out of varied and different ethnic, geographical and cultural groups of people -
beyond   and  beneath  everything,   it  is
economic imperialism. One of them candidly   stated,   "It  is  often said that we
Portuguese have the vice of history. Some
even say we take refuge in the past to
compensate for the smallness of the Present-thus   obeying  the   doleful  law  of
empire, corroded by stagnation or decadence.'1   It is this insistence on clinging
to   the  tattered   toga   of  yesterday  that
prevents  modern Portugal from uncovering   the  intellectual facundity  and the
spiritual dynamism of her people. "Africa"
says another of its colonial spokesman,
"for   us   is   a   moral justification  and a
raison d'etre as a power. Without it we
would be a small nation, with it we are
a great country."  Here is the authentic
idiom of classic self-deception, of decan-
dence so familiar from the lips of ruined
barons.   It  is  this  deliberate immersion
in   the   past,   a  self-mummification  as it
were,   that   makes   the   problem   of  the
Portuguese   colonies   one   of   absolutely
unabating tension.    ?
We have no doubt that when the
people of Portugal discover their authentic
idiom, they will speak from the depth of
their understanding, the wise words we
wish them to speak now, for in seeking
the liquidation of the Portuguese empire,
we therefore, seek the realisation of a
freer and fuller expression of the Portuguese people themselves.
The Portuguese colonialists proclaim
their non racial record. But they fail to
understand that any claim to racial
equality is reduced to mockery when it
is overlaid by cultural inequality, nay,
cultural genocide. The Portuguese are
wont to assert that the frontier of their
empire  is   not  geographical,   not   even
purely political, but fundamentally a cultural one.   With strange obtuseness Ad-
riano   Morreira,   ex-minister  for the so-
called   overseas   provinces  of  Portugal,
observes in his book,  " Portugal's stand
in Africa," on page 111, "Now, we Portuguese   have   always   repudiated   the
philosophy of agression and reprisal between cultures which has. inspired Nehru,
Nkrumah,   Nasser,    and   likewise,    we
repudiate  conflict  between  classes and
races." The distinguished leaders of Alro-
Asia need no defence against this blind
and venomous attack,  but one wonders
at the intellectual temerity of a person
denouncing cultural agression while holding fast to the philosophy of total aversion to cultural confluence of any kind.
Do the Portuguese not realise the consequences, scalding and   explosive, of the
systematic  debasement,  eventual denial,
may, obliteration, of the individuality of
the Africans as a subject  people ?   It is
this  wilful  blindness   of  the Portuguese
rulers,    the   topsy-turvy   logic   of   their
Owerllian insouclane, their proponsity to
ignore  the  terrible  beam   in  their  own
eye,   while furiously   focussing   on   the
non-existent  mote in other's, that constitutes a tearful threat to world peace, and,
to world sanity.
What has been the record of the
process of selective assimilation ? After
465 years of Portuguese colonial rule over
Mozambique only a handful of the^ African
population has been favourably aifected.
Dictator Salazar, with brutal candour,
says as much, "a law recognising citizenship takes minutes to draft and can
be made right away ; a citizen, that is
a man fully and consciously intergrated
into a civilised political society, takes
centuries to achieve." In order that the
decadent ruling elite of Portugal may
cling to their fond "vice of history ", the
helpless peoples in the colony must live for
%
countless centuries in political serfdom
and cultural thraldom - such is the pers.
pective offered to us ! Such is the perspective the agents of the imperialists are
striving to perpetuate !
For 465 years, the relationship of the
oppressed Mozambican African with the
Portuguese have remained the same-that
of a servant, 465 years of variations on
the persistent theme - that of a servant;
demands not further involvement in
the embroidery of the variation, but
destruction of the theme itself, its perpe-
tuators and agents.
It is not necessary for us to recapitulate here, the picture, dismal and distu-
bing. that prevails in Mozambique. That
picture has been drawn, with precision
and power, by the UDENAMO, in its
petition to the United Nations in November, 1953. Who does not know of the
overwhelming illiteracy, the grinding
poverty of the African people there ?
Who does not resent the constant survei-
llence under which the humblest African
lives, where any African who changes
his residence, in all innocence, from one
district to another, is forthwith captured
and penalised ? Need one detail the
story of repressive exploitation of the
African by the ruling white minority
elite ? Further more dare we forget the
many thousands of African'killed by the
Portuguese forces, the many freedom
fighters arrested and imprisoned, the
stench of the concentration camps, the
situation where - by the innocent and
freedon loving African has been ^turned
an export commodity, a domestic slave,
a forced labour ?
Let us frankly and decisively recognise that what the UDENAMO is involved in, in the struggle for the liberation
of Mozambique, is something elemental,
irrepressible and irreversible. The UDENAMO knows that the African of Mozambique must emerge not only politically
but psychologically and economically
as well.
This assertion of the African personality, this determined quest for national
identity, by us for whom the dominant
Portugal has fixed bleak boudaries of
life, is of fundamental world shaking
importance, The Mozambican African,
for many generations, was warned against
aspiring for excellence; he was asked to
make peace with not just mediocrity, but
with meanness.
He is today unbound, is resonant
against the most stubborn, sustained and
brutally dissonant of colonial powers. As
the weight of the white man lifts, in the
African continent, as the horizon of political freedom widens, the deeper and
fuller assertion seeks unfettered expression. It is easy to wipe away tears, it
takes, however deeper sysmpathy to wipe
away tears which continue to haunt
laughter and speech and song; these
inner tears fade away only when cultural
continuity is regained, there by indentify
made secure and renewal assured at the
fountain of our own lives.
Today, the UDENAMO is engaged
in that miracle of re-birth, a joyous and
triumphant re-assertion of the African
personality To that miracle of re-birth
we of the UDENAMO warn that the
problem of Mozambique is deeper than
political freedom, it is one cf cultural
emancipation also.
The strife-torn confrontation between
the Portuguese colonials and the Africans
makes the situation in Mozambique so
emminently fateful. The sheath of deca
dence cannot submerge and deny expression to the awakened Mozambican
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