Maputo — "Many of those who fought against us want to take away our memory", warned Mozambican intellectual Sergio Vieira on Monday night at a packed event to launch his memoirs.

The 750 page volume, "Participei, por isso Testemunho" ("I participated, and so I bear witness"), tells of Vieira's life in the struggle against Portuguese fascism and colonial rule - from a schoolboy in the western city of Tete, to student activist in Lisbon, to founder member of Frelimo and close collaborator of Frelimo president Eduardo Mondlane, to minister in the post-independence governments of Samora Machel.

Vieira held a wide variety of jobs after independence - director of Machel's office, governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Security, director of the African Studies Centre at Maputo's Eduardo Mondlane University, and currently director of the Zambezi Planning Office. He also spent ten years as one of the most effective Frelimo orators in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.

For all of this, Vieira is hated by the far right. Even before the book had been launched, people who could not possibly have read any of it were scribbling angry comments on Mozambican blogs denouncing Vieira as "a liar", "an assassin" and "a torturer".

Vieira declared that he wrote the book to reclaim the past from the hands of those who would distort it, and who would turn heroes into traitors and vice versa. He noted that attempts are under way in some quarters to rehabilitate the regimes that the liberation movements overthrew - Portuguese colonialism, and the white minority regimes of Ian Smith's Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.

It was crucial that those who lived through the liberation struggle should write down their experiences, he said, "so that our children and grandchildren may know the truth".

There are a growing number of memoirs now available, including books by Mondlane's widow, Janet, by former Health Minister Helder Martins, by Matias Mboa, who was a political prisoner under colonial rule, and by the first head of Mozambican security, Jacinto Veloso.

Vieira urged other Frelimo leaders - including the current President, Armando Guebuza, and his predecessor, Joaquim Chissano - to write their memories. For history had many witnesses, all with their own insights into the past.

"I didn't write a Bible", stressed Vieira. "I didn't write the absolute truth. I didn't write to close down a debate".

Closing the meeting, Chissano himself echoed Vieira's fear that history might be lost. He recalled that he had spoken recently to a young Mozambican who had never heard of Nachingwea - the main Frelimo training camp in southern Tanzania during the independence war.

"When we speak to our young people, we start from the premise that they know something and understand what we're talking about", said Chissano. "But sometimes the basic knowledge is missing, and we end up talking in different languages".

Vieira's book was printed in Portugal in an arrangement between the Mozambican publisher Njira and the Portuguese publisher Caminho.

If the rules of the market were strictly obeyed, a 750 page volume would be prohibitively expensive for Mozambican readers. So several companies have sponsored the book - including the second largest Mozambican bank, the BCI, the leading cell phone company, M-cel, the national airline, LAM, the port company Terminais do Norte, and HCB, the company that operates the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi.

Their sponsorship has made it possible to sell the book for 400 meticais (about 14 US dollars).