Report on Citizenship Law Mozambique Patrícia Jerónimo 1. Introduction Mozambique is a former Portuguese colony located on the eastern coast of southern Africa. It is bound by Tanzania to the north, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to the west, South Africa to the west and south, Swaziland to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the east. It occupies a total area of 799,380 square kilometres, divided into eleven provinces and three regions: North (Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces), Central (Zambezia, Sofala, Manica and Tete provinces) and South (Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo provinces, plus Maputo city).1 At the time of the 2017 General Census, the country’s resident population was estimated at 28,861,863 people.2 As was the case with all newly-independent African states, Mozambique was faced at independence, on 25 June 1975, with the task of creating a new nation out of the territory it had inherited from the colonial state (Chabal 2002: 41). A difficult task anywhere, this was a formidable endeavour in Mozambique, given the extension of the territory and the fact that the Portuguese had never built a proper communications system linking the regions north and south of the Zambesi river (Newitt 2002: 186; Chabal 2002: 48, 56). As pointed out by Newitt (2002: 186), the Zambesi valley ‘acted like an inward extension of the sea, [helping] to perpetuate cultural divisions between the matrilineal peoples to the north of the river and the patrilineal peoples to the south’. Furthermore, due to intense migration to neighbouring countries during colonial times (for work and later to escape the liberation war), the various regions of Mozambique were more closely linked with their neighbours across the border than with other parts of Mozambique (Newitt 2002: 187-188). At the time of independence, much like today, the ethno-linguistic composition of the population could be described in the following manner: 98% as originating from a variety of Bantu ethnic groups (e.g. Makua, Tsonga, Makonde, Shona, Sena, Swahili, Ndau) and other indigenous groups, with the 1 Information taken from the United Nations Human Rights Committee Consideration of Initial Reports from Mozambique, of 23 May 2012, CCPR/C/MOZ/1, §§ 5-6, available at https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CCPR%2fC%2fMOZ%2f1 &Lang=en [17.03.2019]. 2 Statistical Yearbook 2017, p. 19, available at http://www.ine.gov.mz/estatisticas/publicacoes/anuario/nacionais/anuario-estatistico-2017.pdf/view [17.03.2019]. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author 1