Football and Colonialism - Nuno Domingos New African Histories

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by excluding the indígena populations, and the resistance of a large portion of settlers and their elites to any political outreach, clashed with the goal of social integration, which was particularly pressing in urban contexts. The need to tailor a new official model of physical practice to the specific challenges that defined the period from the mid-1950s onward highlighted the state’s inability to impose its conception of a proper education of the body. The political effect of segregation preoccupied the colonial rulers; the case of sport was especially troubling because of its capacity to bring people together, to cement identities, and to raise consciousness. The postwar political scene, namely in terms of the multiplication of the processes of independence in Africa and the eruption of armed conflict in Angola in 1961, in Guinea-Bissau in 1963, and in Mozambique in 1964, called for other ways of addressing the indígena issue. Furthermore, the context of postwar economic modernization, albeit deficient, meant that the state framework had to be reconfigured with a view toward the stabilization of the African labor force. These structuring elements in the evolution of the colonial field of power spilled over into sports practices and consumptions.

      In 1947 the Catholic Indo-Português club was integrated into the AFLM. The following year the Portuguese state allowed athletes’ transfers between the colonies and the metropolis.162 In 1949, the SNI’s leader, Captain Montanha, when answering a request by the Associação Africana de Inhambane, stated, “We have been recognizing for long that it is a good policy to support indígena associations, giving them all necessary help, with the main objective of creating an associative spirit among the indígena masses and, simultaneously, to take those associations to cooperate with the government’s colonizing and civilizing work. In my opinion, it is through this process that we will achieve a slow and useful assimilation.”163

      In 1952 the creation of a second division of the AFLM, composed mostly of a second line of settlers’ clubs, also included two teams organized by mestiços: Atlético de Lourenço Marques and Vasco da Gama. The fact that the latter club came from the AFA prompted a long debate within colonial institutions. The DSAC advised against the inclusion. They were afraid that the registration in the AFLM championship of a team composed almost entirely of “nonwhite” players could give way, through football’s actual competitive logic, to a public-order management problem.164 The governor general, Gabriel Teixeira, on the contrary, supported the inclusion. Still, this openness was indeed an attempt to reach out to mestiço elites.165 The new competition, besides having granted these clubs access to “downtown football,” stimulated the circulation of players between the AFA and the AFLM. The number of athletes that shifted from one association to the other was hardly meaningful, but their performances, on the one hand, and the fact that transfer virtually meant getting a job, on the other, raised football’s value as a vehicle of professional integration.166 The establishment of a second division was also a response to the growing dissatisfaction among the boards and the supporters of a few settlers’ clubs, who felt discriminated against by the notables that ruled over local football. This aspect of integration highlights the fact that social management was not confined to the dichotomies indígena/civilized or white/nonwhite but stretched across an ever more complex class system.

      The integrationist intentions behind the 1956 and 1957 colonial sports law contrasted with the persisting local discrimination. The percentage of black members at sports clubs and associations in Mozambique decreased over time (table 2.1):

      Source: Based on data from Anuário estatístico de Moçambique (1935–58)

      On the other hand, the percentage of mestiços was stable over time. If we take into account that membership in all sports clubs increased significantly, we can conclude that the growth of sports associativism in the central areas of Lourenço Marques excluded the black population.167

      During the discussion in the Conselho Legislativo on the creation of the Conselho Provincial de Educação Física (Provincial Council on Physical Education), the governor general of Mozambique pointed out that, although indígenas were not covered by the law, it was important to find solutions for their gradual integration within the sports field; this should be carried out with “a degree of flexibility, so as to allow for experimentation, trial, and error.”168 The uncontrolled consequences of the football market, which help create new African heroes, would put this “policy of flexibility” to the test, more so even than the state itself.

      In 1957, when African players such as Matateu and Coluna were already showcasing their skills in the metropolis, Carreira de Tiro, an AFLM club, asked the newly created Conselho Provincial de Educação Física (Provincial Council on Physical Education) for information regarding the registration of indígena players. The CPEF was faced with questions for which the law had no answer. Tacitly legitimated by the social-organization model, racism in sport became a public matter only when those discriminated against belonged to a small African petite bourgeoisie with access to newspapers. Carreira de Tiro’s request triggered a decision-making process169 that revealed the nature of the strategies of euphemization that strove to conciliate persistent racist actions and policies with the new lusotropical face of Portuguese propaganda, as well as with the wider issue of urban social control.170 Under the cover of a discursive façade, state agents acted strategically, seeking to balance a politically correct rhetoric with the existing interests among the settler community.

      The skewed rhetoric of Fernando Olavo Gouveia da Veiga (the CPEF’s president) as he strove to sum up the problem and produce doctrine, can be seen as a metaphor for Portugal’s colonial policy during this period. Racist policies were not inscribed in the law, since it did not distinguish between indígena and nonindígena players. The decision to employ them was left to the clubs. In Lourenço Marques, some did. The CPEF’s president pointed out the possible political gains in “integrating the indígenas.” To delay integration would have “harmful effects . . . in more advanced indígena circles, as sport is one of the main vehicles of passion, something that isn’t always easily controllable.” In line with the international image the country was trying to promote, discrimination was “contrary to the higher principles of our constitution, all the more so since it goes against our mentality and governing practices, guided by integration and assimilation principles.” Integration should not, however, upset “nonindígena circles,” which would only “reluctantly accept the random registration of indígenas as players for our own clubs and associations.” To reconcile the deep-seated local racism with the need to create laws that enabled the integration of indígenas, their sporting participation was legalized, although it was left “to the clubs’ judgment” the possibility of blocking the indígenas’ access, by invoking sports and associative internal regulations. This solution would be, the CPEF’s head concludes, “a demonstration, even within the international field, of a real indígena integration policy employed in our social system.” In a note in this same document, the SNI’s acting director agrees with the registration of certain elements, but adds that the registration of teams composed exclusively by indígenas should be studied with care.171

      In 1959 the colonial administration decided to abolish the African Football Association,172 integrating some of its clubs in the AFLM’s third division, which had been created for this purpose.173 In the same year, African clubs had to remove from their statutes words that hinted at any type of racial discrimination, although terms like African had become commonplace and were employed consciously as a reaction to colonial racism.174 This integration strove to put an end to various situations that gradually revealed the hypocrisy of the Portuguese assimilation system.175 When, in 1959, the AFA clubs moved to AFLM’s third division, they did so under very specific circumstances. Matches were played in downtown pitches, which offered the best setting for the game, in the hours that remained free from matches involving clubs from the two upper divisions—in other words, almost always early in the morning. In the first year, the possibility of the third division’s

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