Maria Paula Meneses

Colonial Wars, Colonial Alliances: The Alcora Exercise in the Context of Southern Africa

Images of violence have marked the political landscape of southern Africa since the independence of Portuguese and British colonies. The recent discovery of secret documents attest to the alliance linking white supremacist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia with Portugal’s corporatist–fascist regime. This article focuses on the roots of so much of this violence: the formation of a little-known but crucial white alliance in the subcontinent, code-named ‘Exercise Alcora’, which aimed to perpetuate the minority regimes in the region. South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal, with its two colonies of Mozambique and Angola, thus constituted a political project that sought to frustrate African liberation movements. A critical approach to the (re)construction of national memories is then crucial to understanding the roots of present-day social and political crises in southern Africa, as well as to recognising how important Exercise Alcora, as revealed in confidential documentation, was for the maintenance of white hegemony in this region until the very end of the 20th century. While South African–Rhodesian relations have been extensively dealt with in the literature, the relations between those countries and Portugal were more tenuous and shadowy.

A questão negra entre continentes: possibilidades de tradução intercultural a partir das práticas de luta?

Este artigo parte do desafio de que nao e possivel uma justica social global sem justica cognitiva. A partir da analise critica das ondas de violencia xenofoba que tem abalado comunidades negras vivendo na Africa do Sul, este artigo, cuja referencia analitica assenta nas propostas teoricas avancadas por Boaventura de Sousa Santos a partir das Epistemologias do Sul, aponta para a urgencia de uma leitura mais complexa e cuidada da diversidade e das hierarquias culturais, condicao para uma traducao ampla do impacto da violencia colonial. Assente numa reflexao sobre as discriminacoes raciais no Brasil e os conflitos xenofobos na Africa do Sul, este artigo busca propor pistas que contribuam para descentrar as narrativas eurocentricas dominantes, apostando numa visao do social enquanto espaco plural, composto de multiplas narrativas interligadas, frequentemente contraditorias entre si. A construcao de um dialogo intercultural constitui, como este artigo defende na sua parte final, um desafio a compreensao ampla das raizes da desigualdade no mundo. Multiplas experiencias cosmopolitas caracterizam os atuais contextos urbanos no Sul global e o nao reconhecimento desta vibrante e diversa realidade cultural e epistemica constitui um compasso reivindicativo pelo ampliar dos sentidos da cidadania e das pertencas.

Secrets, Lies, Silences and Invisibilities: Unveiling the Participation of Africans on the Mozambique Front during World War I

In the context of the centennial anniversary of the beginning of World War I (WWI), little attention has been paid to the Portuguese battlefields in African war theatres, which include Angola and Mozambique. In a recent field trip in Northern Mozambique, while talking about war and violence, an old woman mentioned his father having been a carrier during the ‘big, old war’ in Northern Mozambique.2 Researching this episode, we came to know that a whole neighbourhood in Pemba, a city in the extreme North of Mozambique, had been named after these carriers — Carriers Corps, thus Cariaco — presumably because members of the corps were given housing in this place.3 This episode calls our attention to memories of African men and women who, directly or indirectly, participated in WWI and have been forgotten or silenced in contemporary academic studies.4