Our Town, May 1, 1953

This is the second of two columns on the natives of Mozambique. Thursday Scott reported how it appeared at first that the natives enjoyed a happier life in this territory but it turned out to be the same old South African story.

LOURENCO MARQUES, Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa –The government here makes some surprising token contributions to remind the black man that his interests lie close to the governor-general's tender heart. Ninety-nine percent of Mozambique's natives live in thatch huts, but there is one impressive housing development here with electricity, running water, a small patch of garden and all for about $5 a month. I saw nothing like it anywhere in South Africa. There are also schools, recreational clubs, maternity centres and hospital facilities. They are hopelessly inadequate to cope with anything but a tiny minority of the population and yet there are said to be more hospital beds for natives in this relatively small colony than in all of South Africa. These gestures, while ludicrously small, are a constant and well-publicized reminder to the black man that he, too, might some day know the full benevolence of his masters. Perhaps the most dramatic of all these lollipops is the ' theoretical hope of  one day becoming, in fact, the equal of the white,' a promise contained in the magic word "as-similado."

Should a native overcome the tremendous obstacles of environment and lack of schooling he may take certain tests to prove that he is "assimilated." Then he will be entitled to register as a citizen, buy property, live where he pleases and cast his vote for the machine. The "assimilado" idea seemed to me to offer at least a hope that is denied the natives of South Africa and so I went into it thoroughly with an assistant to an assistant director of native affairs. And found it a cruel hoax. The native must first have the unqualified endorsement of three "white" witnesses, this in itself almost impossible - since most whites fear repercussions should their candidate fail. 

They must testify, among other things, that he has abandoned all such tribal practises as pagan dances and witchcraft, that he has never been arrested and that he earns at least 600 escudos (or about $20 a week). An examiner's board then looks over the aspirant to see that he is "properly Portuguese in language, habits and dress." Finally comes the cruellest test of all a rapid-fire dictation of advanced Portuguese. Five mistakes in spelling or punctuation are all that's needed to be failed.

It says little for the hypocrisy of the white man and much for the determination of the black that out of more than five million natives some 1200 have made the grade. Even with his certificate of citizenship the "assimilado"  has no way of changing his pigment of skin and thus is even more exposed than before to what is, without being put into writing, a well-defined practise of discrimination. 

While the native may sit on the same waiting bench or in the bus with you or stand in the same queue at the bank or sit, by his own choice, in one corner of the same church, he does not enter a first or even second class European cafe or bar. The soft-pedal treatment of the natives in the cities does not exist in the rural areas where the cheap labor really counts. Since the capital of Lourenco Marques depends heavily for revenue as a port serving South Africa and particularly the Transvaal, the parent government at Lisbon has worked out a deal so infamous that even the lowliest native in the cities is aware of it. 

This Is known as the Mozambique Convention by which Mozambique guarantees to supply the Transvaal with 80,000 Portuguese natives for work in the mines, with a minimum contract of a year, in return for 47H percent of the Transvaal's transit traffic or, in simpler terms, an exchange of conscripted, low-wage laborers in return for a guaranteed port subsidy. 

The average colonial white Portuguese, himself, shrugs such things aside, tells you to simply look at the undeniably happy-go-lucky air of his six servants, and may even convince himself- as one host at a dinner solemnly said to me, that "with wisdom and tolerance we have set a goal for all Africa." 

You could believe him, too, if you didn't look twice.