The Pedagogy of Revolution: Youth, Generational Conflict, and Education in the Development of Mozambican Nationalism and the State, 1962-1970

 

Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 35, Number 4, December 2009

MICHAEL G. PANZER

(State University of New York at Albany)

This article addresses a lacuna in analyses of FRELIMO’s nationalist development during the 1960s. Specifically, the article examines the impact of generational tensions between Mozambican youth and FRELIMO party ‘elders’ that emerged during the anti-colonial war at the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam. The main argument is that under the auspices of the Mozambique Institute, which operated almost exclusively in Tanzania, the FRELIMO secondary school was a site of significant intergenerational tensions that affected the liberation movement during a particularly critical moment of its anti-colonial war against Portugal. This analysis is particularly relevant for the issue of generational tensions and may help to encourage historians of contemporary Africa to (re)consider how African nationalist groups, operating within another nation’s sovereign space, could build legitimacy and establish hegemony. This article, then, also indirectly argues that FRELIMO was able to utilize sovereign space within Tanzania and was, therefore, able to construct institutional bodies (schools, hospitals, military camps) that garnered hegemonic legitimacy in such a way to allow the nationalist movement to act as a proto-state.

“Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray

it.” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth)

“Educate man to win the war, create a new society and develop our country.” (Samora Machel, from a Speech at the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, September 1970)

Leia ou imprima aqui: Download The Pedagogy of Revolution JSAS Dec 2009a

Poderá também gostar de:

• For the starving of Zimbabwe, it was little short of a miracle
• TRUTH BE TOLD?
• THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER

LinkWithin

31/01/2010 in História | PermalinkShareThis

Reblog (0) | |

Comments

1

Francisco Moises said...

O artigo de Michael G. Panzer, "The Pedagogy of Revolution: Youth, Generational Conflict, and Education in the Development of Mozambican Nationalism and the State, 1962-1970" que foi publicado no Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 35, Number 4, December 2009, NAO MERECE NENHUMA CONSIDERAÇAO SERIA. UMA RAZAO É POR AS SUAS FONTES SEREM QUASE EXCLUSIVAMANTE AQUELAS QUE SEMPRE DETURPARAM A HISTORA CONTEMPORANEA DE MOÇAMBIQUE QUE INCLUEM EDUARDO MONDLANE, SERGIO VIEIRA, QUE ERA SECRETARIO DE MONDLANE; JANET MONDLANE E INDIVIDUOS COM IDEIAS PRE-CONCEBIDAS A FAVOR DA FRELIMO E EXCLUIU OS ESTUDANTES QUE ERAM A MATERIA PRIMA DA REVOLTA.
É tambem de salientar que o artigo do Panzer idealizou a situaçao da Frelimo e a liderança de Mondlane, e assim concentrou-se na periféria em vez do problema em questao. A revolta dos estudantes foi parte integral da Revolta contra a liderança de Eduardo Mondlane que incluia militares e civis da Frelimo -- revolta esta que vinha a superficie depois da morte de Samuel Filipe Magaia, primeiro comandante da Guerrilha da Frelimo. Apesar das mentiras de ele ter sido morto num combate com as tropas portuguesas, por toda a parte sabia-se que os que tinham mandado a morte de Magaia era Mondlane e os seus sequazes. Isto sempre aumentava o odio das pessoas contra o ditador Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane.
Vinha tambem acumulando-se a informaçao que Mondlane era na verdade um agente do inimigo, da CIA em particular, a aliada da PIDE, e que estava pouco interessado na luta rapida pela independencia, a razao que fez com que ele e os seus sequazes decidissem eliminar Magaia. Por mais que quisesse demitir Magia, Mondlane nao podia faze-lo visto que o comandante Magaia gozava dum apoio quase total dos militares da Frelimo por causa da sua coragem e da sua visao de que se devia libertar bastante terreno para a sede da Frelimo mover a zona libertada em Moçambique. Isto ia em choque com a politica duma guerra prolongada preconisada por Mondlane. Uma outra razao da incapacidade de remover Magaia foi visto que o governo de Tanzania respeita Magaia imensamante e admirava-no pela sua coragem.
A revolta contra Mondlane focalisou-se no instituto moçambicano em Dar Es Salaam visto que era la onde havia mais liberdade e onde havia menos perigo de chacinas pela camarilha mondlanista de Samora Machel, Joaquim Chissano e outros. Se Panzer tivesse feito uma pesquisa teria sabido que O Padre Mateus Pinho Gwenjere nao era um racista, mas estava, como tambem estavam os estudants, contra a presença de Portugueses na Frelimo tais como Fernando Ganhao, Jacinto Veloso, Helder Martins e a sua esposa e os canecos-indianos: Sergio Vieira, Oscar Monteiro e Jorge Rebelo.
Gwenjere tinha fornecido ao governo tanzaniano informaçao suficiente que demonstrava que aqueles individuos eram perigosos porque actuavam a favor do inimigo. E aquilo fez com que o governo tanzaniano os deportasse para Algéria e os dirigentes negros na Frelimo fizeram tudo por tudo para que "as suas cabeças pensantes" regressassem a Tanzania da Algéria depois do falha da nossa revolta contra Mondlane e depois do governo tanzaniano ter removido Gwenjere de Dar Es Salaam para Mwanza. Panzer nao disse que Gwenjere gozava do apoio quase total dos estudantes e dos militantes da Frelimo entre militares e civis.
Todo o artigo de Panzer esta cheio de confusoes, mentiras e falsificaçoes, pois a maior parte da informaçao de que depende veio da Janet Mondlane, uma individidua que deturpa a historia sem escrupulos e mente descaradamente como o seu marido Mondlane mentia quando estava vivo.
Contraio aquil que Panzer diz: a Frelimo nao tinha controlo nenhum dos campos de refugiaods que estiveram na Tanzania que eram campos de Naçoes unidas. Quando a nossa revolta falhou e nos fomos escoraçados pelo governo de Tanzania depois da Frelimo ter falhado fechar a escola po muitas vezes, o governo tanzaniano enviou-nos para o campo de Rutamba no distrito de Lindi, provincia tanzaniana de Mtwara, com instruçoes dadas a nos pelos tanzanianos que se os dirigentes da Frelimo comparecessem ali deviamos logo informar as Naçoes unidas e o governo tanzaniao havia de actuar contra eles. E na verdade, os dirigentes da Frelimo nao vinham ali. Mas os estudantes exilados excapuliam-se dai para o Malawi, Zambia e principalmente para Nairobi, Quénia, quando se tornou claro que Kawawa nao resolveria a situaçao visto que o seu mestre, o presidente Julius Kambarage Nyerere, apoiava Mondlane como lider da Frelimo.
Rashid Kawawa, o vic-presidente, tomou a decisao de nos remover de Dar Es Salaam visto que queria nos separar dos dirigntes da Frelimo e proteger-nos enquanto ia resolver os problemas dentro da propria Frelimo antes de nos mandar vir ao Instituto. Panzer nao menciona nenhuma destas coisas, embora nao aconteceram como Kawawa tinha prometido.
O artigo de Panzer nao tem credibilidade por mixturar coias e por dar nomes incorrectamente tais como Alberto Njanja. O individuo que pessoalmente bateu Armando Emilio Guebuza no Insituto moçmbicano e deitou-o no chao, nao se chama Alberto Njanja. Tenho que evitar o seu nome exacto aqui visto que se encontra num pais africano onde os terroristas guebuzenses podem atingi-lo e fazer-lhe dano imenso. Com terroristas nao se deve brincar e nao se brinca.
Os estudantes moçambicanos, que reagiram abusivamente a Eduardo por este ter mandado Sergio Vieira redigir uma carta a eles imperando que fossem a Tanzania dos Estados Unidos, nao tinham sido enviados aos EUA pela Frelimo. Eram na sua maioria parte da elita do centro de Moçambique que tinha sido formada nas escolas missionarias e nos semiraios catolicos. O seu contra-ataque com o titulo de "A revoluçao mçambicana atraiçoada" humilhou Mondlane completamente. Eles sabiam que na Frelimo chacinava-se e os intelectuais eram carne de canhao.
Panzer nao falou da invasao do escritorio da Frelimo em Dar Es Salaam no dia 11 de Março de 1968 por um groupo de revoltosos nao relacionados aos estudantes que incluiam homens e mulheres macondes armados de catanas, paus e cornos durante o qual Joaquim Chissano, chefe da Seugrança da Frelimo, perdeu o seu casaco -- arrancado pelos assaltantes e tambem retirado do seu corpo por ele proprio no seu esforço para se libertar das maos dos assaltantes que tentavam catana-lo e do qual Samuel Sansao Mutemba, familiar da Josina Machel (vide: Josina Machel),veio depois a morrer no Muhimbili Hospital de Dar Es Salaam, dos ferimentos recebidos durante o ataque. Quanto a este incidente, mais informaçao para muito breve.
Francisco Nota Moises

Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 35, Number 4, December 2009

 

 

The Pedagogy of Revolution: Youth, Generational Conflict, and Education in the Development of Mozambican Nationalism and the State, 1962-1970

 

MICHAEL G. PANZER

(State University of New York at Albany)

 

This article addresses a lacuna in analyses of FRELIMO’s nationalist development during the 1960s.  Specifically, the article examines the impact of generational tensions between Mozambican youth and FRELIMO party ‘elders’ that emerged during the anti-colonial war at the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam.  The main argument is that under the auspices of the Mozambique Institute, which operated almost exclusively in Tanzania, the FRELIMO secondary school was a site of significant intergenerational tensions that affected the liberation movement during a particularly critical moment of its anti-colonial war against Portugal.  This analysis is particularly relevant for the issue of generational tensions and may help to encourage historians of contemporary Africa to (re)consider how African nationalist groups, operating within another nation’s sovereign space, could build legitimacy and establish hegemony.  This article, then, also indirectly argues that FRELIMO was able to utilize sovereign space within Tanzania and was, therefore, able to construct institutional bodies (schools, hospitals, military camps) that garnered hegemonic legitimacy in such a way to allow the nationalist movement to act as a proto-state.  

 

“Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray

it.” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth)

 

“Educate man to win the war, create a new society and develop our country.” (Samora Machel, from a Speech at the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, September 1970)

 

 

During the night of 5 March 1968 at the FRELIMO[1] secondary school in Dar es Salaam, a fight occurred between two students: Daniel Baulene Chatama and Shadraque Paulino.  The cause of the fight was not immediately known to the teachers, administrative staff, or to Janet Mondlane who, as the Director of the Mozambique Institute, was informed by telephone at approximately 10:30pm about a situation at the school.  In her statement to the Tanzanian police on 7 March 1968, Janet Mondlane described how this altercation at the secondary school required the direct intervention of Samora Machel, Marcelino dos Santos, and Joaquim Chissano who were, at that time, some of FRELIMO’s most important political cadres.[2]  They arrived with the intention of restoring order at the school and removing individual students who had been causing problems with the daily operation of the facility. 

According to statements given to the police by Janet Mondlane, as a result of the fight, two members of the school’s staff – Aurélio Manave, a nurse and instructor, and Eduardo Coloma the Dean of Students – were taken into police custody, brought to Kilwa Road police station in Colasil, and were beaten by Tanzanian police in the full view of students who were “shouting beat him, beat him” from outside the station window.[3]  Aurélio Manave was, in fact, manacled and, according to Janet Mondlane:  

Indeed, the policeman did strike him across the head, and naturally Manave could not defend himself.  Manave did not know how many times – once, twice, thrice –

he was struck since after the initial blow, he was quite unaware of further blows.

Finally, he was asked to remove his trousers and his shoes, all of this in front of

the students…Soon after Coloma came in and the men were manacled together. 

He said that Coloma was molested by the students.  After a while some

FRELIMO men came and they were released to them.[4]

 

The police had apparently arrested these two men based on accusations made by one of the students involved in the fight, Daniel Chatama, who claimed that the staff at the secondary school was threatening him as well as other students.[5]  After determining that he was the instigator of the fight, Coloma and Manave sequestered Chatama to his room, but he managed to escape out the window and went to the police.  It is not known if Daniel Chatama learned of Machel and Chissano’s summons to the school “to remove” him “from the place and quiet the students.”[6] 

            In a 2003 interview, Aurélio Manave reveals another interesting insight into this tumult at the FRELIMO secondary school.  Referring to the situation as “this incident,” in which “confusion broke out at night,” Manave mentions that Samora Machel

            always carried his pistol and when he found out about the disturbances and

conflicts, he and four other people who came with him from Temeke went to my

room.  They didn’t fire any shots…Samora came to hide his pistol in my

residence…once the Tanzanian police forces arrived, the students started

shouting, ‘these two friends are the ones who are threatening us.’ So, the police

arrested me and Koloma (sic)…the police went to investigate my room and they found Samora’s pistol and mine.  But Samora was gone by then.  He didn’t stay because he didn’t want to get involved in that conflict.[7]

 

Nowhere in this interview does Manave describe the beating he endured at the police station, nor does he mention the chortles and physical threats of the students at the window.  It is interesting to note, however, that Manave makes a specific point to state that, although there were guns at the secondary school, there was no gunfire or gun- related violence that evening. 

João Cabrita, in his book Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy describes the situation differently.  Cabrita argues that when Machel and other FRELIMO cadres arrived at the secondary school, shots were indeed fired, resulting in the flight of many students from the campus.[8]  This version of the events reveals that the tumult that evening was indeed serious but, nevertheless, it also demonstrates how various individuals remembered or interpreted the events of that particular evening.[9]   

The following day, 6 March 1968, when Manave and Coloma were still in police custody, there was another fight on the roof of the school between two other students: Alberto Njanja and Marcelina Rafael.  Again, according to Janet Mondlane’s statement to the police, a security guard at the school, Mr. Sandy, saw both students “struggling” on the roof.  She recalled:

He ran out of the dorm and up to the roof, separated the two students and took

Marcelina to her room.  Sandy did not know if she had been beaten seriously by

Njanja, but she was crying.  She had been hanging her laundry on the roof when

Njanja encountered her…Njanja accused her of telling others and spying on him

and giving information to his enemies…Marcela denied doing such a thing

concerning anybody.  Njanja then grabbed her and beat her in the face.  Then the

guard came to break it up.[10]

 

Janet Mondlane also mentioned in the police statement a student named Sarmento, who had brought a knife into his classroom. When the teacher went to tell Janet Mondlane about this incident, he (the teacher) revealed that, “Sarmento told him the knife was to be used to kill the white Portuguese who were in the school.  The teacher replied, ‘And do you want to kill Shadraque (Paulino) and Marcelina, too?’ Yes, yes, was the reply.  At this point the teacher walked out of the classroom.”[11]

            All of these incidents at the FRELIMO secondary school reveal important clues about the complex internal tensions within FRELIMO during the anti-colonial war against Portugal.  Since its inception on 25 June 1962, FRELIMO had struggled with dissension generated from ethnic, ideological, and personal differences among party officials in the hierarchy of the movement.  These divisive issues, which have already been analyzed by scholars, included how to define the “enemy,” the choice to develop and implement a socialist ideology within FRELIMO, and debates about the escalation and strategy of the armed conflict.  The personal ambitions of individuals and the ethnic and regional backgrounds of FRELIMO officials also affected the unity of the liberation movement.[12]   However, there is also ample evidence to argue that gender and generational conflicts significantly affected FRELIMO and the operation of the secondary school.  In her work on Christianity and generational tensions in colonial Ovamboland, Meredith McKittrick argues, “…in practice, generation is always gendered, while gender always has a generational component.”[13]  Although her study analyzes a different African society in an alternative context and time frame, McKittrick’s statement is also applicable to FRELIMO’s struggle to liberate Mozambique as gender and generational issues permeated all social, political, educational, and cultural relationships.

This paper will put forth a new perspective on the development of FRELIMO as a revolutionary movement.  Specifically, the paper addresses the intergenerational conflicts affecting FRELIMO and Mozambican nationalism during the anti-colonial war.  This new analysis will enhance existing knowledge of the internal strife within FRELIMO and demonstrate the ways in which the events at the FRELIMO secondary school in March 1968 represent a critical moment in the development of Mozambican nationalism.  As an institution that represented FRELIMO’s attempt to build state-like legitimacy in the eyes of Mozambican refugees, Tanzanian authorities, and the international community it was essential to maintain an orderly and harmonious secondary school.  The troubles at the school represented yet another challenge to FRELIMO during an important transformative phase of the movement’s history.  While facing an increasingly hostile and brutal war against the Portuguese in 1968, FRELIMO needed to preserve a united nationalist front: an effort that faced multiple challenges from within the movement itself and especially from some young Mozambican students attending the Mozambique Institute secondary school and several others studying at schools abroad.  As the likely inheritors of a liberated Mozambique, youths’ compliance and loyalty to FRELIMO was of paramount concern to the movement’s leadership.  When young students challenged that necessary state-like order, FRELIMO’s quest to maintain a united nationalist front faltered.

Generational tensions were significant factors that contributed to the internal divisions of FRELIMO during the nationalist period.  An analysis of intergenerational conflicts and the role and meaning of youth within FRELIMO will shed new light on how and why the incidents occurred at the secondary school in March 1968.  Although youth and generational studies are relatively new discourses in writing about African history, they are important frameworks through which historical phenomena can be (re)analysed.[14]  For example, recent works such as Paul Richards’s Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone have raised the issue of how the failures of patrimonial networks and political malfeasance can contribute to the ‘youthful’ desire to participate in acts of violence against corrupt “gatekeeper” states.[15]  Moreover, in her insightful analysis of youth in Zimbabwe’s guerrilla war, Norma Kriger addresses how youths – usually single, young males - shaped relationships between peasants and Z.A.N.U. guerrillas in ways that often undermined the functionality and operation of nascent civilian organizations.  For Kriger, youth often “defrauded” parents, attacked and killed those believed to be “sell-outs,” and persistently challenged their elders’ authority during Zimbabwe’s liberation war.[16]  For their part, young Mozambicans, whether as students or as soldiers, had a vested interest in the outcome of the anti-colonial war because their potential future - as colonial subjects of fascist Portugal - offered few opportunities and would merely continue to stultify their individual agency, through colonial structures such as chibalo, forced labour.[17]   Therefore, FRELIMO leaders, like their counterparts later in Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone, recognised that young people were “elements of the African population” who were “especially responsive to a revolutionary summons,” but only if youthful intransigence, defiance, and violence could be focused, controlled, and contained.[18] Mike Kesby makes a similar argument regarding youth in Zimbabwe stating that “…military strategy intended to further national struggles had unintended consequences for local social relations.  In guerrilla-held areas however, the guerrillas consciously empowered local young people whose energy they wished to harness for intelligence gathering and logistical support.”[19]  

In order to fight the Portuguese and liberate Mozambique, FRELIMO leaders wanted to foster the revolutionary potential of disaffected Mozambican youths who had arrived in Tanzania as refugees in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Often arriving impoverished, orphaned, and malnourished, many Mozambican refugees (but especially the young) sought retribution against the racist and exploitative policies of Portuguese colonialism.  FRELIMO, with its promises of social and political egalitarianism, coupled with an emergent leftist ideology, offered an attractive alternative to the Mozambican refugees in Tanzania as well as for people still living in colonial Mozambique. 

Youth constitutes a complex, heterogeneous, and socially constructed category that encompasses individuals of both sexes and, although young people are part of all societies, defining youth requires an analysis of the shifting social, cultural, and gendered meanings that transcend age as the sole determinant of youth.  For example, youth is also understood as a temporary phase of life in which individuals’ ability to engage in socially recognised rites of passage ultimately determines marriage eligibility, social status, concepts of manhood and womanhood, as well as access to political power and property.  Youth, in this sense, were not necessarily children but were, at times, older men and women whom many Western societies would deem to be adults. 

In many “traditional” African societies, youth was a social status that most individuals tried to escape as quickly as possible.  Youth was often perceived as an undesirable social category imbued with assumptions of physical and mental immaturity, as African elders often expressed their power and control over youth in ways that curtailed individual agency.  Elders in all societies create social mechanisms designed to control young people, who embody potential threats to gerontologically and socially established positions of power and authority.[20] According to Jon Abbink, “…there is a need to integrate the youth factor as a necessary element in any social analysis of African societies, thus testing the relative autonomy of youths as actors (re)shaping social relations and power formations.”[21]  Abbink’s assertion, then, is that ‘youth’ itself serves as a discourse that defies reductive tendencies to homogenize ‘youths’ as individuals who are relatively powerless because they are physically young or mentally immature. 

In order to understand how youth as a discourse and young people as individuals affected and defined Mozambican nationalism, this paper will analyze the ways in which FRELIMO propagandized youth, disciplined students in educational institutions and settings, and mandated their participation in the anti-colonial war.  It will also examine the ways in which some youth expressed individualism through physical and intellectual resistance toward FRELIMO that not only informed the political philosophy of the movement but also generated opposition to the leadership. Some Mozambican youths expressed agency in their participation in the anti-colonial war against the Portuguese, while others did so in their refusal to fight at all.  Moreover, some young people engaged in activities that subverted FRELIMO’s ideological beliefs, which were often dictated by elder party officials.  In these ways, youth took advantage of the interstices created in the unpredictable context of an anti-colonial war to shape FRELIMO’s nationalist identity. 

As evidenced by the events at the FRELIMO secondary school in March 1968, education and educational settings – whether in FRELIMO’s “formal” schools or “bush schools” – were potential sites of generational, ethnic, class, racial, and gender discord.  The FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam generated loyalty to the liberation movement through the appropriation of Western pedagogical methods and the empowerment of youth who were expected to play an active role in the anti-colonial war.  The FRELIMO secondary school also represented the possibility of future schools in a liberated Mozambique, organized and built upon socialist precepts that purported to eliminate racial, sex, and class differences.  Finally, the secondary school, above all, generated obedience to FRELIMO through daily, task-oriented regimentation that established order, classroom decorum, and a dichotomous yet reciprocal power relationship between teacher and student.  It is in the educational milieu that generational tensions emerged to challenge the FRELIMO hierarchy.   

 

 

Expectations of ‘Youth’: Nationalism, Education, and Ideology during the

Anti-Colonial War

 

The leadership within FRELIMO espoused a leftist ideology under the direction of the movement’s first President: Dr. Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane.  Not only was Eduardo Mondlane the most academically qualified person to lead FRELIMO, but the fact that he held the only PhD. among Mozambicans, earned both the respect and ire of other FRELIMO members. Eduardo Mondlane’s international connections, education, and charismatic personality made him the temporal patriarch of the movement.  Under his leadership FRELIMO became a nationalist movement and proto-state engaged in an anti-colonial war against Portugal, but jealousy and personal political rivalries consistently plagued Mondlane throughout his tenure as President. 

Mondlane encouraged Mozambicans to adopt a revolutionary line consistent with FRELIMO’s inchoate but decidedly leftist ideology.[22]  Mondlane’s philosophy of social egalitarianism was the antithesis to both ‘traditional’ African practices and Portuguese colonial impositions.  Many of FRELIMO’s leaders also wanted to eschew ‘traditional’ African values and practices, which they interpreted as socially and politically stultifying, to implement a revolutionary new social paradigm under Mondlane.  Between FRELIMO’s First Party Conference in June 1962 and the Secondary Party Congress in July 1968, Mondlane and the FRELIMO leadership endeavored to implement ideological positions that attacked heterodox colonial and ‘traditional’ African structures that promoted racism, sexism, class warfare, and individualism. 

Several individuals affiliated with FRELIMO, however, disagreed with Mondlane’s ideological direction. Elder FRELIMO party cadres like Lázaro Nkavandame and Uria Simango did not agree with Mondlane and the movement’s philosophical shift toward the Left.  They felt that the utopian vision of a socialist and egalitarian Mozambique was neither feasible nor practical.  Thus, during the first six years of its existence, FRELIMO cadres not only fought the Portuguese military, but also argued among themselves as dissident factions of elder men (Nkavandame, in particular) undermined the socialist direction of the movement for personal financial enrichment and political gain.  The acrimony within the FRELIMO leadership not only resulted in well-publicised purges of elite men like Nkavandame and Simango and the eventual assassination of Eduardo Mondlane in February 1969, but also profoundly affected the rank-and-file FRELIMO youths who were fighting the Portuguese as either soldiers on the frontlines or as students attending the FRELIMO secondary school at the Mozambique Institute.      

While living and pursuing his doctorate in the United States, Eduardo Mondlane met and married Janet Rae Johnson, a white American woman who became the Director of the Mozambique Institute in Dar es Salaam in 1963.  Despite her non-Mozambican background, Janet was a committed revolutionary and her loyalty to both Eduardo and FRELIMO made her a good choice to head the nascent proto-state institution. She spent a considerable amount of time procuring foreign financial aid for the purpose of constructing and maintaining the secondary school.  Janet’s presence at the helm of the Mozambique Institute was also indicative of FRELIMO’s purported sexual and racial egalitarianism and, although her role as the Director also brought criticism, her self-sacrifice and steadfast dedication to the operations of the Mozambique Institute were essential to the ‘new’ direction that FRELIMO wanted to portray.  The Mozambique Institute was a critical component of FRELIMO’s proto-statehood: its existence as group of buildings, hospitals, and dormitories offered physical evidence that demonstrated FRELIMO’s capacity to manage a bureaucratic institution in ways that garnered legitimacy from Mozambican refugees.  The purpose of the Mozambique Institute, then, to educate, heal, and assist the Mozambican refugees, meshed well with its hegemonic functionality.

The Mozambique Institute operated more than just a secondary school as it also expanded its bureaucratic influence to build a hospital for refugees and to provide aid to Mozambicans living in refugee camps in Tanzania.  However, the initial purpose of establishing the Mozambique Institute was to aid “approximately 50 student refugees in Dar es Salaam” who had fled to Tanzania from northern Mozambique.[23]  Eduardo and Janet Mondlane appealed to international donors such as the Ford Foundation, which provided the initial funds to establish the main buildings and campus of the FRELIMO secondary school at the Mozambique Institute.[24]  These “student refugees” already possessed a rudimentary education likely attained in Catholic missionary schools operating in northern Mozambique.[25]  The initial cohort of “student refugees” was predominantly male (35 boys and 15 girls) and, in her international appeal for funding the Institute, Janet Mondlane revealed a gendered assumption about the students that also incorporated a generational component. She stated:

These are young men who have a purpose in life.  They are young men on whom

the future of Mozambique depends…These young men need scholarships and a

school to help them continue on the path that they have selected.  Mozambique

is a country which has a desperate need for doctors, economists, for people who

are trained in agriculture, for all the professions that a modern society requires:

teachers, engineers, mechanics.  These are the roles that these young refugees

must finally fill.[26]

 

It is highly probable that these young men and women were teenagers around the ages of 15-18 as Janet Mondlane indicates (and implies) that they would need scholarships to study abroad in a university setting.[27]  During this early phase of the Mozambique Institute’s development, the secondary school could only educate a limited number of youthful male refugees (and even fewer female students) who were apparently destined to lead a future liberated Mozambique. 

Based on the quote above, Janet Mondlane did not imply, yet, that the young girls would play a similar role to the boys in the political development of the nation.  However, it was also politically and ideologically expedient to provide access to education for young girls because, although their future role in Mozambique was envisaged differently from that of males, it presented FRELIMO with an opportunity to appear egalitarian as part of its ideology.[28]  By demonstrating that young women could also pursue an education, FRELIMO was attacking both the “traditional” patriarchal structures of African societies that curtailed the power and status of women and the racist and sexist practices of Portuguese colonial authorities.  In this way, education was a weapon used to fight a two-pronged war against ignorance perpetuated by Portuguese colonialism and “traditional” African values.  FRELIMO’s commitment to sexual egalitarianism became more resolute as the anti-colonial war against Portugal intensified and the leadership consented to arming women (including Samora Machel’s first wife, Josina Machel) to form the “Female Detachment” in 1966.[29]

Janet Mondlane’s writing reveals another common facet of a burgeoning Mozambican national identity: that FRELIMO, as the sole revolutionary movement, “imagined” their youthfulness and potential as a nation through their youth.[30]  Although international donations enabled the Mondlanes to establish the FRELIMO secondary school at the Mozambique Institute, insufficient funds limited the number of students with access to formal education. Young male refugees in their imagined roles as future leaders seemed to take precedence. FRELIMO was also limited in its capacity to educate older adult refugees, regardless of sex or educational background, at the school.   Therefore, ‘older’ Mozambican refugees in Tanzania, who might have possessed a limited education, did not possess the same opportunities to attend classes at the FRELIMO secondary school given the school’s size and limited financial capacity.

As refugees, the youth who were selected to attend the secondary school possessed an assorted mix of talents, potential, and educational backgrounds.  Another important consideration was the degree of Portuguese fluency the student possessed, “since all classes are conducted in the Portuguese medium, the textbooks as well as the outside reading material must be in Portuguese, too.”[31]  This decision ostensibly limited the number of potential students who could, at least initially, attend the FRELIMO secondary school.  Moreover, the use of Portuguese as the primary language of instruction created a homogenous linguistic medium for classroom lectures, thus eliminating the problem of deciding which African language might otherwise take precedence.  The primacy of Portuguese language instruction also limited the number of students with access to English, which was the necessary language to pursue their continued education at the Kurasini International Education Centre (K.E.I.C. – also in Dar es Salaam), as well as at universities abroad.  The debate surrounding access to university education abroad was a factor in the violence at the Mozambique Institute’s secondary school in March 1968.

  Young refugees who claimed to or possessed some educational background were tested and placed in the appropriate classes with students of similar education levels.  Many of the students arrived in Tanzania without birth records or other materials that would verify their age.  Generally relying on physical appearance, estimated age and peer-group classifications were also used to determine which classes a student could attend.  These estimates proved impractical as individuals who were younger teenagers (14-16) might posses a similar level of education to older teenagers (17-19).  Although the FRELIMO secondary school was co-educational, students of different ages and peer-groups often attended the same classes.  The result was a heterogeneous classroom comprised of different ages and sexes possessing a similar educational level.  The age differences between students did not necessarily affect the level of academic instruction in the classroom, but older students were distinct from their younger peers because they were expected to act as role-models and leaders for the younger students.[32]    

     Acquired in both FRELIMO’s schools and through direct participation in the revolution, FRELIMO’s educational strategy was intended to generate a sense of nationalism and loyalty to the party leadership among the future citizens of Mozambique.  Despite limiting the number of student refugees at the FRELIMO secondary school because of financial considerations, disparate educational backgrounds, and generational differences, both Eduardo and Janet Mondlane also understood that it was necessary to educate as many refugees as possible – regardless of age or sex - in order to inculcate the ideology of FRELIMO and foster loyalty to the movement, thus, generating a sense of political legitimacy and sovereignty.  Education was of fundamental importance in building a new nation.

With the advent of the anti-colonial war on 25 September 1964, the number of refugees living in Tanzania increased significantly.  Tens-of-thousands of Mozambican men, women, and children crossed the Rovuma River and entered into refugee camps to escape the escalating military retaliation from the Portuguese.[33]  In the first few months of the war, so many refugees came into Tanzania that Janet Mondlane estimated their total number to be around 150,000.[34]  Given the burgeoning numbers of Mozambican refugees, FRELIMO and the Mozambique Institute were, therefore, faced with numerous humanitarian crises and a realisation that education was the vital component to foster Mozambican nationalism within Tanzania.    

Since the majority of the refugees in Tanzania were from the Makonde, Makua, and Yao ethnic groups of northern Mozambique, it is also important to recognise their difference from most of FRELIMO’s leaders who were from southern Mozambican provinces. Due to their initial proximity to Lourenço Marques (today, Maputo), many individuals in high-ranking positions within FRELIMO possessed more access to education via colonially sanctioned mission schools.[35]  FRELIMO’s leadership largely consisted of individuals who had attained some degree of education and social empowerment during colonialism, by contrast with the northern Mozambicans had fewer opportunities to pursue an education during the colonial era.  This explains why the high numbers of illiterate Mozambican refugees originated from the provinces in the north.  

Uneducated northern refugees who fled to Tanzania posed a unique problem for FRELIMO.  The leadership recognized that it needed to provide education to as many refugees as possible in order to promote their revolutionary ideology.  However, perceptions of southern Mozambican privilege and elitism within FRELIMO were, therefore, also understood in terms of ethnic differences.  The regional background of FRELIMO leaders exacerbated ethnic strife within the movement, as the majority of party elites originated from Mozambique’s southern provinces.  

When the anti-colonial war intensified in the late 1960s, so too did the ethnic and regional rivalries within FRELIMO.  Although FRELIMO attempted to correct this regional and ethnic imbalance among the party leadership with expanded educational opportunities in Tanzania and the ‘liberated zones,’ by 1968, the party elite was still disproportionately southern.  A victorious FRELIMO would mean the political and social empowerment of individuals in the highest positions of authority within the movement.  Therefore, not only was the independence of Mozambique at stake, but so were regional, ethnic, and individual claims to power in the future nation.

 In order to motivate people to fight for independence and demonstrate political legitimacy, FRELIMO’s leaders needed young students to educate as many refugees as possible.  This task largely fell on the shoulders of young men attending the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam.  These youths were a perceived panacea to cure the nefarious legacies of colonial abuses.  The role of youth in facilitating education in the refugee camps was a powerful symbol of the vitality of FRELIMO and also fostered the image of a youthful nationalist movement determined to achieve independence from Portugal.   FRELIMO rhetoric proclaimed that education was paramount to the success of the revolution and that it was the responsibility of everyone – but especially young males – to deliver the nation from colonial and ‘traditional’ burdens.

Male students at the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam were expected to travel to the refuge camps during their holiday breaks to teach reading to the roughly 90 percent of refugees who were illiterate and, in the process, also instruct refugees about FRELIMO’s ideological positions through reciting party rhetoric using public-speaking skills.[36]  Young men from the FRELIMO secondary school were expected to appear as leaders who spent their well-earned time off from school demonstrating support for FRELIMO.  Education and the promulgation of literacy within the refugee camps served as a disciplinary tool to get both youthful instructors and older illiterate refugees to conform to the policies and revolutionary values of FRELIMO.[37]  The presence of young educated men in the refugee camps also demonstrated FRELIMO’s commitment to expand education to all Mozambicans and use their youth as proactive and visible supporters of the liberation movement.  

It is also important to recognise that many refugees were considerably older than the younger students from the secondary school, so when these young men taught in the refugee camps, they inverted the typical educational paradigm by which older, more experienced teachers taught younger, less experienced students.  Thus, young FRELIMO men embodied a visible shift in societies that were traditionally ruled by elders. The new status of youth, promoted by FRELIMO, altered more commonly accepted power and generational relationships in “traditional” Mozambican societies and families.  By incorporating and proactively empowering young men as integral members of the liberation movement, FRELIMO was able to display a youthful image that not only promoted its legitimacy as a proto-state among refugees, but also proved that ‘traditional’ African age-grades and generational power relationships were anomalous to the movement’s revolutionary values.

Although this reality of educational and generational inversion was prevalent in refugee camps and in ‘bush schools’ within the ‘liberated zones,’ this was not necessarily the case at the secondary school itself where older teachers maintained discipline and order with a regimen of class periods, eating and leisure time, mandatory study sessions, cleaning and building maintenance duties.[38]  Similar to E.P. Thompson’s argument about “task orientation” in disciplining workers in factories during the Industrial Revolution in England, the FRELIMO secondary school borrowed heavily from Western models of pedagogical method, school discipline, and educational practices.  Based on visual evidence taken from pamphlets produced by the Mozambique Institute in 1965 and 1967, students sat in rows (sometimes two at one desk) facing a teacher who invariably maintained classroom discipline and controlled the “narrative” of instruction.[39]  The images produced for these pamphlets were used to procure funding from sympathetic international aid groups and, thus, were used a propaganda tools through which youth in an educational setting were put on display to convey the image of revolutionary progress.[40]  Other FRELIMO pamphlets, such as “Mozambique and the Mozambique Institute, 1972” which has orphaned children on its cover, contain juxtaposed pictures of maimed children on crutches and healthy youths in productive and educational settings.  These images conveyed the idea that FRELIMO was not only fighting the Portuguese to liberate Mozambique, but that they were also struggling to provide a better future for all young Mozambicans. 

The daily existence at the FRELIMO secondary school and in the refugee camps were made obvious in the political and educational publications of FRELIMO leaders, who unabashedly portrayed youth as the primary beneficiaries of a successful nationalist movement.  The photographs in these pamphlets also show how school uniforms were not always uniform.  Although it was common for African students who attended missionary or other schools in Africa to wear uniforms, young men at the FRELIMO secondary school wore a white shirt with dark pants and young women wore an assortment of blouses and skirts.  It is, therefore, unlikely that funding for universal school uniforms took priority over classroom materials, room and board requirements, and teacher/staff salaries.[41]  Given the limited funds to maintain the operation of the school, the priority was to educate the maximum number of students.  FRELIMO juxtaposed positive and negative images of youth, despite the obvious differences in apparel, to procure funding for its schools and to gain an international audience sympathetic to the liberation struggle.  Thus, Mozambican youth were the likely inheritors of a liberated Mozambique, and those who attained an education would be the primary beneficiaries as jobs and future government positions might be made available to them.

 Throughout the mid-1960s, the FRELIMO secondary school also prepared students to attend the Kurasini International Education Centre (K.I.E.C.).[42]  The students who attended the K.I.E.C. were advanced students of university age (on average, around the age of 18) who were proficient in English.[43]  The FRELIMO secondary school and K.I.E.C. also promoted university studies abroad, and those students fortunate enough to attain this distinction would likely pursue a college-level education at schools in United States or in Europe.  Janet Mondlane explained on 1 September 1965:

As has been said many times before, the purpose which has motivated the development of the Mozambique Institute is that of providing educated young men and women to work within their homeland.  Every young nation needs people with an understanding not only of the problems that must be faced within their country, but also of the complex role each nation plays in today’s world…At this time there are more young Mozambicans undertaking advanced studies than there have been altogether throughout the centuries of Portuguese colonisation.  There are 122 Mozambican students enrolled in studies overseas at the university and technical schools.[44]

 

The ability of some young Mozambican students to study abroad, however, also inadvertently resulted in the creation of educated elites among students within FRELIMO’s secondary school.  When certain students gained access to education abroad it is not hard to imagine that those young FRELIMO students who were able to continue their studies outside of Tanzania were envied by other less academically proficient students who were unable to pursue similar ends.  The desire to study abroad was also a coveted goal, as the opportunity also provided FRELIMO’s leadership with the excuse to encourage students to adhere strictly to the movement’s revolutionary ideology and contribute to the independence of the nation.  The possibility of studying abroad in the 1960s served as the proverbial “carrot” to discipline, motivate, and control youth in FRELIMO’s secondary school and other educational settings.  The access (or lack thereof) to university education overseas was one factor in the events at the Mozambique Institute in March 1968.  However, due to the escalation of the anti-colonial war, FRELIMO’s leaders began to place severe restrictions on the number of students studying abroad. 

Speaking ‘Youth’-to-Power

            The origins of the incidents that occurred on the night of 5 March 1968 at the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam can be traced to the relationship between certain teachers and students at the school itself and the ideological direction of FRELIMO in the context of the burgeoning anti-colonial war.  They are also connected to the role of the fortunate Mozambican students who, with the help of funds from the Mozambique Institute, were studying abroad and who refused to return to Tanzania to serve in the military campaigns or rear-base operations against Portugal.  Although FRELIMO struggled during the mid-1960s to fight against internal political machinations and external Portuguese threats, the movement managed (under its patriarch, Eduardo Mondlane) to provide access to education, health care, and refugee assistance to a limited number of Mozambicans in its capacity as a proto-state.  In the context and unpredictable course of the anti-colonial war, it was inevitable that tensions and factions within FRELIMO surfaced that exposed the ideological differences and personal rivalries that threatened to destroy the semblance of unity FRELIMO enjoyed in the early 1960s.

There were two issues that directly affected the operation of the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam: first, the presence of whites at the school, either as Portuguese teachers and staff or, in the case of Janet Mondlane and other white foreign volunteers, personnel in other positions of power; and, second, the influence of Father Mateus Gwenjere, a Catholic priest who became a teacher at the secondary school, who motivated students to pursue a course of action and study that countered FRELIMO’s revolutionary expectations.  The intersection of race, class, gender, youth, and generational tensions undermined the proto-state policies of FRELIMO and ultimately forced the secondary school in Dar es Salaam to cease its operations for nearly two and a half years.

            The origin of the trouble at the school coincided with the escalation of the anti-colonial war in 1966.  The opening of new fronts in Mozambique forced FRELIMO to procure and call upon more military and administrative cadres to participate in the struggle.  In a letter written on 2 April 1968 to a Mr. Mwingira (the Chairman of the Member Commission investigating the “Affairs of the Mozambique Institute”), Janet Mondlane provides some speculative hindsight into the situation as it developed at the school.  She states:

            In 1964, a decision was made in conjunction with the views of FRELIMO, that

            an age limit be established at which a student might enter the Institute.  Those

            students who were 17 years of age or under, who had completed primary school

            in the Mozambican educational system (the first four years of school) or in the

            Tanzanian system, would be given entrance to the Institute and its facilities.  Each

            student was interviewed individually by the Director of the Institute, and if there

            was doubt in the case of any student, he was interviewed by the President and the

            Education Secretary of FRELIMO.  Since there were no documents to certify the

            age of any of the students, it was therefore necessary to rely on the good faith of

            the student and there is no doubt that a good number of people beyond the age of

            17 remained as students in the Institute.[45]

 

Janet Mondlane recognized that the arbitrary age limit of 17, which apparently could not be verified, provided a means for some older students to enter the secondary school despite FRELIMO’s attempts to prevent it.  She continued to assess the situation at the school by referring to the time “in October of 1966” when “the Central Committee of FRELIMO met and among other things, outlined its educational goals and aspirations.” They observed:

            The Central Committee considers that the Mozambique Institute: 1- Ought to be

            basically an educational centre in which there will be militants with an intellectual

            qualification sufficiently adequate to enable them to be directly assisting in the

            realisation of the duties of the Revolution, or selected for special training, or for

            following middle or upper level studies abroad, within the general perspective

            defined by FRELIMO…following these resolutions, FRELIMO began a more

intense programmes [sic] of explaining to the students their role in the Mozambique revolution.  In addition to sending all students to special camps during their school holidays, political courses became a part of the school curriculum in order that the individual student could better understand the meaning of the liberation struggle.[46]

 

These expectations of the students, regardless of their age, made it their duty to take part in revolutionary activities, but it also assumed that young students would recognise the value of contributing to the revolution itself.  In this sense, participation in the revolution provided an education that trumped the formulaic pedagogical milieu of the classroom.  Knowledge acquisition and learning in the classroom were superseded by active participation in the various ideological and military fronts of the anti-colonial war.  Whether as solders, administrative cadres, or as instructors in the refugee camps, young Mozambican students at the FRELIMO secondary school and university students studying abroad had to fulfill their revolutionary obligations, even if that meant forsaking a semester or graduation to return home to fight.  Educated youth were “required to serve the liberation struggle in whatever capacity seemed necessary – that no student could be absolutely assured that he would, upon leaving secondary school, automatically go ahead for university studies.”[47]  If students finished secondary school, they were expected to serve FRELIMO for one full year before even considering a study abroad option. 

Mandatory service to FRELIMO, however, became an issue for those university students who were already studying abroad, several of whom refused to return to Mozambique.  In December 1967, Eduardo Mondlane produced a document entitled, “A Brief Account of the Situation of the Mozambican Students Abroad and of Their Participation in the Struggle for National Liberation” that was directed toward young members of UNEMO (União Nacional dos Estudantes Moçambicanos or National Union of Mozambican Students) attending universities outside of Mozambique, but was especially directed toward those students in the United States.[48]  Mondlane’s tone is polemic and, at times, angry which is evident in the extensive use of capital letters in the text to emphasize certain points.  Mondlane lamented:

Unfortunately, whether because of certain failures on the part of the Central

Committee, or because of the corrupt and evil influence of imperialism,

CERTAIN STUDENT COMRADES AS MUCH BECAUSE OF THEIR

FAILURE TO COMPREHEND THE TRUE MOZAMBICAN SITUATION

AND THE DEMANDS OF THE STRUGGLE, AS BECAUSE OF

EGOTISTICAL TENDENCIES, HAVE BECOME HESITANT, THUS

RAISING OBSTACLES BEFORE THEIR DIRECT PARTICIPATION

IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION.[49]

 

Although classroom studies were important, Mondlane argued that the knowledge and experience gained from participation in the revolution was a better form of pedagogy because individuals developed a sense of political and ideological solidarity.[50]  For Mondlane and other elder leaders of FRELIMO, “THE STRUGGLE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AND BEST TRAINING SCHOOL THERE IS IN THE WORLD.”[51]  Therefore, when several UNEMO students in the United States refused to return not only did each express a sense of individualism in their defiance of elder FRELIMO leaders, but their perceived intransigence was a threat to the entire liberation movement in its war against Portugal.  Although Mondlane recognized that “THE MAJORITY OF STUDENTS DO NOT ASPIRE TO HAVE SPECIAL PRIVILEGES… THE STUDENT WENT ABROAD PRECISELY BECAUSE FRELIMO HAD DECIDED IT WAS BEST, and the student was in this way continuing as a part of the national action.”[52]  The document also reveals the paternal nature of FRELIMO’s authority over young people, as Eduardo Mondlane used language that hinted at patriarchal power that was both conceptual and nationalistic. 

The wording in the document provides clues about the generational tensions reflected in the recalcitrance of the young students and their refusal to submit to the disciplinary power reserved for the elder FRELIMO leadership.  Mondlane argued that FRELIMO’s authority was paramount to the protestations of students abroad by stating:

            In the context of the struggle for the national liberation of Mozambique, WHICH

            IS OUR HISTORIC TASK IN THE PRESENT PHASE, because FRELIMO and

            only FRELIMO KNOWS [and] understands the real motivations of the People and

            clarifying their historic objectives; [only FRELIMO knows how] TO

            ORGANIZE, TO UNITE, TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE POLITICALLY AND

            TO PREPARE THEM MILITARILY, BECAUSE FRELIMO AND ONLY

            FRELIMO WAS CAPABLE OF DEFENDING STRATEGY AND TACTICS

            ADEQUATE IN ORDER TO UNLEASH, TO DEVELOP, TO CONSOLIDATE,

            TO EXTEND AND TO CARRY TO SUCCESS THE ARMED STRUGGLE OF

            NATIONAL LIBERATION; FRELIMO [therefore] APPEARS AS THE

            INCARNATION OF THE WILL AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE

            MOZAMBICAN MASSES, THE DEPOSITORY OF NATIONAL

            SOVEREIGNTY AND LEADERSHIP FOR THE FATHERLAND.  Thus, to

            obey FRELIMO is to obey the Fatherland, to pursue an objective which is the

            historic task of our People in the present phase of national liberation.[53]

 

Mondlane’s attempt to rein in unruly students abroad and force them to “obey” FRELIMO’s orders also promoted an angry response from those UNEMO students studying in the United States.  Published in May 1968 (five months after Mondlane’s letter, and two months after the events at the FRELIMO secondary school at the Mozambique Institute in Dar es Salaam), the polemic and accusatory tone of the student response challenged “the unjustified accusations made by Dr. Mondlane” and also included a pronouncement of defiance in which the students wanted to “publicly…denounce Dr. Mondlane’s failure as leader of a truly revolutionary Mozambican party.”[54]  The student reply, according to historian Douglas L. Wheeler suggests a “passionate and sometimes confused or cryptic” rhetorical style that verbally assailed Mondlane.  These students also attacked Mondlane’s credibility, especially his order that they curtail their studies (especially in the “imperialist” United States) and return home to serve FRELIMO.  Because Mondlane had earned his doctorate in the United States prior to the anti-colonial war, many students felt that his demands were both egotistical and hypocritical.  In a direct expression of youthful defiance, the students pointed out this apparent hypocrisy by bluntly stating “take note, Dr. Eduardo C. Mondlane, that it is this same government that you consider to be the corrupter of the nationalism of our Mozambican youth that placed you there as the president of FRELIMO!”[55]   The students also resisted the FRELIMO directive to return to fight blaming Mondlane’s “superiority complex” claiming that

To make decisions and impose them on others could be due to a superiority complex, or despotism, or mental insanity.  We are curious to know which of the three would apply to the Doctor in view of all these decisions of his.  We believe that the third choice, mental insanity, was not the mental state of the author when he wrote that very excellent pamphlet.  But what about the superiority complex?[56]

 

It is interesting to note the sarcastic and derogatory tone of the student response.  Far from an immature tirade against Mondlane, their reaction demonstrates how some young men perceived the authority of the movement’s elder patriarch.  Youth agency was expressed from abroad through verbal defiance and, although these students attacked the very character of Mondlane and questioned his authority and the revolutionary direction of the liberation movement, to write their names at the end of the document and not remain anonymous reveals their willingness to make a mature (and potentially risky) decision.[57] 

The discourse between these young men and Eduardo Mondlane reveals how intergenerational strife was a significant factor in FRELIMO’s quest for revolutionary proto-state legitimacy. If the ‘elder’ FRELIMO hierarchy was unable to convince many young students to return from abroad, the nationalist movement, as a proto-state, faced a loss of credibility, authority, and sovereignty which it claimed to possess.  Relative student autonomy abroad enabled them to both defy President Mondlane and expose FRELIMO’s façade of unity.  Youthful defiance, then, undermined the anti-colonial war effort and threatened the modicum of ‘legitimate’ hegemony maintained by FRELIMO.

The exchange of ideological and personal barbs between Mondlane and young Mozambicans studying abroad demonstrates how youth agency and generational tensions also affected the liberation movement.  The apparent lack of student discipline evident in their refusal to defer to the demands of elder FRELIMO leaders demonstrates how some youth conceptualized their own value and roles within and to the nationalist movement.  For many young people, Mozambican nationalism was not, therefore, determined only by their participation in the anti-colonial war at the behest of elder leaders, but was also expressed in blatant acts of individualism that defied FRELIMO’s egalitarian ideology.  Thus, intergenerational conflict intersected with class, ethnic, regional, and racial tensions already affecting FRELIMO.

This individualism on the part of the students demonstrated an alternative interpretation and expression of nationalism.  The vitriolic exchange between FRELIMO’s elder President, Eduardo Mondlane and younger students studying abroad reveals how the meaning of Mozambican nationalism could be shaped and understood differently among various generational actors.  In this way, elder FRELIMO party leaders were forced to reconcile the intersection between their socialist-inspired interpretation of nationalism and the overt individualism among certain members of the Mozambican youth.  This is not to say that all young people who studied abroad challenged the FRELIMO elder hierarchy as many did return ‘home’ to fight, but the students who did resist the movement’s demands displayed an alternative understanding of what it meant to be a FRELIMO cadre and future citizen of Mozambique.

Closer to ‘home’, the situation at the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam also rapidly deteriorated as racial and generational conflicts arose that undermined the operation of the school.  Father Mateus Gwenjere, a Catholic priest and teacher from Sofala, Mozambique who fled to Tanzania with several students in 1966, was hired by Eduardo Mondlane to teach Portuguese at the secondary school.  The relationship between Gwenjere and Janet Mondlane quickly deteriorated as a result of Gwenjere’s opinion that students should learn English instead of Portuguese.  Moreover, Gwenjere asserted that all students (at least the male students) should pursue university studies abroad and that the true “enemy” of FRELIMO and Mozambican nationalism was whites - especially the white Portuguese working at the secondary school.  Although there were many white, expatriate Portuguese loyally serving FRELIMO in their effort to oust Portuguese colonialism, Gwenjere’s racist vitriol and support for elitist individualism affected the operation of the school. 

Gwenjere was particularly effective in convincing several students, who likely faced little chance of being selected to study abroad as the anti-colonial war escalated, that whites at the school represented the true “enemy” of FRELIMO.  Among others, students like Daniel Chatama, Nunes Antonio Nunes, and Alberto Njanja (the alleged instigators of the fights) stopped attending classes, caused disruptions on the campus and often refused to interact with white teachers and staff.[58]  The director of the Mozambique Institute, Janet Mondlane, was another target of Gwenjere’s factional rhetoric as he accused her and other whites at the Mozambique Institute of being “imperial agents.”[59]  Several Mozambican students followed Gwenjere’s lead and called “for the removal from the Institute’s staff of four expatriate Portuguese teachers and the director, Janet Mondlane, all of whom were white.”[60] As tensions at the school mounted between students and staff, Eduardo Mondlane was forced to remove Gwenjere from his teaching post in February 1968, but the damage to the operation of the FRELIMO secondary school was already in progress.[61] 

Conclusion

The escalation of the anti-colonial war in the late 1960s coupled with the problem of trying to control and discipline Mozambican students abroad exacerbated the situation at the secondary school.  Gwenjere was a catalyst for young students to express their frustrations by rebelling against FRELIMO authority.  Although not all of the students embraced Gwenjere’s positions on race and the “problem” of FRELIMO’s absolute authority, rebellious students attacked other students who remained sympathetic to FRELIMO, Eduardo Mondlane, and the presence of white teachers.  This explains why accusations of “enemies” existed in the fights between Chatama and Paulino and Njanja and Rafael.   Moreover, when Manave and Coloma were arrested and taken into police custody, rebellious students not only physically and verbally attacked their elder authority figures, they were privy to the humiliating emasculation of Manave who was stripped naked in front of them and beaten by police.  When the Tanzanian police acted upon the students’ chants of “beat him, beat him,” the students inevitably realized that the normative power relationship between teacher and student had broken down.  Many students fled the campus leaving teachers and staff (both whites and blacks) to serve FRELIMO in other capacities.[62]  As a result of these events, the FRELIMO secondary school at the Mozambique Institute was forced to shut down for two and a half years in order to evaluate the causes of the violence between students and threats to the teachers and staff. 

The tensions at the school largely reflected the internal political debates within FRELIMO itself.  Scholars have argued that racial, elitist, regional, and personal differences undermined ideological unity within FRELIMO, but as this paper argues, generational tensions – played out in educational settings – also negatively affected the revolutionary direction and stability of the liberation movement.  The violence at the FRELIMO secondary school, coupled with student protests abroad and the influence of Father Mateus Gwenjere, demonstrated how some youths, in the context of the nationalist period of Mozambique’s history, attempted to assume power over their own lives.  Moreover, the effect of these decisions also undermined the notion of a universal, homogenized Mozambican nationalism. That is not to say that the relationship between the FRELIMO leadership and Mozambican youth in the borrowed sovereign space of Tanzania was not, at times, affable and politically expedient.  However, as the anti-colonial war placed new demands on the FRELIMO leadership, the inability to muster all able-bodied young men to the cause of liberation reveals the precarious relationship between generational actors.  For FRELIMO, its claim of being a united front against Portuguese colonialism was exposed as fallacious in terms of its inability to completely divest the influences and practices of individualism, elitism, regionalism, sexism, and racism from its socialist positions. 

In the realm of education, FRELIMO’s Mozambique Institute secondary school was a marker of proto-state development, but its inability to accommodate the vast majority of refugees unintentionally created the appearance and reality of educated elites who possessed access to universities abroad.   The initial benevolence of FRELIMO’s educational project, in turn, ironically undermined its own egalitarian and socialist ideology.  Moreover, when some youths resisted the beckoning call of FRELIMO to return to fight the Portuguese, their actions exposed yet another facet of burgeoning Mozambican nationalism: the relevancy of intergenerational tensions in the power relationships of FRELIMO cadres. 

MICHAEL G. PANZER

Department of History, State University of New York at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York 12222, U.S.A. E-mail: hstryman@hotmail.com

 

Veja http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Current_Events/hofstraworkshop0308.html

 

---

[1] FRELIMO stands for the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique or Frente de Libertação de Moçambique.

[2] Oberlin College Archives, (hereafter OCA) Herbert Shore Collection in Honor of Eduardo C. Mondlane 30/307  Documents, p. 1., Mozambique Institute, 7 March, 1968, Series SG II, Historical Files Collected, Series 6 – Mondlane/Mozambique Archive (microfilm), Reel #3, Document # 1585: “Statements Given to the Police, Kilwa Road Station.”   There may have been other FRELIMO officials as well. See below.   The Oberlin College Archives houses a unique and diverse collection of documents, correspondence, and a plethora of other primary source documentation relating to Mozambique, Eduardo and Janet Mondlane, and FRELIMO.  As an undergraduate, Eduardo Mondlane attended Oberlin College. 

[3] OCA, Ibid., p. 4.

[4] OCA, Ibid., p. 4.

[5] The tone, nature, frequency, and type of “threats” are not known.

[6] OCA, Ibid., p. 1.

[7] Interviews, “Interview with Aurélio Manave,” Samora Machel Documentation Center, The ALUKA Project, available at http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.machel0005, retrieved 10 October 2007.

 

[8] J. Cabrita. Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 54.  Thus far, I have been unable to verify whether or not there were actually shots fired that evening.  Moreover, this reveals the obvious: that future oral interviews with individuals who were in attendance at the school that evening might verify or reveal similar and/or different interpretations and recollections of the matter.  

[9] See footnote 8.

[10] OCA, Ibid., pp. 4-5.

[11] OCA, Ibid., 4.  The teacher’s name is not mentioned, but it was a male teacher.

[12] These factors are well-known and have already been analyzed in detail. For example, see W. C. Opello Jr., ‘Pluralism and Elite Conflict in an Independence Movement: FRELIMO in the 1960s’, Journal of Southern African Studies 2, 1 (October 1975), pp. 66-82.; A. Isaacman and B. Isaacman. From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900-1982 (Boulder, Westview Press, 1983), p. 83.

[13] M. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2002), p. 6.

[14] J. Abbink and I. van Kessel, Vanguard or Vandals: Youth, Politics and Conflict in Africa (Leiden, Brill Publishers, 2005), p. 3.; E. Bay and D. Donham, eds. States of Violence: Politics, Youth, and Memory in Contemporary Africa (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2006), pp. 10-12.; R. Waller, ‘Rebellious Youth in Colonial Africa’, Journal of African History, 47, (March 2005), pp.  77-92.

[15] P. Richards, Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth, & Resources in Sierra Leone (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996).  For an explanation of “gatekeeper states,” see F. Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

[16] N. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 179-180.  Also, David Lan’s book Guns & Rain: Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1987), addresses the role(s) of youth in shaping the “legitimacy of resistance” and  the relevance of metaphysical and symbolic heritage during anti-colonial wars.

[17] See, for example, A. Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938-1961 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1996).; J. Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877-1962 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995).  Chibalo (sometimes spelled Xibalo or Shibalo) meant forced labor, especially in the production of cotton in northern Mozambique.  Similar work requirements and conditions existed in the port of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) for stevedores.  Young Mozambicans who attained a rudimentary education, spoke fluent Portuguese, and often held occupations that assisted the colonial state could, but rarely did, attain the status of assimilado given the obstacles.

[18] T. Henriksen, ‘People’s War in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau’, The Journal of

Modern African Studies 14, 3 (September 1976), p. 383.  Henriksen specifically mentions students, intellectuals, and youth.

[19] M. Kesby, ‘Arenas for Control, Terrains of Gender Contestation: Guerrilla Struggle and Counter-Insurgency Warfare in Zimbabwe 1972-1980’, Journal of Southern African Studies 22, 4 (December 1996), p. 577.

[20] There are several recent studies, for example, that have analyzed how urbanization, gender, and migration have altered the ‘traditional’ elder/youth dichotomy in Africa.  See P. Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860-1910 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1994).; T. McClendon, Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s-1940s  (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2002).; M. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2002).; also, see the works mentioned above by Meredith McKittrick, David Lan, Norma Kriger, and Paul Richards.

[21] Abbink, et al., Vanguard or Vandals, p. 3.

[22] Under Mondlane, FRELIMO was influenced by Tanzania’s version of socialism.  That is, although not identical to Nyerere’s model for Tanzania, Mondlane’s vision included, inter alia, empowering the peasantry threw collective educational and agricultural strategies, cultural and social liberation for women, and usurping the ‘traditional’ power of chiefs.  As a political and social ideology, Mondlane’s ideological leanings were multifarious and based on a pragmatic approach to contingencies. Mondlane’s belief in these particular tenets as a basis for a liberation Mozambique was instrumental in providing a later foundation upon which FRELIMO Party Congresses shaped and modified national policies.

[23] Yale University Archives, (hereafter YUA) New Haven, Connecticut, Ronald H. Chilcote Collection, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa, Manuscripts Collection,  African Collection, Letter written by Janet Rae Mondlane, Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika, The Mozambique Refugee Situation, p. 4, c. 1962, Microfilm 710, Mozambique #8, FRELIMO Official Documents. 

[24] Janet later reveals that the Ford Foundation donated US$67,000 for the Mozambique Institute, however, after this initial support, the Ford Foundation stopped funding the project as a result of diplomatic pressure from Portugal.

[25] In 1940, Portugal ceded primary and intermediate level education to the Catholic missionaries and other religious missions operating in Mozambique.  Although it is likely that the education was rudimentary at best, it is also the case that whatever education Mozambican refugees possessed likely exalted the status of the Portuguese as a colonial power and indoctrinated through a divisive pedagogy, notions of white racial and intellectual superiority.

[26] YUA, The Mozambique Refugee Situation, pp. 2, 11-12, Microfilm 710, Reel #8.  The emphasis is mine.

[27] Ibid., pp. 4-5.  Janet briefly describes the educational challenges facing a 17 year old young man named Zeca.  She goes on to argue (on page 6)  that “The story of Zeca’s search for education can be repeated in the experience of Antonio, and in the story of Lopes, in that of Eli, in the experiences of Isaac, and João.  The same experiences apply to Felipe, Daniel, Pedro, Gabriel, José, Patrick, and any of the young men that we found in the refugee camps outside Dar es Salaam.” Based on this statement, it is very likely that these young men were around the same age as Zeca.

[28] Ibid., p. 4. Janet Mondlane does state that the refugees were “young men and women who recently had to flee Mozambique in order to escape imprisonment or one kind or another.” Thus, there were some female students as well.

[29] The Destacamento Feminino (DF), translated from Portuguese, as Women’s Detachment is also known as the Female Detachment.  The semantic distinction is one of age: using “Women” implies adults, but “Female” is more inclusive and includes younger women who also joined the DF and fought the Portuguese.  For a similar argument see K. Sheldon. Pounders of Grain: A History of Women, Work, and Politics in Mozambique. (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002), pp. 124-125.  See also Sheldon’s endnote 40 on p. 146.  Also, the actual date of the founding of the DF is disputed because of the gap between its involvement in the anti-colonial war and its ‘official’ bureaucratic recognition in July 1968.  See Sheldon, Pounders of Grain, p. 125.

[30] B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, Verso, 1983), p. 6.

[31] OCA, Pamphlets, Mozambique Institute 1967, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document # 1080.

[32] This was especially true at the FRELIMO secondary school in Bagamoyo, Tanzania which began its operations in 1970.  This school was the successor school to the FRELIMO secondary school in Dar es Salaam which ended its operation after the March 1968 violence.  W. Minter, ‘Centros Difusores da Linha in the Mozambican Revolution, 1969-1975’, in D. Wiley and A. Isaacman (eds), Southern Africa: Society, Economy, and Liberation (Board of Trustees, Michigan State University, 1981), pp. 137-138.

[33] YUA, Letter/Updates by Janet Mondlane, p. 1. No Title Given, Microfilm 710, Reel #8.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel, for example, were both from southern provinces in Mozambique were access to even a rudimentary education during the colonial era enabled them to pursue higher education and emerge as party leaders. 

[36] YUA, Mozambique Refugee Survey, p. 16, , Microfilm 710, Reel #8. 

[37] Numerous scholars such as Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Paulo Freire, and Antonio Gramsci, for example, have already argued about the disciplinary power of education over subjects and citizens.

[38] Some of the teachers and tutors were white, foreign nationals who supported and volunteered for FRELIMO.  There were also black teacher, staff, and other personnel at the secondary school.  Most teachers in the ‘bush schools’ were black Mozambicans.

[39] YUA, Mozambique Institute 1965, Photographs 1-21, Microfilm 710, Reel #8. and Pamphlets, Mozambique Institute 1967.  See also OCA, especially photographs 3, 5, 8, 9, 15, 23, 25, 26, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document # 1080.  For a further explanation of power and the need for reciprocal dialogue in an educational environment, see P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (New York, The Continuum International Publishing, Inc., 1970).

[40] But not necessarily “dialogical,” revolutionary pedagogy as theorized by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

[41] OCA, Documents, ‘The Crisis Among Mozambican Student Refugees in Dar es Salaam’, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document #3522, January 1964.

[42] OCA, Document, ‘Report: 1 September, 1965’, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document #441, September 1965, p. 2. The K.I.E.C. was another international secondary school in Dar es Salaam “run by the African-American Institute.”  Students who attended the K.I.E.C. also had opportunities to attain international scholarships. Janet Mondlane stated that, although initially educated at the Mozambique Institute, there were “46 secondary and pre-secondary students enrolled at the English-speaking Kurasini International Educational Centre (K.I.E.C.)…”  Both educational institutions worked together to create opportunities via education for African students.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Ibid.  The emphasis is mine.

[45] OCA, Correspondence, April 2, 1968, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document #505.  The emphasis is mine.

[46] OCA, Correspondence, April 2, 1968, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document #505.  The emphasis is mine.

[47] OCA, Correspondence, April 2, 1968, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document #505.

[48] D. Wheeler, ‘A Document for the History of African Nationalism: A Frelimo “White Paper” by Eduardo C. Mondlane (1920-1969)’, African Historical Studies, 2, 2 (1969), pp. 319-333.  UNEMO was an organization of students whose existence was sanctioned by FRELIMO.

[49] Ibid., p. 321.

[50] Ibid., p. 326.

[51] Ibid., p. 331.

[52] Ibid., p. 327.

[53] Ibid., pp. 327-328.  The emphasis in italics is mine.

[54] D. Wheeler, ‘A Document for the History of African Nationalism: The Unemo ‘White Paper’ of 1968, a Student Reply to Eduardo Mondlane’s 1967 Paper’, African Historical Studies, 3, 1, (1970), p. 170. The underline for emphasis is in the document.

 

[55] Ibid., p. 173.

50 Ibid., p. 177.

51 Ibid., p. 180. The students were all male and are listed as follows: Marcos G. Namashulua, President; João H. Wafinda, Vice President; Mario J. de Azevedo, Secretary General; Gilberto Waya, Treasurer; Carlos Anselmo, Secretary of Publicity; and Alberto Jama, Auditor.

 

 

 

 

[58] OCA, Documents, June 17, 1968, Janet Mondlane, Mozambique Institute, Reel #3 (microfilm), Document # 97.

[59] W. Finnegan. A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1992), p. 109.

[60] Opello, ‘Pluralism and Elite Conflict’, p. 74.

[61] OCA, Correspondence, May 6, 1968, Eduardo Mondlane, Eduardo Mondlane Materials, Reel #2 (microfilm), Document # 2610.  Some scholars I have spoken with suggested to me that Mateus Gwenjere was actually a covert agent of the Portuguese.  If Gwenjere was working for the Portuguese, his influence over the students in the FRELIMO secondary school did succeed in fomenting some anti-FRELIMO activities and sentiment.   

[62] Based on some unspecified and indirect references in the available aforementioned sources for this paper, some Mozambique Institute staff continued to help FRELIMO in Dar es Salaam and in the refugee camps.  Some individuals, for example, apparently helped by writing and translating books that would be used when the secondary school was later reopened in Bagamoyo.