Protestant Churches and the Formation of Political Consciousness in Southern Mozambique (1930-1974). Teresa Cruz E Silva. Basel, Switzerland: P. Schlettwein Publishing, 2001. Pp. 210.

---

This study presents an analysis of the role of the Swiss mission in the development of nationalism in southern Mozambique. Based on oral as well as written sources, the author interprets the relations between the Swiss Presbyterian mission, the colonial state and colonial subjects between 1930 and 1974. The oral sources consist of more than fifty interviews, including conversations with former missionaries of the Swiss Mission, and individual or group interviews with Mozambicans who went to school at the mission. Furthermore, the author consulted documents in archives in Maputo, Lausanne, and York as well as an impressive range of published works.

Teresa Cruz e Silva describes the founding of the Swiss mission in southern Mozambique by local evangelists. In 1880, seven years after the establishment of a station in Northern Transvaal by missionaries from Switzerland, a convert of Mozambican origin started preaching the gospel in his home area in Southern Mozambique. The fact that the mission was not, as in many other places in Africa, founded by European missionaries, but by local evangelists had important consequences. First, the Swiss mission was from the start strongly grounded in local society, a fact that exacerbated tensions between the mission and Portuguese authorities. Second, it contributed to early elite formation and African initiative in the religious sphere. This, in turn, led to conflicts between Swiss missionaries and local evangelists, as the missionaries feared too much African influence would entail a ‘return to paganism’. Yet, the missionaries also saw the advantages of a strong local network and took to developing the training institutes that they deemed necessary to prepare evangelists and church elders for their task.

A major part of the book is devoted to the missionaries’ role in education. The author rightly acknowledges the importance of education in a large number of areas. She describes the role of writing in the construction of ethnic identity, the conflicts over language policy between the colonial state and the missionaries and, the role of education in elite formation and political consciousness. The impact of the mission’s youth groups, called mintlawa, is especially stressed. The mintlawa groups fostered ‘skills essential to the development of a critical understanding of social reality’ (p. xvii). The songs and Biblical parables that were studied in the groups were interpreted as political messages by many of the students.

Many later nationalists acknowledged the role of the mission school and the mintlawa groups in their political formation. As it is stated in one of the biographies of former mission school students: ‘The Swiss missionaries had a kind of political and moral power. They taught us a certain number of things that were political…’ (p. 160). Also in the biographical chapter on Eduardo Mondlane, the role the Swiss mission played in his life and political career becomes apparent.

The book is not without its flaws. A crucial point is the vagueness of some of the key concepts. It can be surmised that the author uses consciousness in the sense of awareness of Mozambique as a nation. She also seems to assume a relationship between such awareness and political activism against the colonial state. Yet, national consciousness and nationalism are not identical: the fact that some of Cruz’s informants fought against colonialism, while others joined the Portuguese army already shows this. It also does not become clear how the consciousness of Mozambique as a nation relates to older forms of consciousness: the author assumes ‘consciousness’ to be a modern phenomenon. This conceptualisation could have led to an interesting contribution on the debates about modernity in Africa. Yet, the author refrains from discussing her definition of the terms used in the book.

The author emphasises the relations between anti-colonial resistance and the Swiss mission. Although she does not assume a direct relationship between the protestant missionaries and the anti-colonial movements, she stresses the importance of the Swiss mission in the formation of an elite. At times, her interpretation leads her to treat the evidence partially. Thus in the rebellion of 1894-1895 the missionary church was twice set on fire: once by the Tsonga rebels and once by the Portuguese army. Teresa Cruz e Silva gives an explanation for the Portuguese reaction, but does not discuss the Tsonga attack. Was the mission, despite the author’s statements that the Tsonga differentiated between the mission and the state, associated with white rule? Another example of such partial interpretation is the explanation given for the fact that girls at the mission were trained ‘to be good wives and mothers’ (p. 167). This is seen as a concession to Tsonga traditions and not related to the conservatism of some of the Protestant missionaries. As the book seeks to explore the role of the Swiss mission in the development of a political elite that challenged an oppressive state, the Protestant missions are by and large interpreted as a progressive force.

This leads to the final point of this critique. There is a tendency in the book to discuss colonial Mozambique in three blocs: the Protestant churches, the state, and the Mozambican people. Yet, many studies have refined such a division and pointed out the internal tensions within ‘the church’, ‘the state’ and ‘the people’.

Despite these flaws, the book is certainly worth reading. It gives us a fine example of the relations between Christian missions, literacy and elite formation. Using a wide range of sources, the author has managed to give us an overview of the history of the Swiss missions in Southern Mozambique. This history has led the author to discuss many important themes: the relations between protestant missions and the Portuguese colonial state, between education and political activism, and between literacy and the construction of ethnic as well as national identity. 

Inge Brinkman
Ghent University (Belgium)