for white settlers, Asians, mulattos (half-
castes) and .assimilados (black Portuguese)
which means that African students who
succeed in their final primary school
examinations have got to be assimilados
prior their admission in Secondary schools.
Conditions for assimilation are so well
planned by the Portuguese athorities that it
becomes impossible for the majority of the
African students to qualify and thus arc
forced to surrender their educational career.
Always remaining as holders of a standard
four (4a classe)  school certificate.
On the secondary level, no African assimilado has ever completed the full seven
year "Liceu" program in Mozambique. In
relation to the average income of African
wage earners,, thc cost of a child to the liccu
is very high. Tuition amounts to the equivalent of one month's wages during the first
year and raises higher with each grade
passed. Official figures show that in the
biggest and best high school "Liceu Salazar"
in Lourenco Marques, the capital city of the
colony, which during the school term of
1958/59 enrolled 1.157 pupils, only 35 were
African assimilados. Thc so-called Colonial
University, in Lourenco Marques, the Portuguese are boasting and singing to the world
about  is  therefore  built   for  the  whites   and
mullatoes who so far are the only people in
Mozambique with thc necessary requirements
for admission.
Most of the African assimilados on the
secondary level are enrolled in commercial
and industrial schools because of the slightly
low fees as compared to the Liceu.
Colonial powers which have lost their
grip, l>ecause they have permitted and even
encouraged the growth of African educated
people are viewed by the Portuguese with
considerable contempt. There is no place in
Mozambique for Africans who think for
themselves. The present administration believes that by educating Africans it will be
hastening its own eventual doom and yet forgetting that it does not need any one to be
educated for one to know that she or he is
oppressed- j
While the so-called Republic of South
Africa with its Bantu Education Act, presents
the spectacle of a Government feverishly
trying to completely dismantle a relatively
progressive native educational- system and
pursue the Portuguese educational system,
education in Mozambique has always been
guided by the belief that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Always
hoping for the best but preparing for the
worst.
I