i
Ll.w
'THE   Y-shaped   Colony of Mo-
. zambique popularly styled Portuguese East Africa is the most populous and second largest of the
five African Portuguese colonies.
The largest of the rest is Angola
and the remaining three are Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde Islands
and the tropical islands of Sao
Tome and Principe.
Mozambique is bounded on the
East by the Indian Ocean, on the
West by Southern Rhodesia and the
Transvaal, on the South by Natal
and on the North by Northern
Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Tanganyika.
Its areL is 297,731 square miles.
-From Cape Delgado in the North
to Belagoa Bay in the South is a
distance of almost 1,300 miles.
The Mozambique frontier is irregular varying from 56 miles in the
South to 480 towards the North.
The colony of Mozambique derives its name from the town of
Mozambique a former capital of
the territory and a way station on
the voyage of India.
BACKGROUND TO THE
The trading civilization of Sofala
Queliamane, Mozambique and other
seabord towns and cities of East
Africa was a very old one. It penetrated much deeper into the interior than has been supposed.
"These merchant cities and trading kingdoms of the coast of
•Zanj (the blackman), says Basil
Davidson, "were neither Arab nor
Persian, nor Indian: they were
African and predominantly negro
African."
Between the eight and the eleventh centuries these towns and cities became politically and commercially oriented towards Arabia,
Persia and India.
Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese
navigator, "discovered" the colony
of Mozambique after rounding the
Cape. He touched Queliamane in
February and the port of Mozambique in March, 1918 before sailing
North for Malindi, Mombasa and
India.
"Devil take thee", said a Tunisian when he met these Europeans
in the Indian Ocean of all places,
"What brings you here"? And that
greeting proved ominously prophetic.
When in 1505 the Portuguese dispatched 23 ships of their fleet under
Francisco d'Almeida they instructed them to capture the commercial
monopoly in the Indian Ocean.
D'Almeida was to build a factory
at Sofala to manage the flow of
gold from the "mines of Ophir".
NEVER UNITED
Kilwa and Mombasa further
North were to be captured and all
Arab shipping, save that from Malindi, expelled from the seas. D'
Almeida attacked Kilwa, built the
fortress of Santiago and bombarded,
burnt and pillaged Mombasa.
The Portuguese waged a war of
aggression 'that created hostilities
which were to plague them for the
next 200 years.
Through most of the 16th century the merchant cities and kingdoms were never sufficiently strong
or united to face the Portuguese.
Antonio Fernandes, a convict left
on the coast by D'Almeida in 1505,
explored much of the hinterlands of
Sofala, seeking information on the
gold fields of Monomotapa, an
African potentate in the interior.
On two trips he explored the modern
districts of Manics and Sofala and
Mashonaland (Southern Rhodesia).
Fernandes recommended that the
Portuguese go up the Save and
Lundi rivers. Here they were to
put up a factory which would tap
the gold fields directly.
The explorations of Fernandes
were unrelated to any consistent
programme of discovery or development. They only served centuries
later to bolster Portuguese claims
of priority in their attempts to link
Angola and Mozambique.
CONSISTENT
PROGRAMME
In 1544 the Portuguese founded
a settlement near Quelimane to enable them to penetrate the interior.
Lourenco Marques explored Dela-
goa Bay in the same "year although
the town that now bears his name
took it much later.
The main route into the interior
became affected through the Zambesi river as a result of the explorations of Fernandes. In an effort to
speed up the export of gold the captain at Mozambique founded Sena,
160 miles from the Coast, and Tete
321 miles upstream, soon after.
Driven by messianic intensity
Father Gonzalo da Silveira, a Roman Catholic missionary, imperialist
vanguard, reached the royal residence of Monomotapa near Mount
Darwin in 1560. He found a compatriot, Antonio Caiado, Captain
of the Gates, living with the King.
ROLE OF MISSIONARIES
After twenty-five days of training Father Silveira baptized thc
Monomotapa his favourite wife and
his sister and 300 relatives and tribal elders.
Swahili traders, sensible of the
role of missionaries as the vanguard of imperialist interests, fully
explained this to the newly converted African potentate. And that
proved the undoing of .the zealous
missionary.
JJ/.    DECEMBER, 1964       7