THE STRUGGLE ff03 INDEPENDENCE IN MOZAMBIQUE - Page 4.
Under these laws it has been possible for the South African mining
interests to obtain each year hundreds of thousands of cheap workers
who flocked into the gold, diamond and coal mines to escape arrest,
for they could not prove to the Portuguese administrators that working in their own farms and taking care of their homesteads was a
bona fide productive activity.
The international labour agreement between South Africa and
Portugal includes, inter alia, payments to Portugal by the mining
companies of about 6 pounds in gold bullion per African worker signing the contract; half of four months1 worth of the worker's wages;
47.8 per cents of the imports-exports of South Africa to be shipped
through the port of Lourenco Marques; rights for Portugal to hunt
and arrest all Mozambican Africans v/ho may have either run away from
the mines or entered South Africa clandestinely, and accrediting
Portugal in South African banks with half the wages of all Mozambican
mine workers, to be handed over to them back in Mozambique in Portuguese currency about two years later without interest.  Portugal,
therefore, receives from gold mining each year estimated profits of
over 10 million dollars from simply controlling the African labour
traffic to and from South Africa.  This does not include the financial
benefits which accrue to her from the 47.8 per cent of the Witwaters-
rand's imports-exports which must pass through the port of Lourenco
Marques as an integral part of the agreement.
REBIRTH OF NATIONALISM:
Those Africans who have ever had any illusions as to the
good intentions of Portuguese colonialism could not help but wake up
"to the facte as they are.  They began to see their people become
gradually poorer au the white people were getting wealthier.  The
more the black people tried to force themselves into the European
system of life, the more stringent the Portuguese laws against them
and the more frustrated they became.  While earlier the Portuguese
had been talking about "civilizing" the black man through assimilation by insisting upon certain cultural and educational standards,
later they began to restrict the facilities which might have made it
possible for at least a few Africans to get the necessary tools to
gain access to the power structure.
as a reaction to the above situation, Africans began to
organize themselves into associations camouflaged as regional civic
and mutual aid organizations.  But from time to time these groups
have come to demand the rights which they have lost to the white man,
and each time they have been ruthlessly slapped down by the Portuguese
government.  In the earlier part of the century, when the Portuguese
people themselves were still groping for a more democratic system of
government than they ever had before, many African groups arose in
various parts of the country and formed organizations which were more
L openly aimed at political emancipation.  I am referring here to such
I organizations as the Associacao Africana and the Centro Associativo
dos Negros de Mozambique, whose membership tended to reflect the
I colour line between the so-called mulattoes or mixtos and the indig-
' enous Africans.  Later, however, the Portuguese government was able
to purge them of the more nationalist minded leaders and plant its
own stooges as leaders.  Even though these two African associations
still exist today, they are both either thoroughly under the control
of the government or their leaders dare not show their true feelings
about the situation.  In any case, they are really not what one
might call popular organizations, precisely because they serve no
visible purpose for the majority of the African peoples.  They are
at best simply bourgeois social clubs, often called upon to shout
their part in the militarized chorus of allegiance to Salazar, which
is from time to time demanded of them by the present regime.
Other forms of nationalistic groups have been organized
from time to time in the past, but mostly on a regional or linguistic