO_insurgency_(2013%E2%80%932021)

The short is that modern Mozambique is a very commie leftwing government which is as corrupt and dysfunctional as their ANC counterparts. Also check this!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Mozambican_general_election

Yeah that's right, the modern major political parties don't just share the same names as that of the factions during the Mozambique civil war, they fricking ARE the exact same factions, with some politicians sitting in Mozambique parliament having been the same generals commanding troops to kill their political opponents sitting on opposite benches literally in the field of combat! Point is, it's Kosovo levels of political instability and tension, even 30 years after the end of the war, and many atrocities like mowing down civilians still stand as open wounds never having been healded by both factions.

THE BURNING DOWN OF MOZAMBIQUE SURVEYOR GENERAL's OFFICES AND THE NATIONAL TITLE DEED's OFFICES:

Right back to Cadastral stuff. At some point between 1977 to 1992, during the Civil War, communist guerillas had infiltrated Maputo the capital and burned down fricking everything. 100 Year old maps. Records, files, stamps, folders, and deeds. Every single municipality and region and province ceased to exist on file, and there was basically only ash. They did this with the deliberate intent of destroying what they had believed to be a European supremacist system, and by eliminating the Mozambique National Cadaster, they would basically go full Fight Club with that end scene where the main character destroys all banks and relieves everyone from crippling debt. In this way the socialist soldiers believed that by eliminating records of which boundaries belonged to whom, they would have eliminated Portuguese influence upon Mozambique society forever, and ensure that the Coommunist notion of commune and shared prosperity would follow.

Of course with the end of the Civil war, and during peace talks in 1992 between the 2 factions, mediated by the Grand Mozambique church, post war chaos, people discovered that all of the Cadastral records were destroyed and the unintentional chaos soon followed. You see black people whom had lived for centuries next to a beach, suddenly found themselves in conflict with veterans rewarded with land which fell over their physical buildings, like their cattle corrals and huts. Men with brick houses refused to share land with other without records, but there were no records to have proof of ownership.

Many of the entrepeneurs whom tried to uplift themselves out of poverty, could not leverage their homes or ancestral lands for loans to start a shop or business, as no bank local or multi-national would loan against a land parcel which had no proof of ownership. Houses, buildings and flats which survived the war could not improve with asset interest, as once again ownership proof wasn't obtainable from anywhere. Who the heck is gonna buy a farm, if the guy you are buying it from can't proof he's the ACTUAL owner. This elimination of cadastral records would have dramatic economic repercussions for Mozambique's economy, when they had already suffered a devastating colossal poverty inducing war.

The absence of maps, and municipal records of say, where the water pipes were laid, also meant that maintanence would not be achieved easily for any water system which would need the eventual repairs over time. Other problems without a national Cadastral record, included which boundaries laid where against Mozambique's national borders, and fights would break out between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, as to whom owned what. There sure as heck wasn't any Multi-national communist friendship when Zimbabwe discovered coal near Mozambique's borders. It was a massive diplomatic slapfight between the two nations.

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/zimbabwes-hunger-for-power-2014-04-07

The biggest fights between land ownership tends to be next to the coast and beaches, as fishing rights between villagers can depend on whose land is adjacent to what part of the coast, and people will ignore land parcel boundaries anyway to go and fish. The point is, there was massive national nuclear drama caused by the thoughtless actions taken by these commies when they cucked their entire nation by burning down the Survey records and Title deeds of all the farms and stands.

Anyways GOOD DAY!