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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 - 10 - i - .u L • "» "«■"
Object Description
Description
Title | CENPA-297~06 |
Filename | CENPA-297~06.tiff |
Full text | 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 - 10 - i - .u L • "» "«■" |
Archival file | Volume19/CENPA-297~06.tiff |