WASHED by the warm Agulhas current that comes all the way across from Western Australia along the equator, the Republic of Mozambique is situated on the south-east coast of Africa.
Maputo (formerly Lourenço Marques), situated on Delgoa Bay, is the country’s capital and main port.
Hunter-gatherers, ancestors of the Khoisan people, lived in what is now Mozambique since about 4000 BC.
Over a period of many centuries, most hunting-foraging peoples were absorbed by incoming Bantu communities that settled there before AD 100.
By the 4th Century AD, the southward and eastward Bantu migrations of iron-working peoples finally absorbed the original nomadic societies.
Arab merchants settled on the Mozambican coast during the 8th Century AD, trading in gold, ivory and slaves.
In 1497, Portuguese navigator Vasco Da Gama landed on the coast of Mozambique while in 1505, Portuguese settlers occupied the Muslim settlement on the Ilha de Moçambique, making it a slave-trading centre and part of Portugal’s maritime empire.
The Portuguese brought gold from the mines of Munhumutapa, on the Zimbabwe plateau, to India to purchase the spices that ensured Portugal’s prosperity during the 16th Century.
In 1884, when Africa was divided among the various European powers, Angola, on the Atlantic Ocean, and Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean, became recognised as Portuguese colonies.
During the early years of Portuguese activity and expansion into the interior, towards the Kingdom of Munhumutapa, which assured the supply of gold and slaves, the Roman Catholic Church also gained access to the region.
After the killing of the Jesuit missionary, Gonçalo de Silveira, in 1561, the Jesuits continued to ‘missionise’ until they were expelled in 1759.
The closure of a Jesuit school at Sena and the depot established on the trade route between the coast and Tete terminated Portugal’s ‘cultural ties’ with the prazeros (the original Portuguese recipients of land leased from the Portuguese crown who later became ‘Africanised’ –presumably a reverse assimilation).
During the 1780s, the prazeros expanded slaving operations in Mozambique.
The slave trade became Mozambique’s most important business.
It resulted in vast depopulation, especially of the coastal areas.
Despite the abolition of slavery in 1878, indigenous Mozambicans were forced to work long hours, with very little pay, for colonialists who had been granted concessionary rights to develop land and natural resources.
Forced labour, and the sale of labour to other parts of Africa, resulted in the retardation of development in Mozambique.
The indigenous population did not benefit from the construction of the railroad linking the port of Beira with present-day Zimbabwe, the settling of Portuguese families as well as the building of schools and hospitals.
Neither education nor healthcare were available to those who were not Portuguese.
A massive flight to neighbouring colonies resulted in further depopulation in Mozambique.
Mozambique, which came into being in 1890, was in no sense a state.
It had no administrative or legal system, no public revenues or communications, no services and was largely unmapped.
The boundaries to the north and south-east had some historical validity, but the rest were the arbitrary outcome of the Ultimatum and the Scramble, with Portugal, for the most part, denied what she claimed.
Unable to create an administration or invest in the economy, Portugal sub-leased well over half of the territory to companies, financed by British and Belgian capital, who administered, policed, taxed, monopolised trade and extracted labour by force from the territories chartered to them, subject to decisions made at head offices in Britain, France, Belgium, South Africa and Lisbon (nominally).
In 1891, a treaty establishing the boundaries between British and Portuguese properties in south-east Africa was negotiated and in 1910, the status of Mozambique changed from that of a Portuguese province to a Portuguese colony.
During more than 300 years of nominal and actual colonisation, Mozambique was primarily a source of trade with Europe and of cheap labour for European farms, the construction of ports and roads in Mozambique and for the mines in South Africa.
Colonial policy, based on the egalitarian theory of assimilation, stated that if an African was fluent in Portuguese, was Christian and was of good character, he was to be given equal status as a Portuguese citizen.
However, very few Africans qualified for citizenship, mainly because educational opportunities were inadequate or non-existent.
In fact, Portuguese colonial powers had no interest in educating Mozambique’s indigenous population beyond their usefulness in needs identified by the authorities.
Consequently, little effort was made to provide any meaningful education.
By 1900, a very limited number of schools were scattered along the coast where attendance was minimal.
Only 1 195 African and mulatto children attended schools. Approximately 607 of these were in missionary schools.
By 1909, along with some trade and agricultural schools, there were 48 primary schools for boys and 18 for girls — the majority run by missionaries.
Education deteriorated even further after the Salazar regime came into power in Portugal in 1926.
It was almost impossible for anyone classified as ‘indigenous’ to obtain an education, any instruction, Christianity or be reclassified as ‘civilised’ to be assimilated and given the rights of Portuguese citizenship — for which the almost unobtainable school certificate was the criteria.
The Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968, was intent on repressing all opposition in Portugal’s African colonies.
Accordingly, state-sponsored schools established by the Salazar regime created a schooling system for the children of Portuguese settlers only.
African enrolment in schools was minimal, until the 1950s.
With the influx of Portuguese settlers, between 1954 and 1956, enrolment increased by 30 percent, and tripled by 1964.
But these schools were open only to ‘assimilated’ Africans; and by 1954, only 322 Africans were enrolled in government primary schools.
A three-year rudimentary education was especially designed “…to gradually lead the ‘Indigenous’ from savage life to civilisation…,” with subjects such as the Portuguese Language, Arithmetic, the History and Geography of Portugal, Design and Manual Work, Physical Education and Hygiene as well as Moral Education and Choral Music.
An ironic state of affairs since as late as 1966 was that 90 percent of the indigenous population and 40 percent of the Portuguese white settlers were found to be illiterate.
Unlike South Africa, where the Roman Catholic Church was perceived as an agency of social justice and transformation, in Mozambique, the Catholic educational missions were very much an instrument of the Portuguese Government’s strategy of Christianisation and nationalisation.
From the 1940s to the 1960s, Roman Catholic missions, which worked in close collaboration with the Portuguese Government, expanded their field of operation dramatically from 296 missions in 1940, to 2 000 in 1960. In these schools, Africans were taught mainly by rote; their chief focus being the Catechism.
By contrast, foreign Protestant missions, which were accused of validating African languages and culture and encouraging education for Africans “… in a way that promoted a tendency to be uppity,” were viewed with great suspicion by the authority and, as a result, declined from 41 in 1940, to 27 by 1960.
Mozambique was declared independent from Portugal in 1975.
While it initially struggled to gain administrative and political stability, Mozambique is currently experiencing one of the fastest growth rates for a developing country in the world.
Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and is a published author in her field. For comments, e-mail: linamanucci@gmail.com