Mozambique and economic growth. FRELIMO took control of the territory after 10 years of sporadic warfare, as well as Portugal's own return to democracy after the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, and the failed coup of 25 November 1975. Within a year, most of the 250,000 Portuguese in Mozambique had left—some expelled by the government of the nearly independent territory, some fleeing in fear—and Mozambique became independent from Portugal on 25 June 1975. A law had been passed on the initiative of the relatively unknown Armando Guebuza of the FRELIMO party, ordering the
Postage stamps and postal history of Mozambique 1975, many existing stamps, some going back as far as 1953, were issued with an overprint marking independence. Issues of independent Mozambique have been relatively restrained and focus on local subjects. Philatelic issues are frequently released in sets of four-to-six stamps. For instance, in 1985 there were 10 issues, of which three were single commemoratives, five were sets of four, and the remaining two were sets of six. The Kionga Triangle was a tiny territory on the border between German East Africa (present-day Tanzania) and Portuguese Mozambique occupied by the Portuguese forces in 1916. On May 29, 1916, stamps from