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The ‘Aringa’ at Massangano

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

M. D. D. Newitt  and
P. S. Garlake
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Extract

In the nineteenth century the Portuguese government became engaged in a long struggle with the most powerful of the landowning families of the Zambezi—the famous prazo holders. Beginning as a domestic affair brought about by the weakness of the administration, the wars eventually developed into a struggle for the survival of even the vestiges of Portuguese rule on the Zambezi. The Portuguese government mounted nine expeditions before it was finally successful in 1888. The prazo holders, for their part, gathered round them the tribes and families broken up by the wars and by the raids of the Landim and Ngoni, and their resistance became, by the end, a general struggle of the African peoples of the lower Zambezi, not so much for independence, as against any alteration in the way of life of the ‘Rivers’—against westernization. Most of the fighting centred round the stronghold of Massangano at the junction of the Luenha and Zambezi rivers a few miles below Tete. The ‘aringa’ at Massangano was destroyed finally in 1888 but there are still extensive remains of it and of other sites connected with the Zambezi wars. The expedition reported in this paper made a plan of the ‘aringa’ of Massangano and was able to show the continuity in building tradition between the Portuguese ‘fairs’ built in Mashonaland in the seventeenth century, the Swahili east-coast sites and the nineteenth-century building in the Zambezi valley. The expedition was also intended to form some estimate of the potential of the virtually unworked fields of Moçambique archaeology and tradition, and by making two detailed studies to attract other workers to the same area.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 133 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 An aringa is a stockade made of wooden stakes which surrounds a whole settlement, often of a great many huts and families but sometimes only of one, The term is widely used in the nineteenth century to describe the residences of the prazo holders and the fortified military camps built during the wars. On the other hand a luane is a house with a walled courtyard. This type of house was very common in Zambezia from the earliest times, and throughout East Africa.Google Scholar

2 Historia dos guerras no Zambesi, 1, 213.Google Scholar

3 The site of Massangano was visited by the authors between iz and ig September 1965.Google Scholar

4 Mathers, E. P., Zambesia, England's El Dorado in Africa (London, 1891).Google Scholar

5 Already it is quoted as the authority on the period, e.g. by Duffy, J. in Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, Mass. 1959).Google Scholar

6 The wars of the Portuguese against Vaz de Anjos will be well known to anyone who has studied the records of the Nyasaland missionaries. James Stewart and Richard Thornton record important details of these wars, and Thornton describes in some detail the aringa of one of the Vaz de Anjos family called Bonga.Google Scholar

7 A prazo literally means a period of time. In this context it refers to the system of landholding on the Zambezi. Dating from the early seventeenth century and modified at intervals in 1675, 1759, 1760, 1779, 1832, the land along the river was divided into estates and leased for three lives—the estate passing in the female line. Conditions attached to the lease included the obligation to marry a Portuguese, the duty of collecting the head-tax (mussoco) and administering the area, providing military support for the government and paying a quitrent annually to the government. The system has been compared to the feudal system in Europe from which it was derived, and in many of its characteristics it did closely resemble the feudal system.Google Scholar

8 Theal, G. M., Records of South-eastern Africa, III.Google Scholar

9 It was not possible to take any steps towards gathering oral tradition in the area. Inquiries in the villages did however show that the name of Nhaude was well remembered, as being that of one of the opponents of the Portuguese. One old man was interviewed who was reputed to have been alive during the final stages of the Zambezi wars. He recalled that each village had paid tribute to Massangano in the form of millet, and produced a woven grass bag 25 by 40 cm. to demonstrate the quantity. Some villages were expected to pay more than one bag, according to their wealth. This man was headman of a village near Campaes.Google Scholar

10 The Portuguese had only begun to expand north of the river in the middle of the eighteenth century. Bars or mining camps existed north of the river, and these formed the basis of expeditions into the interior and the future conquest north of the river. The Pereira family were of Indian origin, and rose to fame through trade with the Kazembe (see Cunnison, I., ‘Kazembe and the Portuguese’, J. Afr. Hist. I (1961), I).Google Scholar

11 Livingstone described Massangano as follows when he passed it on his first voyage down the Zambezi in 1856: There are some good houses in the stockade. The trees of which it is composed seem to me to be living and could not be burned. It is strange to see a stockade menacing the whole commerce of the rivers in a situation where the guns of a vessel would have full play on it, but it is a formidable affair for those who have only muskets’ (Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (London, 1857),655).Google Scholar

12 Literally ‘sergeant-major’, this title was purely honorary, conferring status but no obligations. Technically it made Bonga an officer in the Portuguese army and, as such, he was granted military honours on his death. The real function of the title, however, was to confer prestige on Bonga which would enhance his standing with his African subjects and which would cause him to recognize, however cursorily, the sovereignty of the Portuguese. The title of capitāo-mor is found more often and had the same wide usage, being granted occasionally to officers on active service but more often being bestowed on influential landowners, or on important African leaders whose support the Portuguese wanted. The nature of this title would explain why the Portuguese did not remove it during the rebellions. It would have been open encouragement for Bonga to assert full independence. In fact, the da Cruz never advanced any formal claim to independence until after Bonga's death (see p. 144).Google Scholar

13 The Minister responsible for accepting these terms was J. de Andrade Corvo. He was the author of a large and highly critical volume of essays on the Portuguese colonial empire, Estudos sobre as provincias ultramarinas (Lisbon, 1884).Google ScholarThe importance of this work has been pointed out recently by Boxer, C. R. in Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire.Google Scholar

14 This site is today referred to as Tembué or Campaes. It was pointed out by local inhabitants as being the site of an old aringa. Although there are no structures to be seen, the ground is littered with pottery, both European and African, with the remains of metal objects which might be of later date. A Portuguese military epaulette was also found on the surface. The site is right next to the road from Tambara to Lupata.Google Scholar

15 Sousa e Silva, O Disirita de Tete.Google Scholar

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18 de Castilho, A., op. cit. 17–18.Google Scholar

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20 de Castilho, A., op. cit. 17–18.Google Scholar

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22 Theal, G. M., Records of South-eastern Africa, III, 388.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. III, 477.

24 This map is in the possession of the Royal Geographical Society in London.Google Scholar

25 Documentaçāo Avulsa Moçambicana do Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (Lisbon, 1964), 859.Google Scholar

26 Tabler, E. C., op. cit. 208.Google Scholar

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29 Ferreira, J. J., Recordaçōes da expediçāo da Zambesia em 1869 (Elvas, 1891).Google Scholar

30 Schofield, J. S., Primitive Pottery (Cape Town, 1948), 172–173,Google Scholar and Goodall, E., Rhodesian pots with moulded decoration’, Nada, XXIII (1946), 36–49.Google Scholar