"     ■    ' ■.,...-,...■:..,      ,■■ '       ■
Jaime M. A. Khamba
(Mozambique)
Mozambique, an oppresed colony
of Portugal in South East Africa,
has an area of 302,000 sq. miles.
This vast country is very rich in
mineral and natural resources, such
as Iron-Ore, coal, manganese, gold,
bauxite, paraffin, Sugar cane, Tea.
Copra, Cashew Nuts, -Timber, Sisal,
cotton and some other precious
meals. With their eyes on the natural
resources, the Portuguese imperialists and financial oligardy, who are
the most vicious, barbaric and ruthless colonialists history has ever
recorded in our time, have refused
to leave Mozambique, to which they
are uninvited.
The . "civilizing mission "the
bourgeois vocabulary for exploitation and domination, which brought
Vasco da Gama to Inhambane,
South of Mozambique in 1498, on
his way to India, marked the beginning of the present colonial domination of the die-hard and shameless Portuguese in Mozambique.
Da Gama, who exposed the country to Portugal, on his way to the
Northern part of Mozambique,
tortured and killed many innocent
citizens, inorder to facilitate his
forced entry into the country. He
also noticed that the country was
Historical   ~ z:^:z        :o Lre
Nailed Liberation Struggle
^diczz
by J.M.A. /Khamba
rich in mineral resources. This he
reported to the then King of Portugal, who immediately assigned him
with the responsibility of capturing
the country and the wealth by all
means.
In 1502, he came back on a mission of permanent strangulation and
and life-long exploitation. Since
then the Portuguese refused to
leave the country.
In 1505, the Portuguese occupation became effective, after the
captain Pedro de Anaia, with Francisco de Almeida, then Governor
had landed at the Island of Mozambique. The Africans smelt rat, and
began the campaign for the emani-
cipation of their country.
In 1531, in order to expand the
exportation of gold which he stole
from the country, the captain of
Portuguese founded a market at
Sena. This transformed Sena into
Commercial centre. A few years
later, the city of Tete was constructed and the first colonial Governor
General of Mozambique, Francisco
de Melo Castro, was appointed.
In 1561, Antonio Caiado, a Portuguese settler who was living in the
court of Emperor Monomotapa
when Goncalo da Silveira, a Catholic priest went there with an expedition, led by Francisco de Barreto,
from Sofala to Inhanga and Pen-
halonga, with.an intention to destroy
the Africa Empires.
In the April of 1569, three
vessels manned by 1,000 Portuguese
soldiers under the command of D.
Francisco de Barreto, then Governor
of India, left Lisbon for Mozambique, with an order to seize mines
of Emperor Monomotapa, and his
people. Barreto and his men landed
at the Island of Mozambique. On
their arrival,when the African people saw that these henchmen from
Portugal were provoking war,
replied them in the same- voice and
many of them lost their lives.
In 1571, after various batiles, and
unconcluded negotiations with the
Emperor Monomotapa. Barreto
evacuated his two hundred men who
were fortunate to remain alive.
In .1573, Barreto died, and was
succeeded by his aide-de-camp
Vasco Fernandes de Hommen, who
, returned to Sena with four hundred
men in search of thc gold mines.
After various clashes with African
people, he penetrated into the land
of Manica.
There they found gold, but did
not have competent men to explore
it. From Sofala, he went to the
North of Zambezia and then to
Sena, where he tried to explore the
silver mines of Chicoa, and was
attacked by Africans who destroyed
him together with his remaining two
hundred men.
The King of Portugal easily
forgot the lesson that Vasco de Hommen and his men wanted to dominate every aspect of trade as well
as Africans. In a few years a great
number of Portuguese settlers
wanted to impose their laws upon
.the Africans, and were resisted by
African people.
The number of conflicts increased
in 1628, in the Region of Zambezia.
Emperor Monomotapa was by then
converted into Christianity and
therefore easily exploited. The
vandals disseminated, the seeds of
misunderstanding with other Chiefs
through the Emperor and tribal
dispute started. They dominated the
whole Zambezia. The main reason
of dispute was the refusal by other
 IJf    MAY/JUNE, 1964       29