Mueda massacre

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Headquarters of the district administration in Mueda in 1995 - place of the event on June 16, 1960

The Mueda massacre ( Portuguese Massacre de Mueda ) is a violent crime committed by the Portuguese colonial administration against residents of the small Mozambican town of Mueda on June 16, 1960. After protests by the population in front of the headquarters of the district administrator of Mueda, soldiers opened fire on the crowd, and numerous people are said to have been shot.

The massacre is considered a key event for the establishment of the Mozambican liberation movement Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) two years later and one of the last protests of the Mozambican people before the start of the war of independence four years later. The massacre is still an important part of the official culture of remembrance in Mozambique. The scientific processing questions the version of the events spread by the FRELIMO propaganda.

prehistory

In the course of the independence movements on the African continent, efforts arose in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique to separate from the colonial power Portugal. In particular, the exploitation of the population through forced labor, the poor social and economic situation of the population and the overexploitation of the countryside were considered reasons for the desire for independence. For this purpose, different groups were founded, including the Mozambique African National Union (MANU) in Tanganyika under the leadership of Mozambique-born Mateus Mhole of the Makonde people . Members of the MANU are said to have mainly been Mozambicans from the Makonde and thus to have given the MANU a kind of "ethno-nationalist" orientation. The MANU believed that, following the example of Tanganyika, Mozambique's independence could be achieved through negotiations with the colonial power Portugal. It is considered unclear whether the MANU understood the different relationship between Tanganyika and the United Kingdom in contrast to the relationship between Mozambique and Portugal and was also aware of the geopolitical importance of Mozambique.

The massacre

Mueda (Mozambique)
Mueda
Mueda
The small town of Mueda is located in the Cabo Delgado province, in northern Mozambique; about 75 kilometers from the Tanzanian border.

The exact circumstances of the massacre have not yet been clarified. The state-official Mozambican point of view states that members of the MANU visited the Makonde district (comparable to today 's Mueda district ) in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado several times between 1959 and 1960 to promote their political goals there. The MANU was supported by the Sociedade Algodoeira Africana Voluntária de Moçambique , founded in 1957 , an association of cotton workers in the Makonde highlands. The MANU members asked for a meeting with the colonial administrator of the district, Garcia Soares, with the aim of improving the living conditions of the people in the district. They were put off with a request to come back again in six months.

On June 16, 1960, the two MANU members Faustino Vanomba and Quibirite Diwane (also spelled Chiribite Diwane) again visited Garcia Soares in the city of Mueda. The district administrator had asked frigate captain Carlos Alberto Teixeira da Silva , the colonial governor of the province of Cabo Delgado, to respond to the demands of the MANU representatives. In the course of this, numerous residents of the city and the surrounding area - sources give up to 5000 - gathered in front of the district administration. While the MANU members demanded more independence (literally “liberdade da terra”, “uhuru” in Chimakonde ) and higher prices for the harvested or mined raw materials, Governor Teixeira da Silva only offered a small increase in prices and should primarily benefit from social issues and economic progress.

After around four hours of negotiations, the district administrator Garcia Soares decided to split up the crowd: the local Catholic priest, the “Indians” (Asian minority) and the chiefs (régulos) stayed on the veranda of the house, while everyone else had to stay outside . District administrator Garcia Soares ordered the crowd to salute the Portuguese flag . At the same time, the administrator ordered the two MANU representatives Vanomba and Diwane to be arrested and put in a car. Both led to riots. The protesters tried to prevent the arrest of the MANU activists by throwing stones, among other things. The district administrator then ordered the crowd to be fired to break up the meeting. Numerous people were killed in the process.

How many people were killed in the massacre is still unclear. While local sources report 16 deaths, a military report puts the death toll at 20, and a report by the district administration counted around 30 deaths. The later founded FRELIMO spoke of 150 deaths, and Alberto Chipande , eyewitness and later Chief of Staff of the FRELIMO Army Forças Populares de Libertação de Moçambique , wrote in the FRELIMO magazine Mozambique Revolution of 500 to 600 deaths. The article was also included in Eduardo Mondlane's book Lutar por Moçambique . The numbers given in it are taken from the official Mozambican historiography to this day. It is also unclear who actually shot into the crowd. While some sources say they were Mozambican auxiliary police (cipaios) , others claim that Portuguese soldiers were responsible for the massacre.

Effects

The news of the massacre spread very quickly in Mozambique, especially in the north via the Makonde's internal messenger network, which also worked across borders to Tanganyika. The incident was not reported internationally.

Before the massacre, many Mozambicans at home and abroad believed that there could be a peaceful solution to their homeland's aspirations for independence. The Mueda massacre is seen as a turning point and a clear indication that Portugal would not voluntarily give up its colonies. The massacre motivated many groups - particularly the Makonde in northern Mozambique - to join the armed struggle for independence. Alberto Chipande appeared as an eyewitness to the massacre within FRELIMO and illustrated the brutality of the Portuguese in speeches and reports.

The massacre also led to increased attempts to create structures in the resistance. In 1961 the MANU moved its headquarters to Mombasa , Kenya , where Mateus Mhole led the organization. The União Democrática Nacional de Moçambique (UDENAMO) was founded just 45 days after the massacre in Bulawayo ( Southern Rhodesia ); In Niassaland (now Malawi ), Mozambican migrant workers from the Tete province founded the União Nacional Africana de Moçambique Independente (UNAMI). All three organizations - MANU, UDENAMO, UNAMI - were forerunners and basis for the all-Mozambican independence movement FRELIMO, which was founded in Dar es Salaam in 1962.

reception

The massacre as part of the FRELIMO narrative

June 16 Primary School (Escola Primária 16 de Junho) on the Ilha de Moçambique .
June 16 Primary School (Escola Primária 16 de Junho) on Vladimir Lenine Avenue in Maputo

On the Portuguese side, the impact of the incident - the most casualty since the Barué revolt of 1921 - on the anti-colonial and anti-Portuguese mood in the colony was massively underestimated. In its function for the Mozambican independence movement, the massacre is comparable to the massacre of Pidjiguiti on August 3, 1959 in Bissau ( Portuguese Guinea ) and the revolt of Baixa de Cassanje on January 3 and 4, 1961 in Malanje ( Portuguese West Africa / Angola ) - key events for the independence movements in the other two large Portuguese colonies in Africa.

The Mueda massacre remains a central element of the narrative of FRELIMO, which is still ruling today. It is celebrated as an immanently important event to this day. However, Faustino Vanomba and Quibirite Diwane, the two representatives of the MANU, are not celebrated as heroes these days for political reasons. In the course of FRELIMO's founding in the 1960s, tensions arose in the involvement of the MANU, so that the memory of the massacre is now depersonalized as a collective Mozambican moment and remembered in an anti- tribalist way . The role of the Makonde is hidden.

June 16 is not a public holiday, but is celebrated as a memorial day in Mozambique. Usually the President and other Mozambican politicians lay wreaths at the memorial for the massacre in Mueda every year. "Mueda" is a battle term that describes the harshness of the Portuguese colonial regime. Numerous streets and squares in Mozambique are named after the “Martires de Mueda” (martyrs of Mueda), and many schools have the date of the massacre in their names. On June 16, 1980, Mozambique's new currency - the metical - was introduced as a symbol of final independence from Portugal.

In 1979, the Mozambique-born director Ruy Guerra shot the first Mozambican fiction film in black and white on 35 mm with the title Mueda, Memória e Massacre ("Mueda, memory and massacre"), which tells the story of the Mueda massacre. In the film, Guerra mixes fact and fiction. Guerra also took the annual commemorations and re-enactments of the massacre for the recording ( re-enactments ) of the local population. The film, which was shown in many cinemas in the country, is said to have contributed greatly to the legend of the massacre.

Discussion of myths and facts

It was not until the 1980s that the facts about the Mueda massacre began to be processed, as various historians questioned the background and reports of the incident. Until then, the statements of the veteran Alberto Chipande and his published text in the Mozambique Revolution and in Lutar por Moçambique were the only accessible sources of the history of the massacre. Chipande also repeated his version of the incident in several media outlets, including the anti-colonial Mozambican weekly Tempo .

From 1979 to 1984 two history workshops (Oficina da História) of the Maputo Center for African Studies of the Eduardo Mondlane University investigated the incident. The groups released two documents: a collection of testimony based on interviews with survivors from 1981 and 1982, and the record of the trial of the two arrested MANU agents Vanomba and Diwane. In particular, the testimony of witnesses is considered to be falsified and influenced by the version officially distributed later by FRELIMO. The research was published by historians Yussuf Adam, Hilário Alumasse Dyuti and João Paulo Borges Coelho in 1993 in issue 14 of the Mozambican National Archives' Arquivo magazine .

The French historian Michel Cahen examined the archives of the Portuguese secret police PIDE and the Portuguese military, as well as interviewing Portuguese soldiers and representatives in Portugal. Cahen questioned the official historiography that MANU representatives wanted to negotiate with a local district administration for the independence of their region or even the entire colony. According to Cahen's reading of the PIDE documents, several representatives who repeatedly asked the district administration for negotiations did not belong to the MANU, but to two competing groups, the Tanganyika Mozambique Makonde Association (TMMU), which is strongly linked to the Tanzanian Tanganyika African National Union ( TANU) as well as the Mozambican African Association (MAA), a group that fought for the return of Mozambican migrants from Tanganyika to Mozambique. According to Cahen, the two people arrested, Vanomba and Diwane, belonged to the MAA, which wanted to set up a local migrant organization in Mueda under the name Sociedade dos Africanos de Moçambique . The aim of the two was to bring Mozambican migrants to Mueda, in cooperation with the Portuguese administration, not against them. They also asked for uhuru (freedom for the earth), which does not stand for independence, but in Chimakonde in general for a better life. According to Cahen, the majority of the population reacted negatively to the provincial governor's "arrogant speech". According to him, 7 to 16 people were shot by eight Mozambican auxiliary police officers. Also, the gathering of residents was not a demonstration, but a "banja", a public meeting requested and called by the Cabo Delgados provincial government. However, the local district administration was unable to control such a large crowd.

From Cahen's perspective, the incident was perfectly suited for the propaganda of the later FRELIMO, as the founding members of the MANU allowed them to take up ethno-nationalist currents and thus present themselves as a unifying and at the same time anti-tribalist force. Likewise, the violent response from the Portuguese administration legitimized the armed struggle for Mozambique's independence that began in 1964. As a later high-ranking FRELIMO functionary, Alberto Chipande was able to embody the significance of the massacre for the liberation movement, although it was later questioned whether he was even present at the massacre.

The significance of the massacre for the politicization of the Makonde, their resistance structures in Mozambique and Tanganyika as well as their integration into the all-Mozambican independence movement are still part of controversial scientific debates.

literature

  • John A. Marcum: The Rise of Mozambican Nationalism. In: Edmund Terry Burke and Michael W. Clough (Eds.): African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-65987-9 , pp. 17-34.
  • Chapter World Politics from 1960 to 1975 and Mozambique's Liberation Struggle. In: Sayaka Funada-Classen: The Origins of War in Mozambique: a History of Unity and Division. African Minds, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-1-920489-98-4 , pp. 203-286.
  • Michel Cahen: The Mueda Case and Maconde Political Ethnicity: Some notes on a work in progress. In: Africana Studia. Revista internacional de estudos africanos. No. 2, 1999, pp. 29-46.
  • João Paulo Borges Coelho: O Estado Colonial eo Massacre de Mueda: processo de Quibirite Divane e Faustino Vanombe. In: Arquivo. No. 14, 1993, pp. 129-154.

Individual proof

  1. ^ A b John A. Marcum: Conceiving Mozambique . In: Edmund Terry Burke and Michael W. Clough (Eds.): African Histories and Modernities . Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-65986-2 , pp. 17–34, here: 19 f .
  2. ^ A b c d e Funada-Classen, Sayaka .: The Origins of War in Mozambique: a History of Unity and Division. African Minds, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-1-920489-98-4 , pp. 221 ff .
  3. ^ A b Funada-Classen, Sayaka: The origins of war in Mozambique: a history of unity and division . African Minds, Eccleston Place, South Africa 2012, ISBN 978-1-920489-98-4 , pp. 176 .
  4. ↑ a b Visão História . No. 12 . Lisbon June 2011, p. 36 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Michel Cahen: The Mueda Case and Maconde Political Ethnicity: Some notes on a work in progress . In: Africana Studia . No. 2 . Postage 1999.
  6. ↑ Guilherme Almor de Alpoím Calvão: Quantos morreram em Mueda? In: Público. June 16, 2002, accessed December 27, 2018 (Portuguese).
  7. ^ Joris de Bres: The Mueda Massacre . In: Peter Franks and RW Steele (eds.): Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper . tape 36 , no. 2 . Wellington, New Zealand June 6th 1973.
  8. ↑ a b c d Paolo Israel: Mueda Massacre: The Musical Archive . In: Journal of Southern African Studies . tape 43 , no. 6 , 2017, p. 1157–1179 , doi : 10.1080 / 03057070.2017.1382186 .
  9. ↑ soico TV: 600 moçambicanos foram mortos a exigir Independência no Massacre de Mueda. In: Youtube.com. 2011, accessed December 27, 2018 (Portuguese).
  10. ^ Adrien Barbier / AFP: Mozambique commemorates Mueda massacre. In: Youtube.com. June 17, 2015, accessed December 27, 2018 (Portuguese).
  11. ↑ Ruy Gerra: Mueda, Memóra e Massacre. In: Youtube.com. 1980, accessed December 27, 2018 (Portuguese).
  12. ↑ Diawara, Manthia: African cinema: politics & culture . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1992, ISBN 0-253-31704-5 , pp. 96 .
  13. ↑ Joel das Neves Tembe: Uhuru na Kazi: recapturing MANU nationalism through the Archive . In: Kronos . tape 39 , no. 1 , 2013, p. 257-279 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 30, 2019 .