Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
cial barriers of Lourenço Marques, this shantytown elite was, following independence,
poised to enter Maputo with confidence.
The experience of personal racial humiliation in Lourenço Marques influenced many
early policy decisions by Frelimo (Hall and Young 1997). Many leaders of the new
government,includingPresidentSamoraMachel,hadthemselvesbeen
assimilados
,had
been promised equality by the Portuguese in principle, and then denied it in practice.
During Machel's 1976 speech announcing the nationalization of rental housing, he re-
called for his audiences the apartheid structure of the colonial capital. Nationaliza-
tion—which appropriated for the government not just abandoned properties around the
country, but all rental housing in Mozambique's various Cities of Cement—would be an
important victory over the legacy of colonialism, as it would end capitalist speculation
and abolish racial and social discrimination in housing. The apartment buildings of the
city were “built on top of our bones, and the cement, sand, and water in those build-
ings is none other than the blood of the workers, the sweat of the workers, the blood of
the Mozambican people! Buildings are the highest forms of exploitation of our people”
(Machel 1976, 60).
Figure 10.8
Mozambique's President Samora Machel addresses a Maputo crowd, 1980. (Credit:
Martinho Fernando/CDFF)
AsMachelendedhisspeech,heissuedacaveat.Thepresidentwarnedthatnotevery-
one who wanted an apartment or a house in the City of Cement would get one. Only
thosewhomadeareasonableincome,hesaid,wouldbeabletoaffordtoliveinanation-
alized building. The buildings were state assets. The loans that had financed their con-
struction somehow had to be paid off. Although rents were dramatically reduced from
what they had been previously, the nationalization of rental buildings was still geared
towardthosewhocouldrecoupthegovernment'sinvestmentandbestmaintainthephys-
ical condition of the colonial inheritance.
