LOURENCO MARQUES, Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa. – Down in the Union of South Africa they're unsuccessfully trying to lick the "native problem" by the law and the lash. Here in this sun-baked colony of Portugal they've successfully done it by giving the black man lollipops,

At first glance – especially if you have just come from South Africa, it's exciting to find  white and black intermingled. 

An official booklet handed to new arrivals says, "Portugese, laws do not allow for any form of color-bar or distinction of color." There's not a single European- only sign in all Lourenco Marques to separate the white from the black, who outnumbers him 30 to one. 

Native crime is almost unknown. South Africans who holiday here are amazed to find that they may leave their car or hotel room unlocked without danger of theft, unheard of in Johannesburg or Capetown where abject poverty has made petty thieves of thousands of natives. 

A drunken native is a rare sight here– in a week I have not seen a single one. Last year, I learned at police head-quarters, there were less than a thousand in all Mozambique jailed for drunkenness– a thousand in a native population of more than five million. 

More surprising than this, however, is the startling difference in the personality of the average native here as compared with South Africa. 

There is laughter and light-heartedness. It is a joyful experience to stroll through a busy native market and to watch the good-humored bargaining. Men and women of black skin walk and behave with a dignity I thought I would never see again.

 In a store where I went to buy swimming trunks the white clerk served the black customers who were ahead of me (it would never happen in Johannesburg) and treated them with equal courtesy. 

I was prepared at that moment to overlook some of the more unsavory facts of this tight little outpost of a dictatorship. But then I began to look for the reasons behind all this, discovered a policy that is cold-bloodedly, diabolically efficient and began to wonder if South Africa's ruthless suppression isn't, in fact, the milder "solution." 

The Mozambique policy works by merging two diametrically opposed theories. One, in the soft words of a Portuguese colonial official, is to give the native "a deep-rooted respect for authority." The other is to keep alive his hope for a better life. One keeps him good. The other keeps him happy. It could only work, of course, in a dictatorship. For here there is no such thing as a politically-aware native. 

No Native Newspaper

In South Africa you find a great many small newspapers and periodicals, some of them obviously Communist-inspired (with much space devoted to Russia's peace campaign and the Rosenberg case), but many speaking honestly for the native's interest. 

There are scores of organizations, notably the African and Indian Congresses, battling, often at odds, against "apartheid." 

While many of their members are imprisoned, the organizations, themselves, live on. There are individual white men like Father Huddleston and Patrick Duncan, about whom I wrote the other day, who are still able to speak out against oppression. 

And because of this, even at the lowest level, you find South African natives who know the real issues. Here In- Mozambique there Is none of that. There's not a single anti-government, liberal or native newspaper. 

No voice is allowed to be raised in criticism of authority. A rigid censorship stops at the border any periodicals which might plant some obvious questions in a native's mind or, for that matter, a white man's. 

"Agitators" or "subversives" who crop up from time to time disappear silently and swiftly. Expulson is the threat hanging over the head of every man who speaks his own mind back to Portugal and a solitary cell for the white "agitator" or across to the sweltering west coast colony of Angola for the native criminal. 

The crime rate is kept to nothing because even a minor offense is treated as a major crime and, above all, the native fears banishment to another country. 

A leading Lourenco Marques businessman told me this story: "Twenty years ago my wife and I came home from a concert and saw a native climbing out of our window. The man had once worked for us and had been a good servant. I called to him to stop and he began to run. "I ran after him and tackled him while my wife phoned the police. We found he had broken into the house to steal a novelty ash tray he'd always admired extravagantly. I was prepared to drop the charges because he was a man with a large family but the police took him. He was sent to Angola. He never came back."

Women, too, are expelled and prostitutes are sent to the grim island of San Tome so that –and again these are the official's words –"they may learn to do useful work." 

While the Portuguese constitution does, as the booklet says, specify that there shall be no color discrimination there is a strict nine o'clock curfew for the native population and violations may mean for the "first offense, a six-months sentence on the road gangs or a paddling by the "palmetoria," – a cane-handled disc with a flat, round surface so perforated that it will administer the maximum pain without drawing blood. (Portuguese are sensitive about blood and do not even allow the bulls to be killed in their rings.)

Drink in Moderation 

Such punishment alone, as South Africa has discovered, might not be a complete deterrent to crime, but the masterminds in fascist Portugal have thrown in the lollipops, as well. 

Consider the absence of drunkenness. In South Africa, where it is illegal for a native to have a bottle of spirits in his home, there's an acute alcoholic problem. 

Here they beat it by the very sound theory of encouraging the native population to drink in moderation. Last night, shortly before the closing hour of eight, I went into one of the many native bars. Although I was the only "European" there no one seemed surprised. 

While there's a voluntary segregation, for the most part, there's nothing to prevent inter-racial fraternalism so long as you keep your conversation to the weather. 

It was a small, barren room, but clean and with a pleasant pub-like atmosphere of small talk and laughter. 

The East Indian bartender who had a smattering of English explained that wine only was for sale– Madeira, Muscatel and Careavolas imported from Portugal and poured directly into tumblers from the demijohns. They have a deliberately low alcoholic content and a small tot sells for about three or four cents. There's no limit on the number of drinks a native may have, apart from the fact that he can rarely afford more than three or four. 

The barman, however, is liable for a fine and a prison sentence if he serves an intoxicated native and he, too, has a healthy "respect for authority." 

Those natives who aren't satisfied with such mild imbibing go in for illicit brewing, using pineapples, cashew nuts and fermented sugarcane, but since there's a 90-day stretch on a road gang and a fine of $25 for drunkenness "after hours" parties are conducted behind locked doors or in the bush. (The government has put rigid controls on the sale of yeast and the private growing of sugar cane to cut down this clandestine drinking, which has eliminated the bootleg joints or "shebeens" that flourish in South Africa.)

In effect the native here fills the same classic role that he does throughout all of Africa, doing the back-breaking labor for the white man at starvation wages, but in the cities, where trouble might break out, the Portuguese government provides a cunning illusion of "native rights." 

The effect is one of a huge company union with everything rigged for the company. The native feels that he's being looked after by a strictly-enforced "minimum wage regulation" to prevent "exploitation" by his white employers.

This turns out to be about 40 cents a day or just about the same average as it is in South Africa where no effort is made to dignify exploitation. 

Employers are required to give a contract to the native labor, which they're only too happy to do, and the native is presumably proud to be reminded that in theory the employer may be jailed if he doesn't abide by the deal. From time to time swarms of government officials and every other white man is a part of the well-oiled machine go about questioning native laborers to be sure they are being treated according to their contract. 

(This is the first of two columns on the Negroes of Mozambique.)