Histories of South-South Solidarity: African Influence and Support to Timor-Leste's Independence

Paper Abstract: The African liberation movements, in particular of the Portuguese-speaking world, had important and direct consequences for the people of Timor as the democratic revolution in Portugal pushed for a change in decolonising the territory. Existing literature identifies the influences of the African liberation movements and intellectuals in the literacy campaigns organised by the independence movement (FRETILIN), campaigns which were interrupted by the Indonesian invasion of the territory in 1975. However, the histories of Asian-African entanglements during the Portuguese late colonial period and in the years of the Indonesian occupation are less accounted for in the national and global historiography.





This study aims to address this absence, concerning the political influences of African anti-colonial writings in the East Timorese resistance, but in particular Mozambique's role in the history of international solidarity with Timor-Leste’s struggle for independence in the 70s to the 90s. Interweaving oral histories, through interviews conducted between 2018 and 2024 in Díli, Maputo and Lisboa, with archival research, the objective is to trace the histories of this solidarity between Mozambicans and East Timorese. The solidarity principle with occupied people dominated the personal and collective experience of Mozambicans, in periods marked by civil war, blockades and attacks from the apartheid regime allied forces, food rationing and hunger. The results from this research points to the existence of solidarity networks which were not limited to the government sphere, but which are transversal to all the Mozambican society.

Paper co-authored with: Nuno Rodriguez Tchailoro, Independent Researcher