This was at the turn of the century and the city’s inhabitants were seeking refuge from the low-lying areas, which were marshy and unhealthy. Until the end of the nineteenth century, Lourenço Marques never succeeded in breaking out of the cane palisade extending along a sandy bank, which now houses FACIM (the Maputo Agro-Commercial and Industrial Fair). Everything was contained within this narrow strip, where the Portuguese felt safer. Up above, on the higher ground, was the bush, and to the north, the muddy territories of the mangrove swamps.
A stroll through modern Maputo allows us to read these signs of History. The city is recent but, as in a shell, the different ages became juxtaposed in layers. Another logic then organized the urban space on grounds of race, class, civilization. What was sought was the mirror of a certain type of Europe, as if it were the Mediterranean, rather than the Indian Ocean lying next to it. Later, the city was disarranged and rearranged, sometimes in the naïve hope of accommodating everyone and allowing itself to be inhabited in a spirit of equality. Under attack from the countryside, the city resists. Managed by the demands of urgency and the ever-insufficient funds, Maputo’s beauty eventually imposes itself even after the most difficult moments such as last February’s heavy rains.
Some trees resist as well. Some of them are monuments. The old phama in Xipamanine that gave its name to the area. The kigelia in front of the fort: how many stories, how many myths? It’s worth visiting African cities for their trees, which contain legends, and are laden with more stories than foliage.
A Place Where Hybridities Are Made
Much is known about Maputo’s historic and architectural heritage. But the city has other lesser-known merits. Maputo was the melting pot for experimentation in new artistic currents. It was there that much of Mozambique’s art and thought were forged.
Over a period of decades, the suburbs of old Lourenço Marques had the atmosphere of a borderland, a place of cultural hybridity. In districts like Mafalala, Malanga, Xipamanine and even Malhangalene, space was no longer ordered completely along the lines of race.
It was in areas like these that the cultural hybridity that is the basis of Mozambican thought was forged. In these borderland areas, exchanges were woven not only between races but between cultures. The importance of Makua communities in districts like Mafalala is well known. From a cultural point of view, these areas were highly productive.
During the second half of last century, this suburban belt constituted a series of extremely active cultural niches. Names such as Noémia de Sousa, José Craveirinha, Chichorro, Malangatana, Calane da Silva, the guitar player Daíco, the musical group Djambo, are all products of this cultural conviviality. However, it wasn’t only art but actual political thought that germinated in these peripheral areas — civic centres (the African Association), newspapers such as the Brado Africano, student associations (NESAMO, the Nucleus for Mozambican African Secondary School Students), all this agitation occurred on the urban periphery as if a new world were being born from the outside, an invasion from the skin that aims towards the centre.
It is quite common for suburban districts like these, inhabited by the working classes, to be the limbo where artistic currents are renewed. Samba first emerged in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, tango was born in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. We can, without doubt, detect a similar tendency in the suburbs of Maputo — Fany Mpfumo and Marrabenta music, José Craveirinha and the new poetry, Malangatana with his hugely innovative impulse in painting, Alberto Chissano in sculpture. And we could add Chichorro, the painter of women waiting for marriage on their verandas. Maputo continues, like Chichorro’s women: biding time on its wide veranda that looks out over and into itself.
Article published in İndico, July 2000.
Mozambique: Twenty-five Years
On independence day, I was 19. As an adolescent the dream of one day seeing a flag raised for my country had grown gradually stronger. At the time, I believed that a dream could be expressed through a flag. There are things we do because we believe in them. Other things we begin to do because we have ceased to believe. But in 1975, I was a journalist motivated by belief. The world was my church, men my religion. And everything was still possible.
My memory isn’t good, but I remember this very clearly. On the night of 25th June, I was scheduled to be on duty at the headquarters of the National Radio Station. For me, it was a punishment to be isolated from the great festivities that were taking place in the Machava Stadium. But we were asked to show discipline and we had to accept that some would have to make sacrifices on behalf of others. It was all part of the belief.
At a quarter to midnight, I and three other journalists decided we were going to be disobedient. There was a rusty old car at the office, and there was someone who thought he could drive. And so we fled the newsroom and off we went in the direction of the stadium, like insects attracted by the seductiveness of light. On the way, I savoured the vague thrill of having transgressed and of joining the collective celebration.
Although there was no traffic, our old car crept along slowly. “At this speed, we’ll never get there in time,” someone commented. At this point, we suddenly heard sirens, and in an instant, we found ourselves caught in an endless line of cars. To our indescribable shock, President Samora Machel was travelling in one of the vehicles. It was the presidential motorcade that was heading for the ceremony and was slightly late. By some happy accident, our old jalopy ended up being absorbed into the motorcade. So that was how, infiltrating ourselves among high-ranking figures, we entered the stadium, thronged by the clamouring crowds.
I shall never forget those glowing faces, spellbound and enraptured; I shall never forget the look of those who were building that moment. There was rejoicing, the celebration of our being people, of having our land and deserving the heavens. More than a country, we were celebrating another destiny for our lives. It was a kind of redemption, a re-encounter with our own future.
Twenty-five years later does the average Mozambican wear the same expression? No. Nor could that ever be. For during the first of those twenty-five years, a total, absolute hope took shape. It was a legitimate, but naïve hope that it would be possible, within a generation, to change the world and redistribute happiness. Between the optimism of demagogy and pessimist defeatism, what balance can be drawn up for this period? These have been, above all, years of learning what sovereignty and dignity are, and what they can be. As a nation, we haven’t learned to walk yet, while we share the same dreams and disillusions. We would no longer rush to a stadium with the same childlike joy to celebrate a new annunciation. But that doesn’t mean we are any less disposed to have beliefs. We shall be more alert to the knowledge that everything needs a direction and a time. We feel the pulse of a world that simultaneously requests us to show citizenship while also denying us it.
A quarter of a century is a long time in the history of an individual. But it’s almost nothing in the history of a country. Today, we know that we are still a long way from fulfilling the dream that caused us to sing and dance in the Machava Stadium on the 25th of June. Most of our aspirations are still to be achieved. We can resort to explanations, point the finger of blame, but none of this will be very productive. We shall need to invent within us reasons to act. With greater or lesser belief, but in a process of construction. Not the best of all futures, but a future for everyone: a future that may begin this very day. Mozambique is no more than this process of construction, this commitment to our children.