Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940

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MOZAMBIQUE

Towns might be ruled either by an elected council or by an

appointed municipal commission. Elsewhere, districts under civil

administrators were created. Along the Zambezi, administrative

expansion was based on the old

pra^os

(estates). Those south of

the river had been taken over by the chartered Mozambique

Company, which since 1902 had begun to replace them by

districts. Those on the north bank were nominally in state-

controlled territory, but in 1892 they had been converted into

concessions whose owners had the right to collect African poll-tax

and levy forced labour, in return for policing and 'developing'

their

praqos.

The state did, however, directly control one area

within the territory of the Mozambique Company: this was the

chiefdom of Barwe, which since its conquest in 1902 was

administered by the governor of Tete district. North of Quelimane

district, Portuguese authority was scarcely acknowledged any-

where in 1905. Inland from Mozambique Island and Angoche, a

combination of Makua chiefs and Muslim rulers held out under

the skilful leadership of Farelay, a descendant of the old sultans

of Angoche. Farelay's power was broken in 1910, but resistance

continued further up the coast until 1913. Beyond the Lurio river,

the Niassa Company was powerless outside its few coastal forts

until after 1910.

Throughout Mozambique, administrators were thin on the

ground, while their responsibilities were wide. In 1911 the

governor of Tete district and his adjutant had a secretariat of six

men; there were six more senior officials in the trade and justice

departments, and an inspector in each sub-district. This

staff,

which included interpreters, was supposed to perform a full range

of government duties and to report annually on finance, taxation,

prices, roads, trade licences, claims, posts, telegraphs, public

health, prisons and meteorology. The main administrative funct-

ions were the supervision of the

pra^ps,

the maintenance of order,

taxation and the administration of the labour laws. It is scarcely

surprising that the governor wrote in 1912, 'The region of Barwe

is too large to be administered directly by

single individual...and

however active the official in charge may be, it is not possible for

him to assess and collect the head tax in a proper manner within

the twelve months of the year. '

The colonial service in all the

Districto

Tete: relatorio

governador 1911-1912 (Lourenco Marques, 1913),

35;

quoted

Malyn Ncwitt, Portugal

Africa:

the

last hundred jean (London, 1981),

55.

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Portuguese colonies was bitterly criticised for inefficiency,

corruption and every variety of extortion and malpractice. The

real problem undoubtedly lay in the shortage of funds to pay the

administrators proper salaries; as it was, they mostly resorted to

private trade as in the past, while the understaffed police force

relied on impressed black militias who terrorised the population

in the name of law and order.

On the whole, the extension of European control over

Mozambique did not involve large-scale expropriation of land

from Africans. In a few areas, notably in the far south, prime

farmland had been seized for plantations, but legislation in 1901

recognised the rights of Africans to land that they had habitually

occupied or worked and it made provision for them to acquire

individual titles after twenty years. It was not until 1918 that the

law was revised to enable reserves to be demarcated where tribal

tenures alone would apply. A department of ' native' administ-

ration was organised in 1907 and charged principally with

recruitment of labour, conscription of

police,

the organisation of

justice and the supervision of chiefs. At village level, but no

higher, the authority of the government was represented by an

African chief

(regulo),

on to whom were loaded all the most

unpopular administrative tasks. The chief retained his traditional

role in the allocation of land and in customary law but he was

also required to assist the government to contract labourers and

to collect tax. These duties made the chief unpopular and his

position hard to fill.

The population of Mozambique was subject to the 'moral

obligation' to work, which had been laid on it by the labour law

1899.

All adults were liable for unpaid work for the government

and in addition had the responsibility to be gainfully employed.

Chiefs and those producing crops for export were exempted, but

all the rest had to contract themselves to an employer. If they did

not do so, the state could arrange the contracts itself and unpaid

penal labour could be exacted for non-payment of taxes, breach

of contract, etc. Government officials frequently recruited labour

on behalf of private companies, even though this was technically

illegal. Payment for contract labour was laid down in law but

workers found themselves subject to fines and deductions; often

they had to travel at their own expense and found themselves

recontracted at the end of their term. Flogging was common, as

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was the molestation of women — particularly by the black police

when out on tax-gathering missions. The population responded

by voting with its feet and, from the turn of the century, there

was a steady exodus of population from the frontier regions. The

flight of the population was sufficiently serious for a commission

to be established to study the problem in 1908.

The chief consideration in Portugal's attitude to its colonies was

that their budgets should

balance.

Within Mozambique there were

concessionaires whose interest lay in the long-term growth of the

economy, but at the beginning of the century their influence was

still limited. Long-term projects took second place to the

immediate need to increase revenue. The quickest way to do this

was to service production in territories further inland. As British

and Belgian capital intensified the exploitation of minerals in the

interior of southern Africa, so the routes to the coast, which were

mostly under Portuguese control, grew in importance. To profit

from their geographical position, the Portuguese had to divert all

available resources to the construction of harbour works and

railways. Lourenco Marques was linked to the Rand in 1894 and

Beira to Salisbury (Harare) in 1899. The ports grew fast, as did

the revenue for the colonial exchequer. Ports and transit facilities

were not, however, the only services which British colonies

sought from Mozambique. When the Gaza hinterland was occu-

pied after 1895, the Portuguese became aware of the massive

extent of labour migration from that area to Kimberley and the

Rand. Too weak to prevent this exodus, the Portuguese authorities

sought to control and exploit it to the best financial advantage.

This was done through a series of agreements which culminated

in the

modus vivendi

of 1901 by which a recruiting monopoly was

granted to the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association

(WNLA) in return for a capitation fee and a specified share of the

Rand rail traffic. By 1905 the gold and coal mines of the Transvaal

employed about 59,000 men from Mozambique — almost three-

quarters of their total workforce.

The

modus vivendi

found bitter critics on all sides. Being free to

recruit throughout the Colony, WNLA threatened to deprive

it of vital labour reserves and undermine the value of conces-

sions.

Migrant labour was alleged by some Portuguese to 'de-

nationalise' the Mozambique workers and lower their respect

for Portuguese authority. The Rand magnates, for their part,

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feared a Portuguese monopoly over their labour supplies while

Natal and the Cape bitterly resented the railway agreements.

Southern Rhodesia also protested vigorously at its exclusion from

recruiting rights. Even Portuguese who appreciated the fiscal

benefits of the

modus vivendi

pointed to the purchases made by

migrant labourers in Johannesburg, and the South African liquor

they consumed, to demonstrate that mine earnings did little to

stimulate Portugal's own commerce. There were also some who

thought a mortality rate of 7 per cent per annum among miners

unacceptably high. Nevertheless the system was renewed in the

Mozambique-Transvaal Convention of 1909 on approximately

the same terms: up to 80,000 miners a year to be provided, on

12-month contracts, and 50 to 55 per cent of the Rand rail traffic

secured for Lourenco Marques. From 1914 a provision for

deferred wage payments increased the flow of sterling into

Mozambique and made the arrangement still more favourable for

the Portuguese. The Portuguese inspectorate in Johannesburg

recorded that between 1909 and 1916 the monthly average of

workers employed in the Transvaal ranged from 85,394 to

96,541.

The Mozambique Company had been called into existence to

clothe the utter nakedness of Portugal's colonial establishment at

a time when the openly predatory imperialism of Germany and

South Africa threatened the very survival of Portugal's colony in

East Africa. The company proved fairly successful in filling this

administrative vacuum but if anyone in Portugal had imagined

that the company would also exclude all foreign influence, they

were to be much mistaken. In order to launch its administration,

the company made a number of sub-concessions which were taken

up by foreign capital, while the railway to Rhodesia was built and

owned by a subsidiary of Cecil Rhodes's financial empire. A

struggle also took place between British and French shareholders

for the control of the chartered company itself and in 1913 a

substantial South African purchase of shares was engineered by

Libert Oury, a director of Belgian origin but British nationality.

Oury was to co-operate closely with Southern Rhodesia to secure

the development of the railway and the port of Beira, and customs

and transit payments were to become the company's chief source

of revenue. It is doubtful, however, if the influence of British

imperial interests significantly improved the company's perfor-

mance or altered the course of its policies. These were determined

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much more by the logic of its geographical position astride

Southern Rhodesia's road to the sea. In one respect, indeed, the

Mozambique Company never became as subservient to British

interests as the state-administered areas, for in general it reserved

its own manpower for local employment: despite diplomatic

pressures, WNLA and other foreign contractors were excluded.

From 1903, WNLA recruited in the territory of the Niassa

Company, but for some years little of this was actually under

company control. Indeed, in 1906 the Yao of Machemba, who had

lately moved out of German territory, combined with local

Swahili rulers to expel the Portuguese from Palma. In 1908,

however, British and South African capital established the Nyassa

Consolidated company, which took control of the chartered

company and provided it with funds. The aim of this consortium

was to obtain contract labour for South Africa; it was therefore

in direct competition with the many northern chiefs who still

exported slaves to Arabia, with the aid of guns bought from the

company. In 1909, the reorganised Niassa Company set about the

conquest of the interior, cutting off its opponents' arms supplies

and enlisting support among Africans who had suffered from the

slave-raiders. In 1912, reinforced by Indian sepoys from British

Nyasaland, the company defeated the last major source of

resistance, the Yao chief Mataka.

A year later, ironically, the South African government forbade

recruitment north of latitude 22°S, in order to reduce the high

death-rate on the Rand. This meant that Mozambique north of

the Zambezi was thrown open to other labour markets. The

Niassa Company promptly agreed to supply Robert Williams with

labour for the Katanga copper-mines, but the South African

members of the company had no interest in these and most of them

sold out to a German consortium in May 1914. After 1910, when

Angola temporarily suspended the recruitment of labour for

planters in Sao Tome, the latter had been allowed to recruit

labourers in Mozambique. This traffic exceeded

5,000

men in 1916

but sharply declined after 1917. In 1915 recruitment for work

outside Niassa Company territory was halted. Meanwhile, in 1913,

Southern Rhodesia had been allowed to recruit up to 15,000 men

a year in Tete and Barwe districts.

Migrant labour supported Mozambique's finances in four ways,

which can be demonstrated from the revenue figures for 1917 for

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the state-administered territories.

First, it enabled Africans to pay

hut-tax. South of the Sabi, this was charged at double the rate of

the rest of the Colony and absorbed virtually the whole income

of many rural areas. Then there were the capitation fees on

recruited labour and the railway receipts. These items made up

40 per cent of the Colony's income in 1917. In contrast, rent from

the Zambezi praqos, the showpieces of domestic economic

achievement, brought the state 2.3 per cent of its revenue.

Fourthly, deferred payment of wages increased African purchasing

power within Mozambique, thus stimulating commerce and

customs revenue.

The impact of external demands for labour was far more

pronounced in the districts south of the Sabi than anywhere else.

Comparatively little labour for use outside the territory was ever

recruited from its most populous districts, those of Quelimane and

Mozambique. In

1908,

when recruitment was possible in all parts

of the Colony, nine out of ten migrants to the Rand came from

south of the Sabi.

Here, many Thonga and Chopi farmed poor

land and had been hard hit by the rinderpest of the

1890s.

By the

turn of the century, the journey to the mines had become an

established part of their way of life. They had to leave wives and

children behind, but many signed on for a second, third or fourth

contract in order to earn money for the tax, and for the ironware

and cloth which they brought back from the Rand. It is likely that

south of the Sabi labour migration caused a decline in population

in the earlier twentieth century. This could be attributed to

prolonged male absenteeism, to permanent emigration and to

sickness and death among miners, all of which would also have

affected female fertility. Between 1905 and 1912, 87,000 'legal'

entrants to South Africa failed to return; tuberculosis, phthisis

and syphilis were rife

the

mines;

and down to 1912 the death-rate

on the Rand among workers from Mozambique was never less

than 7 per cent per annum.

Missionaries in the south were

worried by alcoholism and homosexuality among returning

workers, while many Europeans assumed that migrant labour

destroyed family life and undermined the authority of chiefs.

Great Britain: Admiralty (Naval Intelligence Division), A

manual

Portuguese

East

Africa (London, 1920), IJI. s

Ibid.,

177.

Ibid.,

175-9. Of the 754 men from Niassa Company territory who worked in Katanga

in 1914-15, over 20 per cent died there. C. A. Perrings, Black mimworkers in Central

Africa (London, 1979), 170, 177.

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North of the Sabi, the main challenge facing both the govern-

ment and the concessionaires was how to increase the export of

primary products. During the years before the First World War,

these were mostly gathered wild by Africans. Up to 1912, rubber

was the most valuable export commodity; there were also exports

of ivory, wax, mangrove bark and oil-bearing seeds. The Portu-

guese made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to organise the

collection of such products. There were also irregular exports of

crops,

especially groundnuts, which Africans grew for their own

use and marketed when in surplus. The chief source of cultivated

export crops were the plantations. Of these, the most important

were clustered on both sides of the lower Zambezi and in

Quelimane district. In this region, the prases were leased to five

companies. On the north bank, the Zambezi Company produced

tea, copra and cotton, as well as salt and cattle, while the Boror

Company (said to be largely financed from Germany) grew cotton,

sisal and copra. The most important plantation crop, however,

was sugar, grown along both banks of the Zambezi by companies

which were absorbed by a British firm, Sena Sugar Estates, soon

after its formation in 1910. By 1905, and up to the mid-1920s,

sugar accounted for about a quarter of total exports from all parts

of Mozambique, and most of it came from the lower Zambezi.

The sugar-growing companies formed a powerful pressure-group

opposing foreign labour-contracts. In 1906 their concessions were

extended for fifteen years, and in 1909 they brought about the

virtual abolition of the government's inspectorate for the

pra^ps.

Elsewhere, the cultivation of export crops was as yet very limited.

Some sugar was grown in the lower reaches of the Buzi, Sabi and

Nkomati rivers. Goldmining persisted in Manhica, but through-

out the period annual production never much exceeded 10,000 oz.

In Tete district, nearly all the

pranks

were leased by the Zambezi

Company, which had very little capital and contented itself with

subletting its concessions at a profit, closing its eyes to the

sub-concessionaires' ruthless exploitation of their tax and labour

privileges. From Niassa Company territory there were scarcely

any exports: in 1913 they amounted only to £67,000, of which

half came from rubber. In the same year, domestic exports from

Mozambique Company territory were worth about £500,000;

those from the Colony, about £i.2m.

The meagre economic prospects away from the Zambezi

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deterred investors and settlers, and thwarted

the

growth

of a

railway system which might help

integrate the various parts

of Mozambique. Not only were the main lines built to serve South

Africa

and

Southern Rhodesia;

the

British

did

their best

prevent the Portuguese from linking the huge Tete district to the

coast. Such

railway might have been useful

Nyasaland, but

Britain did not wish to see that territory become dependent on

any port which would fall

Germany

in a

future partition

Portuguese Africa. Thus Britain constructed a line from Blantyre

to Port Herald whence steamers could carry traffic

to the

concession seaport of Chinde and avoid Portuguese transit dues.

This line, completed in 1908, was extended

Chindio, on the

Zambezi, in 1915. Nonetheless, Portugal pressed ahead with

line

of its own: between 1913 and 1918 Quelimane was linked

Mocuba, 145 km inland on the Licungo river. In the south, some

effort was made to link up the coastal districts, but

was many

years before railways played much part in promoting the export

of local crops rather than men.

to the

1920s many areas

Mozambique were outside

effective Portuguese control. Social change was influenced

economic forces emanating from the coast and they often affected

inland peoples in a very diluted form. In many parts of northern

Mozambique the caravan trade continued until the First World

War, carrying rubber but also the more traditional commodities

of ivory, slaves and guns. In economic terms 'pacification' meant

first and foremost the spread of the bush trader who, in Mozam-

bique, was usually an Indian. These traders bought agricultural

surpluses and encouraged African men displaced from the caravan

trade

take up cash-crop farming. Among the Makonde cash

obtained

this way came

replace firearms

and

cattle

marriage contracts and the cash-flow was further increased by the

earnings from compulsory labour. The growing circulation

cash tended

weaken

the

customary bonds associated with

communal landholding

and

cattle-keeping,

and

there

was a

tendency

for the

large village

to be

replaced

by the

isolated

homestead. In this new nuclear family the position of men became

supreme and the status

women within the matrilineal family

was severely modified.

Nearer

the

coast

the

influence

Portuguese

and

Indians

modified African. societies

other ways. Owners

coconut

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MOZAMBIQUE

plantations encouraged African squatters to harvest the nuts in

return for being allowed to till the land. The consequent growth

of population in the immediate coastal areas and the general

increase in cash-crop farming led to increasing pressure on the best

settlement sites. Huts were built near the available water supplies

with the result that fields were cultivated at ever greater distances.

Around Inhambane distances of up to eight miles might have to

be travelled to the fields. The alternative was to live nearer the

fields and shift habitation with the seasonal changes in water

supplv.

6—1926

Sharing a long frontier with German East Africa, Mozambique

was the Portuguese territory most affected by Lisbon's belated

entry into the European war, in March 1916. The timing was

dictated by the recent British invasion of German territory from

the north; if the Germans were expelled from East Africa,

Portugal wanted a share of the spoils, especially the tiny 'Kionga

triangle' just south of the mouth of the Rovuma river. The

frontier commandant immediately occupied the triangle, meeting

no resistance, but his attempt in May to cross the Rovuma was

a disaster. Soon afterwards, an expeditionary force arrived from

Portugal; the British occupied the German ports; and by Sep-

tember the Portuguese held the lower reaches of the Rovuma. In

November 1917, however, the German commander, Lettow-

Vorbeck, crossed it further upstream, at Ngomano; he crushed

a Portuguese force sent against him and swiftly overran other

Portuguese outposts in the hinterland of northern Mozambique.

In 1918, the Germans pressed south, in search of munitions, as

far as the railway at Namacurra; in July they turned back and

recrossed the Rovuma in September.

The Germans and their

pursuers, British as well as Portuguese, laid a vast region under

contribution for food and labour. Many Africans had in fact

welcomed the Germans as liberators, and when the Portuguese

reoccupied the north they rooted out' collaborators'. The brutality

of this reoccupation provoked protests from British officers,

and

caused a stream of refugees into British-controlled territory.

See chapter i), p. 667.

Cf. G. Lardner Burke to Colonial Office (forwarded to Foreign Office), 17 November

1920,

Public Record Office (London), FO 371/5491.

PORTUGUESE AFRICA

Meanwhile the war had also shaken Portuguese control in the

far west.

March 1917 they faced rebellion among the former

subjects of the

makombe,

the king of

Barwe.

This was the one part

of the Mozambique Company's territory in which the government

was able to recruit labour, and the demand for carriers and unpaid

labour was greatly increased by the war. The revolt spread rapidly

eastwards into Gorongosa

and

north-west into

the

country

between Tete and Zumbo.

was led by members

the exiled

royal house of

Barwe,

aided by the priests of local spirit cults, but

the leaders sought

build

broad alliance and secured

the

adherence

Nsenga and Chewa

on the

north bank

of the

Zambezi. Since the formal end of the Zambezi wars in 1902, the

whole area had remained very disturbed; banditry was rife and

the warlike tradition of the

chikunda

slave-soldiers was still very

much alive. The Portuguese contrived to detach the Ngoni chiefs

of Gorongosa and raised

large force of Ngoni auxiliaries; this

sealed the fate of the rebellion, but it took the Portuguese the best

part of two years to regain control in the hinterland of Barwe.

The first few years after the war saw little real change

the

management

Mozambique. Great hopes were pinned

the

reforms which

1920-1 granted financial autonomy

to the

colonies

and

sent

out

Manuel

Brito Camacho,

leading

politician

Portugal, to be high commissioner. But the results

of this autonomy were an unstable currency and rapid inflation,

and

in any

case Brito Camacho resigned within

year.

The

territory

as a

whole continued

to be

firmly subordinate

the

interests of Britain and South Africa. Both blocked or perverted

efforts

improve Mozambique's primitive economic infra-

structure. Once the war had removed the possibility of

German

take-over

the north, the Portuguese renewed hopes

com-

pleting

rail link between Quelimane and the Zambezi which

might stimulate trade in the interior as well as tapping the trade of

Nyasaland. But in

1919

Lord Milner, the British colonial secretary,

effectively thwarted this project; alarmed by threats of American

commercial penetration north

the Zambezi,

enabled

the

British-dominated Mozambique Company

build

railway

through its own territory from Beira to

point on the Zambezi

where

could link up with Nyasaland's transport system. This

Trans-Zambezia' railway was financed by

loan on which the

Nyasaland government was obliged to guarantee the payment of

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