Mozambican War of Independence hand-over of power to FRELIMO, uncontested by elections. Formal independence was set for June 25, 1975, the 13th anniversary of the founding of FRELIMO. Many Portuguese colonials were not typical settlers in Mozambique. While most European communities in Africa at the time – with the possible exception of Afrikaners – were established from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, some white families and institutions in those territories still administered by Portugal had been entrenched for generations. About 300,000 white civilians left Mozambique in the first week or two of independence (in Europe they were popularly known as "retornados"). Samora
History of the Jews in Mozambique History of the Jews in Mozambique The history of the Jews in Mozambique, until 1975, was closely connected with the history of Judaism through the former Portuguese empire, particularly those elements of it operating on the coastlines of the Indian Ocean. By the time the first Portuguese ships entered this ocean in the late 15th century, Jewish merchants and persons connected with sea work had lived on, and next to, this ocean for many centuries. As a European presence deepened by the late 19th century in the Portuguese East African colonial capital then called "Lourenço Marques", a cluster of Jews