Mozambique
This text was originally written by the coordinator of the respective volume for the print edition as an introduction to the geographic area in question; the possibility of updating it was left to each author’s discretion. It should be interpreted together with the general introductory text from the respective volume.
Mozambique, being the second most important colonial territory of Portuguese influence on the Sub-Saharan African mainland, features, in common with Angola, a rich ensemble of architectural and urbanistic heritage corresponding to three specific periods. Vestiges of Portuguese origin from the 16th to the 18th centuries are concentrated on the coast northward and to the centre of the territory (Island, Ibo, Quelimane, with Islamic and Indian influence), along with some marks of penetration along the Zambeze River. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the buildings started to become concentrated in the new most important urban cores of the central and southern areas and to extend into the sectors in between with the construction of the first railway lines. Starting around 1875, and throughout the first half of the 20th century, there was also the urbanization and architectural construction of other cities and the structuring of regions of the interior such as the valley of the Limpopo River, Vila Pery/Chimoio, Manica and Sofala, Vila Cabral/Lichinga, Niassa and Nampula, alongside the development of the rail network; later on, in the 1950s-1960s, there was the creation from scratch of airports that ensured air traffic and the improvement of the expanding road system. It is known that the period between 1875 and the mid-twentieth century saw the gradual definition of the territory of Mozambique, with its main axis of penetration, colonization and urbanization. That period also witnessed territorial exploration and settlement, military domination, the establishment of administrative organization, the creation of infrastructures, economic development and the formulation of the main cities, towns and settlements.
Urbanism and territory in the 19th and 20th centuries
In the middle of the 19th century the occupation of the vast Mozambican territory was still patchy: on the coast from Cabo Delgado to Angoche it encompassed about 400 km; to the south it included the long area between Quelimane and Maputo. In the interior it corresponded to an area of about 500 km along the Zambeze as far as Tete and Zumbo. The white population of this vast territory did not exceed 6,000 in 1910, with about 12,000 of mixed race by 1930. The white population would reach around 11,000 in 1918 and 20,000 by 1930. The most active commercial relations were located in the south and in the interior, linked to the Transvaal and Orange regions. These were ensured by ox-cart traders (the Boers, from 1837), and by English from Durban (from 1824) through the area of Gaza (around 1855). The publication As Colónias Portuguesas (1882), a work aimed at the popular promotion, gives us an idea of the timid urbanization process that the territory was undergoing at the time. The province (as it was then named) was divided into eight districts: Mozambique, with 30,000 inhabitants, including 7,000 on the Island of Mozambique; Quelimane with 13,000; Tete with 6,000; Cabo Delgado with 6,500; Sofala with 3,000; Angoche with 65,000; Inhambane with 100,000. As for Lourenço Marques, it had no more than 458 inhabitants. The same work also listed the most visited ports, namely the Island of Mozambique, Lourenço Marques, Ibo and Quelimane; and mentioned as settlements, besides the district capitals, the villages of Mossuril, Cabaceiras and Lumbo in the region of the Island of Mozambique; Sena in the Quelimane district, the colony of Pemba in Cabo Delgado and the military settlement of Bazaruto in Sofala.
In the third and particularly in the last quarter of the 19th century pressure from colonialist countries desirous of settling in Africa and the need to proceed with an effective occupation of the territory (as was imposed soon after by the Berlin Conference in 1885), led to military campaigns (such as the Campaign of the Fort of Ribeira D'Amba, the starting point for the military actions of 1895) and expeditions of a scientific nature. Among these are: those of Serpa Pinto, Capelo and Ivens (the Geographic Mission of 1877); and the mission for the Definition of Borders between Mozambique and the Transvaal, headed by Freire de Andrade, Caldas Xavier and Mateus Serrano in 1890-1891. With the definition of borders to the south (1869), the north (1886), and the west (1891), territorial control entered a new stage, with António Enes, appointed Royal Commissioner in 1894, a stage that enabled the definitive “pacification” of this colonial region, and its subsequent administrative reorganization which was developed until c. 1907. In the economic and administrative domains, the Portuguese State, dealing with its chronic difficulty in terms of funds and human resources (and also because of directing the available resources mainly to Angola), decided to make territorial grants to the “majestic companies', monopolist enterprises mainly with European and international capitals. The most important case was the Companhia de Moçambique (Company of Mozambique), which managed the wide central area of Mozambique surrounding the Zambeze between 1892 and 1942. Functioning almost like a “state within the state” the company controlled the general aspects of territorial management: administration, police, customs, postal issue, economy, industry, bank, public works, and schools. The process was also undertaken by smaller companies, such as the Companhia do Niassa (from 1893 to 1929 - later on, resulting in two districts, Niassa and Cabo Delgado), and the Companhia da Zambezia, of 1892, in Quelimane and Tete. Throughout the 1910s-1930s the territory of Mozambique was administratively organized into six districts and two companies. This stage saw the start of the construction of railway lines for penetration into the interior (the first emerged in 1883-1894, from Lourenço Marques heading to South Africa, and several others were established in the following decades (1900-1920) in the centre and north of the territory. Hence the formation of three maj or rail corridors (as in Angola), generally in the east-west direction: one to the south (from Maputo to South Africa); a central one, a double line (from Beira to Rhodesia of the South-Zimbabwe and to Nyasaland-Malawi); and another to the north, also for the region of Lake Niassa.
In summary, through the processes described above, Mozambique had, by the turn of the 20th century, achieved occupation and military pacification in a territory that had been enlarged and reorganized administratively. The 20th century, particularly between the 1930s and the 1970s, corresponds to the period of development of cities, towns and settlements established in the 19th century, as well as the creation or promotion (for example, by administrative elevation to city status) of many urban cores. The acts of urbanization led by the State, although significantly centralized in Lisbon, gave rise to the numerous urbanization plans developed for most of the urban or proto-urban areas. It is worth mentioning some of them.
The capital was subject to the Plano de Urbanização de Lourenço Marques (Urbanization plan of Lourenço Marques), by the Gabinete da Urbanização Colonial, later Gabinete da Urbanização do Ultramar (Colonial/Overseas Urbanization Office) by João António de Aguiar in 19471952 and approved in 1955. Enlarging the area external to the urban grid of the late 19th century, such as the new area of the city's expansion (separated from it by a ring road forming a long arc), it was designed as as a vast encompassing area, according to the model (characteristic of the period) of the garden city served by a system of large roundabouts. It also predicted an expansion northwards and a settlement around the airport with reserves for indigenous population.
The Cadastro Geométrico (Geometric Cadastre) of the Mozambican capital in this period confirms the progress of the grid-like allotments towards the east and north - where the future quarters of Polana and of Sommerchield would later be built. Within this context, the so-called Unidade Residencial Indígena de Munhuana (Munhuana Indigenous Residential Unit), in the vicinities of the city, was designed as an enlarged “neighbourhood unit" composing a quarter for about 15,000 inhabitants. This kind of urbanization and occupation confirmed the clear choice of a “segregated city” (separating the natives from the colonizers, i.g. quarters for blacks separated from quarters for whites). It was only after 1965 that the guiding plan for the city would be developed in the light of new tenets by the Gabinete de Urbanização (Urbanization Office) of the Maputo Town Hall, co-ordinated by engineer Mário de Azevedo and chief architect José Bruschy in 1967-1973.
There were several plans for the outskirts of the capital in the 1950s-1970s, especially for the cores of Namaacha, Vila Luísa/Marracuene, Bela Vista, Manhiça and Ponta do Ouro. In this territorial section, it is worth mentioning the Plano Regulador da Ocupação dos Solos (Regulatory Plan for the Occupation of Land) by Fernando Mesquita in 1966, a survey undertaken in an effort to organize space from a pioneering perspective; in a way, antisegregation.
In the city of Beira, the organization of the urban space can be divided into three well- defined historical periods: the 1920s, the 1940s and the 1960s. The known plans dating back to the 1920s are academic in expression, being examples of the so-called “city beautiful" its concept based on a design along Beaux Arts lines, that is, emphasizing formal effects and visual composition rather than the functional and pragmatic themes: we are alluding to the Projecto de Urbanização e Alargamento da Cidade da Beira (Urbanization and Enlargement Project for the City of Beira) and Projecto de Urbanização da Praia de Macuti (Urbanization Project for the Beach of Macuti, on the outskirts), both from 1929-1932, by architect Carlos Rebelo de Andrade, with the aid of architects João Aguiar and Lima Franco, who would later be very active in overseas planning. The academic and formalist language was shown in the systematic use of the major straight road axis leading to large roundabouts, and in the search for symmetry. However, due to the political-administrative changes that resulted from the end of the Company of Mozambique jurisdiction and, at the same time to the nature of the language used in those plans, their practical results must have been minimal. In fact, in order to keep abreast of urban and administrative changes, the former Committee of Urban Administration was replaced in 1933 by a regular town hall; the opportunity for the elaboration of a new urbanization plan came-up in 1943, this time undertaken by a partnership: the Ante-Projecto de Urbanização da Cidade da Beira (Preliminary Urbanization Plan for the City of Beira) by architect José Porto and engineer Ribeiro Alegre, but it was only partially followed and implemented. The Plano Regulador da Cidade da Beira (Guiding Plan of the City of Beira) by Carlos Veiga Pinto Camelo (1965) and Plano da Região (Plan for the Region) by Leopoldo de Almeida (1966) were elaborated in the 1960s.
For the other cities and towns of Mozambique, it is also important to mention the series of urbanization plans, regional plans, guiding plans, urbanistic layout plans and similar documents which as a whole form a remarkable corpus for this historical period: - to the north, Island of Mozambique (1964); Nacala (1941, 1954, 1963 and 1974), city in 1959; António Enes/Angoche (1924, 1932, 1965, reviewed in 1972), city in 1970; Porto Amélia/Pemba (1936, 1956, 1963), city in 1930; Nampula (1962), city in 1935; Vila Cabral/Lichinga (1932, 1961, 1971), city in 1962; - in the centre/south, Quelimane (1950, 1966), city in 1942; Tete (1950, 1973); Inhambane (1956, 1967), city in 1956; Manica, city in 1972; Vila Pery/Chimoio (1950, 1958, 1966, 1973), city in 1969; - to the south, João Belo/Xai-Xai (1966, adjusted in 1973), city in 1961; Ressano Garcia (1972); Chibuto (1964).
Several other urbanization plans were executed for Mozambique in this phase, from the initial plans called “settlement projects” (in the 1930s-1940s), up to the final plans from the colonial stage, in 1973-1974, such as those developed by Profabril (for Nova Freixo, Niassa, in 1973), or by the Hidrotécnica Portuguesa, for Trigo de Morais/Chokwe (1974) - confirming the continuity of the urbanization effort in the territory.
Importance of modern architecture, remarkable buildings and monuments
Without prejudice to an assessment of the value of the buildings built throughout the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century in Mozambique, emphasis, in terms of heritage, must be placed on the modernist and modern stage in the 20th century, which corresponds to the last 50 years of the colonial period. In fact, it is important to highlight a series of architectural works of clear value and originality, whether in terms of urban location, or for their aesthetic and functional quality, within the cultural frameworks of the so-called Modernist Architecture of the 1930s-1940s, and the Modern Architecture of the 1950s-1970s.
As we have seen in the general introduction to the Sub-Saharan region, these works were executed by architects who were almost all trained in Lisbon and Porto, apart from periods of training connected with European schools and those of Anglo-Saxon inspiration (the latter explained by the proximity of South Africa), with branches in Maputo and Beira. Analysed as a whole, we note some differences regarding the context and especially in architectural language and style from the works of modern architects in Angola. In the end,
Mozambique possesses works of a greater expressive diversity, which often surpassed (or at least reinvented, or even subverted) the modern influence based on the model of Europe and Le Corbusier - and was especially influenced by architecture from Central and South America (Mexican and Brazilian, as in the work of João José Tinoco or Garizo do Carmo), and even inspired from African art (for example, Pancho Guedes).
Another particular feature of the Mozambican heritage lies in the importance of two territorial areas marked by the scattered occupation of the land: the valley of the Limpopo and the prazos of Zambezi. In both cases, the main elements of heritage value are not the small cores that were built in each place in those two regions, but the structuring of the territories as a whole. In the case of the Limpopo valley, the essential results from agrarian colonization through irrigation (1950s-1970s), with its system of channels, dams, waterways and bridges, along with planned core settlements throughout the area. As for the prazos of Zambezi, this consists of a very wide sub-region, but with a solid cohesion in its historical process of settlement and colonization, a process which begun in the 16th-17th centuries barely interrupted until the dawn of the 20th century.
However, unlike architecture, there is little difference between Angolan and Mozambican public statuary and monuments in the main cities and towns. In both cases traditional and figurative models were followed from a monumental and academic perspective. This tendency showed the persistence until late of traditional, figurative and realistic sculpture from the last stages of the monarchy and the First Republic, and was in the spirit of the neo-conservative ideology of the subsequent period of the Estado Novo. In fact the commemorative and evocative pretexts were common to the two major colonial territories and the varied scales of the existing urban structures, in which the monuments were set, were also similar.
Heritage aspects
When comparing Mozambique and Angola, in certain aspects of contemporary heritage problems and actions, the contrasts come-up, especially regarding the absence of the former values and the lack of understanding, or awareness by the national community, of the importance and scope of modernism in architecture. On the one hand, there is probably, generally speaking, a more consistent cultural training and understanding of modern architectural values in the Mozambican architectural community and its associates, as opposed to Angola, where the legacy of neo-traditional Estado Novo architecture is heavier; on the other hand there is less pressure for urban renewal, the country being less wealthy and consequently with slower cycles of urban demolition/reconstruction of its built heritage. However, this does not mean that there are no problems. It is worth remembering, for example, the decay and abandonment of the most important modernist building of Beira (the Grande Hotel, possibly no longer recoverable); and the partial destruction of the ensemble of Ministry of Agriculture buildings in Maputo (work by João José Tinoco), following a fire that damaged it significantly and which was probably connected to the chronic lack of maintenance of its structures and spaces.