Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER
10
From Racial Discrimination to Class Segregation in
Postcolonial Urban Mozambique
DAVID MORTON
In 1968, Sebastião Chithombe left his family's farm in Mozambique's countryside and
headed for the city of Lourenço Marques. Mozambique, stretching some 1,500 miles
along the coast of southeast Africa, was at the time a colony of Portugal; Lourenço
Marques, in the far south, was its capital. Chithombe was 14. He came to the city hoping
to earn some cash, buy shoes and nice clothes, and then return to his parents' fields. But
staying in the city soon became its own justification.
Chithombe's first home in Lourenço Marques was in the backyard of the Portuguese-
owned cantina where he worked, at the edge of the city's shantytowns. Within a year
he moved into the shantytowns, to a ramshackle compound built of zinc panels where
he shared a small airless room with several other young men. There was no furniture.
Between them they had a coal-burning stove, a cooking pot, dishes, a pail to fetch water
with, and two reed mats for the five of them to sleep on. Chithombe opened a stall at a
local market, made more money, and over the years moved into one larger room in the
compound after another. By 1974, he was sharing a two-room unit with his brother. The
roof did not leak as much as the other rooms he had lived in.
Mozambique became independent of Portugal in June 1975. In the months leading up
to the scheduled handover, most of the Portuguese population left, many going to Por-
tugal and many to neighboring South Africa. In Lourenço Marques, most whites lived in
what was colloquially known as the City of Cement, the formalized part of the city, and
as they departed, some left their homes in the care of African friends or employees. One
ofChithombe'sfriendswasgiftedanapartmentbyaPortuguesefriend.WhenChithombe
visited his friend at his new home, it was the first time Chithombe had ever been inside
an apartment in the City of Cement as a welcome visitor, rather than as a laborer. The
experience was bewildering. Entering through the apartment's front door, rather than the
servants' entrance, Chithombe went to the bathroom and washed his hands. “It was the
