Football and Colonialism - Nuno Domingos New African Histories

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pages, football is not “just a game,” but instead the centerpiece of a vivid tableau whose subjects have heretofore remained underexplored. Accordingly, Domingos’s work not only provides missing pieces of the bigger pictures of Portuguese and Mozambican history, not to mention of the history of football, but also offers an exceptionally fine-grained perspective on the lived experience of colonialism in Mozambique—shedding comparative light on such experiences elsewhere—while alerting us to the many and often contradictory potentialities of sport to shape human subjectivities.

       Harry G. West

       Acknowledgments

      The publication of this book concludes a process that had the crucial contribution of various individuals and institutions.

      First of all, I would like to express my debt to the permanent, open, and rich dialogue I had with Harry G. West at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I am also grateful to the late John D. Y. Peel, whose work was an important inspiration. At SOAS I would also like to thank my colleagues Paul Hansen, Mao Wada, Alex Verbeek, Mira Moshini, Robert McKenzie, and Dorota Szawarska.

      I have benefited from the comments, amendments, and criticisms that I received from Deborah James and João de Pina Cabral during my Viva.

      I am particularly grateful to Nelson Teixeira and Miguel Pinheiro for their support during the period I spent in Mozambique. In Maputo, I was fortunate to have the collaboration of Humberto Coimbra, Natu Harilal, Carolina Leia, Teresa Cruz e Silva, Aurélio Rocha, Renato Caldeira, and Fátima Mendonça. I am also grateful to the staff of the Historical Archive of Mozambique, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Mozambique, and the Eduardo Mondlane University.

      I would also like to thank the staff of the National Library of Lisbon and the Imprensa de Ciências Sociais of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where the first version of this book was published in Portuguese.

      The critical and attentive readings and the suggestions of Bárbara Direito, Frederico Ágoas, Inês Brasão, Isaura Domingos, Jorge Domingos, José Neves, and Rahul Kumar were decisive for the completion of my work.

      Most important were the comments made by the manuscript’s reviewers and the editors of the Ohio University Press New African Histories series. I am especially grateful for Allen Isaacman’s encouragement. I want also to express my gratitude to the people who worked on the book’s production at the Press, and especially to Gillian Berchowitz and Nancy Basmajian.

      The final version of this book owes a great deal to the skilled work of revision and translation of Miguel Cardoso. I wish also to thank the translation work done by João Paulo Oliveiro for the first version of this manuscipt.

      Diogo Ramada Curto kindly persuaded me to research the Portuguese colonial experience abroad, and Salwa Castelo Branco also insisted that I should pursue that enterprise in London.

      For many and diverse reasons I’m also grateful to Alfredo Margarido, Ana Estevens, Augusto Nascimento, Clara Cabral, Cláudia Castelo, Diana Costa-Felix, Eduardo Ascensão, Elisa Lopes da Silva, Elsa Peralta, Fernando Domingos, Isabel Pombo, Isadora Ataíde, João Fazenda, José Mapril, José Manuel Sobral, Luís Sá, Marcelo Bittencourt, Miguel Jerónimo, Nina Tiesler, Nuno Dias, Nuno Medeiros, Onésimo Teotónio de Almeida, Pancho Guedes, Paulo Catrica, Pedro Martins, Pedro Roxo, Raquel Borges, Rui Santos, Roberto Chichorro, Sofia Miranda, Tom Herre, Todd Cleveland, Victor Andrade Melo, and Victor Pereira.

      This research was funded by a grant from the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal).

      Without the contribution of all the former players and coaches of Maputo I had the opportunity to meet, this research would not have been possible.

       Abbreviations

ACPEFMArquivo do Conselho Provincial de Educação Física de Moçambique (Archive of the Provincial Council of Physical Education of Mozambique)
AFAAssociação de Futebol Africana (African Football Association)
AFLMAssociação de Futebol de Lourenço Marques (Lourenço Marques Football Association)
AHMArquivo Histórico de Moçambique (Historical Archive of Mozambique)
CPEFConselho Provincial de Educação Física de Mozambique (Mozambique Provincial Council on Physical Education)
CUFCompanhia União Fabril (Company Union Manufacturing)
DGEFDSEDirecção Geral de Educação Física, Desportos e Saúde Escolar (General Office of Physical Education, Health, and School Sports)
DSACDirecção dos Serviços de Administração Civil (Head Office of Civil Administration Services)
DSNIDirecção dos Serviços dos Negócios Índigenas (Head Office of Native Affairs)
FIFAFederação Internacional de Futebol Associação (International Federation of Association Football)
FNATFederação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (National Foundation for Joy at Work)
GALMGrémio Africano de Lourenço Marques (African Guild of Lourenço Marques)
INEFInstituto Nacional de Educação Física (National Institute of Physical Education)
PIDEPolícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado (International and State Defense Police)
RAUReforma Administrativa Ultramarina (Overseas Administrative Reform)
SCCIMServiços de Centralização e Coordenação da Informação de Moçambique (Mozambique Office for the Centralization and Coordination of Information)
SNISecretariado Nacional de Informação (National Secretariat of Information)

       1

       Football and the Narration of a Colonial Situation

      JOSÉ CRAVEIRINHA’S ETHNOGRAPHY OF SUBURBAN FOOTBALL IN LOURENÇO MARQUES

      In 1955, José Craveirinha, a prominent Mozambican mestiço poet and journalist,1 suggested that the distinctive performance of African players from the suburbs of Lourenço Marques revealed a form of intelligence, an “extraordinary and limitless . . . fantasy” of the indígena (native) population, which the poet attributed to its “acute sense of malice.” Malice, usually associated with grave and harmful actions springing from an evil source, was here given a positive spin, as intelligence or cunning.2

      This was one among a series of articles that Craveirinha wrote that year in O brado africano3 on the kind of football played in the suburbs of Lourenço Marques. In another piece, he addressed the way in which suburban players adopted, adapted, and re-created the game, a European invention.4 “The indígena,” he emphasized, “is ready to adapt to new things but also to transform them or even discover them anew.”5

      The use, in local football, of what he termed “witchcraft practices” was one of the most conspicuous manifestations of this process of adoption. Craveirinha highlighted the influence of “ancient taboos, beliefs, superstitions” in the local adoption of the game. These beliefs had a powerful effect on the players’ “reflex system.” For years in succession, Beira-Mar, a team from Chamanculo, a suburban neighborhood, won the local championship because, the poet claimed, “before the matches, their athletes drank a special tea at the president’s house and, at some point, several black-and-white crows would appear behind the opposing team’s goal, to indicate how many goals they would suffer.” “Black men and many mestiços,” the poet continued, “still entered the pitch with small ‘copper’coins inside their boots, and would rub certain ‘remedies’ on their knees beforehand in order to protect their bodies from the opponent’s sorcery.” Africans, he noted, “gladly accepted countless impositions and customs from a more advanced civilization but, at the same time, they held on to a series of traditional practices that reflected their ‘worldview.’” The interpretation of this topic led the poet to issue a challenge: “these manifestations demand a vast study, which would lead to a greater knowledge of the black man, of his problems, of his clashes

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