Mozambican convert miners: missionaries or a herd without a shepherd?
Dr. Alda Romão Saúte
Department of History
Maputo, Mozambique
asaide@zebra.uem.mz
Abstract
The paper examines the manifold ways that Mozambican migrant miners encountered and explored Christianity in all its complexity, interpreted it in their own cultural and historical contexts, and appropriated it as their own, forging in the process Christian congregations. By exploring the experiences of returning Mozambican miners from South Africa, I contend/argue that the Word of God, the Gospel and literacy in Southern Mozambique, especially in the Maciene District did not come from the sea with the “civilization” and with the big ships, nor from the European missions stations through catechists, but it was spread by returning Mozambican miners converts at their own initiative.
Based on over 100 interviews and extensive field work in the Gaza, Inhambane and Maputo Provinces (the three provinces constituting Southern Mozambique), this study demonstrates that without training or commission by the missionaries, Mozambican miners were not only manifestly proclaiming Christianity and building Christian communities imbued with meaning within the context of their own values and experiences but also introducing literacy, multi-ethnic brotherhood, European notion of space and working days, clothing, agriculture instruments and new ways of building houses. They were, after all the principal socializing agents throughout the countryside.
In short, the crux of the paper is to understand the ways in which Mozambican migrant miners encountered Christianity, built Christian communities in the compounds and in Southern Mozambique, especially in the Maciene District.
Two of the ten men [Mozambican migrant miners] searched had two Bibles each, indicating the result of missionary propaganda in the Transvaal. Now, the blacks carrying these will attempt to spread in their districts the doctrines, which they [the missionaries] had instilled in their spirit. (...) In addition, one of the Bible-carrying mine workers had a pen and pencils, one slate, seven bottles of ink and one packet of envelopes.
Contemplating the Bibles, slate, bottles of ink, pen and pencils in the miners’ boxes, the Governor General of Mozambique, Freire d’Andrade, knew from previous experience as Governor of Inhambane, that the Bibles were going to be read and expounded upon in the home villages of those workers. Using the slate, the Mozambican miners would teach others to read and write, motivating them by showing how the "signs" on the Bible pages could "speak." Andrade saw the Bibles as proof that Mozambican miners had been influenced by Protestant missionaries, and hence, were "de-nationalizing" Mozambicans and in active opposition to Portuguese colonialism.
Andrade’s statement on the impact of Mozambican miners from the Transvaal on local communities allows us to reflect historically on the African-mission encounter in southern Mozambique. Andrade’s statement also suggests that Mozambican convert miners not only posed a serious threat to the stability of the Portuguese and Roman Catholic colonization agenda, but also challenged the assumption that the establishment of Christian missions and spread of Christianity and literacy in southern Mozambique were products of the white missionaries’ efforts.
This paper on Mozambican convert miners: Missionaries or a herd without a shepherd explores the experiences of returning African miners from South Africa because I argue that the growth, expansion, and development of Christianity in southern Mozambique, particularly in the Maciene District has depended on, and been distinctively molded by Mozambican miner initiatives. Without training or commission by the missionaries, Mozambican miners were manifestly proclaiming Christianity and building Christian communities imbued with meaning within the context of their own values and experiences.
The central premise of this paper is that the Word of God and the gospel in Maciene District did not come from the sea with the civilization and with the big ships, nor from the Anglican European mission stations through catechists and neither with the returning refugees of Ngungunhane campaigns, but it was spread by returning Mozambican miners at their own initiative. It also was the effort of returning miners which facilitated the presence of Protestantism/Anglicanism in Maciene despite the Portuguese and Roman Catholic alliance to undercut Protestantism in Mozambique.
Before turning to this issue it is necessary to explore the political and economic conditions of Mozambique in the early stage of Portuguese colonialism in order to provide a context for understanding evangelical work in southern Mozambique, particularly in Maciene District.
A) Mozambique’s political and economic situation on the eve of formal colonial rule:
Portugal’s status as the colonial power in Mozambique.
Portugal’s status as the colonial power of Mozambique was confirmed for the Europeans at the Berlin Conference (1884/5), but more as a result of the competition for position between Germany and Britain, than because of its independent strength. The Berlin treaty simultaneously obliged Portugal to ‘effectively occupy’ its colonies. Thus, at the political level, Portugal not only organized the colonial administration to annihilate its most refractory ‘vassals’, such as the leader of the Gaza kingdom, but also to establish the colonial state apparatus (army, police, court of justice and jails) which would guarantee Mozambican labor by force. Three levels of Portuguese administration operated subordinate to the General-Governor of Mozambique. At the highest level were the district governors, usually military officers. Each district was divided into European and non-European areas. European areas were administered as concelhos (councils) with limited self-government while Mozambicans, living mainly in the rural areas which were administered as circumscrições (circumscriptions) and posto de localidades (local offices). A Portuguese official called chefe or administrador do posto governed each of these circumscrições and posto de localidades with the help of the régulos (usually members of local royal families). Mozambicans were coerced to pay taxes, and to perform chibalo (forced labor).
At the economic level, Portugal, lacking the required financial resources to bring about development, responded by drawing Mozambique into the global network and playing the rentier role by leasing out its colony and its resources to various interests, in particular to British capital. This process took different forms in different parts of Mozambique. In the center and north, under the system of chartered companies, the Portuguese leased out great tracts of the country as concessions to private foreign capital which had rights not only of economic exploitation, but also of administration and political control. The Companhia do Niassa had jurisdiction over an area of 190,000 sq. km and the Companhia de Moçambique controlled a concession of 155,000 sq. km. While northern and central Mozambique were leased to foreign capital, southern Mozambique, the regions south of 22 degrees south of the Save River, were turned into a service economy for South Africa.
Portugal organized the supply of Mozambican workers to the mines of South Africa and, by extension of this service role, labor was bartered for transport services: the Mozambican railways and labor facilities were guaranteed a proportion of South Africa’s import-export traffic. A transport infrastructure was built to serve as an outlet for South Africa’s raw material exports, and it also facilitated the easy flow of men to and from the mines. That flow of men was necessarily a constant and highly regulated one. By the late 1890s, chibalo, labor conscription, and emigration had become intimately linked in a continuously reinforcing spiral; the more labor the gold mines drew from Mozambique, the more Portugal, a weak colonial power, was compelled to rely on cheap, compulsory labor. But forced labor also served to push increasing numbers of males to South Africa where as ‘volunteers,’ they could earn wages far higher than at home. Mozambique consistently provided the highest proportion of migrants for the gold mines although many other countries also furnished labor.
The development of mining in South Africa totally transformed the Mozambican class structure. A class of worker-peasants was formed in the south of Mozambique. In addition to those recruited through the official channels, there was much clandestine emigration, with Mozambicans working in various other sectors of the South African economy. Katzenellenbogen reports that "[As] early as October, 1889 a survey of forty-four mines in the Transvaal revealed that, out of a total of 8013 African mineworkers, 4657, or 58%, were Mozambicans." The Governor of Mozambique, Freire d’Andrade’s report on Mozambique points out the steady flow of Mozambican migrant miners to the Transvaal during the period 1902-1906, as shown in the table below.
Table 1: Statistics of Male Mozambican Immigrants to the Witwatersrand Mines, 1902-1906
________________________________________________________________________
Year Region Total
Maputo Gaza Inhambane
________________________________________________________________________
1902 5,220 19,297 13,168 37,685
1903 3,150 19,531 18,586 41,267
1904 3,432 11,795 11,817 27,044
1905 5,766 17,564 13,894 37,224
1906 *4,676 14,166 17,056 35,898
________________________________________________________________________
Total 22,244 82,353 74,521 179,118
________________________________________________________________________
* Six migrants from West Africa were included.
From the data, Andrade comments that the native population of southern Mozambique, particularly of Gaza and Inhambane, was robbed of over 150,000 males who lived almost permanently in the Transvaal. Their labor, in other words, was used to build up South Africa’s economy and not that of their own country even though labor export provided the Portuguese government with a dependable source of income. Portugal received payments in gold in exchange for each emigrant legally contracted by the WNLA (Witwatersrand Native Labor Association). The persistent absence of a large percentage of the fittest section of the Mozambican workforce contributed to the underdevelopment and peripheralisation of the country. In fact, the high rate and steady labor migration to the South African mines did not only exercise a crucial influence on the reproduction but also labor pressure and reorganization of gender roles in southern Mozambican households. To easy the labor bottleneck, women and older children (girls) performed tasks that their own male relatives and later Portuguese colonial officials often presumed they were biologically incapable of doing. In this labor - exporting zone, women helped by their older children hewed and cleared heavy stumps. Moreover, women besides farming, cooking, fetching water and fire, bearing and raising children, began to be responsible for all the duties in the household in the absence of the husband or man. Thus, one can infer that the principal productive forces of southern Mozambique were not only shaped according to Portugal’s need to accumulate capital, but also according to the needs of capitalist accumulation in South Africa.
Despite Andrade’s concerns, male Mozambican immigration continued to be the distinguishing feature of this region and a major source of colonial revenue. This export of cheap labor continued even after 1926, when Salazar’s regime came to power in Portugal and inaugurated a policy of ‘economic nationalism’ that was intended to create conditions to serve the accumulation needs of the Portuguese bourgeoisie. It was in this political and economic context that Mozambican miners met the missionaries, converted to the Christian faith, built Christian communities and, later on, spread Christianity in southern Mozambique.
B) Mozambican miners meeting missionaries and the building of Christian communities in the mines of South Africa
The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1870 and of gold at the Witwatersrand in 1886 brought in succession a period of prosperity to the economy of southern Africa, the migration of tens of thousand of Africans to South Africa and the propagation and emergence of Christianity both in the compounds and in southern Africa as a whole. The propagation of Christianity in the diamond and gold mines began as early as 1880 and 1890 respectively. Congregationalists, Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Calvinists, the South African Compound Mission (SACM) and Catholics saw the African workers housed in the compounds as a potential source of new converts. It was, in fact, on the South African compounds that Mozambican workers were initially exposed to the Christian message and later built Christian communities.
The compounds where African miners were living were more centers of workers organization and institutions of social control. The compounds generally consisted of four attached buildings forming a square with a large open area in the center. These buildings were divided into rooms, each room containing from ten to twenty Africans. The doors of the rooms all opened to the square, and there were gates guarded by African policemen which the African workers had to pass through in order to get out of the compound. African workers were supplied with maize meal from the steam pots of the compound and meat rations which miners cooked in the compound courtyard. Anything else like beer or other types of food had to be purchased out of their wages in the compound or at neighboring eating houses. Life in the compounds was mainly organized around work with only Sundays or special days like Easter and Christmas off . To illustrate the alienating and dehumanizing conditions of the compounds, Agnew, a Free Methodist missionary stated
the work of visiting the rooms in these compounds would not perhaps suit the high-toned preachers. Some Wesleyan preachers have said that they do not like native work.(...) Some of the rooms to be visited are very dark, very dirty, [very noisy], and the inmates thereof are not anxious to hear the gospel. To go into these rooms and sit on an oil can or an empty dynamite box and endeavor to explain the mystery of godliness is something in which there is little earthly glory, and which wins but little earthly applause.
It is not surprising that some African miners living in these conditions and far from their families, communities and environment, would turn to beershops and brothels in the nearest urban locations. Other groups of miners would involve themselves in faction fights, riotous quarrels or dances. Others would attend schools, churches and brass bands to escape boredom, homesickness and the generally dehumanizing living conditions.
These descriptions of the living conditions of African miners in South Africa help us to understand when, why and how Mozambicans encountered Christianity and joined or built Christian communities. For example, Philip Nyampule, a Mozambican miner described his encounter with the Christian faith as follows:
I came from Gazaland an absolute heathen, to work in the mines. I had never heard about Jesus Christ. I was working in the Wemmer compound. One Saturday night three of my roommates and I went out on a drunken spree. On Sunday morning our thirst drove us out for more. As we were entering the gate of the compound, I noticed a circle of natives gathered around a European, so I remarked to my chums, ‘Hallo [Hello]! What is up there?’ ‘Don’t go near them,’ replied my companions, ‘they are the people of the Abafundizi [priest] and the schools!’ I was just sufficiently under the influence of the intoxicant to make me obstinate and combative, so I said: ‘Who are you, to dictate to me what I must do? and went straight over the group. (...) Then the white man [missionary Baker] said: they [the Mozambican miners] seem to understand nothing at all; their heads are as hard as stones, you can get no sense into them.’ ‘I [Philip] was furious and marched off to our room.’ (...) ‘The following Sunday I went to the open-air meeting. His [Abafundizi] address was principally about the evils of indulgence in intoxicating liquor. He had convinced me that we are fools, and I decided to give up the drink.’
Later on he was baptized and chose the name Philip. Nyampule’s experience was not unique. Gastão Pene Manave, although not one of the first to go to the mines, told a similar story:
On Sundays, during our worship in the church, drunken miners often entered and disrupted the services. The members of the church council, evangelists or catechists (including me) would persuade them to keep silent or to leave. Later on, we would visit them to explain that beer makes people stagger, and swear, and fight and steal, and often lands people in jail, while their wives and children go about naked and starving at home. If they would like to change, we could do something for them, that is, help them to believe in God as we believed. I really remembered Michaque Tsangane, a Xhosa miner, who after my talk said: ‘My heart was pressed with what you said in the church. I had drunk, but I wanted you to pray for me.’ Later on, he converted to the Church of England [Anglican church].
In another account, Agnew, a missionary worker in the compounds, sadly commented in his diary that: "Sometimes in the out-of-door meetings [on Sundays] we would be disturbed by drunken characters and others. (...) So we always invited them into our school and indoor meetings." These disturbances were generally stopped by either the African compound police or other miners. Similarly, Baker explained that one Saturday night he walked round the Wholhuter compound, and going from room to room could not find a single miner to whom he could address the issues of God because of the ongoing beer drinking. "I stood outside and wept," stated Baker.
As the Nyampule, Manave, Angew and Baker accounts reveal, an appreciable number of Mozambican miners encountered missionaries and Christianity during their leisure-time activities, particularly on Sundays. They accepted the new faith because the missionary message touched on their failures and weaknesses, namely, intoxicating liquor. Their accounts also demonstrate that propagation of the gospel on Sundays in the compounds competed with other leisure-time activities.
Like many other southern Mozambicans, Estevão Uamusse crossed the border into South Africa to seek work and training. According to his son, Noé Estevão Uamusse, when his father arrived in the compound he was accommodated in a heathen dormitory. Their life consisted of noise, drunkenness and absence of respect. One day his father complained about the awful life in his room in a talk with his underground co-worker. After a while the co-worker took his father to visit his dormitory. "My dad, astonished with the order, neatness and warm welcome from the miners’ dormitory asked the co-worker: ‘How did you manage to keep your room clean and quiet?’" The co-worker replied: ‘Here we are Christians.’ My dad: ‘What is it to be a Christian? I would like to be a Christian and live in this pleasant place.’" Soon his father was invited to live in a Christian dormitory and learn the Christian faith.
Pedro Zimila, an old man, remembered that when he too went to the mines, during the trip he was advised to inform the manager of the mine that he was a Christian of the Church of England. "I did not ask why I should say this because I was afraid." Once in front of the manager he repeated the message. The manager said: "There is your room Shangaan boy." "I went there and I found my future mates knelt and mumbled something. I stood shaking, sweating at the door because I thought it was a mining regulation." One mate walked to the door and welcomed him. This was the way Zimila became acquainted with Christianity.
Some elderly miners recalled that their fathers and uncles had described their experiences of a somewhat later period. Brass bands, magic lantern shows, open-air religious services and mostly the enthusiastic literacy classes were the activities where their fathers, uncles and themselves encountered Christianity. The missionaries, evangelists and catechists, they remember, taught them the matter of salvation, about prayer, the blood of Jesus, how it washed the earth, the mercy and forgiveness; to sing the hymns, and to pray. Teachers focused their lessons on reading and writing skills, using blackboards or wall charts, slates and pencils, and the Bible for reading. Thus, the missionaries, evangelists and catechists introduced the word of God and hence converted Mozambican miners to the Christian faith. A very interesting case is that of João Manuel Nhavotso. He remembered that:
One day a Mozambican miner appeared in my room and said, ‘I have a class for Ba-chopis in my school, and I am looking for scholars.’ I replied, ‘I will come.’ In spite of my advanced age I wished to go school. I started to spell out the syllables, ba, be, bi, bo, bu. When I could read and write a word on the chart I would fairly laugh with joy. I would say, ‘I love books,’ ‘I love it here,’ pointing to my eyes, ears and chest. When I received my salary I bought a spelling book, Bible and hymnbook. After three months I was able to spell out words in the Zulu language.
A similar memory was shared by Zacarias Paindane, miner, who explained that even though he attended the Sunday prayer meetings, he felt his Christianity unfulfilled. He wished to be able to read the Bible and therefore he asked a dormitory mate to teach him to read and write. He used to pay one shilling per month.
These Mozambican accounts are confirmed by missionaries of the SACM. For example Albert Walklett said that in the 1890s Rev. Morris and he often had magic lantern lectures at the De Beer’s, Central and British United compounds. They established schools in four compounds where the miners were instructed in the mysteries of the three R’s. This work was on the whole interesting and encouraging; the miners made rapid progress and all seemed eager to learn. Galley, who was from the same mission, but worked three years later, recorded a similar impression of the assertiveness of migrant miners in Kimberley:
The morning-schools in the compounds still continue to give me encouragement. I have now thirty scholars at the Central and twenty at the De Beer’s compounds; fine, stalwart men they are, and all eager to learn.(...) However, De Beer’s, containing over 2,800 souls was always to us and other missionaries a place of many difficulties for native conversion.
The foregoing testimonies illustrate the diverse ways Mozambican miners encountered the gospel and joined or built Christian communities in the Kimberley and Witwatersrand compounds. For instance, some Mozambican miners were drawn to Christianity because they had concluded that the Word of God had saved them from an evil life. Others perceived Christianity as a path to enter into a community marked by a new respectability evidenced by cleanliness, order and respect. Still others understood Christianity as an avenue to learn how to read and write, that is, a new way of perceiving the world. There is no indication that these individuals rejected Mozambican beliefs.
Another point well worth noting is that Mozambican miners were not a tabula rasa in this encounter, but creatively selected, adapted, and manipulated Christianity for their own benefit in the brutal compound regime. Zacarias Paindane’s and SACM missionaries’ accounts suggest that Mozambican miners were capable of turning the tables and manipulating literacy classes to suit their own ends. While the missionaries perceived the literacy classes as vehicles for disseminating the gospel and the ethic of industrial work, Mozambican miners understood these classes as a source of economic advantages and social prestige. Thus, some literate miners received some shillings from work-mates for teaching them how to read and write or for writing a letter. At the Randfontein compounds two Mozambican miners from Bilene and Catembe taught classes for work-mates; at Clydesdale Collieries, another Mozambican from Manjacaze also taught night classes for his work-mates. Harries and Maloka asserted that small literacy groups proliferated in the compounds and most of them worked under the guidance of church elders. Other literate miners stood a chance of getting white-collar jobs or clerical and other better-paid jobs at the mine. Gastão Pene Manave bluntly explained that he spent 15 years working as a list checker for the underground miners because he was literate. The encounter with Christianity offered Mozambican miners an education that permitted them to maneuver in the material world or climb out of it, and to avoid the most dangerous work underground.
Once Africans had accepted conversion, the Mozambican migrant encounter with Christianity and the creation of Christian communities in the compounds became the consequence not only of missionary activity but also of the zeal of the recent converts who worked tirelessly to spread the faith among their work-mates. One such convert was Noé Estevão Uamusse, a Mozambican miner, who explained that:
One day, I was underground working when my Xhosa co-worker, Temussana, insulted another colleague. I was astonished with the rude behavior but kept silent. After two days I told him that I wanted to have a conversation with him but out of the working place. In fact, I went to his dormitory and I spent an enjoyable time listening to him and asking him about the verbal fight he had had with the other colleague. After that, I explained to him that to avoid trouble a man needed to be patient, to listen and to forgive. Before finishing my talk he said: ‘Ah! I have really never seen you mad at or insulting anybody.’ And I promptly replied: ‘Because I am a Christian. I behave this way because I follow Jesus’ teaching about mercy and forgiveness. In fact, I came here to invite you to come to where I learned these values.’ He bluntly asked me: ‘Did you learn these values in the church?’ I replied: ‘Yes.’ Then he asked me: ‘But do you want to prevent me from beer drinking on Sundays?’ I answered: ‘No. First we will go to the church and later on you can go to the beershop.’ Sunday we went there and the Xhosa preacher addressed Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness and the evils of drunkenness using daily experiences in the compounds and the Xhosa homeland. My Xhosa co-worker was so deeply touched that he told me that he wanted to quit drinking and come to church every Sunday. The following Sunday he came to collect me in the dormitory. Later on, he asked me to teach him the catechism.
David Vumuca Langa, an Anglican convert, recalled that during 30 years of nursing in the compound hospital, he convinced many patients to give up their charms (amulets and protective charms) and believe in God’s teachings. For example, Alberto, a patient who came with a big wound in the leg believed that the accident, which caused the wound, was a result of a muloi’s (witchcraft) attack, and hence, the charms around his wrist were protecting him. "Using Evangelical and health knowledge I told him that he could never be saved by charms. We [human beings], of course, I assured him could do nothing; that only the Holy Spirit could change our hearts and subdue our natures." Underground mining, Langa stressed, was dangerous work. The patient listened very respectfully to what he said in regard to Jesus and salvation, and handed the charms to him.
These reminiscences reveal that as time passed, the recent Mozambican converts made the work of proselytization their own business. Any time and any place was used by recent Mozambican converts to approach their work-mates in the compound. What appeared at first to be a scattered and small group of ‘intruders’ or ‘fanatics’ were actually manifestations of new communities maneuvering themselves into being, of small groups forging new links, manipulating, being manipulated and ultimately reconstituting themselves. Part of the success of the recent converts, I argue, was a result of converts’ ability to combine evangelical teachings and everyday life experiences as a means to gain new converts. The reminiscences also shed light on the ways in which eventual Christian work was undertaken by Mozambican miner converts in southern Mozambique.
A number of Africans converts who had been promoted as evangelists and catechists also catalyzed the process of conversion and the establishment of Christian communities in the compounds. African evangelists and catechists gathered fellow Christians in their rooms for frequent prayers and religious services. Saturday and Sunday afternoons they visited ‘heathen’ dormitories, prayed for the sick and held catechism classes. A quarter century later the process was similar. For example, David Vumuca Langa, an Anglican evangelist in the mines in the 1930s, related that on Sunday mornings, accompanied by some of the African Anglican Christians, he would visit the heathen rooms and hold a short prayer service and sing hymns. Then they would go to the church for mass. According to him, during the procession sometimes a "lost sheep" would be rescued and other people would follow the group to the church. Usually after the mass "we asked the strangers to introduce themselves to the church community. Some stated that they were there because they liked the Anglican preaching; others said because they wanted to be Anglicans rather than Catholics." Besides the Sunday morning procession from dormitory to dormitory, Langa explained that oftentimes "he [Langa] moved from one compound to another preaching in dormitories, counseling miners about their personal problems and preparing work-mates for baptism." Most of his teachings were filled with daily experiences from the compound.
Another interesting account on conversion and the building of Christian communities was told by Bonifácio Macie, a Mozambican miner, living in Manave’s catechist room. Bonifácio Macie reminiscing on his mining life 40 years ago bluntly said:
I am so proud of catechist Gastão Pene Manave, who lives here in Maciene. In Jone, he was the catechist in our room. In spite of laboring all day in the mine, every evening Manave [as other catechists and evangelists] not only held an evensong [evening prayers] but also taught catechism to the heathens. On Saturday, he visited new converts, the sick or the heathens in various compounds. On Sunday, he held matins [morning prayers] and after that a procession from room to room. He sang and preached to the heathens. Then he would lead his group to the church. During the mass he acted as turukela [interpreter] of the Shangaan or Xhosa languages. Many people loved and respected his preaching. I knew some Mozambicans who became Christians because of his teachings.
Like Bonifácio Macie, Baker narrated a story about Titus Ndaba, a Chopi convert and evangelist from Gazaland. According to Baker, during a Sunday morning service, Titus Ndaba attempted to interpret the Scripture: "[T]here is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." He preached:
My brothers, there is a serpent on every path, and the man who trifles with it is a fool. If you play with sin it will bite you. A habit may seem very small and harmless, but indulged in, like the use of strong drink, or immorality, it ends in death. The only safe path is to follow Jesus Christ’s, and then the end will be eternal life.
Ndaba’s sermon, as well as those of other Mozambican evangelists or catechists was not merely picturesque. Behind the simple, figurative talk was the sincerity of one who knew the people to whom he was talking, their failures and weaknesses as well as their kindly and generous qualities of heart. Knowing and loving the people whom they were addressing and their besetting sins, they emphasized denunciations of wrongs of everyday life and warned their listeners about the danger of disregarding the manifold calls, which God had vouchsafed to them. Simon Nkomo, a Shangaan convert, preaching to his work-mates, gave the example of a young man from Gazaland who during three years in a mine, collected pieces of corn meal cobs, bones, rags, bits of coal, and other odds and ends and deposited them in two beautiful trunks. After he ended his term he went home. Once there and before the excited family and welcoming neighbors, he opened the trunks disclosing the odds and ends. When his father saw them he shouted: "Get rid of this, you idiot!" Simon interpreted:
[M]y dear friends, you have another Father, Who is in heaven. He sent you into the world to work for him. If you spend your life in accumulating earthly treasures, when you get up there into the presence of God, and your boxes are opened, God will say to you, ‘you idiot! (...) And He will bundle you and your rubbish into the outer darkness. You better begin to find out what kind of things pass current in heaven, and lay up treasure where the moth and the rust cannot corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.
In sum, the testimonies of Mozambican and other African evangelists and catechists and Baker’s account highlight the varied ways that they employed to gain a growing number of converts. It was through their commitment that Africans with ethnic and language differences could worship and belong to the same Christian community. Maloka states that at Knights Deep mine in Germiston, for example, the Sothos and Shangaans held a joint Christmas service. Ethnic and language differences were not barriers to such efforts, since many Africans spoke more than one language and could translate for those who could not understand the services. Thus, ethnic and language barriers were not obstacles in the process of building Christian communities in the compounds. Another point explicit in these accounts is that it was Mozambican and other African catechists and evangelists who made Christianity shine and live in the compounds. Their zeal and commitment to the work of God did not fade when they returned to their villages. It found expression in setting up their own congregations at home.
Although not explicit in the Mozambican miners accounts, there was already in the African religions the requisite to which missionaries could appeal, and upon which, they could enlarge and build the Christian faith. African/Mozambicans believed that the ancestor spirits, known in southern Mozambique as Swikwembu were the masters of everything: earth, fields, trees, rain, men, women, children, even of wizards. They had full control over all these entities or persons. The Swikwembu would bless or curse and bring misfortune on their descendants. They were the most powerful spiritual agency acting on man’s life, and hence, the necessity of propitiating them with prayers and offerings. When I compare the characteristics of African religions with Christian religion I find significant similarities. They can be grouped as follows:
Characteristics
African Religion
Christian Religion
Meaning
Spiritualistic religion
Yes – Swikwembu
Yes - God
Spiritual entities worshiped
Omnipresent
Yes – Swikwembu
Yes - God
Present everywhere but not physically
Omniscience
Yes – Swikwembu
Yes - God
Acknowledge what their people do although spatially and physically distant
Omnipotence
Yes – Swikwembu
Yes - God
Absolute control over living and non-living entities
Sacerdotal Religion
Yes - eldest brother
Yes - Priest
Religious acts
Yes - Swikwembu
Yes - God
Prayers and offerings
Animistic Religion
Yes
No
Various gods
Looking to these similarities I argue that the conception of Swikwembu as both transcendance and with divine moral attributes easily allowed some Mozambicans to accept Christianity in their lives. God was one more spirit to help and protect them. In this context, two general ideas grew out of the ferment of evangelization in the mines and had a considerable impact on Mozambican miner converts. First, it is clear that Mozambican miner converts perceived that, in principle, they suffered no ritual or cultural stigma from participating in Christian religious life. Second, Mozambican miner converts conceived a narrative continuity in religion more pervasive, all-embracing and comprehensive than the Western view of religion as a separate department of life. They related Christianity to the whole system of life. For instance, some Mozambican converts saw Christianity as a path to learn to read and write. Literacy allowed them to understand the mine managers in the mine work place and the Portuguese colonial administrators. Some Mozambican converts learned and practiced professions such as evangelist, catechist and teacher in the compound. Others understood conversion as a way to entitle them to run their Christian communities themselves and to gain secular advantage. Other Mozambican converts used Christianity in those areas of life over which their community felt little of control such as beer drinking, praying for the sick, and comforting the relatives of the dead. In sum, they considered Christianity as path to spiritual, educational, economic and/ or social advantages.
The process of conversion and building of Christian communities in the compounds was not a linear but rather a complex one characterized by resistance, struggles and acceptance. While I previously demonstrated the Mozambican success of converting and creating Christian communities, I will now discuss some unsuccessful attempts at conversion. Accounts of Mozambican miners and missionaries point out that there were Mozambican and other African miners who refused conversion. Perhaps they reacted this way because Christian activities took place in the miners’ leisure time or they did not understand what the African catechists and evangelists and missionaries were doing since they [Africans] were there only to dig diamonds and gold. The most common forms of open resistance or sabotage of a church service or meeting were the playing of drums and xylophones and shouting. Noé Estevão Uamusse, Mozambican evangelist, recalled that on different occasions when visiting the rooms of heathens, he heard words of contempt and mockery. One miner asked: "Who are you? What do you want here? How much are you going to pay me? We are here for mining." Other miners would laugh and shout hurrah [good idea, very good]! Suca! Huma [get out]! Similarly, Latimer Fuller, an Anglican missionary who gathered his group at a corner in the compound courtyard explained
When we start preaching, there is a band and a thump from the corner and you [we] know that the pianos have begun: six men with a sort of drumstick in each hand start to belabor the pianos, and we perceive an evident unsteadiness in the congregation. (...) [Meantime] a terrific yell comes from a distant doorway (...) in a moment he is joined by a twenty dancing natives stamping, shouting and yelling till perspiration runs off them in streams, and the congregation moves off to the dance while we proceed to another and quieter mine.
Even physical attacks and acts of vandalism on converts were not uncommon. Philip Nyampule, Baker’s Chopi convert, who had given up beer drinking, found his books ripped, his writing slate broken and his way to a Sunday service barred by dormitory mates and former beer-drinking fellows. A similar experience was related by Gastão Pene Manave who explained that one day when trying to advise a colleague who had had a drunken fight was told rudely: "Let me alone guy. I never care about your preaching," and the colleague covered himself with a blanket.
Yet despite resistance and setbacks, Mozambican miners built Christian communities in the South African mine compounds at the turn of the nineteenth century. Brass band performances, magic lantern shows, open-air religious services, conversation among work-mates and literacy classes were the various ways in which Mozambican and other African miners were converted to Christianity and the creation of new communities in which ethnic and language differences were overcome. Moreover, it is worthwhile to note that even though the European missionaries had played an important role in the conversion of the first Africans to Christianity, African converts were the key players in the process of conversion and building of Christian communities in the mine compounds. Africans contracted as evangelist, catechist, pastor or simply convert used any opportunity to preach and convert more co-workers to the Christian faith.
C) Mozambican miner converts returning with the Bible to the countryside of the southern Mozambique- Maciene district
"[Diamane] with a Bible and a hymn book in his haversack, and a mackintosh over his shoulders, off he went."
While in the Kimberley and Witwatersrand compounds, thousands of Mozambican miners had acquired some knowledge and practice of Christianity, and when they went back to their villages they began to preach the Christian message. It may be that they only grasped the most elementary rudiments of the Christian faith, but even so, nearly four out of ten returning miners started to propagate their newfound faith. Within two to three years some miner converts had already created tiny congregations of believers, members of their households or simply neighbors. This section will also demonstrate that miners spread Christian ideas through the reading charts, literature and writing material which they read or offered on arriving home. Still others returned to their villages with the intention of starting a day school. Yet, by and large, the Mozambican miners’ activities were not planned or prepared by the European congregations operating in the compound mines. It simply happened because of the zeal and commitment of Mozambican miner converts, at a time when the training of African agents was still far from high on the normal missionary agenda.
The experience of Titos Baúle, a Mozambican miner convert, provides a fine example of the relationships between the process of Christianization in the compound mines and southern Mozambique. According to his son, Titos Baúle was probably born in 1861. He was captured during Ngungunyana’s raids in the Chopiland and taken to Chaimite to work as a slave. From there Titos Baúle fled to South Africa. In South Africa he converted to the Christian faith while he worked in the mines. Upon his return and before settling at Baúle-Chidenguele, went to Bilene to marry Lina Maxaeie, the sister of his friend and work-mate in mining and religion. Afterwards he went back to Baúle alone for a short time and then returned to Bilene to fetch his wife. He started to sing and pray alone in his hut. After that he invited his relatives and neighbors to pray. Jonatana Titos Baúle recalled
When my dad arrived at Baúle, the people were heathens. My dad did not face obstacles in converting the Baúle community because he asked permission from the chief of the land, called Mavilane, and had family connections with the majority of this community’s members. When the number of women and men grew, he built a small hut in his yard. He prayed and sang in Zulu but interpreted into Chopi. He never returned to South Africa.
Estevão Mulate Baúle, an Anglican convert, corroborated Jonatana Titos Baúle’s account: "When Titos Baúle arrived, he held a meeting with his brothers and relatives where he explained that he had found Christ in South Africa, and had returned home to act as missionary among his heathen community." The name of his denomination was the Church of England. He started to preach at Kokola La Mahoo where the Baúle community lived near the swamp to hide from the Ngungunyana’s attacks. Indeed, in 1951 Francis Boatwright, an Anglican missionary, acknowledged publicly that Titos had taught his people even before Bishop Smyth was consecrated the first bishop of the diocese in 1893. Titos was therefore one of the grandfathers of the Diocese of Lebombo. Blind for the last ten years of his life, he never ceased teaching the Gospel of Salvation; he knew all the prayer book and most of the Bible by heart.
Titos Baúle’s experience was strikingly similar to other Mozambican miners, varying only in time, space and the quality of personal relationships with Mozambican chiefs.
Djobe Mucavele and Jeremias Mucavele, too, carried the Gospel to Maciene. Paulo Estevão Macie recalled:
The Anglican religion in Maciene was brought by the Mozambican miners who went to the Rand by foot. When they left Maciene they were heathens. In the compounds beside eating and sleeping, repair work or mending, they were learning to read and write from the Bible. When they arrived home, they talked about their adventures. Among other things they discussed the Bava Mfundissi [the priest], and what he taught about Jesus and the resurrection. After that, they prayed and invited the wives, children and the neighbors to learn what they had learned in the Rand. In time, these men went back to the Rand and asked the missionaries to follow them, to go to their country and baptize their converts. Djobe Mafumo [Mucavele] and Jeremias Mucavele were the Mozambican miners who started to teach and spread the Gospel in Maciene well before the English Anglican missionaries. They were also the ones who invited the missionaries to go to Maciene.
Similarly, Felisberto Chinhamane Chilengue described Djobe Mucavele preaching and successfully converting and gaining followers. He eventually moved from open air meetings to a hut that he built and set up a chiluvelo, an altar for worship. During the service, Djobe Mucavele stood and preached in front of the chiluvelo with lighted candles. Jeremias Mucavele, Chicogo, Djobe’s brother-in-law and work-mates from the mines, read and interpreted the Bible during the mass. In these early days, Felisberto Chilengue concurred that "God’s prophets did not wear a special cloth, instead they used regular clothes brought from South Africa." Later on, Djobe Mucavele traveled to Jone where he reported to the missionaries the flock that had joined him.
Although many Maciene informants asserted that Djobe Mucavele and Jeremias Mucavele among others, were the key players in the propagation of Christianity in Maciene, some offered a slightly different version. For example, Matilde Chicogo, supporting Paulo Macie’s and Felisberto Chilengue’s accounts stated that although Djobe Mucavele and his male collaborators did not teach women and children to lead the prayers, in their absence women and children prayed and sang. And hence, women and children also played a significant role in propagating or maintaining the Chrisitian faith. Celita Uamusse, stressing the same point, explained that from the very beginning of Djobe Mucavele’s preaching women constituted the majority of attendants. "We, children were not allowed to attend catechism classes because sometimes we played during the work." Both women asserted that Djobe Mucavele had never baptized anybody.
Titos Baúle’s and Djobe Mucavele’s experiences demonstrate the ways in which Mozambican miners built Christian communities in Maciene district. Second, their experiences of conversion in the compounds in some ways were replicated in the countryside of Mozambique. For instance, the process of conversion and subsequent formation of Christian communities at the mines started in open air meetings, evangelist visits to the dormitory or in talks with a co-worker. In the Maciene district, in small face-to-face settings, miner converts talked about Jesus to close relatives, and demonstrated how to pray. In addition, the church hierarchy which they had known in the South African compounds was implemented at the Maciene district: positions of leadership in the church were circumscribed to men. Nevertheless in the context of Maciene, women had begun unofficially to play these roles.
Finally these miners’ experiences also suggest that while Mozambican converts were preaching the gospel, at the same time they were introducing new values to their communities such as: i) the meaning of special space and time - to pray to God there is a need of a chapel (with chiluvelo, candles, crucifix, cassocks) and a specific time to worship. Mozambican miner converts built a small hut where they set up an altar for worship. Consequently, people had to plan their daily activities knowing that they should make time for their prayers. For example, Sunday was no longer a field-working day; ii) the new notion of hierarchy in the church - there was a community of believers, preachers, evangelists, priests and bishops with specific tasks to perform; iii) the new principles of dressing - by looking the way miner converts dressed when leading or attending the religious services, Mozambican new converts began to understand the need to wear European clothes rather than Mozambican muchecas and tangas when in church services. Thus, women were to replace the Mozambican culture of tangas, a single strip of cloth round the waist, with Western dresses, which covered the shoulders, and the upper part of the body. This visible distinction in life-style would apparently mark off the Christians from the rest of the community for many years providing missionaries with a rough but convenient method of identifying their adherents. Missionary Stowell visiting Maciene district, noted that on a Sunday there would be seen, in some of these "straw" churches, as many as fifty or sixty people, dressed in "clean" and "beautiful" clothes, while outside would be sitting a few "heathen" women, dressed in a single strip of cloth round the waist, their hair and bodies smeared with bright red earth. Mozambican miner converts were important agents of change in their home regions both culturally and religiously.
Unlike in Chidenguele and Maciene, where the chiefs generally permitted miner converts to spread the Word of God, in Nhamavila miner converts oftentimes experienced their rude and brutal power. Under the threat of conscription to chibalo, Zaqueu Machai and Isaías Nhatave spread and built Christian communities. According to Noé Estevão Uamusse, Zaqueu Machai left home for the Witwatersrand. It was during his sojourn in the Rand that he encountered Christianity, and was baptized and confirmed. Back home, Zaqueu Machai asked permission to preach to the chief. The chief sent his messengers to watch Zaqueu’s performance. Zaqueu gathered his family and he stood up, holding the crucifix, praying and preaching. The messengers were impressed, and asked him the meaning of the figure on the crucifix. Zaqueu Machai explained that it was Jesus Christ crucified and added "[F]or God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." The chief authorized Zaqueu Machai to preach all over the land. Nevertheless, on various occasions, the messengers would secretly appear to check Zaqueu Machai’s activities, according to Noé Estevão Uamusse.
Isaías Nhatave’s experience was different from that of Zaqueu Machai in one important aspect. Isaías Nhatave and his Christian community had ended up in chibalo. Ribeiro Nhatave, nephew of Isaías Nhatave explained
[My] uncle Isaías suffered a lot to spread Christianity because of Portuguese persecution. When my uncle and other converts were praying, frequently the chief of the land would appear and arrest the people and take them into chibalo. My uncle ended up working at chibalo. Despite these Portuguese persecutions, my uncle continued to preach the gospel. Later on, he went to Maciene to invite the missionaries to baptize his converts.
Zaqueu Machai’s and Isaías Nhatave’s experiences demonstrate the vulnerability of the miners’ evangelization and the response of miner converts, depending upon local circumstances. These events might explain the long period spent forming a Christian congregation.
Contrary to the situation in Nhamavila, in Zandamela in spite of some chiefs’claims of authority, miner converts had room to preach, to create Christian communities, as well as to establish contacts and friendship with other miner congregations. Often a miner convert would visit or invite another miner convert to preach in his congregation and/or talk about his work and community. Among themselves they might exchange religious material, ideas or information. For example, Naftal and Marta Buque and Artur Massochane Chibuque recalled that Josefa Mutiwa Buque, the founder of Christianity in Buquene, had links with Djobe Mucavele, Titos Baúle, Unkuanovane, Daniel and Júlio Dumangane. In looking back, Marta Buque thought that these networks were not only the seeds of the formation of the Anglican community but also provided evangelical and secular news and support to the Mozambican miner converts scattered all over the country. Her husband, Naftal Buque, one of the oldest Mozambican Anglican priests, asserted that it was through these networks that Josefa Mutiwa Buque contacted the Anglican missionaries at Maciene. Similarly, Jonatana Titos Baúle recalled that several times Josuel Maxaeie, his uncle from Bilene Macie, went and preached at Baúle. David Vumuca Langa also remembered that Isaías Cossa and Mateus Cossa were oftentimes guest evangelists from Nhocoene- Chongoene to Bahanine.
These reminiscences suggest that the brotherhood, which grew out of the dormitory or church in South Africa, was extended to a much broader community of Christians. Shangaans from Bilene and Chopis from Zandamela felt as close as siblings, a phenomenon that would have been almost impossible given the divisions left during the Ngungunyana regime. Christianity was breaking ethnic and language barriers and creating a community of Christians. In fact, through the evangelical teachings Mozambican converts had perceived that the derogatory names or distinctions of people according to ethnic group was the work of men. Every human being had the same constitution. In these new Christian communities Mozambican converts had the possibility to travel and exchange ideas with other converts, that is, broaden their world view. Moreover, these communities were also used as a network for the selection of a good marriage partner, family alliances and help in case of need. It was the practice for parents far from the schools to house their children with a fellow Christian family while they were educated. Finally, the reminiscences implied that the converts’ links facilitated the Anglican and other missionaries’ efforts to establish their congregations and legitimize leadership in the region.
Missionary Donald F. Stowell echoed the Mozambican accounts. He asserted that every petty chiefdom had Christian villages, and many of these had a specially built church of mud and wattle, with an altar, crucifix, candlesticks, pictures and vestry in which to hang cassocks and store supplies for the catechists, preachers and helpers. There, a dozen people, particularly the miner converts, prayed to Jesus every morning and afternoon but especially on Sundays. These little centers of Christian life that Stowell recognized had sprung up all over Maciene [District] despite the absence of white missionaries. Missionary Philip Mkize, remembering the early days of Anglican mission work in Maciene, stated that by the time Maciene became the biggest center in the diocese, the Shangaan miners, who alternated between Maciene and the Rand, were mostly responsible for the rapid growth of the work in Maciene. Many of them, Mkize explained, converted in the Rand, and when they returned to their homes "they not only stuck to the religion taught to them by the missionaries at the mines, but passed it on their people, when whole families were converted." Matias James (Jaime) Chicogo, former student, teacher, catechist and priest of Maciene, eulogizing the life of Bishop William Edmund Smyth who passed away on April 5, 1950 wrote
[B]ishop Smyth came to us while I was young. I can hardly call to my mind and I heard and saw him doing at Maciene. (...) Bishop Smyth’s last visit to Maciene was in 1912. He arrived at Maciene and found almost the largest congregation he had had during his visits to Maciene. He said, ‘I met some of you at the diamond mines, Kimberley. I followed you to your country.’
In other words, the first Anglican work in Maciene district was not a result of the evangelization of the European missions, but rather of the Mozambican miner converts.
Parallel to the miner converts’ proselytization, miners with a knowledge of literacy and desire to teach reading and writing also promoted Christianity in southern Mozambique, particularly in the Maciene district. On their departure from South Africa they brought with them supplies of catechisms and Bibles, spelling books and slates, bottles of ink, pens and pencils, so as to be able to start teaching as soon as they arrived home. Titos Baúle, a Mozambican miner who had been converted and instructed in the mysteries of the three R’s, back home taught ba, be, bi, bo, bu to women and men. According to Jonatana Titos Baúle, his father was conscious that a strong Christian community needs people knowledgeable in catechism and the Bible teachings, and hence, besides preaching of the Word of God, he undertook the teaching of catechism and the Bible. Lucas and Joel Nhangave were some of Titos’s pupils and later on helpers in evangelization.
A similar point of view was expressed by a group of informants from Maciene. Matilde Chicogo, remembered that from the time she was very young she saw some Maciene women attending Djobe’s catechism classes. Djobe had a guidebook with questions and answers. He instructed women so that if he asked: "who created you?"; the women would answer: "God created me"; Djobe: "What did God create you for?"; the women: "God created me to know, to believe and to love Him on the earth and in the heaven." And so on. Women needed to learn by rote. Felisberto Chinhamane Chilengue concurred that Djobe asked questions of and taught the answers to men and women. He also taught the Lord’s and Holy Mary’s prayer by rote. Finally, Paulo Estevão Macie added that Djobe started to teach catechism to his family and relatives and then to neighbors and people from the Maciene community. Back in Jone he told the missionaries that members of his village, including his own family knew the catechism. Djobe used Xilengue as the language to teach them.
Others, like Ambrósio Langa, had worked for several years in Kimberley where he had learned to read and write Zulu, and where he had converted. When he returned to Bahanine in early 1900, he attempted, successfully, to bring literacy to his community. Simultaneously with preaching, Ambrósio Langa gathered some boys and taught them how to write and read in Zulu. David Vumuca Langa remembered hearing from his brother from Joni,
Mbava ni mamani (father and mother)
Ngibhala lencwadi ukusho ukuthi kuhamba kanjani./ I am writing this letter to let you know how I am doing.
Ngihlala emzini wezinsizwa, sahlala sibaningi, ngihlangana nabantu ababuya czindaweni ezahlukahlukile. Abantu engihlala nabo babuya kuwowonke amagumbi amane amazwe asezanzi ne Africa, labantu baqhamuka emazweni anjengo Lesotho, nase Malawi, nase Xhosa kanye nase Botswana. Njalo ebusuku siyahlanga, senzela ukuthandaza ndawonye. (...)/ I live in a Christian dormitory, there are so many of us, I meet people from all over Africa. People I live with come from all corners of southern Africa - including countries like Lesotho, Malawi, Botwsana and South Africa. Every evening we meet for a prayer meetings.(...)
Sengiyema lapha. Ukhonze kakhulu ekhaya./ This is all I have for today. Send my regards to everyone at home.
Inkosi ize inisikelele ini busise futhi./ May God protect and bless you all.
David Langa said that it was typical of those who wanted to show that they had mastered the Zulu language. However, Ambrósio Langa, not satisfied with his level of education and eager to spread literacy in the community, enrolled his son Stefani in the Swiss mission boarding school at Ricatla - Marracuene. There Stefani studied secular and ecclesiastical subjects. Back in Bahanine Stefani combined evangelical and literacy work teaching boys as well as adults. By using the book Lições de Coisas (Lessons of Things) boys were taught Portuguese while adults were instructed in Shangaan through Buko La Vaxaheie (The Speaker’s Book). At that time, David Vumuca Langa explained, the Anglican Church did not have a boarding school, and therefore, the only option was to enroll at the Swiss mission school.
Despite the scarcity of detailed records about Mozambican miner converts’ work in education, the evidence suggests that the people of Maciene district were first introduced to literacy or Western education through the efforts of Mozambican miner converts. In their evangelization, Mozambican miner converts started a rudimentary school, teaching catechism and the Bible as well as reading and writing African languages. In fact, the education was ipso-facto biblical. The early students were ordinary men, women and children. Some adults were nearly sixty. The classes were held under trees or in the small chapels.
Mozambican miner converts, using their experiences of literacy on the Rand, thought that catechism, Scripture and the Bible were textbooks for schooling. To be literate meant to know the catechism by rote, and later on, to read the Bible. Indeed, this approach was validated by the Anglican missionaries when they arrived and began to examine the Maciene/Nhamavila/Zandamela/Baúle candidates for baptism. In the eyes of these people education was the learning of religious subjects. As a result, in Maciene and other parts of southern Mozambique, religious teachings preceded the formal Western conception of education.
In sum, oral accounts about the spreading of Christianity in the Maciene district reveal that Christian congregations existed there from the very early days of the Diocese of Lebombo, around 1894, mostly along the two main routes from the Limpopo to Inhambane. They were founded by those who returned from work in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand.
Mozambican testimonies and missionary records indicate that Mozambican miner converts asked the missionaries in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand to follow them home and to baptize their converts in light of the fact that they did not have the authority to perform such ceremonies. However, it is still difficult to know the size of the Mozambican congregations in those days due to scanty statistical data. To some extent, these accounts allow the reader to infer that what Mozambican miner converts preached might be a combination of what they learned and saw in the compound proselytizing process as well as what they interpreted through their own cultural filters. Nevertheless, these Mozambicans with leadership capacity, that was then honed through evangelistic work on the mines, became important agents of change in their home regions, both culturally and religiously. The establishment of Christian congregations by Mozambican miner converts was not a smooth process but rather a complex one characterized by struggle, negotiation and adaptation. These Mozambican congregations were seeded by the arrival of Mozambican miner converts and consolidated both by women and by the labor of Mozambican evangelists who devoted themselves to Jesus Christ.
D) Portuguese state efforts to blur Mozambican miner converts’ evangelization
As already pointed out, returning Mozambican miners from Kimberley and the Witwatersrand were posing a serious threat to the stability of the Portuguese and Roman Catholic colonization agenda. Governor-General Freire d’ Andrade, contemplating the Bibles in the miners’ boxes, not only asserted that it was out character for Catholic missionaries to sell Bibles to these miners, but also that those Bibles were going to be used in the propagation of Gospel and literacy, and hence, opening the world view of the people of the countryside. Moreover, Portuguese administrators and governors of southern Mozambique saw the labor migration to South Africa as a potential political danger to the whole region, and therefore, tried to thwart the Mozambican miners ‘de-nationalizing’ activities. Thus, in July 1902, in an official letter to the General Governor of Mozambique, the governor of Gaza advised that the Chongoene and Muchopes lands be granted to the Franciscan mission. This was a move to counter the presence of Mozambican congregations commonly called Protestants. The Portuguese viewed the Protestant work as de-nationalizing and hence, undermining any official attempts at colonization. The Governor of Gaza wanted to close the "Protestant road" for the sake of Portugal’s own imperialistic interests. In fact, by December 1903, in a exploratory visit, Franciscan priest Camilo Gaveta found many Protestant schools [reed chapels] in the interior of Gaza led by catechists [maybe evangelists] teaching in the Zulu language. He also met the Bishop of the Diocese of Lebombo, William Eduard Smyth, visiting the so-called schools. Thus, in January 1907 the Franciscan mission settled at the cabo (headland) Nhadamel, 1km from Chongoene and 15km from Xai-Xai.
From 1901 to 1905, in a friendly and co-operative correspondence between the Governor of the Military District of Gaza and the head priest of the Roman Catholic mission of S. Paulo de Gaza, Messano, both officials were discussing and planning how to frustrate the proliferation of the Protestant missions. While the Governor asked the mission to establish a station and schools in the Muchopes region, the head priest of the mission solicited the Governor to order the régulos to forcibly recruit Mozambican children to study in the Roman Catholic schools. In 1903 the mission opened 5 day schools for Mozambican children, so-called indígenas. In 1908/9 the Franciscan mission opened schools at régulo Makupulana (Muchopes circumscription) and régulo Xiahlo (Xai-Xai circumscription), the places where Mozambican miner converts such as Titos Baúle, Isaías Nhatave, Zaqueu Machai, Ambrósio Langa, Djobe Mucavele and their helpers spread the gospel.
The Portuguese further tried to thwart these Mozambican miner convert initiatives by arresting the converts and sending them to forced labor. Isaias Nhatave’s experience described elsewhere provides a classic illustration of Portuguese brutality and anti-Mozambican initiatives. Events of this nature were also reported in Anglican records. A letter addressed to the Bishop of Lebombo in 1905, complaining about the Portuguese brutalities, including the fact that the local commandant was sent to arrest an Anglican subdeacon in church during a Sunday service, which he was conducting. A similar situation was described in a bishop’s report. He stated that one of his pupils was arrested from the church while he was conducting a service.
While it is difficult to know from the limited sources available how much the Portuguese attempts to frustrate the Mozambican initiatives succeeded, it is at least clear that the Mozambicans continued singing loudly, praying and preaching in open daylight every Sunday under a tree or in a small chapel. The data strongly support my contention that it was Mozambican miner converts of the Maciene district who carried the main work of proselytizing on their shoulders.
Conclusion
Thus far, this paper has focused on the diverse strategies which Mozambicans used to straddle the European mission and colonial world, cope and struggle to construct a Christian religious experience rooted in their culture and identity. In this paper, I have identified and analyzed the process of the Mozambican encounter with Christianity and the building of Christian communities both in South African compounds and southern Mozambique, especially in the Maciene district. As the preceding discussion has shown, Mozambicans were clearly the key actors in the process of appropriating Christianity and literacy, interpreting it for other Mozambicans as well building new communities for their own space and interests.
In South Africa, Mozambican miners were being introduced to Christianity and building Christian communities in brass band performances, magic lantern shows, open air religious meetings, conversation among co-workers and literacy classes. Although there were several motivations behind the Mozambican desire to be Christian, it was the Mozambican/African perception of the world based on spirituality that provided the conditions in which the Christian message was heard, accepted and transmitted to other Mozambicans. Mozambican miner converts related Christianity to the whole system of life, that is, Christianity as a path to attain spiritual, educational, economic or social advantages.
In southern Mozambique, particularly the Maciene district, it is clear that Mozambican miner converts, not Europeans, introduced the gospel and literacy. The gospel and literacy did not come in the big ships by sea with ‘civilization’: they were spread by Mozambican miner converts. Mozambican miner converts were not a ‘lost herd’ or simply ‘converts.’ They were integral actors in the founding of the Anglican mission of Santo Agostinho - Maciene. Goodall recognized this in the early fifties: "[A]s a matter of history, the faith was first carried to Lebombo by migrant miners." Despite Portuguese attempts to diminish Maciene miner’s evangelical and literacy efforts, Mozambican miner initiatives grew throughout the Maciene district, as well as precipitated the presence of Protestantism in the Maciene district.