Women’s Issues: African Writers Fighting Portuguese Colonialism in the 1950s

This essay approaches the literary production by female intellectuals who opposed Portuguese colonialism in Africa, recognising their active role in history, as well as the cultural and political processes that influenced their writing and its repercussions. Experiencing multiple forms of subalternity – of class, race and gender – women like Alda Espírito Santo, Alda Lara, Noémia de Sousa Deolinda Rodrigues and Manuela Margarido were committed to the creation of new ways of writing and forms of conceiving the world. Playing a fundamental role in the literary, political and cultural environment of the second half of the 20th century, they circulated in spaces in which they questioned male hegemony, discussing gender issues and exercising multiple forms of resistance. This article will consider how the demands of women in the process of political decolonisation have often been reduced to the label of ‘women’s issues’, the idea of unification of struggles having been privileged instead.

Women in Mozambique

Mozambique is divided into matrilineal north and patrilineal south, while the central part of the country has a mixture of the two. Both types of kinship organization have important implications for the situation of women. Women in matrilineal societies could access land and political and decision-making power. They had their own property and their children belonged to their matrikin. In patrilineal societies, women depended on their husbands and their kin groups in order to access farmland. Children and property belonged to the husband’s clan. During the colonial period (c. 1890–1975), women’s position in Mozambique was affected by the Indigenato regime (1917–1961). The native African population (classified as indígenas) were denied the rights of Portuguese citizenship and placed under the jurisdiction of local “traditional habits and customs” administered by the appointed chiefs. Despite the fact that Portuguese citizenship was extended to all independent of creed and race by the 1961 Overseas Administrative Reform, most rural African areas remained within the Indigenato regime until the end of colonialism in 1974. Portuguese colonialism adopted an assimilationist and “civilizing” stance and tried to domesticate African women and impose a patriarchal Christian model of family and gender relations. Women were active in the independence struggle and liberation war (1964–1974), contributing greatly to ending colonialism in Mozambique. In 1973, Frelimo launched a nationwide women’s organization, Organização da Mulher Moçambicana (Organization of Mozambican Women, OMM). Although women were encouraged to work for wages in the first decade after independence, they remained largely limited to the subsistence economy, especially in rural areas. The OMM upheld the party line describing women as “natural” caregivers. Only with the political and economic liberalizations of the 1990s were many women able to access new opportunities. The merging of various women’s organizations working in the country during this period helped to consolidate decades-long efforts to expand women’s political and legal rights in independent Mozambique. In the early 2000s, these efforts led to the reform of the family law, which was crucial for the improvement of women’s rights and conditions in Mozambique.

Women Writing Portuguese Colonialism in Africa

Ana Paula Ferreira, Women Writing Portuguese Colonialism in Africa, Liverpool University Press, 2020, 224 pp.

The unintended consequences of liberalization and austerity on higher education in Mozambique

Chronic shortages of resources to run the state have been a feature of Mozambique since the colonial period. Even before the adoption of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in the late 1980s, conditions were austere due to the effects of Portuguese colonialism, a decade of liberation struggle, prolonged civil war and policy mistakes following independence in 1975. Drawing from archival research and oral accounts, this article analyses the impact of the liberalization of higher education in Mozambique. It explores the strategies adopted by intellectuals and academics to navigate reduced state support and donor conditionalities accompanying austerity measures from the late 1980s. It also highlights the paradoxical effects of austerity measures on fundraising, intellectual production, and the expansion of educational institutions. Austerity measures brought about by SAPs have forced universities and faculty to reinvent themselves by commercializing and privatizing higher education and seeking external funding for research. At the same time, scholars are now intellectually freer but more dependent on donors’ research agendas. Finally, the introduction of privately owned higher education institutions and the marketization of public institutions have increased divisions between the elites and the majority of Mozambicans who cannot afford to pay the fees charged.

Amílcar Cabral

The Guinean-born Amílcar Cabral has been hailed as one of the most original voices in revolutionary processes on the African continent. He was not only behind one of the most resourceful independence movement in Africa, the PAIGC (African Party for the Liberation of Guinea and Cape Verde). But the challenge he posed against the colonial military might was also instrumental to end of Portuguese colonialism altogether. For reaction against Estado Novo brewed mostly in Bissau, on the account of a war the Portuguese was waging against the guerrilla and could not win. This biography describes Cabral’s upbringing in Cape Verde, his political coming of age in Lisbon, as a student in agronomy and anticolonial activist, as well as his transformation into one of the most revered revolutionaries in the world. However, contrary to most studies on Cabral, which tend to rely on the materials produced during the liberation war, this book approaches the life of Cabral from a slightly different perspective. It explores a trove of Lusophone sources, particularly those ones that use contemporary issues to illuminate historical conundrums. The political trajectory Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau have followed sheds light not only on Cabral’s quest for identity – being born in Guinea-Bissau from Cape Verdeans parents – But also on the day-to-day conduction of the anti-colonial war itself.

A United Front

Cape Verdeans and Guineans were conceived in the context of Portuguese colonialism as the nemesis one of the other. Whereas Cape Verdeans were considered civilized, the overwhelmingly majority of Guineans fell under the category of indiginato. And yet, the party that Cabral created purported to congregate Cape Verdeans in Guineans. For this to happen, however, Cabral needed to navigate the tense and conspiratorial environment of incipient nationalist movements both in Guinea-Conacry and Senegal, vying for the support of their hosts. The beginning of the armed struggle against the Portuguese, in 1963, was instrumental for Cabral to silence every other nationalist force in the African diaspora as well as impose his movement as the sole representative of the aspirations of the people of Cape Verdeans and Guineans.

Between Guinea and Cape Verde

This chapter provides the historical background for understanding not only the Cabral’s family background, but also the nature of Portuguese colonialism, particularly in relation to the formation of the two Portugal-dominated territories in West Africa, namely Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Being born in Guinea-Bissau, from Cape Verdean parents, and growing up in Cape Verde, made Cabral a product of the conflictual relationship between these two former Portuguese colonies. For Cabral, then, forming a party that congregates Cape Verdeans and Guineans was also a way to come to terms with his own identity.

Introduction

Undoubtedly, Cabral was one of the most successful guerrilla leaders in the world. Through the movement he created, the PAIGC, he not only contributed to the liberation of Guinea-Bissau from Portuguese colonialism, but he also produced revolutionary theory. Furthermore, his quest for independence was also instrumental to the end of the Portuguese colonial regime and dictatorship itself. This introduction asks the question: almost five decades since his tragic killing in the hand of his own men, and the independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, how can the legacy of Cabral be re-interpreted in the lights of the political trajectory these countries of Lusophone Africa have followed?

Shattering the Walls of Silence

Up to 1959, Cabral had been over-cautious and avoided the fate of many of his comrades, such Agostinho Neto or Mário Pinto de Andrade, who either were in jail or exiled on account of their subversive political activities. However, after his last trip to Angola and Guinea, in 1959, where he had witnessed the crackdown of nationalist organizations, he could no longer maintain his duplicity. He then comes out as a nationalist in a grand way. It was in London, in early 1960s, that he publishes the first political pamphlet under his name, Facts about Portugal’s African colonies,” and he gives a press conference to denounce Portuguese colonialism. From there, Cabral settles in West Africa, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, where he started the work of preparing to launch the anti-colonial war against the Portuguese.