aqui lourenço marques!! radio colonization and cultural identity in colonial mozambique, 1932–74

Journal of Historical Geography, 26, 4 (2000) 605–628

doi:10.1006/jhge.2000.0240, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Aqui Lourenco Marques!! Radio colonizationand cultural identity in colonial Mozambique,1932–74

Marcus Power

The Portuguese empire in Africa was one of the last to collapse amidst the waves ofdecolonization that swept the continent in the 1950s and 1960s. The astonishingendurance of Portuguese colonialisms until the mid-1970s can be viewed partly inrelation to the communication technologies that underscored the Lusophone imperialpresence in Africa in important cultural and political ways. This paper explores thehistorical geography of radio-broadcasting in colonial Mozambique and examinesthe importance of colonial anthropological knowledges in the formation of radioprogramming. Colonial broadcasters represented their work as ‘radio-colonization’ andfrequently stressed the links between their activities and the development of imperialand colonial modernity. From the very beginning of radio-broadcasting in Mozambique,broadcasters sought to harmonize their contribution to colonial culture and societywith the objectives of the colonial state, and broadcasting became central to the capitalistdevelopment of the colony. In the dying days of Portuguese colonialism broadcastersbelatedly began to attempt to assimilate non-white subjects into the perceived order ofcolonial modernization. Radio programming was differentiated in important waysaccording to ethnicity and gender and this paper seeks to discuss some of the complexrelationships between colonial subjectivities and the search for the colonial modernizationof Mozambique. 2000 Academic Press

Introduction: colonialism and the ‘interior’

The Radio Clube de Mocambique, beyond being an excellent means of propaganda, isalso a powerful agent of the diffusion of a cultural spirit, with the broadcast of news,of its lectures, of its musical programmes and its songs. In the ‘interior’, in distantplaces, in the nights of disquiet in the bush, the voice of Mocambique connects all thatis distant to the world of civilised things. In addition to this consolidating voice it fulfilsanother indispensable purpose to the bush, where the signal of another life might notarrive nor the knowledge of facts, of the day to day, of that which integrates the colonistinto the march of time and places them within their epoch.[1]

During the dying days of Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique fears were expressedby managerial staff at the Headquarters of the Radio Clube de Mocambique (RCM),situated in a purpose-built ‘Radio-Palace’ in central Lourenco Marques (now Maputo),that their safety was being threatened by political groups poised to take possession ofthe station. Correspondence between the RCM and various organs of the colonial statehighlighted the existence of a number of grupos fantoches or ‘puppet groups’ with an

6050305–7488/00/100605+24 $35.00/0 2000 Academic Press

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eye on the RCM’s technology and a message to broadcast about the demise ofPortuguese imperialism.[2] On September 7, 1974, as the prospect of MozambicanIndependence loomed ever larger, 29 armed members of the Movimento MocambiqueLivre (Free Mozambique Movement) invaded the offices of the Radio Clube andbroadcast their vision of Mozambicaness, their understanding of the question ofemigration and how they perceived Mozambican ‘race relations’.

A recording of the RCM’s transmission that day stands as a powerful testament tothe important roles that radio had come to play in the cultural and political arenas ofcolonial life and in the historical imagination of the colonial settler. Overwhelmed andpleading, the broadcasting usurpers articulated a desperate demand for the continuationof Portugal and the residence of ‘her’ white colonial subjects.[3] The group had aconsuming passion for Portuguese patriotism and they had come to believe that theRCM, ceasing to articulate the Voz de Mocambique (Voice of Mozambique) had losttouch with the patria:

All the races and nationalities! The Radio Clube of Mozambique is at present transformedinto the National radio of Portugal, of Mozambique. Here at the microphone is an oldman of 66 years of age and of 33 years permanent residence in Mozambique. Mozambicanpeople, free people, oppressed people, today took an extraordinarily daring decision,one worthy of the oldest moments of Portuguese history. The Radio Clube de Mocambiquehas been taken by the people . . . This building has been taken by the true Portuguese,by the people that do not renounce their homeland, that do not renounce their country.[4]

Whilst radio was being used in many other parts of Africa at this time to begin theprocess of decolonization and to forge new ‘postcolonial’ cultural identities, control ofthe principal radio station in Mozambique was being contested by groups claiming tobe ‘truly’ Portuguese (and yet still advocates of a ‘free Mozambique’). The ethniccomposition of Mozambican society (and particularly that of its colonial capital)changed quite dramatically during this period as hundreds of thousands left forneighbouring countries (predominantly those governed by white settler regimes), forPortugal and for various parts of Asia.[5] The occupation of the RCM in 1974 wassymbolic and indicative of the heightened state of ‘racialization’ that prevailed in thefinal moments of Portuguese colonialism and the implication of radio-broadcasting inthis process. For decades, the RCM had played a central role in colonial settler life,often restating the power and presumed permanence of Portuguese colonialism. Thehistory of the organization, despite academic neglect, forms an integral part of thehistory of colonial Mozambique and of the formation of Mozambican cultural identities.The RCM primarily occupied itself with the marketing of a wide range of capitalistinterests in the colony (including those of the colonial state itself) and therefore alsorepresents a particularly important example of how Portuguese colonial capitalismsoperated in Mozambique.

It was only some 20 years after the establishment of the Gremio dos Radiofilos daColonia de Mocambique (Radio Guild of the Colony of Mozambique) in 1933 thatradio-broadcasting begun to be directed toward the majority of Mozambicans with thetransmission of programmes in what were arrogantly called African ‘dialects’. The stepstaken by the RCM toward this kind of ‘native broadcasting’ were closely informed bycontemporary knowledges of Mozambican ethnicity, produced by colonial functionarieswho were “half administrators, half ethnologists”.[6]Radiodifusao in colonial Mo-zambique, it will be argued, was closely informed by colonial anthropological knowledgesand contributed significantly to the climate of acute racial consciousness and culturalintolerance that precipitated the occupation of the Clube in 1974. Overlooking and

607RADIO COLONIZATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN MOZAMBIQUE

denying the presence of the ‘native’ majority in the colony, their complex culturalidentities and their pasts, the Portuguese colonial state spoke to non-white populationsabout health, sanitation, education, agriculture and imperial history and encouragedthem to participate in the Empire and in colonial life on its own, highly racializedterms.

The Radio Clube was preoccupied with a vision of itself as a ‘broadcasting revolution’in Mozambique involving the orchestration of a “concert of international voices”[7]

including that of the Voz de Mocambique as the organization was known until 1952.[8]

The RCM separated its broadcasts in a variety of Mozambican languages into distinctfrequencies, each appealing to a different cultural, ethno-linguistic grouping whoseidentity was therefore deemed to represent a specific, discrete kind of difference,articulated through a separate racial voice.[9] It can be shown that radio-broadcastinghelped to construct and consolidate a set of cultural distinctions which closely shapedcolonial perceptions and understanding of racial difference in the colony.

The orientation of colonial broadcasting toward the mato or the ‘bush’ and hencebeyond colonial cities to the indigenous population is one of the principal subjects ofthis paper. The “signal of another life” that Rodrigues Junior congratulated the RCMfor broadcasting was once referred to by the organization in a statement of its objectivesas Radio-Colonizacao and is the subject of the first part of the following discussion.[10]

The attempted colonization of Mozambique through the RCM offers a powerfulexample of how Mozambican ethnic difference has been approached and representedin the pursuit of colonial, capitalist modernity. Further, radio-broadcasting allowed thecolonial state to articulate a vision of Portuguese and Mozambican territory and toimprint its claim to permanence, supremacy, to in-state its territorial sovereignty.

The paper looks first at the history of colonial broadcasting within the Portugueseempire outlining the key pieces of Estado Novo legislation.[11] The ‘New State’ led byAnthonio Salazar began in 1926 and was based around an interventionist dictatorshipwith an ideology that was deeply characteristic of other European fascist movementsof this time. Salazar became President of the New State in 1932 (a post held withouta break until 1968) and constructed an oppressive, fascist dictatorship around himselfwhich dominated Portuguese imperial policy for nearly 40 years. At the very centre ofSalazar’s vision of the Portuguese ‘civilizing’ mission in Africa was the Portugueselanguage, seen to carry the weight of Portuguese culture and civilization. Salazar’sbureaucratic ‘New State’ was based around an economic nationalism that sought totransform the colonies into centres of colonial modernity which would serve the needsand interests of the Metropole through a number of white settlement colonizationschemes. With the end of World War II, Salazar attempted to play down the fascistcharacter of the New State as it sought membership of NATO and the colonieswere redefined as ‘overseas territories’ in 1951. Such ‘semantic devices’ were highlycharacteristic of the ideology of the New State which envisioned a deracialized ‘Luso-tropical’ paradise and began to escalate colonial modernization plans in the 1950s and1960s to mitigate the rising tides of Mozambican nationalism and construct the illusionthat five centuries of Portuguese imperialism had actually led to ‘modern progress’.

The opening part of this paper then offers a brief chronology of the development ofradio-broadcasting in Mozambique in the context of this autocratic administration andits plans for colonial modernization. The official RCM historical account of theorganization’s past[12] is discussed firstly in relation to the Portuguese colonial state(which sponsored it) and secondly to the bourgeois cultural interests and concernswhich dominated programming output.[13] Next, the paper considers the representationof Mozambican ethnic and gender identities through the RCM. The Radio Clube was

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very much a ‘boys club’ and the organizations discursive representation of Mozambicanfemininities is particularly revealing for this reason. As in Francophone Africa where“most of the programmes were broadcast from colonial capital cities, in French, byFrenchmen” broadcasting was heavily based around particular ethnic and gendergroupings, themselves based in particular spatial settings.[14] Instead of the desire tooffer a broadcasting ‘service’ characteristic of British broadcasting, RCM memberswere offered membership of an exclusive imperial ‘club’ which constructed itself asthe epitome of ‘modern’ colonial values. The organization also frequently discusseddevelopments in colonial anthropological knowledges offering “revelations about [nat-ive] mentalities” in the colony and wrote up most of the experiments with ‘Nativebroadcasting’ in neighbouring countries. Hora Nativa was a programme launched bythe RCM in 1958 under the auspices of the colonial state’s ‘psycho-social action’ planand Voz de Mocambique later followed as a separate broadcasting station exclusivelyfor the indigenous population, broadcasting in an expanding number of ‘native dialects’.

‘Radio-Colonizacao’ or intimate consolation for the anxieties of empire

We must always remember that in the colonial situation, in which, as we have seen, thesocial dichotomy reaches an incomparable intensity, there is a frenzied and almostlaughable growth of middle-class gentility on the part of the nationals from themetropolis. For a European to own a radio is of course to participate in the eternalround of petty-bourgeois ownership, which extends from the radio to the villa includingthe car and the refrigerator. It [radio] gives him the feeling that colonial society is aliving and palpable reality, with its festivities, its traditions eager to establish themselves,its progress, its taking root. But especially, in the hinterland, in the so-called colonizationcenters, it is the only link with the cities, with the metropolis, with the world of thecivilised. It is a means of escaping the inert, passive and sterilizing pressure of the nativeenvironment.[15]

The official history of the RCM[16] focuses attention on a supposed fledgling spirit ofamateur enthusiasm in pursuit of technological progress as a feature of colonialmodernisation in Mozambique (with which the RCM saw itself as inextricably linked).The inauguration of every new RCM building, transmitter or broadcast musical eventwas almost always attended by a senior member of the colonial state and these eventsform key landmarks in the RCM’s historical account. This is however largely a tale ofa small number of male colonial capitalists constructed as ‘enthusiast-entrepreneurs’and it follows every step in the progress of their decision-making in pursuit of broadcastmodernity. Additionally, almost every single figure of “notable prominence in scientific[musical] and literary fields” ever to have graced the tea rooms and microphones at theRCM is remembered here.[17]

The RCM response to the visit of the Presidente da Republica and the Ministro dasColonias in July 1939 receives special mention in this history and was widely writtenup in various editions of Radio Mocambique. In the week leading up to the arrival ofthe President and the Minister, RCM broadcast propaganda principally offered itssupport to the colonial state through its Commissao da Propaganda. The RCM’s diaryof events during that week points out that “[t]his propaganda, the discourses of theauthorities and of other entities of distinction in the colony, could be broadcastthroughout the colony and here at points where the post is a long time coming, whereall other methods of propaganda fail”.[18]


RRR... ZZZaaammmbbbeeezzzeee

RRR... PPPuuunnnggguuuèèè

RRR... LLLiiimmmpppooopppooo

RRR... LLLúúúrrriiiooo

RRR... SSSaaavvveee

RRR... LLLuuugggeeennndddaaa

RRR... RRRooovvvuuummmaaa

I N D I A NI N D I A NI N D I A N

O C E A NO C E A NO C E A N

LAKE LAKE LAKEMALAWIMALAWIMALAWI

C A B OD E L G A D O

NampulaNampulaNampula

Vila CabralVila CabralVila Cabral

QuelimaneQuelimaneQuelimane

BeiraBeiraBeira

InhambaneInhambaneInhambane

TeteTeteTete

PôrtoPôrtoPôrtoAméliaAméliaAmélia

Lourenço MarquesLourenço MarquesLourenço Marques

João BeloJoão BeloJoão Belo

VilanculosVilanculosVilanculos

Vila PeryVila PeryVila Pery

Vila de ManicaVila de ManicaVila de Manica ChindeChindeChinde

MoatizeMoatizeMoatize

Vila CoutinhoVila CoutinhoVila Coutinho

ZumboZumboZumbo

Dona AnaDona AnaDona Ana

António EnesAntónio EnesAntónio Enes

NacalaNacalaNacala

MuedaMuedaMueda

PalmaPalmaPalmaMocimboaMocimboaMocimboada Praiada Praiada Praia

N I A S S A

M O Z A M B I Q U E

Z A M B E Z I A

T E T E

M A N I C A

ES O F A L A

INHAMBANE

G A Z A

MozambiqueMozambiqueMozambique

Emissor Regional (with date)

Radio Station (with date)RCM (1932)

(1957)

Radio Pax(1954)Aero Clubede Beira(1938)

(1963)

(1963)

(1963)

(1953)

(1960)

(1960)

0 300km

Figure 1. Mozambique on the eve of anti-colonial struggle. Note: The geographical distributionof RCM transmission facilities was expanded significantly during the liberation struggle, providing

the Colonial State with the possibility of broadcasting in areas under direct contestation.

The establishment of regional transmission posts (see Figure 1) was one of the centralobjectives of the RCM for four decades and the chronology of their development thusacquired a central position in the organization’s historical imagination(s). The EmissorRegional in Cabo Delgado began transmitting on June 20, 1960, from Porto Ameliafollowing the recommendation of Jorge Dias, a leading colonial Anthropologist whosework concerning the Makonde people of the North was published over the precedingtwo years.[19] One of the principal objectives in the plan to develop such posts and abroader regional network of transmitters was to encourage more sources of localizedprogramming and to thereby increase the RCM’s audience in the provinces, in theimagined rural ‘centres of colonization’. The primary national newspaper of the dayNoticias noted that the regional post installed in Nampula in 1960 would:

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permit the elaboration of more programmes of local taste and characteristics, improvingthe values already there and improving the dissemination of a knowledge of the mostsalient facts of life from a cultural and artistic point of view in addition to news of theeconomic problems that interest the region.[20]

It is important to note that the only rival broadcasting organisation established incolonial Mozambique was also regional in orientation. Radio Pax: Emissora Catolicade Mocambique was established in the second city of Beira in November 1954.[21] It wasthe first catholic radio station anywhere in the Portuguese empire and continuedbroadcasting until the early 1960s. The station was set up by the regional commissionerof the Portuguese Franciscan diocese and Bishop of the Beira Cathedral, Father AfonsoSimoes who, in the first broadcast, noted that:

We cannot cease to underline the fact that, the benefits [of Radio Pax] are enormousfor this our beautiful city because it will be one more voice of Beira to cruise the spaceof the airwaves . . . The Radio Clube and Aero Clube da Beira are not structurallycatholic stations . . . it is necessary to develop religious programmes but if these stationsstarted tomorrow to give more emphasis to religiosity they might solicit the criticismof their subscribers.[22]

The Aero Clube da Beira began transmitting, also from Beira, as early as 1938 andretained a certain amount of independence from the RCM until an accord was signedby the two clubs in 1956 effectively handing over control of the station to the RCM.[23]

RCM’s relationship to other forms of broadcasting in the colony was defined onFebruary 1, 1947, by the colonial state which legally assigned the RCM the task of“establishing agencies and promoting radio-broadcasts in the colony or other formsof undertakings relating to its activities where and when the Directorate considersappropriate”.[24]

Control of the Aero Clube station allowed the RCM to supplement its regionalservices but perhaps more importantly it gave the RCM a total monopoly on radio-advertising in the colony and ensured that no alternative sources of propaganda in thecolony could be heard. In return, the RCM provided the Aero Clube (who retainedsuperficial autonomy under the name Radio Mocambique) with a new central transmitter,new studios, programming and technical expertise.[25]

Effecting a union with the Metropole

The governor-general and the ‘legislative council’ of the colonial state made numerouspublic comments beginning in the mid-1930s “offering their gratitude for the patrioticservices of culture and recreation that were being realised by the RCM”.[26] An increasein the degree of colonial state intervention in the RCM definitely coincided with anincrease in the organization’s capacity to traverse international (particularly SouthernAfrican) borders such that by 1946 the RCM would trumpet that “[t]oday, the RadioClube de Mocambique is the most well known station anywhere in Africa! Its singersand its orchestra’s persistently attain international status”.[27]

The relationship between the RCM and the colonial state began to deepen evenfurther in the month of August 1937 when Radio Mocambique carried a series of articleson its front pages considering the role the organization performed in the maintenanceof the Portuguese colonial presence in Mozambique. Radio-Colonizacao and O Gremioe a Nacao (The Guild and the Nation) claimed an all conquering territorial sovereigntyfor the radio broadcasts of the RCM and suggested that the RCM had come toarticulate the “voice of colonial modernity”.[28] The colonial state responded in October


1937 with the publication of Diploma Legislativo No. 570 which established the basisupon which radio-broadcasting in the colony would be regulated. In the preamble tothis Diploma it was noted that:

Its the truth—that its fair to point out the good services rendered by the transmissionpost of the RCM in loyal, perfect and honest co-operation with the services of thegovernment, always maintaining a patriotic defence of the interests of the colony, thegood of the nation.[29]

This “defence of the interests of the colony” was precisely where the RCM soughtto align itself and a central objective had always been to represent radio-broadcastingin colonial society as a wider institutional extension of the colonial state, as anaffirmation of “the good of the nation” in colonial and more broadly imperial terms.Certainly one of the most important objectives of the RCM from the very beginningof radio-broadcasting in Mozambique was to be in turn heard in the Metropole. Withthe installation of a 100KW transmitter in Matola in 1956 (the most powerful in Africaat this time) the Radio Clube could be heard in Portugal and the President of the Clube,Antonio Figueirdo, greeted the news with the following sentiments:

The Radio Clube has effected a union between Mozambique and the Metropole. Withthis union the spiritual and moral ties that connect Portuguese East Africa to theMother-country will be made more direct and at the same time carving new horizonsfor its activity it gives this union a more perfect national sense, amplifying the imperialvalue well in-keeping with the Portuguese historical and political realities. . . . In noother part of the Empire has an instrument of artistic and cultural influence had anaction so grand, so continuos and so useful as that which the Radio Clube has exercisedwithin and beyond Mozambican borders (emphasis added).[30]

The RCM sought to forge these spiritual and moral ties amongst the Portuguese ofMozambique, Southern Africa and the Metropole as well as to consolidate the “historicaland political realities” of Portuguese colonialism “within and beyond Mozambicanborders”. The majority of this programming was centred around the public culturallife of the colony particularly that of Lourenco Marques. Programmes ranged from‘Lectures about the Economic development of the colony’ to the live transmission ofthe music of the Lourenco Marques Orchestra and choir. Fados and other ‘Portuguesesongs’, live broadcasts of Theatre in Your Home, Orchestral Varieties and FolkloricSongs were amongst the most popular, accounting for well over half of the RCMlistenership.[31] In recognition of the high popularity of orchestral productions, theRCM even stepped in to rehouse and refinance the official Orchestra of LourencoMarques when the city council announced in 1954 that it was withdrawing its assistance.The colonial press responded enthusiastically to this initiative and hundreds of lettersof gratitude were received at the ‘Radio-Palace’.[32]

A significant proportion of the RCM’s income came from advertising, particularlyfrom adverts placed by organizations outside the colony (even though this was rarelyacknowledged in RCM annual reports).[33] Other key sources of RCM funding camefrom subsidies offered by the colonial state, from the Companhia de Mocambique, theNational Railways, the Camara Municipal (City Council) of Lourenco Marques and avariety of provincial and local state administrations.[34] ‘Postcolonial’ histories ofRadiodifusao (produced by Radio Mocambique) have regularly pointed out that radio-broadcasting in colonial times often involved some of the most powerful elements ofthe colonial capitalist bourgeoisie.[35] The RCM often spoke, for example, of the “terribledilemma” that advertising represented to its “cultural and artistic ambitions” but was

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also fond of using the expression that radio nao vive so do ar (does not live on airalone).[36]

In addition to the activities of the RCM the colonial state in Mozambique couldalso rely upon the Servico Ultramarino da Emissora Nacional, a series of proudlyimperial broadcasts developed in Portugal and destined for all the overseas colonies.The Emissora Nacional “always accompanied the [imperial] head of state . . . allowingthe Portuguese to follow step by step the phases of his official visits across the empire”.[37]

The service received programmes made in individual colonies like Mozambique whichwere subsequently transmitted throughout the empire and also organized a news servicecovering developments in imperial and colonial policy. The Estado Novo (New State)of Anthonio Salazar published a decree in 1928 in which it commissioned feasibilitystudies for a Portuguese national radio station and recommended the purchase of two100KW transmitters (short wave for the colonies and medium wave for the metropole).Broadcasting from Bacarena in central Portugal, on August 1, 1935, the first trans-missions echoed across the Portuguese empire. A national orchestra affiliated tothe station was formed in Portugal and programmes initially consisted of concerttransmissions in addition to lectures about Portuguese Literature and the Arts. Saudadesda Nossa Terra (Nostalgia for Our Land) was transmitted by the Emissora Nacionalfrom 1954 and offered “the words of the very best Portuguese writers, songs and poemsinspired by, legendary paisagistico (rural) and regional motives”.[38]

In 1960 the Emissora Nacional was split into two separate broadcasts, ProgrammaA “for those that prefer a light, happy and easy programme with a musical premise”and Programma B “taking into account the cultural and artistic anxieties of that mostelevated and demanding layer of the Portuguese population”.[39]Aqui Lisboa! (LisbonHere!) was one of the popular programmes offered by the Emissora Nacional offeringinformative news programmes about developments in Portugal to the colonial settlerpopulations. Minutos de Amizade (Minutes of Friendship) was also an important serviceoffered by the Emissora Nacional, relaying messages of family and friendship betweenMozambique and the Metropole. By 1940 the entire service was given financial autonomyfrom the Imperial Ministry of Public works and Communications and came to derivealmost all of its revenue from taxes imposed on subscribers and collected in the coloniesby the Ministerio do Ultramar.[40]

An important question to ask at this juncture is to what extent was the RCMconcerned with the ‘national’ foundations of its programming, with developing a “moreperfect national sense” for its broadcasting. As was mentioned above, the Voz deMocambique commanded large numbers of listeners in Southern and Central Africa.[41]

Between 1946 and 1953 the number of South Africans, for example, regularly tuningin to Radio Clube programmes in English and Afrikaans increased by some 73 percent.[42] Hundreds of requests and letters of gratitude were received at the Radio Clubefrom a range of Southern and Central African countries including Angola, Rhodesia,Belgian Congo and Tanganyika. Many South Africans still fondly remember many ofthe broadcasts which began from Lourenco Marques from 1967 and were aimed at theApartheid Republic across the border.[43] Thousands of South African tourists werereceived every year at the RCM’s ‘Radio-Palace’, taking time out whilst on theirholidays in the colonial capital.[44]

Radio Mocambique ran several editorial articles over the course of its 40 year historyespousing the benefits of disseminating the culture of Portuguese music in these regionsyet a significant proportion of all music played by the RCM was produced outside thecolony—primarily in North America Europe.[45] In fact it could be argued that the‘national’ artistic and cultural influence of the RCM was actually quite limited in scope,


confined as it was to substantial volumes of imported music and to live transmissionsof public or ‘high’ cultural events centred on theatre groups, orchestras and choirs.

Scannel, in his work on the history of British public broadcasting, has referred tothese kinds of ‘ritual, ceremonial occasions’ as ‘media events’, arguing that the mostbasic functions of British public broadcasting had been to reproduce the uneventfulroutines of life which were now and then punctuated by ‘great’ occasions which resonatedwith everybody’s memory.[46] Amidst the “inert, passive and sterilizing pressures ofthe native environment” that Fanon ascribed to the ‘colonial situation’, radio-broad-casting offered an important means of escape whilst simultaneously reproducing the‘uneventfulness’ of colonial life.[47] These ritualized, ceremonial occasions resonatedwith the memories of colonial settlers in myriad ways and played a significant role inthe reproduction of colonial settler culture and identity. How then was the identificationof male and female colonial subjects with these events differentially mediated by RadioClube broadcasting?

Boys’ clube: radio and femininity

Teatro en sua casa (Theatre in Your Home) was, according to one piece of RCMaudience research conducted in 1953, the most popular programme offered by theRCM two years after its introduction in 1951.[48] Broadcast from the principal theatersof Lourenco Marques, the programme had as one of its principal objectives the “culturalupliftment” of the colonial settler population. Notıcias, the daily newspaper of LourencoMarques, noted for example that:

The Radio Clube, thankfully, offers programmes of real value that are cause for surprisewith the widespread acceptance they command. These include programmes such as Anight at the Opera and Theatre in your home . . . The radio is full of poor qualityprogramming but Theatre in your home is a very good example and ought to be followedup by the RCM in its attempts to valorize Mozambican culture.[49]

Ownership of the theatres from which the RCM broadcast theatrical performancesrested almost exclusively with one man, Manuel Rodrigues, who later became arguablythe most important figure in the history of Mozambican colonial cinema.[50] In col-laboration with the exclusive membership of the Radio Clube Direccao (Directorate),Rodrigues retained a powerful grip on the public expression of colonial Mozambicanculture, an expression which was predominantly masculine in orientation. Aside fromthe contributions of female presenters and artists contracted by the RCM, the operationof Radiodifusao in colonial Mozambique was a profoundly masculine enterprise. Theentrepreneurial sprit of amateur enthusiasm that predominates in the RCM’s ownhistory of colonial broadcasting was inspired by a fascination for the technologicalfacets of colonial modernity and appears to have been shared by relatively few women,who were excluded from the Direccao for nearly 30 years and who comprised a verysmall number of the organization’s ‘socios’ (members).[51] In 1960, in an article whichconsidered the question of female involvement in radio-amadorismo (radio amateur-enthusuiasm), Radio Mocambique argued that “[i]n the international agreements whichdefine and regulate radio-enthusiasm there is no dispensation which suggests that thisenthusiasm is practised by individuals of the feminine sex”.[52]

Meia hora para a mulher (Half Hour for Women) and Dia da Mae (Mother’s Day)were some of the first programmes developed specifically for (married) women, beginningin 1948 and 1949, respectively. Costa Lima was the first presenter of Meia hora para a

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mulher and in an interview given to Radio Mocambique she recalled that the mostinteresting and popular parts of the show were:

The practical subjects that focused attention on the ordinary problems of everyday life.I always speak of the children and of problems with the Indıgena. I always versedworrying financial problems or of conjugal sentimentality, the misunderstandings ofmen about the sacrifices of women.[53]

Dia da Mae was an extension of this programme and continued the centrality of themother–child dyad. Mothers of the province were called upon every week to donateany spare items of clothing and food and to make donations to the “poor [white]children” of the colony. In 1963 the first broadcasts of a further programme for women,Da Mulher para mulher (By Women, For Women), were made across Emissao A inPortuguese. Family-size recipes and news about European fashion developments werethe principal subjects of this programme and the RCM was quick to stress the potentialfor advertising:

In commercial radio, the feminine sector is one of the most considerate and attentivegroups. . .In truth the housewife [Dona da Casa] has the use of, throughout the day, asa constant companion, a small radio-set that she takes with her everywhere and, whilecarrying out her work, she amuses herself in listening to her preferred programmes andnumbly [insensıvelmente] accepting the publicity messages that are directed toward her.For this reason, the feminine audience of the radio is a positive value in the plan ofcommercial publicity that can be introduced.[54]

The president of the Mozambique pensioners association, at a meeting with theRadio Clube Direccao in October 1962, articulated the kind of vision of female colonists[55]

which the RCM had pursued throughout much of its activities and with which theRCM staff present offered their agreement: “women demonstrating rare courage andlove always accompany their husbands in the superior mission of the family unit whichassumes such a high value in the process of colonization”.[56]

The broadcasts developed by the RCM for female audiences were destined for aparticular demographic section of the female population of colonial Mozambique,closely structured around a notion of the centrality of the family unit. Broadcastsdestined for what the RCM referred to as the ‘civilized woman’ and those aimed atthe native woman differed, however, in important ways.

Indigenous confusions and other social constructions

Radio-broadcasting and the objectives of the colonial state grew closer still in the finalthree decades of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique, becoming an ever moreimportant component of the colonial state’s claim to territorial sovereignty and itspursuit of colonial modernity in Mozambique. According to Juliao Quintinha, writingabout ‘radio and colonial progress’ in Radio Mocambique in 1947: “through radio,colonial governments are able to communicate with all their subordinates across colonialterritory, maintaining themselves in permanent contact so as to impress upon thepopulation the constant activity of colonial life”.[57]

Radiodifusao offered the colonial state in Mozambique an important presence insome of the more remote parts of the colony where, as Rodrigues Junior put it, “thesignal of another life might not arrive nor the knowledge of facts, of the day to day. . . [integrating] the colonist into the march of time”.[58] More than simply a reminder ofthe colonial and imperial presence in Mozambique (and in the Metropole), Radiodifusao


reiterated the synchrony of colonial life, ordering the temporalities of the settler, andintegrating them into the (daily) “march of colonial progress”, situating them within aparticular (masculinist) historical vision of the colonial epoch.

In addition to the notion of a “numbed” reception of radio that the RCM ascribedto women the organization also regularly made a number of negative assumptionsabout the ways in which non-white audiences used and experienced the medium ofradio. In 1937 the ‘listeners page’ of Radio Mocambique published a letter from aPortuguese colonist in Inhambane, observing that radio had provoked some confusoesindıgenas no mato (indigenous confusions in the bush) recalling that:

[I] had observed some natives gathered around a radio set and they were listening tothe cheerful and light music which was followed by the presenter saying ‘This isLourenco Marques!!’ [Aqui Lourenco Marques!!]. The natives looked around the roomperplexed, they had not seen wires beyond the antenna nearby and they had never seengramophone records . . . The white man however strikes a smile of racial superiority,patriotic pride and intimate consolation, knowing that the Voice of Mozambique, of itscapital Lourenco Marques, fills the atmosphere in many parts of the world with anextremely valuable colonial propaganda . . . I explained to the ‘natives’ that “it isLourenco Marques that is speaking to us! It is they that speak there and it is us thatlisten here. It is a white man that converses with us, speaks to us and gives us newsfrom everywhere”.[59]

The indıgena here becomes the ‘other’, primitive and distant relative of the ‘superior’white man who “gives us news from everywhere”. The incapacity of the native toconsume and appreciate radio becomes the means of demonstrating the superiority ofwhiteness and its associated colonial propaganda. A sense of isolation however fromboth the colonial capital (Lourenco Marques) and the Metropole and patria moregenerally was often articulated by the RCM’s listenership in their letters to theorganization. A pride in the “atmosphere of colonial propaganda” was often coupledwith the belief that this isolation had created a number of anxieties and a need for‘intimate consolation’ as a consequence of the estrangements and dislocations of empire.As Fanon has observed, “radio reminds the settler of the reality of colonial power and,by its very existence, dispenses safety, serenity”.[60] In 1938, Radio Semanal, a Portuguesemagazine for radio enthusiasts pointed out for example that;

Mozambique is an extremely extensive territory, relatively lowly populated. It does notcompare with the population density of the Metropole, nor in terms of resources,distractions, material and spiritual comfort. We have there a heroic and ignored groupof colonists living in the bush [no mato] in silence for days and sometimes months,practically eliminated from the world and from the civilised. For months and months,the only friendly voice, the only Portuguese memory, the only vibration of animatedlife that arrives from the big centres is the RCM with its regional songs and its dailynews.[61]

In many ways these two interventions accurately summarize the contribution of theRCM to the forging of cultural identities amongst the settler population through aquest for colonial modernity. Predicated upon the massive exclusion of other ‘voices’of Mozambique, that “smile of racial superiority, patriotic pride and intimate con-solation” must have been instantly recognizable to so many at the Radio Clube and tomany of its white listeners. ‘Regional songs’ articulating a ‘Portuguese memory’ wereparticularly important to the listenership of the RCM. Their broadcasts had served toprovide a powerful and important countenance to the estrangement and isolation ofempire, an “intimate consolation” or the knowledge that Lourenco Marques and thebroader presences of the imperial and colonial states were close at hand. The ‘Portuguese

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Memories’, ‘Regional Songs and Daily News’ that returned colonial settlers to the‘civilized world’ were undoubtedly also a central component in the astonishing enduranceof the Portuguese empire in Mozambique.

Juliao Quintinha also argued however that a higher purpose for radio in thedissemination of ‘colonial progress’ could be identified, that of construcao social (‘socialconstruction’):

regarding the indigenous populations, the benefit of indigenous instruction and educationcan be mentioned here, teaching them the need for and rules of hygiene, administeringto them practical knowledges with which to defend their health, drawing them awayfrom the enchantment with and abuses of alcohol and providing them all with practicalteachings to improve and intensify agriculture and to cultivate professional tendencies(emphasis added).[62]

Following the work of Michel Foucault, it could be argued that the discourses ofcolonial modernization in Mozambique articulated by the RCM frequently reducedthe energies and consciousness of the Indıgena through scientific classification andobjectified as ‘scientific things’.[63] The specific qualities of colonial territory, such asrainfall or soil fertility, the means of subsistence, wealth and natural resources, becamedominant thematics in broadcasting for the ‘native’ enabling them to be more effectivelyspatialized, temporalized and mobilized. The Radio Clube preferred to represent the‘native’ always in relation to these ‘scientific things’ and urged upon them the ways ofdoing and thinking about ‘modern’ customs and habits. In the process the colonialstate constructs itself as the principal locus of modernity in Mozambique and the nativeis instructed in the ways of that state, its rules and its regulations, the order of itsmodernity and in the presumption of its permanence.

One of the most important questions about the history of colonial broadcasting inMozambique is this relationship that existed between the RCM’s objectives for the‘artistic and cultural’ life of the colonists and the organization’s concern for the‘practical knowledges’ and ‘professional tendencies’ of the Indıgena. This relationshipis particularly important here since it allows us to further question the ways in whichthe RCM attempted to (differentially) insert and induce colonial subjects into theprocess of modernizing Mozambique. To what extent did radiodifusao articulate colonialstate discourses of governmentality? Fanon has observed that ‘the colonial subject isalways overdetermined from without’ and it is the terms of this ‘overdetermination’ inthe case of colonial Mozambique which can tell us much about some of the principalways in which the colonial state attempted to conceptualize Mozambican culturalidentities.[64] Importantly, Fanon also regarded language as one of the most powerfulpossible expressions of alienation in colonial society.[65]

Broad-casting the Indıgena: A Voz de Mocambique and Hora Nativa

The development of radio-broadcasting explicitly directed at the indigenous populationin colonial Mozambique was closely related to historical developments in other neigh-bouring colonies in the Southern Africa region, particularly in North and SouthRhodesia and in South Africa. The governments represented in the Central AfricanCouncil (Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyassaland) agreed in October 1945to create the Federation of Broadcasting which was destined to serve, separately, theindigenous and settler populations of the three colonial territories. In the beginning,the Federal Broadcasting Corporation of Rhodesia and Nyassaland (FBC) developeddistinct ‘African’ and ‘European’ broadcasts from its three main regional transmission


posts in Salisbury (Southern Rhodesia), in Lusaka (Northern Rhodesia) and in Zomba(Nyassaland). The ‘general service’ offered by the FBC was broadcast in the Englishlanguage destined for the European population and the ‘African’ service (broadcast innine African languages) was only connected to the former by a third, commercialservice which had advertising as its principal objective.[66]

Radio Bantu began to offer a similar ‘African’ service to South Africans fromNovember 1956. Originally created on an experimental basis for the indigenous popu-lation of the black township of Orlando on the outskirts of Johannesburg, Radio Bantuwas organized by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and was initiallybroadcast in four main languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho). In Angola, the RadioClube do Bie was the first station to create and maintain a regular service of broadcastingexclusively designed for the indigenous population. According to the Journal da Huila,reporting in 1963 shortly after the service began, the programmes were immediatelypopular:

It literally rains every day with letters demanding counselling, that send histories, thattell of historical episodes,[67] that give suggestions, that make requests for music, thatask for more hours of programming, that seek broadcasts in more dialects . . . we receiveletters from parents that enquire about the lack of respect amongst modern children,from women that ask us for recipes, from young girls asking about fashion, love andfriendship.[68]

The monthly journal Radio Mocambique regularly commented, with some be-wilderment and astonishment, about the widespread popularity of broadcasting inAfrican languages across the continent. In 1962 for example, in one of many articlesabout developments in this kind of broadcasting,[69] the journal carried an article aboutRadio Bantu in South Africa observing that “the popularity of the programme presentersis quite astounding”.[70] Why however should the popularity of Radio Bantu and itscounterparts elsewhere in Africa (including Mozambique) have been such a source ofamazement to the RCM? As we have seen, prior to the time when the organization(belatedly) began to consider the possibility of ‘native broadcasting’ in the late 1950sin recognition that there were many other (non-Portuguese speaking) voices of Mo-zambique, RCM broadcasting in the colony was predicted upon the wholesale exclusionand negation of the Indigenous population. Teaching in the vernacular had alsobeen banned since the 1930s and prior to the beginning of ‘native broadcasting’ inMozambique, (anti-state) Protestant missions and student organizations had providedsome of the few public spaces in which issues of cultural and linguistic heritage couldbe openly discussed and debated.

Under the Estado Novo an ‘assimilation’ policy codified a series of labour andtax regulations in the 1930s incorporating an important distinction between ‘indıgena’(native) and ‘nao-indıgena’ which established a number of restrictive conditions fornon-white participation in colonial society. In an important study of African workersin colonial Lourenco Marques, Jeanne Penvenne has shown how the institutionalracism that lay behind the “assimilation morass” prevented many Africans fromacquiring posts in the colonial administration or forming independent businesses.[71]

The hard-earned status of assimilado was subject to constant scrutiny and reviewby officials of the New State and many Africans assimilated to avoid forced labourand the complete absence of minimum human rights amongst those categorized as‘natives’. Some of Mozambique’s leading African intellectuals of the period, likeJoao Albasini, were quick to point out the many contradictions that fractured thisassimilation ideology:

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Portugal deports her unclean, illiterate kubvanas [rabble] here to live off African women,must we assimilate to be their equal? . . . If Africans have to pay [for an assimilationdocument] to prove they are civilised and fit to mix with whites, why not tax whiteswho are uncivilised and live in common law arrangements with Africans?[72]

The beginning of native broadcasting in Mozambique exposed a further contradictionin this policy, with the colonial state offering ‘civilized’ status to some Africans whilsthomogenizing an undifferentiated mass of native ‘others’ within a racialized discourseon colonial modernization. Although continually referred to as ‘Dialects’ by the RadioClube, the first Mozambican languages in which ‘native broadcasting’ was transmittedwere much more widely spoken than the official language of colonialism and instantlyafforded a new regime of contact and communication between the colonial state andits African subjects.[73] For the first time, African subjects were being directly encouragedto identify with the objectives of the Radio Clube and in a wider sense with the objectivesof the colonial state. Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of the introductionof services destined for the African population of Mozambique in comparison to thehistory of services offered in neighbouring states is that the initial impetus for theinitiative came from the colonial state and (not from the broadcasters themselves)forming part of its Servicos da Accao Psico-Social developed by the colonial stateduring the mid-1950s.

The provincial secretary of the colony at the time declared that the programme:

recognised that the civic and educational elevation of the African masses constitutes anational imperative, drawing upon all available technologies and upon experienceswithin the colony, a programme aimed at the psychology of indigenous societies isproposed.[74]

Initially, the ‘pyscho-social action’ programme[75] was organized by the armed forcesand associated military institutions in the military camps and bases of colonial Mo-zambique who offered a variety of educative training programmes integrated andinterspersed with a series of teachings about Portuguese imperial history and concerningthe legislative organization of the colonial state.[76] In the early 1960s the programmewas broadened to include all the media organizations working in colonial Mozambique,particularly the activities of the Radio Clube who had demonstrated to great effect thepower it could wield in some of the more ‘extreme regions’ of the colony. The timingof the pyscho-social action plan which later became known as APSIC or PSICOpossibly also reflects the revival of interest in ‘tradition’ in neighbouring Rhodesia.

Prior to the intervention of the colonial state in this area of the RCM’s broadcastoutput, the Radio Clube had begun to develop a greater willingness to produceprogrammes which acknowledged the (apparently overwhelming) presence of the in-digenous population. During the 1940s Folclore Negro Mocambicana was studied insome detail and songs and music recorded in Shangaan and Ronga[77] were recordedwith increasing frequency by the RCM. Belo Marques, a musical director and composerbased in Lourenco Marques and Hugh Tracey, a South African broadcaster associatedwith Radio Bantu (which ran a programme about Mozambican music), contributedsubstantially toward this trend. In 1943 the first recordings of ‘black’ songs in Rongawere made[78] and over the next two decades, in conjunction with the ‘pyscho-social’programming for the Indıgena, the RCM made well over a thousand recordings in‘native dialects’, many of which were exchanged with those recorded in South Africaby the SABC in associated languages. The pyscho-social programme plan justified thislinguistic strategy in the following terms:


The simple fact that our advice and suggestions are being transmitted by an authoritativevoice that contacts the peoples in their own language is for the more retarded aguarantee of authenticity, omniscience and infallibility. As he who has been taught toread piously believes in the printed letter, the native believes in the voice that speaksto him in his language over the air.[79]

The cultures of black Mozambicans were also recognized by the RCM in otherimportant ways at this time. Beginning in 1941, with an article entitled ‘The CircumcisionCeremony Amongst the Lomue’ (written by the Chefe do Posto in the district of Ile inNorthern Mozambique) the RCM started to document and disseminate, in increasingdetail, knowledges of tribal rituals and ceremonies and more generally informationabout developments in Colonial Anthropology.[80] During the 1940s, Radio Mocambiquetranscribed a variety of lectures (broadcast by the RCM) concerning the ‘CostumesIndıgenas’ (Indigenous Customs). Jorge Dias’s ‘Mission to Study The Makonde’ (1959–60) was extensively written up and discussed by the RCM and many colonial stateadministrators from various regional posts around the colony sent in notes about theirown experiences with particular ethnic groups such as the one submitted by ArlindoDias Graca in 1960 concerning the Makonde people:

In the region of the Maconde to the North of the colony strange dancing customs existin which the Indıgenas dress up in smart dress similar to that of the whites and putwooden masks upon their heads . . . Nonetheless this unknown and mysterious part ofAfrica captures the imagination of the white man and offers him extensive spiritualexploration.[81]

In this way, colonial settlers exchanged impressions and conceptions of Mozambicanethnic groups and were kept informed of developments in the only slightly moreprofessional field of Portuguese colonial anthropology. Several broadcasts transmittedthrough the RCM’s main Emissao A offered the colonial settler population a taste of‘black’, ‘folkloric’ music incorporating the latest scientific knowledges about blackindigenous ethnicities produced by the colony’s anthropologists and several editions ofthe RCM’s monthly journal carried additional sketches of black colonial subjects(Figure 2).

With a forthcoming visit to the colony by the President of the Republic in prospectin late 1958, Jose do Lena, head of the colonial state’s administrative post in Beira,wrote to Radio Mocambique to suggest that the indigenous population of Mozambiqueneeded to be made more aware of the presence of the colonial state arguing that:

I only lament that this suggestion could not have reached a more rapid realisation, sothat all the Portuguese Indıgenas of the colony might be given a knowledge of thepresence in this colony of the highest magistrate of the nation and be made aware ofthe significance of this visit.[82]

The Chefe do Posto in Beira recommended that all similar representatives of thecolonial state at this level should be charged with the responsibility of developingpropaganda for the indigenous population in conjunction with local leaders (regulos)who in turn might organize greater reception amongst their peoples. Hora Nativa, thefirst programming developed by the RCM for the indigenous population of Mozambiquein 1959, did involve some of the recently established ‘regional posts’. At least to beginwith these broadcasts were not controlled by provincial representatives of the colonialstate but rather from the central apparatus, based in Lourenco Marques. Taking itscue from the earlier experiments with ‘folkloric songs in native dialects’ Hora Nativawas initially based around the broadcast of indigenous musical programming and the

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Figure 2. Cover illustration, Radio Mocambique July 1946, Edition 125, Radio Clube deMocambique. The RCM played a significant role in the construction of colonial Anthropologyin Mozambique. Various editions of the organization’s monthly magazine carried images of

ethnographic subjects on the front cover.

principal involvement of regional delegations of the RCM was in the despatch ofbrigades ao mato [to the bush] in order to record more songs.

When Hora Nativa was first established, broadcasts were exclusively recorded inShangaan and Ronga and were designed only for the indigenous population of the Suldo Save region. When the first regional transmitter of the Radio Clube was establishedin Nampula this service was extended to include the Macua-Meto linguistic groupingdesignated by the RCM and was broadcast every Sunday from July 1959 between 6 pmand 9 pm. It is, however, very difficult to gauge how regular listeners of the programmereceived Hora Nativa. The RCM published numerous letters in Radio Mocambiquewhich wrote in approving terms of the ‘success’ of the broadcasts such as in the case


of the following letter which expressed a remarkable grasp of Portuguese and wassingled out as ‘one of the best’ in the RCM’s official history: “the ‘Native Hour’ is aprogramme that I like to listen to in all its various aspects permitting us all to surpass[ultrapassar] our rituals and superstitions . . . the programme has been elaborated andpresented in an impeccable and scrupulous manner”.[83]

African programme locutores (presenters) were constructed as modern examples ofthese colonial values who had left ‘rituals and superstition’ behind, by many an editionof the RCM’s monthly journal from the late 1950s.[84] It appears that the Radio Clubehad been particularly keen to demonstrate through the publication of these letters thatthe great ‘civilising work’ being carried out by the RCM through Hora Nativa wasbeginning to take effect, educating ‘the native’ and in the process improving ‘native’capabilities with the Portuguese language and other modes of European expression.When we consider the range of broadcasting output produced for Hora Nativa itbecomes somewhat more difficult to understand the supposed popularity of this ‘service’.‘Health and Hygiene’, ‘Money Questions’ and ‘The Domestic and National Economy’were the main programme features of Hora Nativa and they attempted to speak to the‘native’ about their position in the modernizing colonial economy. ‘Historical Lectures’and ‘Notes on Administration’ delivered a message about the nature and historicaldevelopment of the Portuguese colonial hold on power and also took the form of aseries of lectures and lessons for ‘Indigenous Instruction’. Despite the fact that musicrecorded in indigenous languages comprized the majority of Hora Nativa programming,a broader engagement with questions of Mozambican cultural identities was not pursuedby the RCM. Instead, in keeping with the kinds of indigenous programming developedin other parts of Southern Africa, Hora Nativa procured the educational and morebroadly ‘civilizational’ upliftment and direction of the native population through meansof construcao social. Social constructions of colonial government and administrationwere disseminated toward a mythologized and undifferentiated space ‘the bush’ (aomato) where the Mozambican population awaited cultural, economic and politicalassimilation and ‘colonial progress’.

The correspondence between the ‘native dialects’ in which the RCM choose tobroadcast Hora Nativa (and later Voz de Mocambique) and the actual territorialconfigurations in which these languages were spoken appears to have been negligible.In 1959 for example, when the RCM began to broadcast Hora Nativa on an experimentalbasis in the Sul do Save region, the RCM claimed that it was not worth broadcastingin Chope, a language widely spoken in the province of Inhambane, since that ‘dialect’was “simply a variation of Shangaan . . . one which is gradually losing its significanceto the more prominent Bantu dialects of the extreme South of the colony”.[85] Chope,however, is still a popular language in Mozambique and in ‘postcolonial’ timesbroadcasting in this language has been expanded particularly in the province ofInhambane.

It appears however that the RCM conducted very little research into the territorialcoverage of these linguistic groupings, with the decision-making process being basedalmost entirely upon political considerations. The linguistic broadcast spaces constructedby the colonial state through the RCM (based on these questionable criteria) have insome ways partly survived the demise of colonialism.[86] It is also salient at thispoint to compare the ways in which Emissao A developed broadcasts concerning thePortuguese language with those developed through Hora Nativa and Voz de Mocambiqueconcerning ‘native dialects’. Not only was the status of Mozambican languages vastlydifferent in each case but also the volumes of programming were distinctly unequal.[87]

Emissao A broadcast some four hours of programming each week from 1961 dedicated

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to the teaching of Licoes de Lingua Portuguesa (Portuguese language lessons) wherethe grammatical structure, punctuation, pronunciation and verb tenses of Portuguesewere discussed and compared with other languages of the world (principally of Europe).No such ‘lessons’ were ever developed for the broadcast of ‘native dialects’ since theIndigena, undergoing broadcast instruction in the ways of colonial modernity, were tobe instructed that their ‘dialects’ and cultural traditions were in and of themselves oflow social and historical status in comparison to Portuguese. Ilda Estevao, born in1942 and employed as a presenter by the RCM from 1962 to work on Portugues MingaLingua (Portuguese My Language), recalls of the programme that “I spoke in aPortuguese full of errors and my colleague corrected me”.[88] Social construction andcorrection were central objectives in the development of colonial broadcasting for theIndigena.

Conclusion

It [radio] is a means of escaping the inert, passive and sterilizing pressure of the nativeenvironment.[89]

The ‘Radio-Colonizacao’ of Mozambique attempted by the RCM beginning in theearly 1930s forms arguably one of the most significant episodes in the history of identityformation in colonial Mozambique. The aims and objectives of the Radio Clube werecomplex and varied quite considerably over time but in general were never very far inorientation from the perceived interests and intentions of the colonial state. Numerouseditorials printed in the RCM’s monthly magazine Radio Mocambique consistentlypromoted the role of colonial broadcasting in the development of colonial modernity,repeatedly constructing the Radio Clube as a wider and logical extension of the colonialstate itself. Each and every visit by an Imperial state official was adoringly coveted bythe RCM following their every footstep across this distant outpost of the Portugueseempire. In time developments in broadcasting technology permitted transmissions fromthe colonial capital Lourenco Marques to be heard in the Metropole and thus throughoutthe empire, thus fulfilling the dreams of many a colonial radio-amador (radio enthusiast).

Two enduring features of the Radio Clube in its attempt to supplement state-ledcolonization activities were its overwhelming domination by men and notions ofmasculine entrepeneurship and its dependence upon state subsidies and advertisingrevenues. Advertising was never the “terrible dilemma” for the RCM that it wasconstructed as (in opposition to cultural and artistic ambitions) but was rather afundamental basis upon which the colonization of Mozambique by radio had begunto proceed. When women were considered important users of the medium in colonialMozambique it was often only as passive recipients of commercial messages, as ‘numbed’and home-bound receivers of advertising. The “cultural upliftment” of colonial settlersthrough musical and artistic programming was, however, an extremely important partof the scope of radio broadcasting in colonial Mozambique. Radio provided animportant source of assuagement for the tensions and anxieties created by imperialisolation, particularly for settlers resident in some of the more remote areas of thecolony. It was here that the RCM engaged the majority of its energies, in disseminatingnews about the development of colonial modernity and in pointing up the centralityof the colonial state to that process.

The extremely belated insertion of indigenous colonial subjects into the scope of theRCM’s activities is also particularly important and deserves further study. Colonial


state power institutionally reinforced differences and tensions between ethnicities andthis process was undoubtedly supported by colonial radio-broadcasting.[90] For decadesprior to the outbreak of anti-colonial warfare in Mozambique the non-white populationof the colony was almost entirely excluded from colonial radio broadcasting except fortheir occasional and sporadic interest to white settlers as ‘folkloric’ musicians or morerecently as passive ethnographic subjects capable only of illustrating advances incolonial anthropology, or ignorance of the technologies of colonial modernity.[91] Vozde Mocambique was strongly motivated by the emergence of the ‘psycho-social’ actionand ‘social promotion’ programmes instigated by the colonial state to counter thegrowing strength of Mozambican nationalism and the increasing usage that nationalistswere making of communications technologies. Although experiments with radio-broad-casting during the propaganda war of anti-colonial conflict provided African nationalistsin Mozambique with an experience upon which to base their control of Radio Mo-zambique in ‘postcolonial’ times, the complex task of dismantling and decolonizing theinstitutional reinforcement of ethnic difference in broadcasting is on-going.

School of GeographyUniversity of LeedsLeeds LS2 9JTUK

AcknowledgementsRadio Mozambique provided access to a variety of important archival material and the illustrationused in Figure 2. Staff at the RM archives in Maputo and at the Mozambique Historical Archive(AHM) offered crucial support and advice for this research. Useful comments on earlier draftsof this paper were provided by James Sidaway, Martin Purvis and two anonymous referees. Theusual disclaimers apply.

Notes[1] R. Junior, Para uma cultura Mocambicana, Noticias 7 May 1949, 10–11; R. Junior, Para

uma Cultura Mocambicana: a proposito de Radio Clube de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique156 (1949) 56–57; R. Junior, Para uma cultura Africana de expressao Portuguesa (Braga1978).

[2] Centro de Informacao e Turismo (CIT) (1971), Informacao No. 130/T/3884/971, 20 April1971, CIT, Lourenco Marques, pasta No 3962, Arquivo Historico de Mocambique; (CIT)(1971) Informacao No. 1666/T/3434/972 (correspondence with Cesaro Abel de AlmeidaViana, 19 February 1972) (Lourenco Marques, pasta No 3962, Arquivo Historico deMocambique).

[3] The feminine is consciously invoked here. The interweaving of discourses of femininity andof colonialism in the Portuguese empire has been a neglected area of research until relativelyrecently. For a useful and insightful discussion of the construction of femininities throughPortuguese imperialism see L. Madureira, The discreet seductiveness of the crumblingempire: sex, violence and colonialism in the fiction of Antonio Lobo Antunes, Luso-BrazilianReview 32 (1995) 17–29. In a later section of this paper the representation of femininities isdiscussed in some depth, largely in relation to the contrasting notions of the ‘feminine’articulated by the RCM for its white and non-white listenership.

[4] Recorded transmission of the Movimento Mocambique Livre occupation of the RCM, 07/09/74, Radio Mocambique archive.

[5] A. Rita-Ferreira, Mocambique post-25 de Abril: Causas do Exodo da Populacao de OrigemEuropeia e Asiatica, extract from his Mocambique: Cultura e Historia de um pais (Coimbra1988). The headquarters of the daily newspaper Noticias in Central Lourenco Marques wasbombed in 1974. On the streets of Lourenco Marques, violent demonstrations, bombingsand shootings were common place throughout much of this period as the colonial state

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negotiated the terms of its withdrawal and as Mozambican nationalists began to lay claimto the capital city.

[6] J. F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London 1993) 53.[7] Radio Clube de Mocambique (hereafter RCM), A Voz de Mocambique vai chegar a

Metropole em toda a roda do ano, Radio Mocambique 242 (1956) 10; RCM, RadioColonizacao, Radio Mocambique 26 (1937) 1.

[8] As if in response to this importance attached to the vocalization of ‘national voices’, whenFrelimo began broadcasting toward Mozambique from Dar-es-Salaam in the late 1960s thestation was known as the Voz de Frelimo. See E. Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique(London 1969).

[9] Even in the case of Emissao A (the first and most popular broadcast, transmitted inPortuguese) the RCM transmitted a substantial proportion of programmes sponsored bythe various diplomatic embassies present in the colony. Voz da Brazil, Voz da Inglaterra andVoz da Franca were outweighed in popularity terms only by the programmes the RCMproduced itself in French (directed at the French speaking population of Madagascar andCentral Africa) in Afrikaans and in English.

[10] RCM, Radio Colonizacao, Radio Mocambique 26 (1937) 1.[11] The Estado Novo or ‘New State’ was a European as well as a Portuguese phenomenon, its

very name a characteristic of the ideologies of the era. See M. Newitt, Portugal in Africa:The Last Hundred Years (London 1981); M. Newitt, A History of Mozambique (London1995). Beginning with a military coup against the Republican government in 1926, in thefirst four years of the ‘new state’ Professor Antonio Salazar of Coimbra University cameto dominate the administration after he was asked to intervene in the country’s ailingfinancial affairs in 1928. By 1930 Salazar had taken a grip on the government, insisting thathe should have a veto over the budgets of every government department. In 1932 Salazarbecame prime minister, a post he held without a break until 1968, by which time Salazarand his associates—most notably Professor Marcello Caetano—had produced a new con-stitution and created an ideological structure which would dominate Portuguese affairs forthe next 40 years.

[12] RCM, Historia do Radio Clube de Mocambique (Lourenco Marques 1961).[13] The RCM’s monthly magazine (published almost continuously between 1934 and 1974),

RCM programming schedules and broadcasts and RCM annual reports are the principalsources for this analysis.

[14] L. Schafer Gross (Ed.), The International World of Electronic Media (London 1995) 225.[15] F. Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (London 1989) 71 (emphasis added).[16] RCM, Historia do Radio Clube de Mocambique (Lourenco Marques 1961).[17] RCM, Historia do Radio Clube de Mocambique (Lourenco Marques 1961) 23.[18] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao- Exercicio de 1949, Radio Mocambique 166 (1950) 3.[19] A. Dias, M. Dias and M. Guerreiro, Missao de Estudos das Minorias Etnicas do Ultramar

Portugues: Relatorio da Campanha de 1959 (Lisbon 1960); A. J. Dias, M. Dias and M. V.Guerreiro, Os Macondes de Mocambique (Lisbon 1964); A. Dias, Problemas politicos esociais observadas do planalto Maconde (unpublished paper, copy available from the Centrode Estudos Africanos, UEM, Maputo 1959); A. Dias, The Makonde people: history,environment and economy, Actas 11 (1963) 34–67; A. Dias Contribuicao para o estudo daquestao racial e da miscegenacao, Boletim da Sociedade de estudos Mocambicanos 114 (1964)63–72.

[20] Noticias, 15 October 1953, 7.[21] RCM, Radio Pax: Emissora catolica de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique (1954) 3.[22] Uma Nova emissora em Mocambique: Radio Pax na Biera, Noticias 10 October 1954, 4.[23] RCM, A Voz de Mocambique vai chegar a Metropole em toda a roda do ano, Radio

Mocambique 242 (1956) 1–2; RCM, A emissora do Aero Clube da Beira passa por grandetransformacao, Radio Mocambique 261 (1958) 2–3; RCM, 1956, 9–11; RCM, 1958, 2.

[24] Portaria 6, 784, 1 Feb 1947, 4.[25] RCM, A Voz de Mocambique vai chegar a Metropole em toda a roda do ano, Radio

Mocambique 242 (1956) 9.[26] RCM, O Radio Clube de Mocambique e a Emissora do Aero Clube da Beira associam-se

para maior desensolvimento e prestigio da radiodifusao em Mocambique, Radio Mocambique234 (1956) 9–11.

[27] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao 1945, Radio Mocambique 121 (1946) 1.


[28] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao—1948, Radio Mocambique 154 (1949) 1–5; RCM, Estatutosdo Radio Clube de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 132 (1947) 11–4.

[29] RCM, A voz de Mocambique: E o nosso mensageiro em todo mundo, Radio Mocambique135 (1947) 6.

[30] RCM, Aqui Lisboa, Radio Mocambique (1953) 9–10, quote on p. 9.[31] RCM, O inquerito do Radio Clube de Mocambique aos seus ouvintes, Radio Mocambique

274 (1959) 4.[32] RCM, Historia do Radio Clube de Mocambique (Lourenco Marques 1961) 23.[33] Interview with Joao de Sousa, Radio Mocambique, September 17 1998. A. Magaia, In-

formacao em Mocambique: A forca da palavra (Maputo 1994).[34] The origin of the Companhia de Mocambique dates from the mineral and timber concessions

awarded to Paiva de Andrada in central Mozambique in 1878. Portuguese high commissionerAntonio Ennes had been keen to remodel the historic institution of the prazos to attractforeign plantation capital and solve problems of ‘pacification’ and administration. Here theproblems of economic development, pacification and administration were being entrustedto a single charter company. The use of concession companies to pacify and administercolonial territories was not insignificant, with the Mozambique company controlling thecentral provinces of the colony until 1941 and through the establishment of the NiassaCompany in Northern Mozambique which operated between 1894 and 1929.

[35] When FRELIMO, the ruling party in postcolonial Mozambique, came to power in 1975the ideological potential of radio-broadcasting was immediately recognized. In the first yearsof Socialist revolution in the country, radio was at the heart of FRELIMO’s attemptedsocialist revolution, which (through the lenses of a vanguard Marxism–Leninism) coun-terposed the objectives of Radio Mozambique against all that its predecessor appeared tostand for. FRELIMO’s senior ideologues frequently referred to colonial broadcasters as theepitome of a bourgeois-bureaucracy, as the incarnation of all that was wrong with colonialsociety and that which would be antithetical to the behaviour of postcolonial state officialsand broadcasters alike. Radio Mocambique (hereafter RM), ‘Relatorio sobre a situacaogeral do Emissor Provincial da RM em Inhambane’, Radio Mocambique (1979); RM,‘Relatorio da Radio Mocambique: II seminario nacional da Informacao’ (1979); I. Christie,Machel of Mozambique (Harare 1988); S. Machel, O Processo da Revolucao democraticapopular em Mocambique (Maputo 1976); S. Machel, Declaramos Guerra ao Inimigo interno,(Maputo 1980); J. Rebelo, Editorial, Mozambique Revolution 42 (1972) 1–7; J. Rebelo,‘Informacao e Propaganda’ (paper presented to the Departmento da Informacao e Pro-paganda conference, Macomia, 26–30 November 1975); J. Rebelo, Discurso da abertura desua excelencia o Ministro da Informacao da Republica popular de Mocambique, in InstitutoNacional de Cinema, Documentos: Conferencia Africana de cooperacao cinematografica(Maputo 1977) 9–21; J. Rebelo, Information y Propaganda, in A. Mattelart (Ed.), Com-unicacion y transicion al socialismo (Avena 1981) 121–32.

[36] RCM, Uma dilemma terrivel, Radio Mocambique 293 (1960) 1–2; RCM, Relatorio daDireccao: ano de 1959, Radio Mocambique 285 (1960) 1–7.

[37] RCM, A radio ao servico da Nacao, Radio Mocambique 246 (1957) 7.[38] Ibid., 29.[39] RCM, Aqui Lisboa, Radio Mocambique (1953) 9.[40] Up until the early 1850s the Portuguese colonies had been supervised by the old Conselho

Ultramarino but in 1859 they were formally brought under the control of the Naval Ministry,renamed the Ministerio da Marinha e Ultramar. In practice the colonies were largelyadministered by service personnel and the character of the government remained distinctlymilitary. See Newitt, A History of Mozambique.

[41] In 1958 the RCM began broadcasting a programme recorded in French and dedicated tothe Belgian Congo. The head of the colonial state in the Congo at this time wrote a letterto the RCM congratulating them for the high quality of this service which lasted for nearly10 years. See RCM (1959) 4.

[42] RCM, A radio e a cultura popular, Radio Mocambique 215 (1954) 22–3.[43] It is important to remember that at this time television was banned in the Republic of South

Africa and that South African radio stations were subject to heavy censorship. Of particularconcern to the Apartheid state was the desire to prevent the transmission and broadcast ofanything which appeared remotely multi-racial.

[44] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao Ano de 1963, Radio Mocambique 322 (1963) 3–7.

626 M. POWER

[45] RCM, Relatorio e Contas de 1938 do Radio Clube de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 45(1939) 6–9; RCM, O que ha . . . Rumo certo, rumo nosso, Radio Mocambique 49 (1939)6–10.

[46] P. Scannel, Public service broadcasting and modern public life, Media, Culture and Society11 (1989) 135–66; P. Scannel, Public service broadcasting and modern public life, in P.Scannel, P. Schlesinger and C. Sparks (Eds), Culture and Power (London 1992) 317–48; P.Scannel, Media events, Media, Culture and Society 17 (1995) 151–7.

[47] Fanon, op. cit., 71.[48] RCM, ‘O Habito de ouvir radio’, Radio Mocambique 219 (1954) 1–2; RCM, Relatorio da

Direccao 1956, Radio Mocambique 249 (1956) 1–9.[49] ‘Programas que justificam a funcao cultural do R.C.M.’, Noticias, 6 September 1954, 8.[50] Manuel Rodrigues (and later his sons) virtually monopolized the ownership of cinema

houses in Mozambique and had a long, illustrious history of relations with the US cinemamagnate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. See Homenagem, Individual que prestigia a nossa cidade,Diario, 14 May 1954, 12.

[51] By 1941, the RCM had over 1400 affiliates, many of which were based in other Portuguesecolonies and in neighbouring Southern African countries. The annual reports of the RCMup until 1944 occasionally listed the racial composition of its membership (and of its staff).See RCM (1940) 23.

[52] RCM, A mulher e o Radio-amadorismo, Radio Mocambique 285 (1960) 9–10.[53] RCM, Costa Lima fala-nos do programa Meia Hora para a Mulher e do Dia da Mae,

Radio Mocambique 169 (1950) 2.[54] RCM, Da Mulher para a Mulher, Radio Mocambique 359 (1967) 24–5.[55] The word ‘colonist’ was one of the principal subjects of the president’s speech where he

derides the derogatory connotations the word had begun to acquire and points out that“colonist [colono] signifies a person who had exchanged their country for another, unknownlife, someone who after exploration transforms the sterile for the productive, reduces thescale of tribal conflicts and transforms the state of savagery to that of being civilized”. SeeRCM (1962) 17.

[56] RCM, Associacao dos Velhos colonos e Radio Clube de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique315 (1962) 10–11.

[57] RCM, A Radio e o Progresso Colonial, Radio Mocambique 137 (1947) 19; RCM (1947) 19,emphasis added.

[58] R. Junior Para uma Cultura Mocambicana: a proposito de Radio Clube de Mocambique,Radio Mocambique 156 (1949) 56–7.

[59] RCM, O Cambio e a Radio: Confusoes indıgenas, Radio Mocambique 24 (1937) 7.[60] F. Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism (London 1989).[61] RCM, A radiofonia em Mocambique: uma entrevista acerca do Radio Clube de Mocambique,

Radio Mocambique 32 (1938) 8–9.[62] RCM, A Radio e o Progresso Colonial, Radio Mocambique 137 (1947) 19.[63] M. Foucault, Nietzche, genealogy, history, in P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader

(London 1976) 76–100; M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London1979); M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977(London 1980).

[64] F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York 1967); F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth(Harmondsworth 1967).

[65] A. Mazrui, Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: the legacy of Frantz Fanon,Third World Quarterly 14 (1993) 351–63.

[66] L. Malkmus and R. Armes, Arab and African Film Making (London 1991); R. Armes, ThirdWorld Film-making and the West (Berkeley 1987).

[67] One feature common to many traditions of radio in Africa is that the ways in which Africanaudiences used the medium in colonial times is poorly documented in available literature.African listeners have used radio in this ‘telling of historical episodes’ but more generallytheir experiences of radio were rarely considered as consistently by colonial broadcastersand the state that sponsored them. For an interesting discussion of African audiences andtheir uses of colonial radio see M. Diawara, Mande oral popular culture revisited by theelectronic media, in K. Barber (Ed.), Readings in African Popular Culture (London 1997)40–8. An attempt is made in a later section of this paper to consider the experiences of anumber of African presenters employed by the RCM for its Voz de Mocambique services.


For an insightful discussion of issues of orality in African communication history seeR. Tomaselli, K. Tomaselli and J. Muller, Broadcasting in South Africa (London 1989);K. Tomaselli, A. Shepperson and M. Eke, Towards a theory of orality in African cinema,Research in African Literatures 26 (1995) 11–36.

[68] Journal da Huila, Sobre as emissoes Radiofonicas para os nativos, Radio Mocambique 325(1963) 7.

[69] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao: ano de 1961, Radio Mocambique 309 (1961) 1–5; RCM, Oservico africano da corporacao de radiodifusao da Rodesia e Niassalandia, Radio Mo-cambique 292 (1960) 5; RCM, Radiodifusao para Indıgenas, Radio Mocambique 292 (1960)1–2; RCM, O servico Africano da corporacao de Radiodifusao Federal das Rodesias eNiassalandia, Radio Mocambique 314 (1962) 4–5; RCM, Radio Banto, Radio Mocambique316 (1962) 19; RCM, A Voz de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 318 (1963) 6–7; RCM,Ainda a Voz de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 321 (1963) 2–5; RCM, Uma Entrevistacom locutores de ‘a Voz de Mocambique’, Radio Mocambique 323 (1963) 9–11; RCM, DosServicos da Accao Psicosocial: A voz de Mocambique a transmitir, Radio Mocambique 326(1963) 22–5; RCM, Relatorio da Direccao: Exercicio de 1963, Radio Mocambique 334 (1964)1–4.

[70] RCM, Radio Banto, Radio Mocambique 316 (1962) 19.[71] J. M. Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles

in Lourenco Marques 1877–1962 (London 1995).[72] Ibid., 65.[73] A label which in many parts of Mozambique continues to the present day.[74] Noticias, 12/10/62, 12, cited in RCM, 1962.[75] Despite carrying many articles about the development of ‘Hora nativa’ and ‘Voz de Mo-

cambique’, nowhere in the journal Radio Mocambique is any mention made of the objectivesof this programme. Very little is known about this highly secretive response from the colonialstate in Mozambique to the incursions of the anti-colonial Mozambican nationalists sinceso much of the documentation associated with the programme was destroyed by thePortuguese secret police (PIDE) in 1974. This state-security police force was established inthe colonies in 1956 and began systematically bringing under surveillance people known tobe hostile to the regime. See T. Henriksen, Mozambique: A History (London 1978); T.Henriksen, Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Mozambique’s war of Independence (Westport1983).

[76] RCM, Accao Educativa e Psicosocial do Exercito em Mocambique: Relatorio das actividadesem 1961, Emprensa Moderna (Lourenco Marques 1962).

[77] For a useful introduction to the history of African music under the regimes of variouscolonial administrations in Africa see K. Barber (Ed.) Readings in African Popular Culture(Oxford 1997).

[78] RCM, Folclore Negro Mocambicana, Radio Mocambique 99 (1943) 4; RCM, Dos Servicosda Accao Psicosocial: A voz de Mocambique a transmitir, Radio Mocambique 326 (1963)22–5.

[79] A. Pereira, Para a historia das Communicacoes em Lourenco Marques (Maputo 1974).[80] At the beginning of the twentieth century, the power of the Makua and Muslim chieftancies

who had led resistance against Portuguese colonial power was curtailed and, with nointention of adopting indirect rule, the Portuguese replaced them with their own chefes doposto and regulos at the purely local level. According to Rocha et al. (1983, 114–5) “therearose once again a multitude of small territorial chiefly units based on local lineages”.Extreme measures of coercion were used by the chefes do posto to fill the labour demandsmade upon them by private employers, from the government for its building projects andfrom foreign contractors who had agreements from the colonial state. See Newitt, 1995;ibid., 410.

[81] RCM, Relatorio da Direccao 1958, Radio Mocambique 273 (1959) 1–8.[82] RCM, A emissora do Aero Clube da Beira passa por grande transformacao, Radio

Mocambique 261 (1958) 2–3.[83] RCM, A emissora to Aero Clube da Beira passa por grande transformacao, Radio Mo-

cambique 261 (1958) 2–3.[84] RCM, A que obedece o novo programa-tipo da Emissora Nacional, Radio Mocambique 291

(1960) 7–9; RCM, A Voz de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 318 (1963) 6–7; RCM, Aindaa Voz de Mocambique, Radio Mocambique 321 (1963) 2–5; RCM, da Mulher para a Mulher,Radio Mocambique 359 (1967) 24–5; RCM 1958, 1959, 1963, 1964.

628 M. POWER

[85] RCM, 1959, 34. After Independence in 1975 President Samora Machel organized a meetingoutside the Radio Mocambique HQ in Maputo where the claimed that there was “a groupof radio workers that had offered service to the colonial regime and for this they ought tobe suspended”. Quoted in Noticias, 19 November 1998.

[86] M. Power, Territory, the state and cultural identitries in ‘post-colonial’ Mozambique (un-published Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham 1997).

[87] RCM, Historia do Radio Clube de Mocambique (Lourenco Marques 1961).[88] Noticias, ‘Ilda Estevao: Uma vida dedicada a Radio’, Domingo, 19 November 1998, 11.[89] Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism, 71; R. Zahar, Colonialism and Alienation (London

1974).[90] C. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (London 1994); M.

Mamdani, Citizen and Subject (Minnesota 1996).[91] RCM, Costumes Indıgenas: Os Macondes, Radio Mocambique 66 (1940) 8; RCM, Viagens,

usos e costumes indıgena no pais do Lumues, Radio Mocambique 71 (1941) 4–5; RCM, Acerimonia da circuncisao entre os Lomues, Radio Mocambique 69 (1941) 8–11.

aqui lourenço marques!! radio colonization and cultural identity in colonial mozambique, 1932–74

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