History of Mozambique free of land mines in 2015, following a 22-year effort to remove explosive devices planted during the War of Independence and Civil War. History of Mozambique Mozambique was a Portuguese colony, overseas province and later a member state of Portugal. It gained independence from Portugal in 1975. In 2007 Julio Mercader, of the University of Calgary, recovered dozens of 100,000-year-old stone tools from a deep limestone cave near Lake Niassa in Mozambique showing that wild sorghum, the ancestor of the chief cereal consumed today in sub-Saharan Africa for flours, breads, porridges and alcoholic beverages, was being consumed by "Homo sapiens"
Victoria Falls Conference (1975) immediate handover to communist guerrillas. Brief, frenzied negotiations with FRELIMO in Mozambique preceded the country's independence on 25 June 1975; FRELIMO took power without contesting an election, while Samora Machel assumed the presidency. Now that Mozambique was under a friendly government, ZANLA could freely base themselves there with the full support of Machel and FRELIMO, with whom an alliance had already existed since the late 1960s. The Rhodesian Security Forces, on the other hand, now had a further of border to defend and had to rely on South Africa alone for imports. The second event was more surprising for the