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João dos Santos Albasini (1876–1922): the Contradictions of Politics and Identity in Colonial Mozambique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jeanne Marie Penvenne
Jeanne Marie Penvenne
Affiliation:
Tufts University
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Extract

This essay considers the life and career of the leading Mozambican intellectual of the early twentieth century, João dos Santos Albasini (1876–1922). A journalist and political activist, Albasini took advantage of the political space opened by Portugal's First Republic (1910–26) to challenge the articulation of colonial policy with respect to citizenship, land alienation, labor conscription and opportunities for education and economic participation. As a founding member of the Grêmio Africano, a Lourenço Marques social group and political lobby, he helped launch the group's newspapers, O Africano (1908–19) and O Brado Africano (1918–74). With the Grêmio newspapers as his vehicle, he sharply contrasted colonial and Republican ideals with the racism and injustice Mozambicans faced in the colonial capital of Lourenço Marques (today Maputo). The Portuguese deemed Albasini a worthy opponent, in part because of his ability to employ Portugal's most revered cultural symbols with an ironic twist.

The essay considers two sets of questions. The first set relates to the definition and analysis of issues Albasini highlighted and pursued. What was Albasini's political and social vision of possible choices within this seemingly fluid era? How does one recover and interpret Albasini's vision and style? Are their meaning and value to be found within the discourses of class struggle, ethnicity, assimilation and nationalism? To what extent did Albasini's vision shape contestation of political and social policy in colonial Mozambique in the critical first quarter of the twentieth century?

A second set of questions confronts Albasini's place in local society and his legacy. Who comprised the Grêmio Africano? What was it about João dos Santos Albasini that inspired Grêmio members and subsequent generations of Mozambicans to view him as a beacon? What did the rest of the local population think about Albasini, during his lifetime and after? What was his impact, and how did it relate to the broader issues of politics, historical agency and identity in early twentieth-century southern African history?

Type
Biographies and Life Histories
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , November 1996 , pp. 419 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Miller, Joseph C., Clark, Andrew F., Zimba, Benigna and The Journal of African History'sGoogle Scholar anonymous critical readers provided very careful and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Research was funded, in part, by the following: Interpretive Research Project of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1988–90), co-directed by Drs Margaret Jean Hay and James C. McCann, of the African Studies Center, Boston University; Fulbright Regional Research Grant (1992–93); Livros/Africana Portuguesa and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (1993). Dr António Sopa of Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique [AHM], renowned for his great skill, knowledge and generosity, acquired the Albasini family photograph from a surviving family member. He also provided photocopies of several documents and hand-copied newspaper references and data. James C. Armstrong of the Library of Congress facilitated the microfilming of the newspapers O Africano and O Brado Africano by Cooperative African Microform Project [CAMP] and drew the author's attention to the work of Brazilian scholar Valdemir D. Zamparoni. Prof. Dra Inês Nogueira da Costa, Director of the AHM, granted permission to publish material from the AHM and kindly provided a photocopy of the extremely rare booklet, Albasini, João dos Santos, O livro da dor: cartas de amor: com um prólogo de Marciano Nicanor da Sylva (Lourenço Marques, 1925)Google Scholar. Jill R. Dias and Olga Iglésias Neves also generously granted permission to cite their important original unpublished work. The author is sincerely grateful to all these people.

2 Jill R. Dias detailed the Portuguese African Associations in Lisbon, their relationship to the African colonial intelligentsia and the Pan-Africanist visions of DuBois and Garvey in her extensive annotations for the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. See also Dias, , ‘Portuguese African associations in Lisbon and international Pan Africanism, 1912–1931’ (Unpublished paper presented at International Conference Group on Modern Portugal Meeting, Durham, New Hampshire, 09 1989)Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 20 08 1932.Google Scholar

3 The bibliography for Mozambique's press history is contained in note 12 below. For the history of the Grêmio Africano, see the following: Neves, Olga Maria Lopes Serrão Iglésias, ‘Em defesa da causa africana: intervenção do Grêmio Africano na sociedade de Lourenço Marques, 1908–1938’ (MA thesis, Lisbon, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, 1989), chs. 3–4Google Scholar; Departamento de História, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, História de Moçambique (3 vols.) (Maputo, 1983, 1993), ii, 279–99; iii, 13–23, 61–77Google Scholar; Penvenne, Jeanne Marie, ‘“We are all Portuguese!” Challenging the political economy of assimilation, Lourenço Marques, 1870–1933’, in Vail, Leroy (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1989), 255–88Google Scholar; Penvenne, , ‘Principles and passion: capturing the legacy of João dos Santos Albasini’, Discussion Papers in the African Humanities, no. 12 (Boston, 1991)Google Scholar; Honwana, Raúl, The Life History of Raúl Honwana: An Inside View of Mozambique from Colonialism to Independence, 1905–1975, ed. and intro. Isaacman, Allen F., trans. Tamara L. Bender (Boulder, 1988), esp. ch. 3Google Scholar; Hedges, David, ‘Educação, missões e a ideologia política de assimilação, 1930–1961’, Cadernos de História, 1 (1985), 7–18Google Scholar; Moser, Gerald and Ferreira, Manuel, Bibliografia das literaturas africanas de expressão portuguesa (Lisbon, 1983)Google Scholar; Mendonça, FátimaLiteratura moçambicana: a história e as escritas (Maputo, 1988)Google Scholar; Zamparoni, Valdemir D., ‘A imprensa negra em Moçambique: a trajectoria de “O Africano” 1908–1920’, Africa (Revista do Centro de Estudos Africanos) [São Paulo], 11 (1988), 73–86Google Scholar; Soares, Paulo and Zamparoni, Valdemir, ‘Antologia de textos do Jornal “O Africano” (1908–1919)’, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, XXII (1992), 127–78Google Scholar. José Moreira wrote a licenciatura thesis on this topic, but it has not been available to the author for consultation.

4 The issue is identified as ‘Numero UNICO’, and the first issue of O Africano when it reappeared on 3 Jan. 1909 was labeled number one. They are clearly published by the same group under the same title.

5 O Africano, 25 12 1908Google Scholar, author's free translation. Olga Iglésias Neves' thesis includes photocopy reproductions of several key issues of O Africano, including the front page containing this editorial, ‘Em defesa da causa africana’, 152.Google Scholar

6 Brado Africano, 22 08 1922Google Scholar, and the subsequent issues through October 1922.

7 Penvenne, , ‘A history of African labor in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, 1877–1950’ (Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1982)Google Scholar; Penvenne, , Trabalhadores de Lourenço Marques (1870–1974) (Maputo, 1993)Google Scholar [Estudos, no. 9]; Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Portsmouth, 1995).Google Scholar

8 Estácio and his son João Dias, José Cantine, Lindstroom Matite, Roberto Mashaba, João Chembene, Rui Noronha, Enoque Libombo, Especiosa da Conceição Gouveia, Carlota Fernandes, José Roldão and others will eventually become familiar figures in Mozambican local history. Many will also serve to link Mozambique's experience with that of the better researched and more thoroughly explored southern African region. Olga Iglésias Neves has compiled a great deal of biographical material and collected the critical documents of the Grêmio Africano in her important licenciatura thesis, ‘Em defesa da causa africana’. See also História de Moçambique, ii, ch. 6Google Scholar; Honwana, , Life, 91–104Google Scholar; Mendonça, , Literatura moçambicana, 85–98Google Scholar; Penvenne, , ‘“We are all Portuguese!”’, 278–84.Google Scholar

9 The commission included Roque d'Aguiar, Vianna Rodrigues, Pas de Mattos, Alfredo Leal, Padre Manuel da Cruz Boavidas and João Albasini. O Africano, 20 05 1914Google Scholar; Honwana, , Life, 93Google Scholar; Actas do Conselho do Governo de Moçambique, 1927Google Scholar, Session 28 July 1927, 13.

10 Brado Africano, 19 08 1922Google Scholar, lists the guests and those sending telegrams and reprints the obituaries from various papers. Editors of every local newspaper attended, except for Eduardo d'Almeida Saldanha. Saldanha, an outspoken Portuguese settler, planter and lawyer, employed hundreds of Mozambican conscripts in appalling conditions on his urban and rural enterprises. Mozambicans referred to Saldanha's farm as the ‘matadouro’, the slaughterhouse. As one of the region's most abusive settlers, Saldanha was the target of some of Albasini's most biting editorials. Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 74–5.Google Scholar

11 No pattern emerged to distinguish Albasini's work among the unsigned essays published in Vida Nova and Diário de Notícias, but his obituary mentioned that he wrote for these papers. José Albasini was generally the managing editor of the Grêmio papers until João became critically ill. After João's death José became a more active editor and writer. Brado Africano, 8 09 1922Google Scholar. Versions of Grêmio history are printed in the following issues of Brado Africano, 24 12 1939Google Scholar, 30 Dec. 1939, 24 Dec. 1941, 12 Dec. 1946, 24 Dec. 1948, and Clamor Africano, 10 12 1932.Google Scholar

12 The Grêmio papers included O Africano (1908–18) and O Brado Africano (1918–74). For a brief period (c. 1921–2) a group broke away from the Grêmio Africano and began to publish their own paper, Dambu dja África [Djambu da Afrika]. Although the composition of the group is known, the content of the paper and the number of issues that appeared are unknown. No surviving copies exist at the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa or the Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique. The history of the Mozambican press is detailed in Sopa, António, ‘Catálogo dos periódicos moçambicanos, precedido de urna pequena notícia histórica, 1854–1984’ (Licenciatura thesis, Maputo, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1985)Google Scholar; Rocha, Ilídio, Catálogo dos periódicos e principais serioados de Moçambique da introduão da tipografia á independência (1854–1975) (São Paulo, 1985), esp. 22–3Google Scholar; Dias, Raul Neves, A imprensa periódica em Moçambique, 1854–1954 (Lourenço Marques, 1956)Google Scholar; Dias, Raul Neves, Quatro centenários em Moçambique, 1854–1954 (Lourenço Marques, 1954)Google Scholar; Capela, José, O movimento operário em Lourenço Marques, 1898–1927 (Porto, 1981), 53–84Google Scholar; Gonçalves, João Júlio, A informação em Moçambique: contribuição para o seu estudo (Lisbon, 1965), 501–6Google Scholar. See also Honwana, , Life, 96–7Google Scholar; oral testimony [OT], joint interview Joaquim da Costa (b. 1899) and Tembe, Roberto (b. 1896), 24 and 25 08 1977Google Scholar, Port Complex, Maputo; letter from Sopa, António to Penvenne, Jeanne Marie, 6 03 1995.Google Scholar

13 Brado Africano, I, Anno, Numero Programa, 24 12 1918.Google Scholar

14 The relationship of Grêmio intellectuals to the nationalist movement of the fifties is raised in the following: Honwana, Life; Isaacman, Allen F. and Isaacman, Barbara, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder, 1983)Google Scholar; Friedland, Elaine A., ‘Mozambican nationalist resistance, 1920–1940’ Transafrican Journal of History, VIII (1979), 117–38Google Scholar; Alpers, Edward A., ‘The role of culture in the liberation of Mozambique’, Ufahamu, XII (1983), 143–90.Google Scholar

15 Albasini's relationship with José Aniceto da Silva is detailed below. Aniceto da Silva, the director of the postal service at Lourenço Marques, hired Albasini. When Aniceto da Silva was on leave in India, Albasini was fired. Brado Africano, 8 09 1922.Google Scholar

16 Willan, Brian, Sol Plaatje, South African Nationalist 1876–1932 (Berkeley, 1984), 26Google Scholar; O Africano, 19 05 1915.Google Scholar

17 To my knowledge, there were no African women in the colonial civil service during Albasini's lifetime. African mobility within the civil service is detailed in Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 126–30.Google Scholar

18 O Africano, 13 02 1915.Google Scholar

19 After 1913, Albasini's agency was a partnership with António Nunes Borges Loureiro. O Distrito, 27 02 1905Google Scholar; O Africano, 1 11 1913, 13 02 1915Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 23 10 1920, 19 03 1921Google Scholar; Anuário de Lourenço Marques, 1918.Google Scholar

20 This aspect of Albasini's career is considered below. O Africano, 5 07 1913Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 8 09 1922Google Scholar. The railway budget proposal for 1906–7 described the position Albasini later held: Proposal, Marques, Caminhos de Ferro de Lourenço, 6 06 1906Google Scholar, Maço 2455, Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino [AHU], Lisbon.

21 O Africano, 5 07 1913, 1 11 1913.Google Scholar

22 O Incondicional, 19 01 1915.Google Scholar

23 Brado Africano, 11 09 1920.Google Scholar

24 O Africano, 12 07 1919Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 20 08 1932Google Scholar; Honwana, , Life, 92.Google Scholar

25 Honwana, , Life, 94Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 20 08 1932, 26 08 1933Google Scholar; Public Record Office [PRO], London, Foreign Office [FO] file 371/4123, MacDonell to Secretary of State for Africa [SOSFA], Confidential, 28 May 1919; FO 367/341, Hardinge, to Lisbon, , no. 1524, 3 03 1913Google Scholar; Zamparoni, , ‘A imprensa negra’, 82ff.Google Scholar; Zamparoni, and Soares, , ‘Antologia de textos’, 134ff.Google Scholar

26 His only well-documented expedition took place in 1909, Secretaria de Negócios Indígenas [SNI], log book, 3–358, nos. 37 of 13 Sept. 1909 to 44, 23 Dec. 1909; SNI, log 3–359. 19 and 23 Oct. 1909, AHM, Maputo; O Africano, 20 05 1914.Google Scholar

27 He went to Lisbon in September of 1919 and returned September of 1920; Brado Africano, 24 09 1919, 18 09 1920.Google Scholar

28 Wheeler, Douglas L., Republican Portugal: A Political History 1910–1926 (Madison, 1978), 34ffGoogle Scholar. The Delagoa Directory (1899–1913) [from 1914 to 1947 called Anuário de Lourenço Marques and later Anuário de Moçambique], an annual almanac published throughout this period, regularly listed urban associations, including the Goa Institute, the Muslim Association, Port and Railway Association, Chinese Nationalists Association as well as the usual business associations.

29 Clamor Africano, 10 12 1932Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 24 and 30 12 1939, 12 12 1946, 24 12 1948.Google Scholar

30 Lobato, Alexandre, Lourenço Marques, Xilunguine: biografia da cidade, Vol. I: A parte antiga (Lisbon, 1970)Google Scholar; Lowth, Ayls (ed.), Doreen Coasting (London, 1912), 216–17Google Scholar; Albasini, , Livro da dor, 29Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 20 08 1932.Google Scholar

31 Brado Africano, 08 through 11 1922, 20 08 1932.Google Scholar

32 Substantial literatures in English, Portuguese and Afrikaans address the life and legacy of João dos Santos Albasini's grandfather, João Albasini (Juwawa). Ilídio Rocha contributed an addenda on Juwawa to the annotated republication of Diocleciano Fernandes das Neves's classic, Itinerário de uma viagem á caça dos elefantes: Rocha, Ilídio (ed.), Diocleciano Fernando das Neves: das terras do império vátua às praças da republica boer (Lisbon, 1987), 196ffGoogle Scholar. Rocha's addenda provides a summary of the literature in Portuguese and Afrikaans and incorporates most of the basic data on Albasini; General Martins, Ferreira, João Albasini e a colónia de S. Luís: subsídio para a história da Província de Moçambique e das suas relações com o Transval (Lisbon, 1957), 14Google Scholar; Lima, A. A. Pereira de, História dos caminhos de ferro de Lourenço Marques (3 vols.) (Lourenço Marques, 1971), i, 25–8Google Scholar; Quintinha, Julião and Toscano, P. Francisco, A derrocada do império vátua e Mousinho de Albuquerque, 3rd ed. (2 vols.) (Lisbon, 1935), i, 79–100Google Scholar, and photos to 113, 313–49; Santana, Francisco, ‘João Albasini uma figura fascinante’, Correio de Manhã (30 07 1985)Google Scholar; Machado, J. J., ‘Lourenço Marques á Pretória’, Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, IX–XII (1885), 647–725.Google Scholar

33 Rocha, , Das terras, 195–208Google Scholar; Martins, , João Albasini, passimGoogle Scholar; Machado, , ‘Lourenço Marques á Pretória’, 663–5Google Scholar; Wagner, Roger, ‘Zoutpansberg: the dynamics of a hunting frontier, 1848–67’, in Marks, Shula and Atmore, Anthony (eds.), Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa (New York, 1980), 313–49.Google Scholar

34 Martins says ‘a black woman from Magul’. Rocha says ‘he formed a family with a black Cossa woman of Magude’. Quintinha and Toscano say simply ‘woman Intamone’. Cossa is a clan name among the Shangaan in the Magude region of Southern Mozambique. Martins, , João Albasini, 16Google Scholar; Rocha, , Das terras, 198Google Scholar; Quintinha, and Toscano, , Derrocada do império vátua, i, 81, 98–9.Google Scholar

35 Anonymous, A guerra dos reis vátuas (Maputo, 1986), 17, 77, n. 53Google Scholar, highlights several 1840s ‘doações’ trust documents established for ‘caseiras’ (common-law wives) of European traders or officials, among them one J. [Joaquina] Albasini.

36 Albasini continued ‘and unhappily there are examples of this in your own family’; Livro da dor, 42Google Scholar. The editor Marciano Nicanor da Sylva gives the translations of mumadji and narra as simply common white and black people respectively, but Albasini probably intended the terms in their coarser sense. Both mumadji and narra were used in the press with negative connotations.

37 Ronga common names were culled from a number of sources, oral and written. Ernesto Torre do Valle's annex of Ronga names for some ‘former and contemporary residents’ of Lourenço Marques was especially useful; Valle, Ernesto Torre do, Diccionário shironga-português e português-shironga (Lourenço Marques, 1906), 318–20Google Scholar; Rocha, , Das terras, 169–208Google Scholar; Quintinha, and Toscano, , Derrocada do império vátua, i, 79–100.Google Scholar

38 Brado Africano, 26 02 1921.Google Scholar

39 The late historian Mabel Jackson-Haight conducted interviews among the surviving Albasinis from the Transvaal/van Rensburg side of the family and found that many were unaware of the Albasini branch in Lourenço Marques. Her research was corroborated by Tessa Kirkaldy, who is completing a doctoral dissertation on changes in the historical memory related to João Albasini (Juwawa) among his family in the Eastern Transvaal. Personal communication with Jackson-Haight, Mabel, 08 1981Google Scholar; personal communication with Kirkaldy, Tessa, 16 09 1995Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 26 02 1921.Google Scholar

40 Wagner, , ‘Zoutpansberg’, 313–49Google Scholar; Martins, , João Albasini’Google Scholar; Rocha, , Das terras.Google Scholar

41 According to Martins and Rocha, António died in 1874 without children, but according to Quintinha and Toscano he had two daughters, Isabel and Joaquina. The reproduction of the 1894 Lourenço Marques census suggests that Maria Isabel Albasini (b. 1872) may have been Antonio's daughter. Martins, , João Albasini, 16Google Scholar; Rocha, , Das terras, 198–9Google Scholar; Quintinha, and Toscano, , Derrocada do império vátua, i, 98–9Google Scholar; Reis, Carlos Santos, A população de Lourenço Marques em 1894 [Um censo inédito] (Lisbon, 1973), unpaginated facsimile.Google Scholar

42 She is variously referred to throughout the sources as Kocuene Mpfumo (a respectful title for a mature woman of the Mpfumo Maxaquene), Kássine [of Itamane] and Joaquina Correia de Oliveira.

43 Reis, , A população de Lourenço MarquesGoogle Scholar, facsimile; Brado Africano, 16 08 1922, 25 09 1922.Google Scholar

44 Regarding a property jointly owned by João dos Santos Albasini and Tomé Fornasini, see O Incondicional, 19 01 1915Google Scholar. The author is grateful to António Sopa for copies of court documents regarding contests around land holding, rents and claims involving Albasini, António Marques da Silva and Albasini's wife Bertha Carolina Heitor Albasini in the AHM collection: Clemente Nunes de Carvalho e Silva, João dos Santos Albazini [Albasini] and Bertha Carolina Heitor Albazini [Albasini]. Maço 20, Processo 17, 1910; Delegado do Procurador da Coroa e Fazenda n'esta Comarca, João dos Santos Albasini e Mulher d. Bertha Carolina Heitor Rodrigues and António da Silva Ribeiro e Mulher, D. Victoria Herminia Ribeiro, proprietors, 1904–7, Maço 13, Processo 17; Comarca de Lourenço Marques, Juizo Civil e Comercial, Francisco António de Lemos-João Albasini, 1921, Maço 49, Processes 3–8, AHM.

45 Agueda M. da Silva would have been 36 at João's birth and 46 at Anthony's. Reis, , A população de Lourenço MarquesGoogle Scholar, facsimile; Neves, , Das terras, 198–9Google Scholar; Valle, Torre do, Diccionário shironga–Português, 319.Google Scholar

46 Despite the different orthography, Marciano Nicanor da Sylva was José Aniceto da Silva's son. He confirmed the strong relationship between Albasini and his father in his prologue dedication in Livro da dor, i. See also Brado Africano, 8 09 1922.Google Scholar

47 Brado Africano, 16 08 1922.Google Scholar

48 Reis, , A população de Lourenço MarquesGoogle Scholar, facsimile.

49 An Albasini family member brought this photograph to the attention of Dr António Sopa of AHM during an interview in 1993. She identified those pictured and gave Dr Sopa permission to copy the photograph. The author is grateful to the Albasini family and to Dr Sopa for sharing this photograph and to Prof. Dra Maria Inês Nogueira da Costa, Director of the AHM, for permission to reproduce it here.

50 Honwana claims that Albasini was never married, but it is clear from joint property documents, the press and Livro da dor that Bertha and João dos Santos Albasini were married in the late 1890s and divorced in 1916 or 1917. Honwana, , Life, 94.Google Scholar

51 Personal communication from Sopa, António, 07 1993.Google Scholar

52 Beatrice and José eventually had two more children. Carlos married Virginia Bendanam. They had a son Enrique Geraldo. Carlos Albasini died of tuberculosis at age 38, in 1938. Beatrice and Carlos did not particularly distinguish themselves amongst the urban African community of Lourenço Marques. Details of the next generation of Albasini and Possola families were culled from O Brado Africano and corroborated and clarified in group interviews with Albasini relatives in Portugal in 1989; group interview with Rudolfo da Silva Albasini, Ambrosia Crisostomo Pacheco Albasini, Ana Paula Crisostomo Albasini Chande, Gulamo Chande and João Távares de Fonseca, 30 July and 4 Aug. 1989, Porto, Portugal, and joint interview with Albasini, Lucas Francisco and Avêz, Fernanda Emília Ochoa, 7 08 1989Google Scholar, Lisbon, Portugal [hereafter, Porto/Lisbon Albasini Interviews, 1989].

53 O Africano, 27 12 1916.Google Scholar

54 Albasini's private letters, published posthumously under the title O livra da dor, allow us to glimpse into his marriage, his divorce and his sense of family. The fifty-page booklet is a collection of five letters written 14,15 and 16 May 1917, 31 July 1917 and 20 April 1918. The letter of 14 May 1917 refers to the divorce as being in process, and expected to be finalized shortly, 30.

55 The following paragraph on Torre do Valle based on O Futuro, 16 07, 1 08, 14 11 1908Google Scholar; O Africano, 19 07 1909, 7 09 1918, 4 10 1919Google Scholar; Lima, Pereira de, História dos caminhos de ferro, 162, n.Google Scholar; A Tribuna, 20 07 1907Google Scholar; Actas do Conselho do Governo, 30 09 1914Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 1 12 1920.Google Scholar

56 Valle, Torre do, Diccionário shironga-português.Google Scholar

57 O Futuro, 16 07, 1 08, 14 11 1908.Google Scholar

58 Torre do Valle's presentation of the government council taking a strong stand against the Portuguese wine industry is reprinted in Câmara Comercial de Lourenço Marques, Relatório da direcção, 1912, Annex IV, 60.

59 Torre do Valle, Diccionário shironga-português; Sylva note in Albasini, Livro da dor, 40, n.

60 The girls' names were Barbara, Giselle, Hermengarda and Salomé. The boy's name was João Manuel. His nickname was Pinto Pássare or Passarinho. Livro da dor, 40.Google Scholar

61 The Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa [BNL] has the most complete collection of these papers, but microfilm copies of the BNL collection are now also available at AHM and through CAMP at the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago. The single known original copy of O livra da dor is at the AHM. Boston University now has a bound photocopy. António Sopa located several sets of legal documents involving Albasini dating from 1904 to 1921.

62 Duffy, James, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge MA, 1959), 304 ff.Google Scholar; História de Africa, ii and iiiGoogle Scholar; Henrikson, Thomas, Mozambique: A History (London, 1978), 155–6Google Scholar; Newitt, Malyn, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years (London, 1981), 145Google Scholar; Newitt, , Mozambique: A History (Bloomington, 1995), 443–4Google Scholar; Isaacman, and Isaacman, , Mozambique, 73–4.Google Scholar

63 Moser, and Ferreira, , Bibliografia das literaturas, 177, 179, 185.Google Scholar

64 Biographical data on Michaela Loforte and her aunt, Dona Carlota, were compiled from social news in the Brado Africano, 25 10 1919, 2 06 1926 and 21 09 1922Google Scholar, and O Africano, 21 02 1917.Google Scholar

65 Although Bertha, Beatrice, Carlos and several other members of Albasini's household are explicitly named in the letters, da Sylva identified Michaela only as M … and others outside his family simply as***. The identity of everyone in the letters, including Michaela's wealthy and prominent aunt Dona Carlota Especiosa Paiva Raposo Fernandes (Titi), would have been clear to townspeople in 1925. Group interview Albasini families in Porto and Lisbon as in note 52 above.

67 Michaela Loforte's wedding to Guilherme Bruheim; Brado Africano, 25 10 1919Google Scholar. See also 21 Sept. 1922.

68 Rudolfo Albasini, João Tavares de Fonseca, and Porto/Lisbon Albasini Interviews, 1989.

69 Albasini's final editorial in O Africano, 30 11 1918Google Scholar, and details of the sale in special story on Grêmio history, Brado Africano, 24 12 1941.Google Scholar

70 Livro da dor, iv–v.

71 Moser, and Ferreira, , Bibliografia das literaturas, 177–83Google Scholar; Sylva, da, in prologue, Livro da dor, iii–v.Google Scholar

72 To date no collection of Albasini's essays has been published beyond the originals in the newspapers. It is unclear what happened to the other material da Sylva collected. Limited reproduction of Albasini's essay work can be found in Iglésias Neves, ‘Em defesa da causa africana’; Soares and Zamparoni, ‘Antologia de textos’; and Penvenne, ‘Principles and passion’, Annex.

73 Livro da dor, 40.Google Scholar

74 The following paragraphs are based on Rocha, , Das terras, 195–208Google Scholar; Martins, , João AlbasiniGoogle Scholar; Lima, Pereira de, História dos caminhos de ferro, i, 25–8Google Scholar; Machado, , ‘Lourenço Marques á Pretória’, 647–725Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 26 02 1921Google Scholar; Harries, Patrick, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (Portsmouth, 1994), 14, 83Google Scholar; Wagner, , ‘Zoutpansberg’, 313–39.Google Scholar

75 Sources as in note 14 above.

76 Historia de Moçambique, ii, 290.Google Scholar

77 A thorough review and inventory of the main issues raised over the nearly twenty years Albasini dominated the scene are beyond the scope of this essay. For detailed analysis of the Grêmio membership and a classification and assessment of themes developed in their newspapers see Iglésias Neves, Paulo Soares and Valdemir Zamparoni's work. Iglésias Neves, ‘Em defesa da causa africana’; Zamparoni, ‘A imprensa negra em Moçambique’; Soares and Zamparoni, ‘Antologia de textos’.

78 Brado Africano, 27 09 1919, 11 08 1922.Google Scholar

79 Penvenne, , ‘“We are all Portuguese!”’, 272–81Google Scholar, and African Workers and Colonial Racism, chs. 4 and 5.

80 Delagoa Directory annually included the titles of newspapers published in the city.

81 Rocha, , Catálogo dos periódicosGoogle Scholar; Dias, , A imprensa periódicaGoogle Scholar; Dias, , Quatro centenáriosGoogle Scholar; Sopa, , ‘Catálogo de periódicos’Google Scholar; Capela, , Movimento operário, 53–84Google Scholar; Gonçalves, , A informação em Moçambique, 501–6.Google Scholar

82 A Cidade, 31 07 1915Google Scholar; O Africano, 14 07 1917Google Scholar; PRO, FO 368/15191, Confidential no. 152, 17 Nov. 1916.

83 See above note 12.

84 Anti-Makua, essays, O Africano, 22 05 1909, 5 09 1909Google Scholar throughout 1909, 9 May 1917, 8 June 1918; Brado Africano, 15 03 1919, 1 05 1926.Google Scholar

85 Soares, and Zamparoni, , ‘Antologia de textos’, 136.Google Scholar

86 Mozambican journalists and writers are well known to the present for their innovative interplay of Portuguese, Ronga and Shangaan languages. Gerhard Liesegang, ‘“Trust your feet” in Mozambique’, [Review Essay] in Southern African Review of Books (Spring, 1988), 34–5.Google Scholar

87 Soares, and Zamparoni, include excellent examples of each persona in their ‘Antologia de textos’, 139ff.Google Scholar

88 Vail, Leroy and White, Landeg, Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History (Charlottesville, 1991).Google Scholar

89 Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 28–44.Google Scholar

90 The local press reveals such contests. See also quote by Camacho, Brito in Duffy, , Portuguese Africa, 251.Google Scholar

91 O Africano, 25 12 1908, 1 07 1915, 10 01 1917.Google Scholar

92 O Africano, 25 12 1908.Google Scholar

93 Delagoa Directory and the annual reports of local business groups: Associação Commercial de Lourenço Marques, Relatório da Associação Commercial de Lourenço Marques, 1891 (Lourenço Marques, 1892)Google Scholar, with minor title changes [Associação Commercial de Lourenço Marques becomes Câmara do Commércio de Lourenço Marques]; Constantino de Castro Lopo, Câmara do Comércio de Lourenço Marques [CCLM], 1891–1966 (Lourenço Marques, 1966).Google Scholar

94 The Delagoa Directory includes mission schools and stations throughout Mozambique. See also van Butselaar, Jan, Africains, missionaires et colonialistes: les origines de l'Eglise Presbytérienne du Mozambique (Leiden, 1984).Google Scholar

95 Penvenne, , ‘“We are all Portuguese!”’, passim.Google Scholar

96 Lemos, Manuel Jorge Correia de, ‘Recenseamentos populacionais em Moçambique colonial’, Arquivo, 1 (1987), 15–24Google Scholar; Medeiros, Eduardo, ‘A evolução demográfica da cidade de Lourenço Marques, 1895–1975’, Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, 111 (1985), 231–9.Google Scholar

97 Van Butselaar, , Africains, missionaires et colonialistesGoogle Scholar; Helgesson, Alf, Church, State and People in Mozambique (Uppsala, 1994).Google Scholar

98 O Africano, 5–12 07 1919Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 27 02 1932, 31 03 1934.Google Scholar

99 Pélissier's point that Mozambique was not a defined nation, united within a single set of boundaries, at least until the end of Chartered Company rule is well taken. René Pélissier review of Newitt's A History of Mozambique, in J. Southern Afr. Studies, XXI (1995), 333–4.Google Scholar

100 See, for example, the patronizing posture toward literate Africans in the South African Native Affairs Commission Report, especially sections on the Church Separatist Movement, Native Press, Native Political Associations, Education and Liquor: South Africa Native Affairs Commission, 1903–1905: Report with Annexures Nos. 1 to 9 (Cape Town, 1905).Google Scholar

101 O Africano, 19 06 1909.Google Scholar

102 Joaquim Swart commented specifically on this aspect in his history of the Grêmio published in Brado Africano, 24. 12 1948.Google Scholar

103 Penvenne, , ‘Labor struggles at the port of Lourenço Marques, 1900–1933’, Review, VIII (1984), 249–85.Google Scholar

104 Comparing census figures for Lourenço Marques in 1904, 1912 and 1928, ‘Mappas estatísticas’, Administração do Conselho de Lourenço Marques [ACLM] document 11/12, AHM.

105 Actas do Conselho do Governo, 12 08 and 2 10 1914Google Scholar; re: Portaria decreto 22 11 1912Google Scholar; O Africano, 12 10 1911 and 31 07, 7 08 and 13 10 1918.Google Scholar

106 O Africano, 7 08 1918.Google Scholar

107 Ibid.

108 Publication of eulogies and tributes to Albasini from local, regional and metropolitan papers in Brado Africano, 16 08 1922Google Scholar, and throughout Sept.; Actas do Conselho do Governo, 28 07 1927, 13.Google Scholar

109 Personal rivalries and feuds were as prevalent in Lourenço Marques as in every other community. In April of 1919 Portuguese settler José Cardosa's political disagreement with Albasini led Cardosa to assault Albasini with a whip. Albasini's colleagues claimed that Cardosa resorted to a whip because he was ill equipped to confront Albasini in a battle of words. O Africano, 19 04 1919, 5 and 12 07 1919.Google Scholar

110 Quoted in PRO, FO 367/341, Hardinge, to Consul, , Lisbon, 3 03 1913.Google Scholar

111 During one of Albasini's more forceful campaigns, the head of government requested translations of the Ronga sections of O Africano, suggesting he indeed could not read Ronga. SNI, doc. 3–56, 19, 23 and 27 Nov. 1915, Maputo, AHM; PRO, FO 371, Confidential, 28 [4123], 28 May 1919.

112 O Africano [Almanacho], VII (Lourenço Marques, 1915), 31Google Scholar. The caricature, dated 1913 by the artist [Carodiso Sa Carmota? illegible], was published in the 1915 almanac.

113 See for example OT, Tembe, Roberto and Costa, Joaquim da, 16 06 1977Google Scholar; Baza, Raul Carlos, 15 06 1977Google Scholar; Brito, Francisco Guilherme de, 27 06 and 5 07 1977Google Scholar; Chibindji, Bandi Albasini, 16 06 1977Google Scholar, all Port Complex, Maputo. Chibindji's father was a trader who knew Albasini in his capacity as an official forwarding agent. Chibinji's father regularly cleared his goods through Albasini and in familiar client tradition named his son [Bandi Albasini Chibinji] after a man whose goodwill might have a defining impact on his business. See also OT, Samora, Francisco Joaquim, 11 07 1977Google Scholar, and Tembe, António Gabriel, 6 and 11 07 1977Google Scholar, both Câmara Municipal de Maputo.

114 OT Tembe, Roberto, Zone, Port, Maputo, , 15 06 1977Google Scholar; joint interview Roberto Tembe and Joaquim da Costa, Port Complex, Maputo, 16 June 1977.

115 The following paragraphs based on OT, Mussana, Mussongueia Samuel, Maputo, Câmara Municipal de, 4 07 and 3 10 1977.Google Scholar

116 António Sopa, Benigna Zimba and Bento Sitoe all contributed to the interpretation of Nwanzengele. See also Nogueira, Rodrigo de Sá, Dicionário ronga-português (Lisbon, 1960)Google Scholar, and Valle, Torre do, Diccionário shironga-português, esp. 318–20Google Scholar; História de Moçambique, iiGoogle Scholar, Moreira's, José section, ‘Primeiras formulações nacionalistas’, 279–99Google Scholar, Nwadzingele, (crepúsculo), 291.Google Scholar

117 OT, Nicodemus Salamão Nhaca, Maputo, AHM, 11 10 1977.Google Scholar

118 Albasini's opposition to labor registration in principle and practice runs like a central thread throughout the press from 1913 to 1918. His column ‘Vozes de Burro’ specifically addresses labor registration. See also O Africano, 16 12 1913, 5 05 1914, 26 02 1916, 24 05 1916Google Scholar; Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 70–4.Google Scholar

119 The material in this paragraph is covered in greater detail in African Workers and Colonial Racism, 70ff.Google Scholar

120 ‘Relatório, Comissariado da Polícia Civil de Lourenço Marques’, Relatórios: Distrito de Lourenço Marques, 1915–1916 (Lourenço Marques, 1918), 16–20.Google Scholar

121 Brado Africano, 26 04 1919.Google Scholar

122 The relationship between Albasini and white union leadership is specifically explored by contemporaries in Brado Africano, 28 11 1925Google Scholar. See also, Penvenne, , ‘Labor struggles at the port’, 249–85.Google Scholar

123 Brado Africano, 28 11 1925.Google Scholar

124 O Africano, 5 06 1918.Google Scholar

125 Ibid. 18 Jan. 1918.

126 Brado Africano, 28 11 1925.Google Scholar

127 O Emancipador throughout this period. See also Capela, , Movimento operário.Google Scholar

128 O Africano, 25 12 1908.Google Scholar

129 For an overview of Anglophone Southern Africa, see Crush, Jonathan and Ambler, Charles (eds.), Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens OH, 1992), 1–55Google Scholar. The classic essay for the region and period is van Onselen, Charles, ‘Randlords and rotgut, 1886–1903’, in Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (2 vols.) (London, 1982), i, 44–102.Google Scholar

130 For the situation in Mozambique, see Actas do Conselho do Governo, February through the close of 1914Google Scholar, contains several exchanges that reveal the justification and nature of the ‘colonial wine’ debates, Actas do Conselho do Governo (14 02 1914), 149ffGoogle Scholar. See also Capela, José, O vinho para o preto: notas e textos sobre a exportação do vinho para Africa (Porto, 1973)Google Scholar, passim; Capela, , O álcool na colonização do Sul do Save, 1860–1920 (Lourenço Marques, 1995)Google Scholar, passim; Penvenne, , ‘Labor struggles at the port’, 249–85Google Scholar; Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 40–3.Google Scholar

131 Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 42–3.Google Scholar

132 ‘Liquor traffic at Lourenço Marques’, PRO, FO 367–188, file 41662.

133 Alcohol abuse is addressed throughout O Africano and O Brado Africano, but see especially O Africano, 25 12 1908, 1 03, 26 04, 13 05 and 23 12 1909Google Scholar, 6 Oct. 1915, 28 July and 6 Oct. 1917, 1 June 1918; Brado Africano, 25 01, 7 02, 16 08 and 20 12 1919, 30 01 and 5 06 1920Google Scholar. Two investigative reports on the long-term health consequences of the alcohol trade conducted in 1908 and 1910 by Dr Rolla, a Portuguese physician, and Sr Falção, the Director of Native Affairs, became central to the continuing debate. Rolla's findings were published in O Futuro, 11, 12, 23 and 29 04 1908Google Scholar, and Falção's survey data in João Bravo Falção, ‘Emigração dos indígenas do Sul da Província de Moçambique para o Transvaal’, Revista Portuguêsa Colonial e Marítima, Ano 12 (1908–1909), 99–114Google Scholar. Junod, Henri, ‘L'alcoolisme Africain’, Bibliotheque Universelle et Revue de Genéve, La Chronique Internationale (09 1930), 384–97Google Scholar; Garcia, Le Comte de Penha, La lutte contre l'alcool aux colonies portugaises (Genéve, 1911).Google Scholar

134 O Africano, 1 03 1909, 28 10 and 3 11 1911 throughout 10 1915.Google Scholar

135 Most of the local papers ran series linking drinking and prostitution during the first two decades of the twentieth century; O Distrito, 23 01, 28 02 and 3 03 1905Google Scholar; O Mignon, 4 05 and 8 06 1902, 21 04 1905Google Scholar; Diário de Notícias, 6 01, 7 and 10 02, 18 05, 19 and 29 07, 16 and 22 08 and 13 09 1906Google Scholar; O Progresso, 12 05 and 17 11 1904, 2 and 9 03 1905Google Scholar; O Africano, 1 03 1909, 28 10 and 3 11 1911, throughout 1917, esp. 15 08 1917Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 8 11 1919, 11 08 1922Google Scholar. For a South African comparative perspective, see Jochelson, Karen, ‘Women, migrancy and morality: a problem of perspective’, J. Southern Afr. Studies, XXI (1995), 323–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ambler, and Crush, (eds.), Liquor and Labor, 6–7Google Scholar; Bozzoli, Belinda, with Nkotsoe, Mmantho, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1983 (Portsmouth, 1991).Google Scholar

136 William Hogarth engravings in 1751 edition in the Mansell Collection reprinted in Sournia, Jean-Charles, A History of Alcoholism (Cambridge, 1990), plates 8 and 9, between 106 and 107Google Scholar. Brado Africano, 27 11 1918Google Scholar; Medeiros, Eduardo, Bebidas moçambicanas de fabrico caseiro (Maputo, 1988)Google Scholar; OT, Tembe, Robert, 16 06 and 10 11 1977Google Scholar, Maputo, , Complex, Port, and Tembe, Saul, 7 and 9 06 1977Google Scholar, Maputo, Câmara Municipal de Maputo, both regarding uputsu and wine.

137 Women were permitted to brew only sufficient uputsu for family use, but not for sale. Brewing was nonetheless a common means for urban and suburban women to earn money. Brado Africano, 27 11 1918Google Scholar. Bozzoli and Nkotsoe make a similar case in a later period for neighboring South Africa, Women of Phokeng.

138 Brado Africano, 27 11 1918Google Scholar. Persecution of women for brewing also significantly disrupted rural society. In Inhambane in 1906, 168 women were arrested for clandestine brewing and sentenced to work building the rail line to Swaziland. Capela, , O álcool na colonização, 49.Google Scholar

139 Police had to be paid off, and periodic crackdowns sent many women off to conscript labor or a ‘reform’ sentence at the mission. O Commercio de Lourenço Marques, 30 09, 21 10 and 4 11 1893Google Scholar; see also note 134.

140 O Africano, 25 12 1908, 1 and 16 03, 22 05, 16 08 1909, 12 10 1911, 28 10 1911, 18 05, 13 07 and 7 08 1918Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 15 01, 8 and 29 03 and 26 07 1919.Google Scholar

141 Dias, Cacilda, daughter of Grêmio leader Estácio Dias, founded a private girls' school, in the city; Brado Africano, 30 07 1938.Google Scholar

142 The school was first established on Avenida Diogo Cão in Alto Mahé. In 1926 it was moved to the ‘palace’ of Dona Carlota Especiosa Paiva Raposo Fernandes. Brado Africano, 8 09 1923Google Scholar. The school was remembered by Roberto Tembe as the Grêmio's school for ‘young women of color…to make them good housewives’. OT, Tembe, Roberto, 16 06 1977Google Scholar, Maputo, Port Complex.

143 Livro da dor, 20.Google Scholar

144 Tempo, Frelimo's national weekly magazine, highlighted Gungunhana's career in the 1970s, but by the early 1980s publication of História de Moçambique a more balanced approach prevailed.

145 Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 18–20, 157.Google Scholar

146 Ndabaningi Sithole's masterfully ironic work Frelimo Militant: The Story of Ingwane from Mozambique, An Ordinary, Yet Extraordinary, Man, Awakened (Nairobi, 1977)Google Scholar, captured the political spirit of the immediate post-independence period.

147 Penvenne, , ‘“We are all Portuguese!”’, passim.Google Scholar

148 Frelimo's pedagogic cartoon character, Xiconhoca or Chico the Snake, conveyed the party's agenda to the masses, regardless of language or literacy. The cartoon regularly cast bureaucrats, capitalists and ‘petit bourgeois elements’ as villains. Departamento de Trabalho Ideológico do Partido FRELIMO, Xiconhoca: o Inimigo (Maputo, 1979).Google Scholar

149 This essay has not attempted to address José Albasini's secondary role. He wrote a history of the Grêmio on 11 11 1933Google Scholar. It was published after his death in Brado Africano, 24 12 1939.Google Scholar

150 Brado Africano, 28 07 1925.Google Scholar

151 In 1906 the literate ‘colored’ population in the city numbered 1,258. The total Portuguese European and Goan urban populations were only 3,084 and 728 respectively. Those numbers suggest that the ‘colored’ population was an important component of the city's total literate Portuguese-speaking population. Delagoa Directory, 1906.Google Scholar

152 Boletim Municipal, Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques, throughout the 1950s.

153 ‘Na nossa terra e da nossa raça’, Livro da dor, 41Google Scholar; Brado Africano party and meeting guest lists, 26 02 1921.Google Scholar

154 The original membership is named in the first issue of O Africano, 25 12 1908Google Scholar. Estácio Dias, among others, does not seem to have had any Portuguese relatives.

155 Turn-of-the-century Lourenço Marques is poetically described in several of Alexandre Lobato's works. Mendes also described the Alto Mahé as ‘essentially Mestizo’ by the late colonial era. O Africano and Brado Africano editorials demanding municipal services for neighborhood taxpayers also reflect Alto Mahé's comparative status, in that it had public toilets and showers in the mid-teens. Lobato, , ‘Xilunguine: pequeno monografia’, Boletim (Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques) (1969), 56Google Scholar; Mendes, Maria Clara, Maputo antes de indepêndencia: geografia de uma cidade colonial (Lisbon, 1985), 95Google Scholar; O Africano, 15 03 1916Google Scholar; Brado Africano, 16 03 1918, 15 09 1923, 16 01 1924Google Scholar; Soares-Zilhão, João José, ‘Lourenço Marques: ensaio geográfico’, Boletim da Sociedade de Estudos da Colónia de Moçambique, XXXVI (1938), 1–60.Google Scholar

156 The colonial government, while maintaining the premise that it did not discriminate on the basis of race, increasingly defined ‘miscegenation’ as a ‘problem’; Figueiredo, A. dos Santos, ‘A vida social’, Colónia de Moçambique: primeira exposição colonial portuguesa (Porto, 1934), 9.Google Scholar

157 Brado Africano, 20 08 1932.Google Scholar

158 Spitzer, Leo, Lives In Between: Assimilation and Marginality in Austria, Brazil and West Africa, 1780–1945 (New York, 1989), 3ff.Google Scholar

159 Cooper, Frederick, ‘Conflict and connection: rethinking colonial African history’, Amer. Hist. Rev., IC (1994), 1516–45, quote p. 1539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

160 Ibid. 1539.

161 Isaacman, Allen F., Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution – The Zambezi Prazos, 1750–1902 (Madison, 1972)Google Scholar; Curtin, Philip D. (ed.), Africa and the West: Intellectual Responses to European Culture (Madison, 1972).Google Scholar

162 Quote from Pott, Karel in Brado Africano, 20 08 1932.Google Scholar

163 The Grêmio press saw Garveyism as both ‘good and bad’; the bad was the racist hate and vindictiveness. Albasini's series on Ethiopianism and Africa for Africans returns to the theme of civilizers, asking ‘what have Europeans done for Africans in 400 years?’ They have introduced prostitution, drugs, white justice only for whites, etc.; see esp. 12 July 1919 and 18 June 1921. Brado Africano, 15 11 1919, 11 09, 18 and 20 06 1921Google Scholar; Dias, , ‘Portuguese African associations in Lisbon’Google Scholar; Andrade, Mário Pinto de, ‘As ordens do discurso do “Clamor Africano”: continuidade e ruptura na ideologia do nacionalismo unitário’, Estudos Moçambicanos [Maputo], VII (1990), 7–27.Google Scholar

164 Albasini represented the Grêmio Africano of Mozambique on the board of directors of the mouthpiece publication of Lisbon's moderate Pan-Africanist groups, first Junta de Defesa dos Direitos de Africa and subsequently Liga Africana, but Mozambicans were not involved with Lisbon politics to the same degree as members from Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe. When Albasini first visited Lisbon in September of 1919, he was already quite ill with tuberculosis. Brado Africano, 27 09 1919.Google Scholar

165 Although the number of titles published dropped from a high of 97 in 1926 to a low of 42 directly after the implementation of legislation targeting the opposition press in 1926, those figures exaggerate the actual impact of the press law. The number of titles was inflated in 1926 because striking railway workers responded to the banning of their newspaper by publishing under a slightly different name. Most of the ‘new titles’ that appeared in 1925–6 were simply single issues of the same paper, O Emancipador. The more marked difference after the coup was the nature of the press content. Rocha, , Catálogo dos periódicos, 22–3.Google Scholar

166 Noronha quoted in Brado Africano, 26 08 1933Google Scholar. For Noronha's role see also Neves, Iglésias, ‘Em defesa da causa africana’, 181.Google Scholar

167 Eulogies to Albasini appeared regularly in urban African press. Brado Africano, 16 Aug. 1922, 20 Jan., 14 July and 16 Aug. 1923, 24 Dec. 1924, 28 Nov. and 19 Dec. 1925, 5 June 1926, 26 Feb. 1927, 27 Aug. and 17 Dec. 1932, 26 Aug. 1933, 1 Dec. 1936.

168 Brado Africano, 15 09 and 13 10 1951.Google Scholar

169 Marcelino dos Santos's father was a member of the Grêmio Africano. Brado Africano, 18 03 1939, 13 09 1947, 23 07 1949, 14 01 1950Google Scholar. Russell Hamilton, Moser and Ferreira, Fátima Mendonça, Edward Alpers and the authors of História de Moçambique all address the trajectory of political and intellectual interplay within the developing liberation groups from the late forties to the seventies: Hamilton, Russell, Voices from an Empire: A History of Afro-Portuguese Literature (Minneapolis, 1975)Google Scholar; Moser, and Ferreira, , Bibliografia das literaturasGoogle Scholar; Mendonça, , Literatura moçambicanaGoogle Scholar; Alpers, , ‘Role of culture’Google Scholar; História de Moçambique, ii and iii.Google Scholar

170 Penvenne, , African Workers and Colonial Racism, 116.Google Scholar

171 This paragraph is based on Willan, Sol Plaatje. The author does not suggest that Albasini and Plaatje were figures of equal importance. Willan's extensive and painstaking research revealed a wealth of information on Plaatje. The hope is that historians will delve into the lives of many Mozambican intellectuals with similar care and energy.

172 Plaatje's papers, Koranfa ea Becoana, Tsala da Becoana and Tsala ea Batho, were all shortlived and irregular in comparison with O Africano and Brado Africano. Willan, Sol Plaatje.