Jehovah’s Witnesses in Colonial
Mozambique
Pedro PINTO*
Centro de Estudos Históricos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower movements have been widely studied
in south and central Africa, in particular in the former British and Belgian
colonies.1 This article analyses these religious movements in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique up until 1974.
The overwhelming majority of religious studies in Mozambique focused
on the role of the Catholic Church and of several Protestant denominations.
However, the Portuguese authorities spent a considerable amount of time
and resources investigating movements such as those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other similar movements, whose numbers of followers was quite
insignificant. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for this phenomenon.2 Further, the paper intends to shed light on the policies regarding
religious minorities in Mozambique, thus contributing to a more accurate
understanding of the religious phenomena in this area.
This paper uses the following nomenclature: the names ‘Watch Tower
Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania’ (WTBTS)3 and ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ are both used to refer to the official WTBTS organisation, with
headquarters in Brooklyn (USA) and its branches in South Africa and Ma*
1
2
3
I wish to thank Cristina Pedroso Ferreira, André Salgado de Matos and Eric Morier-Genoud
for their comments and suggestions.
For interpretations of the Watchtower movements in South and Central Africa in recent
historiography, see Ranger 1986, 14-19.
The paper draws on material located in various archives as well as interviews of Jehovah’s
Witnesses – see bibliography at the end of the paper for details.
The Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society (WTBTS) is the legal entity used by the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in the pursuit of their work of biblical teaching. It was founded by Charles Taze
Russell in Pennsylvania (USA) in 1884.
© LFM. Social Sciences & Missions, 17, Dec. 2005 : 61-123
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
79
presence of the Witnesses in the archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe only
diminished with the departure of the last remaining ‘hired labour’.62
Repression also prevented the growth of the number of African believers
in Mozambique, since in 1940 there were only 27 Jehovah’s Witnesses
preaching regularly in four different towns.63
The European Field. During the 1930s the occasional visits of
European Witnesses from South Africa in Mozambique were systematically
stopped by the Portuguese colonial authorities, greatly restraining WTBTS
mission work among the population of European origin in Mozambique.
The first European evangelists, Henry Myrdal and Edith Thompson,
arrived in Mozambique in 1929. In 1933, Piet de Jager and Lenie Theron
travelled through the European field of the colony distributing large numbers
of WTBTS publications to Portuguese, English and Indian individuals. Two
years later, Robert McLuckie, in charge of the WTBTS office in Nyasaland,
preached in Mozambique on several occasions too. During 1935, Fred Ludick
and David Norman joined efforts with the Myrdal and De Jager couples in
Lourenço Marques, but were detained a few days later by the police and forced
to return to South Africa.64
In 1937, the police of Lourenço Marques summoned Henry Myrdal,
stating that the local Catholic bishop had complained about Myrdal’s
evangelisation The bishop was said to have convinced the Chief of Police that
the ‘[WTBTS] society publications, distributed throughout the country, would
result in the population taking up arms and starting a revolution’.65 Perhaps the
bishop had in mind stories that were disseminated from 1935 onwards of the
62
63
64
65
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Testemunhas de Jeová, SC SR 337/46, pt.25, São Tomé’s PIDE, Official
letter 117/60, 17 June 1960, 281; see also Nascimento 2003, 92-95, 168-169. Nascimento
uses the terms ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ and ‘Watchtower’ interchangeably, allowing a certain
imprecision when he refers to ‘the unshakeable hostility to European presence in Africa
which guided the followers of Watchtower’ (2003, 168). This lapse may give an erroneous
impression, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as some, but not all, of the Watchtower
movements, did not show any signs of such a feeling. As for the remaining movements, one
must differentiate the level and form of such a ‘hostility’. See footnote 34 below.
These towns were probably Lourenço Marques, Inhaminga, Mutarara and a town in the Tete
District, near Nyasaland (1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 117; Interview with Portugal
Jone Dede, Tete, 2003).
McLuckie 1990, 28-9; The Watchtower, 1 November 1933, 334; 1930 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 74; 1934 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 91; 1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, New
York, WTBTS, 119; 1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 115-116.
1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 116.
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role played by the WTBTS in the Copperbelt disturbances.66 Myrdal was
warned that if he continued to preach he would be expelled from
Mozambique. Myrdal appealed to the Governor General of the colony, who
delegated the resolution of the matter to one of his subordinates. This person,
after having read the WTBTS publications, is reported to have concluded that
there was nothing to fear.67
In the meantime, in 1938, another two pioneers (David Norman and
Frank Taylor) arrived in Mozambique. They were soon detected by the police
and threatened with expulsion from the territory, as a result of which they
decided to return to South Africa voluntarily.68
In 1939, after a change of Governor General opened up the possibility of
an even less tolerant successor, the Myrdals sent biblical publications to all the
authorities in the colony by post in order to clarify the aims of the WTBTS,
before abandoning the Mozambican mission field.69
As far as conversions were concerned, the results of ten years of
preaching to the European population was nil.
Nyasaland and Mozambique. From the 1920s onwards, WTBTS
preachers from Nyasaland came to preach in Mozambique, mainly in the north
close to the border with Nyasaland. Apart from these members sent to
Mozambique, other WTBTS believers, searching for a job in the South African
mines, joined other migrants from Nyasaland who sought a first job in the
Portuguese territory before moving on to the Union, and also they took the
chance to preach to others. Many of these migrants worked in the Sena Sugar
Estates plantations. From 1945 onwards, a wave of migrants from Nyasaland
and Rhodesia went to work on these sugar plantations, causing a rapid increase
in the number of WTBTS believers in Mozambique from 34 in 1945 to 124 the
66
67
68
69
In May 1935, violent strikes on the Copperbelt caused serious disturbances. The commission
in charge of investigating its causes pointed to the WTBTS though without proof according
to most sources (Rotberg 1972, 161-168; Wills 1967, 232-233). On his sides, Cross argues
that, if the members of the Watch Tower Society did not participate in the upheavals, the
apocalyptic ideas they preached played an important role in the development of an atmosphere of excitement and ‘unrest’ which made the propagation of the strikes easier (Cross
1972, 381-398).
1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 116.
1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 117. A pioneer is a full time evangelist, often sent to areas
where the local organisation is still undeveloped.
1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 116-117.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
81
following year, and up to around two hundred new members every year, on
average, during the 1950s.70
Sometimes the WTBTS office in Zomba, Nyasaland, sent representatives
to supervise the work in Mozambique. In 1945, a representative from
Nyasaland visited all the groups in Mozambique to organise the Mozambican
work better. At the end of that year, four Mozambican WTBTS believers were
arrested. When the Portuguese colonial officer who questioned them heard
them preaching about a ‘different kingdom’, he reportedly said that ‘the only
kingdom there was, was the Portuguese one, and wanted to hear no more
about any other kingdom’. Two of the believers were sentenced to forced
labour, and the others were kept in jail for some time. When they were
released, they were ordered to stop preaching.71
Finally, in 1948 the Nyasaland WTBTS branch office prepared a new
group of pioneers to be sent to Mozambique, as well as reading classes for
believers and sympathisers in Mozambique. In November, the Portuguese
colonial authorities arrested the Nyasaland’s WTBTS circuit superintendent for
Mozambique, two pioneers, and a congregation servant,72 besides
apprehending thousands of books. Despite protests from the WTBTS branch
office in Nyasaland, the believers were deported to São Tomé under the
accusation of carrying subversive leaflets aimed at the denationalisation of the
colony.73
In 1948, the number of Witnesses in Mozambique had already risen to
around five hundred. However, during the 1950s this number declined again,
reaching a mere 119 believers in 1956. There are several reasons for this: the
end of the contracts of the migrant workers from Nyasaland; the movement of
populations near the borders;74 and repression from the Portuguese colonial
regime, which periodically repatriated Nyasaland natives to their home country,
70
71
72
73
74
1946 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 194; Newitt 1997, 428-441; Makambe 1980.
1947 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 194; 1948 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 201-202.
The territory of each country was divided by the Witnesses in districts, circuits, and congregations. The circuit servant regularly visited the congregations in his circuit. The congregation
servant was the local responsible for each congregation. Mozambique was one of Nyasaland’s
circuits.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, Official letter S.S./54 of Inspector Administrativo António Policarpo de Sousa Santos to Governor of Southern Save, 16 February 1954, 136; 1950 Yearbook
of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 218-219.
Many Witnesses in Mozambique frequently moved to Nyasaland where it was easier to
preach (1950 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 218-219; 1952 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 197).
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and deported key members of the local WTBTS structure to São Tomé and
Príncipe.75 The number of believers only began to rise again after 1960.
Characteristics of WTBTS Groups. Until the 1930s and 1940s, there
was no WTBTS organisation in Mozambique and supervision by experienced
Witnesses from Nyasaland was irregular. Therefore, the groups identified in
many sources as ‘Watchtower’ groups included both subscribers of The
Watchtower, published by the WTBTS, as well as groups formed by
Mozambican migrants who returned from the mines in South Africa and in
both Rhodesias and who had been exposed to WTBTS beliefs there. Their
bonds with the official WTBTS were very fragile, and their formation
rudimentary.
Thus, it is only natural that groups independent from the official WTBTS
organisation existed at this time, such as the one found in 1927 by Gresham
Kwazizirah, representative of the WTBTS in Nyasaland near Inhaminga. The
group, self-designated as ‘Watchtower’, was led by Robinson Kalitera. It was
soon accepted in the WTBTS organisation. We do not know exactly which
beliefs the group upheld, but there is a reference that at one point it had to
make some changes in its teachings.76 Later on, in 1953, some isolated groups
which had already received WTBTS publications were found in territories
unexplored. They were also integrated in the WTBTS.77
In 1964 there was also a group called ‘Watchtower’ near Mutarara, a town
just south of where the southern-most tip of Nyasaland extends into
Mozambique. According to the Portuguese colonial authorities, this group was
‘even more intransigent [than the Jehovah’s Witnesses] in the interpretation
and the execution of biblical requirements, mainly regarding the disrespect for
worldly laws, the political sovereignties, the symbols of these sovereignties, and
75
76
77
In 1955 the Portuguese colonial authorities arrested and deported several congregation servants. The WTBTS work was thrown into disarray and many of the groups, by losing their
leadership, ceased to send reports of their activities to Nyasaland's WTBTS office. This explains some of the decrease of membership numbers (1956 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
233).
1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York, WTBTS, 119. In April 1934, the WTBTS
opened a branch office in Zomba, starting a massive purification campaign of the ‘Watchtower’ group, rejecting 90% of the alleged members. See Chakanza 1998, 29-30.
1954 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 224. Augusto Nascimento states that in 1953 there was a
group in Manica called ‘Chitawara’ which was a variant of the Watchtower (2003, 92-93).
There also is a reference to a group called ‘Acitawala’ in Angonia in 1953 numbering 110 believers (Manuel Teixeira, “Os Acitawala: um assunto palpitante da actualidade”, in Missões, 2,
3/4, 1953, quoted in Pereira 1998, p.90).
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
83
their representatives’.78 The statement reflects the same vague accusations,
lacking any tangible evidence, often made against the members of the
WTBTS.79
A member of the WTBTS office in Nyasaland recalls that during the
1950s:
[I] used to get called to the Police Station in Blantyre to check on groups of
men who had been arrested and asked whether or not they were Jehovah’s
Witnesses. […] I never found any trace of seditious rebellion in any of them.
They were arrested because they had cut down a tree or trees belonging to a
European estate[,] the excuse for which act was that ‘God made the trees so
they belonged to all those who worshipped Him’. The soil conservation laws
were also ignored by these people, particularly the ones relating to not bunding
[sic] the land within a certain number of feet of any watercourse. A further disagreement arose when the Government added £1 per year to the £7 hut tax
saying this was for education. The Watchtower Movement people claimed that
as they did not send their children to school they would not pay that extra £1.
They were a nuisance, not a threat, to the Government.80
During the 1930s and 1940s, there was a greater tendency for uniformity
of the teaching and evangelising methods used by the Witnesses. The
guidelines coming from the headquarters in New York, aimed at all branches
and offices, had consequences on the Witnesses in Mozambique too, as a result
of their growing relationship with the office in Nyasaland.81
It is around 1935 that the use of new technologies, such as phonographs82
and the radio, appeared for spreading the doctrines of the Witnesses.83 The
78
79
80
81
82
See IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, 189-191, 200, 203, 206, 232.
Other differences between the Watchtower Movement and the Jehovah’s Witnesses pointed
out to the Portuguese authorities by members of the Watchtower Movement, relate to the
prohibition to eat pork, rat, and fish without scales; the rejection of the dog as domestic animal; not cutting one’s hair; the use of particular clothing; women always wearing black kerchiefs over their heads; the gathering for religious ceremonies only on Sundays; and finally,
the practice of faith healing. See Oliveira, António L. Henriques de, Relatório sobre o movimento
de populações imigradas e regressadas da Niassalândia ao Distrito de Tete elaborado pelo Inspector do Serviço
de Acção Psicossocial (5.5.1964-2.6.1964), [henceforth quoted as Oliveira, Relatório...] in
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Cx. 121, 20-21, 41-43; Interview with Portugal Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, 1.
Written Statements by Peter Bridle, London, 2 November 2003, 1.
By the mid-1950s the WTBTS movie ‘The New World Society’ was screened in the congregations in Nyasaland, near the border with Mozambique. It is highly probable that natives from
the Portuguese colony attended some of these screeings. Given that most Africans had never
seen a movie, many were interested in the message of the WTBTS. The movie showed racial
unity enjoyed by Jehovah’s Witnesses (Statement by Peter Bridle, London, 2 Nov. 2003, 2).
The Jehovah’s Witnesses Yearbook of 1936 mentions that records with speeches by J. F. Rutherford, president of the WTBTS, were played in Mozambique (p.70). There are references that
at least until 1942 sessions for playing these records were organised for the natives. The year-
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phonographs were portable devices that allowed the playing of records
containing biblical talks.84 After the screenings, question-and-answer sessions
ensued, which allowed the Witnesses to ascertain whether there were any
people interested in being visited by them. For instance, in 1941 the annual
attendance of the screenings throughout Mozambique was 3243. Given the
general illiteracy in Mozambique, this was an effective means for disseminating
the WTBTS message, even if it was limited by the scarce number of
phonographs.
Following this line of reasoning and action, in the early 1940s both the
usage of the phonograph and the distribution and subscription of the magazine
The Watchtower85 – the main organ of teaching of the WTBTS – were
encouraged by the WTBTS’ headquarters. However, only two hundred
magazines reached Mozambique per year because of illiteracy, communication
problems during the World War II, and the confiscation of the magazines by
the Portuguese colonial authorities. It is only after 1957/58 that the distribution
of magazines, books and brochures increased significantly.86
During the mid-1940s, small brochures entitled Model-studies were
published by the WTBTS with the aim of presenting the main tenets of the
Witnesses, arranged in questions and answers. These brochures were used to
conduct bible studies in small groups, and later with individuals.87
83
84
85
86
87
books give us only figures of the annual attendance of the screeings (for instance, in 1939
there had been 5,000 people). The authorities did not ignore the ‘subversive’ potential of
such materials and considered censoring the records. See Thompson 1989, 73-74; IAN/TT,
SCCIM, Box 177, Police Comissaryship of Chinde, Official letter 383, 10 July 1961, 66.
In 1937, one of the talks by Rutherford, usually broadcast on radio, arrived in Mozambique,
South Africa and Rhodesia (1937 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 88). For the potential of the
radio to transmit ‘subversive’ ideals, as well as for its use by the regime in Mozambique, see
Power 2000 and Gonçalves 1960, 232-236. Compare with Paul, 1975, 74-75, 104.
Initially the records were only available in English, necessitating simultaneous translation. In
the late 1930s some records appeared in Cinyanja and, some years later, in Zulu, Xhosa and
Sesotho. The 1941 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses reports on how the playing of a ‘record put
to flight five Roman Catholic native teachers [who] later caused a report to reach the ears of
the District Commissioner that “someone with a gramophone was going around the villages
telling the people that Armageddon is here and that all Europeans are going to be destroyed”’
(131).
In 1949 the magazine became available in Cinyanja.
Most of the WTBTS publications were banned in central and southern Africa during the Second World War. Still, in 1954 literature was discovered and confiscated in Mozambique, and
some native Jehovah’s Witnesses were interrogated for three days before being released (1955
Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 229).
The booklet Model-Studies was also available in Cinyanja, Sesotho, Zulu and Xhosa.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
85
As far as regular meetings were concerned, it is only in the late 1950s that
the schema of three meetings which WTBTS congregations in other countries
used, started to be applied in Mozambique. Due to lack of local supervision,
there were still many areas where the meetings were neither held regularly nor
according to the guidelines from the WTBTS headquarters. On the other hand,
travel by Witnesses to Nyasaland and South Africa, in order to attend
conventions and obtain organisational guidance, was frequent.88
During the 1950s, the WTBTS launched an alphabetisation programme in
eastern Africa. Small brochures teaching how to read and write were printed,
and parts of the weekly meetings were used for this purpose. ‘May everyone
teach one more’ was the motto for this campaign. Up until then the majority of
the Jehovah’s Witnesses could neither read nor write, which made it difficult
for them to acquire doctrinal knowledge.89 There are records of this campaign
in the late 1950s for northern Mozambique and during the 1960s for Gaza
province in the south of the country.90
Simultaneously with this educational program, an effort was made to
cleanse the WTBTS congregations of practices considered contrary to biblical
teachings (for instance, polygamy, spiritualism, alcoholism, and practices
considered immoral), implying the expulsion of any person unwilling to repent
and change his behaviour.91
88
89
90
91
Statement by Portugal Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, 1. From 1958 to 1960, Witnesses from Nyalasand continued to respond to the many calls from Mozambican groups to be better instructed in WTBTS beliefs and how to preach from house to house (1959 Yearbook of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, 231; 1960 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 239; 1961 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
217). The three weekly meetings of the WTBTS consisted, first, of a main meeting that contained a talk based on the Bible, followed by the study of the Watchtower magazine by means
of a question-and-answer session. The second meeting was the ‘service’ meeting, directed at
training preachers for ministry at the Theocratic Ministry School. This school was founded in
1943 with the purpose of making every Witness capable of explaining his beliefs without
needing to resort to any external aids other than the Bible. Every man was encouraged to enrol at this school, and to participate by presenting short talks and receiving specific advice on
oratory skills. Later, women were allowed to participate in the school as well. Finally, the
third and shorter meeting consisted of small groups of believers who gathered to consider, by
means of a question-and-answer session, a WTBTS publication. At every meeting, attendee
participation was frequent and encouraged (Epstein 1986).
With the arrival of WTBTS missionaries during the 1950s, literacy increased to the point that
36,000 of the 50,000 Witnesses in the region could read and write in 1970 (1972 Yearbook of
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 235).
Personal communication, Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 1 December 2003; IAN/TT, SCCIM,
Cx. 177, Information of the Post of Chidenguele (Gaza), 1963, 139.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, Secretary of the Post of Zóbuè, Bulletin of Information 28/64,
17 December 1964, 266.
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After the mid-1940s, visits by members from the Nyasaland branch of
Mozambican WTBTS congregations increased, despite difficulties imposed on
them by the Portuguese colonial authorities that often led to repatriation or
deportation to São Tomé and Príncipe. The aim of these visits was to readjust
the Mozambican WTBTS groups, in order to better integrate them into the
centralised procedures of the Society.92 However, an internal organisation of
the WTBTS groups within the Portuguese colony only became a reality in the
early 1960s, when Mozambican natives took over the positions of circuit
superintendents, and when dozens of Mozambican pioneers began preaching
in new areas.93 Simultaneously, after 1960 an European couple from Southern
Rhodesia began to supervise the work in the European field, which started to
grow mainly due to the mass arrival of Portuguese colonists at that time.94
In the 1960s one of the African circuit superintendents reported how,
during those days, ‘although with precautions, the meetings were held regularly
with participation of the attendance in all the planned programs [...]. Preaching
work was also done, however, again, with precautions. The new publishers
were accompanied in the ministry by experienced brothers.”95
From 1961 to 1964, sound-amplifying equipment was used in the
preaching work, with recorded talks being played near street markets. But this
92
93
94
95
1946 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 189.
For the 1960s there are reports of groups or congregations in the following places (districts
are underlined): Lourenço Marques (today Maputo): Chamanculo, Xipamanine, Malhangalene
and Machava (Lourenço Marques), Marracuene, Duco (Magude), Chivonguene (Magude),
Santa Quitéria (Mapulanguene), Xinavane and Esperança (Manhiça); Gaza: Chigumeto (Dengoine) (João Belo, today Xai-Xai), Chugumete, Nhanzilo, Macupulane; Inhambane: Inhambane, Lindela, Massinga, Funhalouro, Cabo Tomé, Mabote; Beira: Inhaminga, Dombe, Marromeu; Zambézia: Luabo, Ile, Nhazombe, Tamanda, Milange; Tete: Dedza, Mutarara, Vila
Nova, Zóbuè, Angónia, Dowa, Chinjale, Nhangoma, Chale; Nampula: Meconta, Ilha de
Moçambique, António Enes (today Angoche); Cabo Delgado: Porto Amélia (today Pemba);
Vila Cabral (today Niassa): Micanhelas, Mandimba, Lichinga e Metangula (Written Statements
by Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 12 Sept. 2003, 2 and 3; Interview with Portugal Jone Dede,
Tete, 2003, 1; Interview with Ernesto Chilaule, Maputo, 2003, 3; Written Statements by Peter
Bridle, London, 2 November 2003, 1-2; 1951 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 229).
By the mid-1960s European congregations had been created in Beira (1966) and Lourenço
Marques. Later, small groups, isolated witnesses and interested persons were found in Machipanda, Nacala, Nampula, Quelimane and Vila Pery (in the latter Africans and Europeans
worshipped together). All these places were supervised by a British circuit superintendent
who, in 1972, was arrested by PIDE police in Nampula and expelled from the colony. However, he was permitted to return at a later stage (Bentley 1990, 23-25; Interview with Acácio
Ramos, Albufeira, 13 Dec. 2003).
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, 206-207.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
87
process was discontinued in 1965 in order to ‘prevent a negative reaction from
the authorities’. 96
For the 1960s we have more precise information on specific
congregations, such as the group of Zóbuè (Tete). This group was composed
of 34 men and 32 women, guided by two WTBTS ‘religious chiefs’ who had
brought the doctrine from Muanza in Malawi. These ‘leaders’ had already
visited Blantyre in Nyasaland and Chileka three times (in 1948, 1959 and 1963)
for spiritual purposes, sometimes accompanied by other believers. They joined
‘many people from Angónia and Zóbuè, though mostly from Lilongwe, Port
Herald and Malange. The meetings generally lasted for 4 days. They were held
on open fields, where the European Macalaqui [McLuckie] and an African,
Aliquizenda Mafunbana, from Johannesburg read the bible and explained its
principles’.97
This group entered briefly on Mozambique’s territory and a Portuguese
inspector, António Oliveira, was assigned to investigate the subject. He briefly
described their beliefs and practices. They had no specific place to gather,
choosing their own houses or meeting out in the open; they received
magazines published by the WTBTS in Portuguese and Cinyanja; they sought
to assure the authorities that when they gathered there were no dances, beating
of drums, nor any group prayers; they baptised by submerging the entire body
and baptised only those who were old enough to understand its meaning;
baptism did not grant any healing powers;98 they had no food restrictions nor
fasts, except a call to moderation in the consumption of alcohol.
The inspector was informed by the group leader that in the family the
husband was the head of the family, but the insistence by the WTBTS on
monogamy was the main obstacle preventing WTBTS beliefs from being
embraced by the populace more widely.99 Believers who resorted to witchcraft
96
97
98
99
Statement by Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 12 Sept. 2003, 2.
Oliveira, Relatório..., 20-21.
On this issue, the inspector gave them some pills to treat the flu, to be sure that their religion
did not forbid the taking of medicines.
There were frequent rumours of sexual permissiveness among African WTBTS communities
in Mozambique. This was possibly the result of the fact that the Witnesses preached in pairs,
women preaching alongside men who were not their husbands. These accusations occurred
throughout the territory (interview with Francisco Zunguza and Paulina Mandlate, Maputo,
20 Dec. 2003). Compare this to similar rumours in the Copperbelt: ‘This was because the
members used to visit one another to greet each other early in the morning in their houses
and spend the day waiting for the Second Coming. They would go about in pairs telling the
people the Word of God, usually a man and a woman or a boy and a girl together’ (Taylor
1961, 112-113).
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were expelled. However, resorting to healers for health reasons was not
forbidden. Concerning politics, they accepted the Kingdom of God as
‘supreme’, yet acknowledged and respected authorities and governments on
earth. They even said that they ‘recognise the need to pay tribute to the
government, both in money and in mutual help’100, referring to occasions when
they collaborated with the authorities to clean roads. There also was no
restriction on the inclusion of white people into their religious group, though
they did not know any such people in Mozambique, contrary to what they had
seen in Nyasaland.
The inspector concluded that, after consulting the local authorities and
merchants, the group had not given any reason for worrying up until then.101
‘With the armed conflict against the Portuguese government [after 1964],
both the meetings and the preaching work were done with greater precautions
as PIDE intensified searches, aiming at neutralising clandestine meetings. [...]
During the 1970s, the situation changed gradually up to the point where the
meetings were held in the middle of the night’.102 These meetings were held in
places often unknown to most of the Witnesses up to the last minute, and the
invitation of strangers was not allowed. Thus their public feature was lost, and
the meetings now served mainly to ‘strengthen the faith of the brothers, and
the inactive members of the congregation’. Preaching in large towns and
villages was frequently limited to bible studies with ‘interested people, their
relatives, and friends’. With these people, precautions were also taken: a person
had to be known for a few weeks, along with his occupation, before he would
be invited to attend meetings.103
As to European Witnesses, they rarely gathered together with African
Witnesses, and they never preached together. White Witnesses normally
preached only to other white members in order to avoid raising suspicions.
100
101
102
103
Oliveira, Relatório..., 21.
Oliveira, Relatório..., 41-43. However, the administrator of the Casula office informed the inspector of the existence of a small group of seven Witnesses whom he considered ‘hostile’ to
Portuguese presence, although he was not specific in his accusations (ibid., 28-29).
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, Act of questioning to Ernesto
Chilaule, 3 June 1968, 213. When Ernesto Chilaule was arrested by PIDE in 1968, he was
asked whether he knew that their meetings were forbidden. He replied that he only came to
know that after reports in the newspapers of a trial in Lisbon of an entire congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1965-66. However, as he understood that the accused had been released, he concluded that they could continue to meet as they used to.
All quotes from written Statements by Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 12 Sept. 2003, 1 and 3;
statement by António Micas Mbuluane, Maputo, 9 August 2003, 3-4; statement by Portugal
Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, 2; 1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York, WTBTS, 127-129.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
89
During the 1970s, PIDE in Lourenço Marques questioned several white
Witnesses and periodically monitored their meetings in order to assess the kind
of information therein divulged, though this vigilance decreased during the last
years of the Portuguese regime. Preaching work was done from house to house
in an alternate manner to avoid drawing attention on themselves. In Beira there
was greater freedom for action: there was already a meeting place, albeit
clandestine. However, some precautions with meetings and preaching work still
had to be taken. On one occasion, a Witness, the owner of a house where
meetings were held, was interrogated by PIDE, but without any significant
consequences. Due to leaks of information, the round-ups made by the police
were always unsuccessful, many times the Witnesses knowing in advance the
police was coming, and thus taking the appropriate measures to turn those
round-ups ineffective.104
Danger of religious ‘subversion’: real or imaginary?
The Portuguese empire had not followed the ‘winds of change’ after the
Second World War, and remained indifferent to the successive nationalist
waves that progressed through Asia, the Middle East, the Arab world, and
finally Africa.
‘Proudly alone’, the Government isolated itself from the rest of Europe,
assuming the stand of the ‘last fortress of the “true” western values’ in Africa,
fighting against the communist threat. Within this context, and realising that
the Cold War had arrived to stay, Portugal ended up benefiting from the global
strategy of the USA, which gave greater importance to the use of a military air
base in the Azores than to the direct support of the African nationalist
movements. Even if the Portuguese regime did not obtain any declared
support for its colonial policy, it managed to achieve a relative and constrained
silence on behalf of its allies.
Due to the regime’s propaganda, Portuguese permanence in Africa was
increasingly associated with the ‘very reason of existence of Portugal’s
nationality, without which it was not fulfilled’. Therefore, the existence of the
dictatorial regime in Portugal depended on whether it could irreducibly defend
its colonies. The end of the colonies meant the ‘end of the nation’.105
104
105
In 1974 there were 100 European Witnesses in Beira and about 300 in Mozambique as a
whole (Interview with Américo Paulino, Alfeizerão, 11 Dec. 2003; Interview with Abel Arrais, Amora, 12 Dec. 2003).
Telo 1994, 177; Rosas 1995, 28-30.
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The Portuguese regime identified communism as its main enemy, the
‘root of all evils’. The designation ‘communism’ was applied to every action
and thought that did not conform to the prevalent values of the Estado-Novo.
Communism was seen not only as an antagonistic political ideology, but mainly
as means to destroy all contemporary political systems, and to introduce
anarchy and ‘absolute chaos’. Communism was seen, therefore, as the ‘greatest
enemy of European, Western, and Christian Civilisation [...]’.106
Beyond the real dimensions of the Communist threat to Salazar’s regime,
it was instrumentalised Communism on the level of discursive practices. The
regime ‘would constantly feed that anti-communism ideology, in order to
create around itself unity and consensus under a supposed threat of invasion,
siege, danger and chaos’.107
This is the context within which the colonial administration started to
look with great caution at the activities of religious groups, in particular
movements that were seen to deviate from traditional religion, fearing their
turning into anti-national purposes.
Up until the 1950s, the attitude of the Portuguese administration in
Mozambique towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses was characterised by repression:
the confiscation of bible-based publications, imprisonment, deportation and illtreatment of its members. Although I have not found proof that any political
directive was issued for this repression, I believe that the attitude of the police
and the administrators was guided by an exacerbated nationalism, by the radical
defence of Catholicism, and by the ‘notorious fame’ which the designation
“Watchtower” had acquired in central Africa during the first half of the
century.108
Beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is now imperative to take a closer
look at the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The belief about the ‘end of the
world’, or eschatology, is particularly important. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe
106
107
108
Faria 1995, 229-231.
Faria 1995, 234-235, 259. For the case of Cabo Delgado, see Gentili 1993, 103-116.
It is remarkable that one policy recommended to the government of the colony of Mozambique by the Bishop of Beira, D. Sebastião Soares de Resende, in February 1953 was ‘to expel
the people related to the protestant sects of Zionism, 7th Day Adventists, and the Watch
Tower, which nourish subversive ideas’ (Pereira 2004). Two years later, the archbishop of
Lourenço Marques, D. Teodósio Gouveia severly condemned Protestantism (in the document Pastoral sobre o Protestantismo) as ‘provocative of social and political upheavals’, not only
in its traditional, mainline form, but ‘now through the Adventists, Pentecostals, Zionists,
Watts [sic] Tower, etc’ (Gouveia 1955, 353-354).
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
91
that God will, in the near future, introduce a millennium in which obedient
mankind will have the opportunity of being led to perfection.
Within millenarian ideology generally, there are two main currents: premillenarianism and post-millenarianism. Those who support postmillenarianism believe that the millennium will be gradually achieved and that
the world is in progress towards this point. They also believe that Christians
should not only preach, but also get involved in trying to change the world and
solve its problems by means of social and political activism.109
The Jehovah’s Witnesses do not fit into post-millenarianism. In a way,
they can be defined as pre-millennialists. The world separated from God is
seen as evil and as getting worse everyday. The only way the millennium will
come is through a sudden and cataclysmic divine intervention. Christians only
have to wait for such an intervention and warn the rest of mankind so that
more people can be saved. Therefore, Christians should not waste their time
trying to change worldly conditions. This is considered futile, and even
potentially contaminating, as it may distract Christians from their main work –
preaching – and lead them to a position alienated from God.110
It is expected from Jehovah’s Witnesses that they read and regularly
discuss the Bible and bible-based publications published by the WTBTS. They
often understand disconcerting worldly events of political, religious or socioeconomical nature as part of the fulfilment of biblical prophecies and the
coming of divine intervention. While they are not alienated from the political
context they live in, they strive to stay away from it.111
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the Devil controls the present worldly
system of things, as a consequence of which they refuse to take part in any kind
of political or military activity. However, they obey the laws of the countries
they live in, fulfilling their obligations towards the state. If authorities try to
force them to disobey what they consider to be God’s orders (by enforcing
military service or stopping their preaching or gathering) and thus to violate
their Christian conscience, they choose to ‘obey God as ruler rather than men’
(cf. Acts 5:29).
Many regimes have regarded this interpretation of contemporary history
and political events as a threat since it announced their end through the hands
of God. As a consequence, the religious beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
109
110
111
Delumeau 1997, 341-360.
Mills 1968, 51-53; Epstein 1986, 534.
Epstein 1986, 541-543; Taylor 1961, 234.
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have brought them persecutions both under democratic and totalitarian
regimes that regarded their non-involvement as insubordination or even
political rebellion.112 That is precisely what happened in the Portuguese
colonies in Africa.
In fact, persecution from political regimes is something expected by the
Witnesses, since they expect to receive the same kind of treatment Christ did
due to having chosen God’s side.113
The position of absolute neutrality in the face of earthly powers as taken
by the Jehovah’s Witnesses was unacceptable to Portugal during Salazar’s
government, and it worsened with the beginning of the colonial war, in 1961.
Although the Witnesses actively refrained from any activities that might
promote upheaval against authorities, some people within the regime feared
pernicious infiltrations that would lead the Witnesses to stop believing in divine
intervention and to take the task of introducing an egalitarian society on
themselves. The regime feared that the Witnesses’ preaching might unify
different groups and/or ethnicities behind a single purpose, or might inflame
the natives who were faced with economic difficulties, or they might even
introduce liberal American or Pan-African influences.114
The Witnesses’ millennialist vision also worried Portuguese authorities.
The idea of a perfect new world, serving God in a united way without social,
economic or racial discrimination or differentiation contrasted deeply with
colonial reality. Colonial authorities foresaw the subversion of the status quo
112
113
114
Mills 1998, 345. Jehovah’s Witnesses were proscribed in dozens of countries during the Second World War. In the USA, their refusal to salute the flag and serve in the army unleashed a
wave of violence against them. A long legal battle in the Supreme Court eventually led to the
extension of the civil liberties guaranteed by the constitution to all minorities (Peters 2000, 818, 288-294.) In Nazi Germany, Hitler considered Jehovah’s Witnesses to be traitors who
should be eliminated due to their neutrality and opposition to racism. Thousands of Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where almost 2,000 died (King 1982, 147-208.).
These cases were well known to the Portuguese authorities in Angola and Mozambique and
were referred to in many communiqués and reports prepared on the Witnesses.
As a matter of fact, analysts of the regime writing on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Angola and
Mozambique (such as Silva Cunha and Ferraz Freitas) advised governmental persecution that
avoided the creation of ‘martyrs’. Although ferocity was never applied in Mozambique, it was
exerted in Angola with the approval of the very same Silva Cunha (see Epstein 1986, 552)).
Regarding the importance given by the regime to religious separatist movements in spreading
Pan-African ideologies, see Rocha 2000, 727-752.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
93
within the message, preached so zealously, of a world without racism or
domination of ‘man over man’.115
Despite the spreading of ‘luso-tropical’ ideal mainly after 1960, natives
were still looked upon as ‘children’ who needed their colonial ‘tutor’ in order to
reach adulthood. In this sense, the Portuguese regarded the ‘Africanisation’ of
leadership in the Protestant and separatist churches, conferring positions of
administrative, spiritual, and financial responsibility to Africans, as an omen
portending Mozambique’s independence, and therefore censored and
sometimes repressed it. In spite of this, almost all of the work of the Witnesses
in Mozambique was done, precisely, by Africans.116
Another issue has to do with the education that was being supplied by the
state and the Catholic Church, within which the native was in a passive
position as recipient of eminently practical contents. Education in most schools
was of low quality, and the superficial and rudimentary knowledge transmitted
was often quickly forgotten. By contrast, at the meetings of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, constant education, much more than simply ritualistic ceremony,
was provided, aiming to make every individual an active preacher of the
Gospel. This form of education was not inspected by the state and, as J. J.
Gonçalves described it, it was akin to ‘clandestine education’, frequently
associated with ‘forbidden sects’ which, as a non-authorised source of
transmission of education, could bring what the state considered to be
subversion.117
Mozambique – The 1950s. One of the persons associated with the
colonial administration in the 1950s and 1960s who stood out in the study and
definition of colonial policy towards separatist African churches, designated as
‘gentile sects’ (seitas gentilicas), was Afonso Ivens-Ferraz Freitas (henceforth
Ferraz Freitas), administrator of the municipality of Lourenço Marques. In
1957 he concluded a secret police report on these ‘sects’ which was later
distributed confidentially to all administrative authorities in the colony. But
115
116
117
Already in 1894, Eduardo de Noronha warned of the perils of non-Catholic religious teachings, due to ‘their evangelical principles of equality [which] have produced in the African
spirit such a rupture of equilibrium, such a profound upheaval of their feelings of propriety,
such a sincere conviction in their loftiest ambitions, that is deemed right and dignified to establish themselves in the town and push the Europeans into the sea’. See Van Butselaar 1984,
131; and Epstein 1986, 545.
Cruz e Silva 2001, 90-93; Helgesson 1994, 373; Epstein 1986, 535, 546.
In the 1940s, the ‘priest […] was the one who talked on Sundays. The population in general
only listened’. Written Statements by Ernesto Chilaule, Maputo, 3 Sept. 2003, 1; see also
Gonçalves 1960, 208-215; Epstein, 1986, 534-535; Taylor 1961, 232-233.
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before we analyse this report, let us describe the evolution of his thought and
action towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In September 1953 the police arrested over a dozen African Witnesses in
Luabo and sent them to the Lourenço Marques prison for almost an entire
year. The officer in charge of the process proposed the deportation of the
African nationals to São Tomé, and the expulsion of foreigners to Nyasaland.
The accusation was clear: the detained were part of a religious organisation
which defended the ideals of ‘Freedom for All’ and ‘Justice in a New World’; in
other words, they were ‘Communists’, and the ‘Mau-Mau’ rebellion had started
in a similar way in Kenya.118
In July 1954, William L. McLuckie, in charge of the WTBTS branch office
in Blantyre, wrote to the general governor of Mozambique, protesting against
the arrest of the Witnesses without the laying of formal charges, reassuring the
governor that the Jehovah’s Witnesses stood for peace and spread a consoling
message to the people they visited. When this line of reasoning did not yield
the desired results, McLuckie travelled to Lourenço Marques and spoke to
Ferraz Freitas in the presence of an officer of the General Consulate of the
USA. Of the entire conversation, the administrator selected McLuckie’s
statement holding that the Jehovah’s Witnesses ‘insisted with their followers to
obey and abide by the laws of the country they lived in, except if any of those
laws conflicted with their beliefs’. Most likely McLuckie was thinking of the
interdiction of preaching and gathering, which was in place in certain countries
at this time, but the administrator foresaw in that statement rebellious
behaviours.119
Afterwards, McLuckie drew Nyasaland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs into
the matter. In November, the British Consulate in Lourenço Marques wrote to
the Governor, inquiring about two British subjects. Freitas gained the
impression that the leaders of the Witnesses, ‘one of the most dangerous
118
119
In 1957 a Portuguese magazine echoed these fears of communism, stating that ‘a sect akin to
Mau-Mau is already in [the province], the Acitawala’ (Ecos da Província de Portugal, 23 (5), December 1957, 122, quoted in Pereira 2000, 122). In 1965 the Chief Command of Mozambique associated the ‘action processes’ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with those of the MauMau (SCCIM, Box 177, Report 80, 12 March 1965, 252). Regarding the mythicising process
involved in the Mau-Mau rebellion, which caused fear of the rebirth of tribalist opposition in
Mozambique, see Cleary 1990.
In 1954, the WTBTS, worried with the deportations, sent Milton Bartlett to speak with the
authorities. The following year John Cooke was sent, without success: Cooke was interrogated by PIDE and accused of being a Communist as well as ‘against the Catholic Church
which helped building the Portuguese Empire’. (1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 122, 124;
Awake!, 8 March 1976, 14).
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
95
religious sects’, were ‘capable of moving Heaven and Earth to defend their
followers’. It is this international dimension of the movement which convinced
the Administrator of the dangerousness of this group. Persuaded that the
Witnesses’ network already spread from Lourenço Marques to Nyasa, the
administrator preferred that the natives remained in Mozambique, so that
through their movements other groups could be detected and suppressed.
However, the intervention by the foreign Consulate forced the Portuguese to
uphold the sentence of deportation to São Tomé so that ‘the natives do not
think that concessions could be made under external pressures’. Freitas’ policy
was more informed by the concern of obtaining further information on
members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses than by the need of making
‘indiscriminate arrests’. He tried to convince the remaining administrative
authorities of his ideas.120
We have, then, two different ways of dealing with the same situation. On
the one hand, there was the administration of Chinde which proposed
measures of strong repression by deporting believers to São Tomé. On the
other hand, there was the more moderate attitude of Freitas who tolerated their
presence so as to monitor their activities in view of acting with increased
efficacy at a later point.
It should be said here that the colony of São Tomé was not pleased with
being a dumping ground for undesired people from other colonies. As a result
of its pressures, deportations to the island stopped in 1960. For the Jehovah’s
Witnesses the end of the deportations came then not as a result of a more
tolerant policy, but due to constraints of internal colonial politics.121
Still, in the process, yet another vision regarding ‘sects’ emerged. The
investigations of the September 1953 Luabo process led the police to Habil
Nantamanga who used to gather with six other people in Metangula near Lake
Nyasa. The Chief of Police in Metangula was ordered to investigate the
presence of Witnesses there. The dispatch sent by the Chief of Police to his
superior officer, the administrator of Amaramba, as well as the approval
dispatch of the latter to the Commander of Police of Mozambique, show a
different stand towards the Witnesses. In effect, the Chief of Police, Inocêncio
Ferreira, questioned seven natives and apprehended some literature from the
WTBTS in Portuguese and Cinyanja. However, he made a point of declaring
120
121
Yet, the following year, contrary to Freitas’ wishes, a new group of Witnesses was deported
to São Tomé (1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 121; IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, João Macassa,
SC SR 4732/62, Act of statements by Paulo Simango, São Tomé, 10 Sept. 1959, 42-44).
Nascimento 2003, 76.
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that he had known that these natives received WTBTS publications. He added
that he was discreetly monitoring their activities and that ‘in spite of having
done so for a long time, he could find anything against them as they only cared
about their religion, though quite poorly apparently since, despite having been
here for years, they can only count on a handful of followers. And the
Portuguese State warrants freedom of worship!…’ He went on then to quote a
letter from a local Catholic priest according to whom ‘it appears they don’t
discuss politics, but simply preach a new religion’. He further added that even
the Anglican missionaries from the U.M.C.A. had stopped bothering about
them. He concluded that if they were dangerous, then they would have already
caused countless problems in that region, considering that they had been there
since 1924. Yet, on the contrary, they stand out for their ‘discipline, obedience
and submission to Portuguese Authorities’.
Freitas explained Ferreira’s views as an indication of the lack of knowledge
of the importance and true purposes of the ‘sect’. Furthermore, he accused the
local Chief of Police of ignoring the Portuguese Constitution, since freedom of
worship was limited by the ‘rights and interests of Portuguese sovereignty’.
Freitas proposed that the two officers involved presented more detailed reports
on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in their areas of jurisdiction. A few months later in
March 1955, however, the local Chief of Police in Metangula maintained that
surveillance into the local group of Jehovah’s Witnesses confirmed that they
occupied themselves only with ‘strictly religious’ activities and the ‘encouraging
of the practice of good deeds’.122
Thus, until the end of the regime, this third view that the Witnesses and
other separatist churches did not present any danger to the regime coexisted in
parallel with state repression and Freitas’ ‘temporary’ flexibility.123
122
123
Regarding the incidents in Luabo, see IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, copy of letter from the
WTBTS Nyasaland Branch office to the Governor General, 21 July 1954; official letter
3719/A/38, 27 November 1954 from Ferraz Freitas to the Head of Division of the Governor General’s Office in Lourenço Marques; official letters 4002/B/17/2 and 4003/B/7, both
dated 21 December 1954 from Ferraz Freitas to the Head of Central Division of Native Affairs, 187-199, 301-310; 1955 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York, WTBTS, 229.
In 1955 an administrator allegedly stated that the Witnesses were a law-abiding group. He did
not try to stop them from preaching but instead advised them to be careful with what they
said and spoke about. Another officer questioned a number of natives but did not arrest
them, having only admonished them to stop preaching (1956 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
234). The suggestions from the Governor of Gaza to the SCCIM in 1962 are significant as he
advised against the taking of drastic measures since those could create controversies, such as
those that occurred during the birth of Christianity. Instead, these groups should be fought
by exerting pressure on the leaders, infiltrating agitators and Catholics in order to convert
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
97
The Theoreticians of the ‘Sects’: Ferraz Freitas. From the beginning
of the 1950s the administrator Ferraz Freitas put himself forward as
“know[ing] every existing sect, their organisation, extension, field and means of
action, composition of their main leaders, and persons used in their
propaganda’ in order to ‘control the situation, without delay’. This knowledge
followed the determinations by the Governor General of Mozambique who, in
a dispatch dated 3 March 1954, had recognised that ‘better than organising
administrative processes against isolated elements, what interests us is to gather
as much possible information, to allow us a comprehensive knowledge of the
manner of acting of the different religious sects, their connections with outside
elements and among themselves, so that it may give us a fair assessment of the
situation. This actuation must be carried out with the utmost tact, so that it
cannot be reproached as religious persecution”.124 From November 1956 to
April 1957 Freitas125 had the opportunity to personally question two Witnesses
arrested in Lourenço Marques: Francisco Zunguza and Paulina Mandlate.
Zunguza, aged 23, was born in Chipanga (Beira), where he had attended the
local Catholic Mission for eight years, leaving school after the sixth grade. He
converted to the Jehova’s Witnesses in South Africa, and was encouraged to
return to Mozambique in order to reorganise the work there which had been
debilitated after the wave of deportations during the 1940s and 1950s. When
he returned from Johannesburg in August 1955, he had not yet completed two
years of teaching and considered himself ‘new in this religion’.
The “conversation” between the two men occurred in a tone that varied
between paternal affability and the administrator’s impatient irritability. Week
124
125
them to Catholicism, refusing any licences requested, as well as supporting Catholic missionary action since ‘total extermination is impossible’ (IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 372, official letter
626/E/7/3 from the Governor of Gaza to the SCCIM, 25 Sept. 1962, 155-56).
Our translation. Freitas 1957a, Vol. IV, 17, 49. The lack of a ‘fair assessment’ is evident in a
process filed in 1952 in Massinga, south of Save. A few years before, ‘American Russelists
[sic] messengers of Jehovah’, had left some books with the natives. The local authorities, misinformed, mistook the WTBTS for the Adventists, as both religions had been accused of
pursuing ‘very dangerous political objectives’ against Portuguese sovereignty (IAN/TT,
SCCIM, Box 129, Chief of Division of Instruction of Southern Save, Official letter
40/6/117, 12 March 1953, 120). [Russelists was a reference to Charles Taze Russell]
Ferraz Freitas seems to be better informed this time on the WTBTS. In 1954, he still believed
in a connection between the latter and 7th Day Adventists and this conviction was shared by
the Chief of the Instruction Division of South of Save, Vitorino Morais Barbosa (IAN/TT,
SCCIM, Box 351, Ferraz Freitas to Governor General, 31 August 1953, 59-67; SCCIM, Box
129, Official letter 40/6/117 from Vitorino M. Barbosa to Police Command of Lourenço
Marques, Governor-General of Lourenço Marques and Administrator of the Council of
Lourenço Marques, 12 March 1953, f. 120).
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after week Freitas tried to penetrate Zunguza’s “secrets”, seeking to gain his
trust by assuring him that the Government would allow all religions, and that,
therefore, he would not be ill-treated.126
Apart from his interest in and detailed questions on religious practices,
Freitas quickly understood the role given to Zunguza for the reorganisation of
the Jehova’s Witnesses in Mozambique, something which explains the
administrator’s insistence in finding out who and where the other Witnesses
were. The fact that Zunguza exchanged correspondence with the WTBTS
branch in Elandsfontein, South Africa, and was in possession of several Bibles
and publications in Portuguese, English, Zulu and Ronga, some of them
originating in the USA and Brazil, only confirmed the suspicions of the
administration of an attempt by the WTBTS to penetrate in Mozambique.127
Though Zunguza eventually abandoned his strategy of evasive replies,
Freitas never got the names or locations of other believers in Mozambique.
Zunguza explained to the administrator the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
by reading and explaining biblical passages. He spoke a little bit on everything,
from baptism to healings, and from the ‘New World’ to Armageddon. Freitas
was convinced that none of the two individuals would ‘denounce their
“brothers” because these would be arrested and it was enough for them to
suffer’.128
But Freitas’ interest was more oriented towards practical than spiritual
issues. He frequently used elaborated reasoning to test Zunguza, who always
replied that the Jehovah’s Witnesses only sought to preach and would do
nothing to eliminate the injustices of political and economic systems. Let us
look at a specific example:
[Question by Freitas] – So tell me something. What does Watchtower thinks?
Not what you think, you Francisco, but what does the Watchtower thinks. We
have over 6.000.000 natives here, and about 30.000 white people. It’s like a
glass full of water where you pour a little bit of salt. It’s all black, and only that
little bit of white. [...] Is it right it’s white people who give the orders? Is it
right? Does your Watchtower thinks it’s right? [...] Is it right for white people
126
127
128
This is taken from the unabridged transcription of the recordings of the questioning of Ferraz Freitas made to the couple. Freitas prefered this procedure and later used long citations
from the interrogations in his own reports. (IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, 310/9, 12, 18; Box
317/9, 17-18, 317/50).
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, 310/15, 16, 23, 34, 37; ibid., Box 317/47, 48; 339; ibid., Box
340/17-18.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, 310/18, 20, 21; ibid., Box 317/10-13, 15, 32, 33; ibid., Box 329;
ibid., Box 340/4-5; Freitas 1957a, Vol. IV, 12.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
99
to be here, forcing natives to pay taxes, ordering chibalo [forced labour], doing
all that? Is that fair? What does Watchtower think of that? Boy, you know I
know your land, and all. I enjoy helping natives. I need to know what you
think, so that I may help you. I need to tell the Government. Listen, I think
it’s not fair as it is, and this way we might be able to help. What does Watchtower think of this? Only a few white people, lots of black people, and white
people here saying you have go chibalo, white people are bossing everything
around here, that’s the truth. What does Watchtower think of this?
[Answer by Zunguza] - Watchtower, on this subject of doing chibalo, go and
serve one’s sentence, go where, all of that doesn’t matter; the only thing that
matters is gaining entrance in the kingdom of God. Because nowadays,
they’re not in the kingdom of God, nor have any power over kings, they
don’t care about war, only the kingdom of God matters [...].129
After six months of interrogation the couple was released. But Freitas was
not fully convinced by the replies he had received. He wrote later that ‘we
questioned them for weeks on end, and they always kept on the defensive’.
Aware of the existence of groups of Witnesses on the Portuguese shore of
Lake Nyasa in Angónia, and scattered through out the centre and south of the
colony, a fact ‘being attributed to [...] the constant restlessness noted among the
native workers’, Freitas concluded that ‘any drastic measure would be
counterproductive, as they would continue to exist, but without our
knowledge. First we must identify the centres, and then eliminate then’. It is
easy to understand that Freitas’ apparent flexibility was only a prelude to
repression.130
In 1957, Freitas sent an alert on the dangers that would soon ravage the
colony. He argued that people had to wake up to the undeniable reality that the
‘civilising and integrating’ work done by Portugal was being threatened. The
administrative workers that thought that the winds of change would never
reach Mozambique were naïvely mistaken. ‘African nationalism’ or ‘Africanism’
would be ‘the instrument used for communist infiltration’, he claimed. The
‘preparation’ phase had already started, the ‘action’ phase was coming swiftly
and the ‘greatest factor used in the “preparation” phase for the
“Africanisation” was religious propaganda’, ‘the indoctrination of the black, for
political purposes, through religion’, he stated. Ferraz Freitas reasoned that
religion profited from the supposedly primitive mentality of black people since
129
130
For another example, see IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 129, 317-8: “[Question] – Natives here pay
taxes, and white people don’t. Is that fair?” “[Answer] – It’s correct to pay the authorities”;
see also concepts about nation and flag in Box 340/5-6, 13-16).
Quotes in Freitas 1957a, Vol. IV, 12-13.
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it presented means to deal with the new challenges resulting from the
intensification of contacts with the European civilisation. In this context, he
goes on, the Bible justified all ideologies and objectives given the Protestant
position of free interpretation of the sacred texts.131 Within a group the native
gradually lost his own will and became an easy prey for ‘subversive’ forces in
their fight against Portugual’s civilising work, as Ferraz Freitas saw it. As a
counterweight, Freitas proposed that Christianisation should be accompanied
by efficacious teachings, aimed at assuring the ‘integration, the achievement of
our policy of assimilation and unity for a common fatherland’.132
As far as the Jehovah’s Witnesses were concerned, Freitas recommended
to the readers of his report the works of Silva Cunha, and referred to his
fruitless interrogation of Zunguza and Mandlate. He also used selective parts of
a chapter in the book Let God Be True (published by the WTBTS in 1946) to
prove its subversive character, stressing its international scope. Freitas defined
the WTBTS as a sect, albeit ‘not “quite” gentile’.133
The quotes chosen by Freitas underline a series of issues. Each Witness is
a minister of the Gospel and therefore preaches constantly. As ministers of
God, Witnesses consider themselves exempt from participating in the political
life of states and of paying homage to symbols of power such as the flag and
the national anthem. They consider these acts as gestures of worship. They
argue that as ambassadors of God they should have the same privileges that
any ambassador has in a foreign country, namely not having to perform
political duties of any sort. They claim the right to exemption from military
service, based on political neutrality and love for their neighbours.134
According to Freitas, these doctrines, seen ‘from a subversive point of
view, can be defined as a truly “open war” to existing societies in the World
and their rules of conduct. They oppose and contradict political, religious and
131
132
133
134
The easy access to sacred books, the freedom of interpretation of the Bible, as well as the
idea that Africans would be inclined to identify themselves with the Jewish people, were reasons for the distrust felt by the authorities towards these practices. The Bible were aware that
the Bible presented a message of hope both comforting and triumphant to oppressed peoples. As a result, certain authorities in Mozambique were uncomfortable with the similitude
between the captivity of the Hebrews in Egypt, or Jewish subjection within Roman empire,
and colonial reality (Barrett 1968, 127-134, 268, 269; Mateus 1999, 33-35; Cruz e Silva 1992,
33; Silva Cunha, Relatório da Missão de Estudo dos Movimentos Associativos em África, in IAN/TT,
AOS/CO/UL/29, 114-121).
Freitas 1957a, Vol. IV, 16, 19, 25, 35, 48, 50-53, 61, 62; Freitas 1961, 91.
Freitas 1957b, 8-11.
Freitas 1957b, 8-11.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
101
economical world organisations, regardless of which they are. They only admit
the existence of the Kingdom of God, with absolute disregard for the World
and its organisation. They instigate world anarchy. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not
owe obedience to world societies’.135 Based on this interpretation of the
WTBTS teachings, Freitas believed that the WTBTS had played an active role
in several upheavals in Central Africa, in particular in Belgian Congo,
Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia.136
From this practice of selective quotations and decontextualisation we can
conclude that colonial analysts of religious issues were very attentive to the
printed word as they feared that potentially subversive ideas could be
assimilated by the ‘primitive masses who were evolving’.137
The situation described in Freitas’ report is in every aspect similar to the
one Sholto Cross found in an extensive report written by the administration of
the Belgian Congo on Kitawala, the designation of a type of Watchtower
movement in that territory. In the report, several inconsistencies presented by
African informers and detectives are piled up in order to make them fit the
preconceived notion of the administrators that a significant African rebellion
was being prepared. Like many of the Portuguese officers, the Belgian
administrators were ‘severely paternalist towards the social organisations which
are not explicitly under the control of either the State or the Church’.138
135
136
137
138
These kind of arguments used by Freitas, and later by Silva Cunha, suggested an association,
especially for colonial officers, between the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Communists. The accusation of anarchy is the result of a twisted understanding of the “non-violence” position held
by Jehovah's Witnesses, and as already explained, communism was seen as an ideological system that aimed at ending with the existing political systems, after which anarchy and chaos
would ensue (Freitas 1957b, 8.; Compare with Cross 1977, 70, 71).
It could well be that Freitas had the following uprisings in mind when he made this argument: the rebellion by John Chilembwe in Nyasaland in 1915, the strikes in the Copperbelt
and Northern Rhodesia in 1935, and the incidents in the Belgian Congo in 1941 and 1944
around a type of WTBTS movement called Kitawala (IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, Official
letter 1687/E/10/3, 2-5). Also see footnote 66 above. Freitas was not the only one to propose this interpretation: in 1961 the administrator of Guijá, after confiscating a WTBTS book
in Portuguese from a native who had returned from São Tomé, wrote that ‘word has it that
[the Watchtower] is one of the most fierce [sects] against the presence of Europeans in Africa, and that it has achieved great development in the neighbour Rhodesias’. The native possessed a second WTBTS book, this one in Zulu, but in this case the administrator of Guijá
wrote that ‘as far as I’m told, this book is the Bible of the sect of “Jehovah's Witnesses”
which possibly has some connection with the Watchtower’. This suggests that there was still
considerable confusion as to official terminology around the WTBTS in the 1960s (IAN/TT,
SCCIM, Box 372, Report from Guijá’s administrator to SCCIM, 27 December 1961, p.116).
Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society 1946, 238-241; see also Fields 1982, 344-350.
Cross 1977, 67-71.
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The analysts of the “sects”: Silva Cunha. Another analyst of religious
movements in Portuguese Africa was Silva Cunha, the future Overseas
minister. In 1956, still a professor at the Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos
(Superior Institute of Overseas Studies) in Lisbon, Cunha proposed (in a report
on associative movements in Angola) a classification of the mystico-religious
associations of Black Africa.139
To Silva Cunha, these associations appeared ‘as a rudiment of a nationalist
movement, reacting against the White man, and with a protest character’. He
argued that prophetic-messianic movements were an answer from African
societies to the disintegration and changes produced in their midst as a result of
the implantation of Western culture.140
Cunha argued that only those associative movements that perpetrated
crimes, such as the Mau-Mau, should be repressed, in order to avoid creating
‘martyrs’ as the latter would only make the movement expand. He suggested
instead the development of a ‘serious and persistent effort aimed at eliminating
the factors that determine the studied phenomena [i.e. religious movements
such as the ‘prophetic-messianic ones]’.141
When Cunha referred to the Watchtower in his report (which he
considered as a successor of the prophetic-messianic associations), he stated
very clearly that from a ‘political and social point of view, their doctrine is
dangerous, as it leads to continuous rebellion against all constituted authority,
since they regard these as a mere result of forces of evil’. He was also worried
that this movement was present in all continents, and expanding, possessing a
significant printing capacity which allowed them to translate their beliefs into
dozens of languages and in significant quantities.142
In the second edition of his work, published two years later, Cunha
developed his ideas on the Watchtower, focusing on its attitudes towards
political organisations. Cunha quoted extensively from the same WTBTS book
which Freitas had used, reaching the same conclusion, i.e. that the movement
was dangerous. He added that the ‘Watchtower followers are deeply convinced
of carrying a new religious message. This conviction gives them a self139
140
141
142
Freitas shared Cunha’s ideas (Freitas 1957b, 8). In turn, Cunha relied on Freitas for his writings (see Cunha 1958a, 56).
Cunha 1956, 8, 39, 41.
Cunha 1956, 48-51.
Cunha 1956, 33. There were those who regarded these international contacts as nothing but
‘a religious disguise for suspicious activities’ carried out by a ‘race of excommunicated anarchists, the Watchtower’ with dubious intents…’ (Domingues 1960, 205).
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
103
sufficiency such that the social dangers of their doctrine assumes a significance
particularly important in view of the fervour of their propaganda’.143
The idea that religious separatism or independence can contribute to
African nationalism was so common among European colonial administrations
that it permeated the studies of both Ferraz Freitas and Silva Cunha.144 The
analysts of the Portuguese administration sought scientifically to legitimise their
fears in face of the appearance of new religious movements in Portuguese
Africa. For that purpose, they sought support in the ideas of George Balandier
and other social scientists, according to whom the ‘religious innovations in the
Black Africa constitute the pre-history of modern nationalism’.145
The studies of Silva Cunha and Ferraz Freitas had different degrees of
impact on the Portuguese colonial administration. Many administrative workers
did not read the studies and often only had access to summaries of, or glosses
on them. Still, the repercussion of the texts cannot be ignored.146 Indeed, it was
143
144
145
146
Cunha 1958b, 64. As happened with the conceptualisations of Luso-tropicalismo and Communism, the ideas about the ‘subversive’ dangers posed by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religious minorities survived the fall of the regime, if to a lesser extent. See, for instance, the article by Fernandes, 1985, esp.128-129 and, more recently, Francisco Proença Garcia 2003,
274-277). Regarding the dangers of confusion in terminology, see the case of Zélia Pereira,
who stated that the ‘Acitawala’ [sic] were also known as the ‘Watch Tower and in Portugal as
Jehovah’s Witnesses’, and which she described them as ‘an apocalyptic and millenarist group
who claims to be the vehicle of the critic of industrial society’ and which ‘on certain occasions originated movements disobeying the authorities in African countries’. Note that the
term ‘Kitawala’ was applied to a movement founded in 1917 in the Belgian Congo. The doctrines of Kitawala were markedly syncretic maintaining only some WTBTS rudimentary doctrines. ‘Kitawala’ is therefore definitely not the same thing as Jehovah’s Witnesses (Pereira
2000, n.26 and Pereira 1998, 90 n.342; also Welo 1972, 3-26; Bernard 1965, 49-50; and Cross
1977, 72-74).
At a conference at the Instituto de Altos Estudos Militares (Institute of High Military Studies)
in 1960, Marcello Caetano, the future leader of the country, gave a speech on the dangers that
a withdrawal from Africa would bring, as it would pave the way for ‘Eastern Communism’.
He then warned of the possible ramifications for Angola of secretive associative movements
that had strong religious accents and a messianic character, refering to the ‘conscientious’
studies by Silva Cunha (Caetano 1960, 45-53).
Balandier 1951, quoted in Cunha 1958b and Freitas 1961. See also Mills 1968, 56-58. For an
analysis of the most recent attempts to understand new religious movements in Africa, see
Silva 1993, 396-400; Ranger 1986; and Barrett 1968, 92-99.
Relvas 1957, 107-113. Examples of documents where Cunha and Freitas are quoted, regarding the dangers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are: the Governor of Nampula in 1962
(IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, p.105); the Commander of the PSP police in Lourenço Marques
in 1971 (IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, SC SR 337/46, Pt.27). See also the opinion of A. da Silva
Rego, dated 12 December 1958 on Freitas’ report, requested by Adriano Moreira, the then
director of the Centro de Estudos Políticos e Sociais da Junta das Missões Geográficas e de
Investigações do Ultramar, in Lisbon (IAN/TT, MAI/GM-GBT18/1958, box 170, 13-17).
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expected that as a result of Freitas’ report on ‘religious sects’, all administrators
of circunscrições in Mozambique would cooperate to gather more elements to
enable a deeper analysis of the problem by the central administration. That
intention never materialised fully. Some administrators responded to the
appeal, but the lack of means and interest of the majority made the project
unachievable.147
Persecuted or not?
Persecution and flexibility coexisted side by side regarding the Witnesses. Until
the 1960s, dozens of believers of the Jehova’s Witnesses were deported to São
Tomé and Príncipe, or to forced labour camps in Mozambique. European
WTBTS missionaries were systematically expelled from the Mozambican
territory, and their correspondence and publications intercepted and
confiscated. In the late 1960s and until 1974, there were regular detentions and
arrests, the repatriation of foreigners, police rounds ups, and the confiscation
of literature. The intensity of the persecution varied according to time and
region, but the areas most affected were Lourenço Marques, Tete, Zambézia
and Inhambane.148
Michel Cahen argues that from 1959 onwards the authorities in
Mozambique began to deal with non-Catholic religious movement in a more
tolerant manner.149 Becoming conscious that repressing ‘religious sects’ would
only lead them underground and thus make it impossible to control them, the
authorities in charge of religious issues, SCCIM (Serviços de Centralização e
147
148
149
Mention of Freitas’ struggle to gather information from administrators can be found in
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 372, Information of Ferraz Freitas to the Division of the Office of
the General Government, 11 May 1962, p.124 and SCCIM, Box 177, pp.245-251 and p.302ss.
Zambézia (Luabo, 1960; Milange, 1960, 1962; Zambézia, 1960, 1961; Mocuba, 1964, Quelimane, 1966); Manica and Sofala (Sofala, 1960, Beira, 1966) Lourenço Marques (Lourenço
Marques, 1961-1962, 1966-70; 1972; Magude, 1965); Tete (Tete, 1963, 1964, 1964; Zambuè,
1964, Mutarara, 1965, Furancungo, 1967, Angónia, 1967, Moatize, 1969); Nampula (Meconta,
1965, Nampula, 1962, 1972), Inhambane (Inhambane, 1964, 1966; Maxixe, 1967(?); Funhalouro, 1968; Morrumbene, 1974). See IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, SCCIM, Box 177, p.36, 65,
78, 105, 106, 168, 193, 206, 222, 226, 233, 255, 273, 343; Box 35, p.47, 68, 168, 176, 446, 473,
536, 563; Box 478, p.576. See also IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Delegação de Moçambique-Ordens de
Serviço-Janeiro a Junho de 1962, nº116, 122 and 156; SC-SR 337/46 pt 79 ‘WatchtowerWatchtower-Indivíduos Fichados’, p.51; SC-CI (2) 17171 ‘Vasco de Almeida e Silva’, p.12.
And interview with António Micas Mbuluane, Lisbon, 2002; written Statements by Portugal
Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, p.1; Our Kingdom Ministry, WTBTS, August 1962, 4; 1996 Yearbook of
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 135; Bentley 1990.
Cahen 2000, 551-592, esp.559-568.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
105
Coordenação de Informação de Moçambique) and elements within PIDE, felt
compelled to act in a less repressive manner. Among those who were less
tolerant, Cahen includes the military forces, certain officers of PIDE and PSP,
circumscription administrators and chiefs of post.150
Using the case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to prove his thesis, Cahen states
that up until the 1960s Witnesses would have been ‘hassled and not repressed’.
Ken Jubber proposes a classification of repression suffered by the
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Africa, based on WTBTS publications.151 For the years
1918 to 1973, Jubber attributes level 3 on a scale of 0 to 4 to Mozambique.
Cahen devaluates this classification, arguing that level 3 could represent much
less violence than level 1. However, I argue that Jubber’s classification is
cumulative, i.e. that level 3 is the accumulation of the characteristics of levels 1
and 2. Still, Jubber’s table is not exempt of errors. In 1963, the WTBTS was
officially prohibited by the government of Angola, yet Jubber only attributes a
level 2 category to Angola. Such classification has a limited use, since deeper
analysis brings to the surface variations that are impossible to evaluate using
limited systems of classification.
As a matter of fact, we find documental evidence of incidents in
Mozambique involving the Jehovah’s Witnesses which would fit both level 1
(for instance, the expulsion of pupils who refused to sing the national anthem,
or detentions on account of alleged disrespect towards the state), and in level 2
(for instance, the prohibition of entry in Mozambique for Jehovah’s Witnesses
from Nyasaland and Rhodesia, the expulsion of missionaries, the confiscation
150
151
A typical example of repressive mentality is that expressed by the administrator of Inharrime’s circunscription (Inhambane) in 1961 – albeit influenced by events in Angola in March
1961 when the UPA, an anti-colonial movement, massacred some white and mestizo population in northern Angola. The administrator proposed a ‘rapid and total disinfection and termination of these sects’, to be achieved by the elimination of their leaders, the extinction of
Protestant missions, especially the American ones, and the expulsion of Protestant missionaries (IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 372, Report by the Inharrime’s Administration Circunscription,
20 April 1961, p.22).
Jubber 1977, 121-134. Level 0: absence of registered incidents; Level 1: expulsion from
school for refusal to sing the national anthem or salute the flag, imprisonment of members
accused of disrespecting the state or tribal authorities, officious repression by the authorities,
and interdiction of gathering at a circuit or national level; Level 2: refusal to allow foreign
Witnesses to enter the territory, expulsion of foreign missionaries, ban of WTBTS publications; imprisonment for refusal to perform military service and illegal detention for proselytism; Level 3: official interdiction of the WTBTS, including interdiction of proselytism and
gathering by the Jehovah’s Witnesses; Level 4: total interdiction of any activity by the
WTBTS and official approval of acts of violence against the WTBTS aimed at eliminating its
presence.
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of publications, illegal detentions for proselytism, and arrests for the refusal of
doing military service).
As to the level 3 category, an official interdiction of the WTBTS existed in
Mozambique. Especially after April 1967, when Silva Cunha, analyst of religion
and Overseas minister at the time, expressed his dissatisfaction with the
reasons given by the authorities in Mozambique for their passivity 152 in face of
the Witnesses’ work, ‘considering it has already been fully established that their
activity was prohibited’ as the repression meted out by PIDE in Angola
showed.153
From the 1960s onwards, and especially after the beginning of the
independence war in Mozambique (1964), ‘subversion’ worried the authorities,
and mainly the police and military authorities, more than ‘deportugalisation’.
Symptomatic of that view was the conference, held in Lourenço Marques,
in 1967, by the police authorities, on the theme of ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (part
of a weekly cycle of talks on ‘gentile sects’, in which the works by Cunha were
abundantly used) in order to prove how ‘dangerous’ the movement was. As to
Mozambique, despite the fact that none of the WTBTS members had been
found to be ‘involved in activities of revolutionary terrorist parties, due to their
conscience scruples’, it is stated in the written text of the conference, that the
Witnesses ‘actually shared the same political ideas and supported them under
the cover of religion’. There is a citation in the conference’s text of the already
mentioned dispatch from the Overseas Minister, Silva Cunha, dated 22 April
1967, which asked for action against Jehovah’s Witnesses “since the
interdiction of their activities was cleared up”.154
A more moderate sector within PIDE, as far as repression was concerned,
proposed ‘far-reaching measures, to condition and assemble religious and
152
153
154
On 28 July 1966, the Beira sub-delegation of PIDE complained that the Witnesses practiced
their ‘cult perfectly at ease, without any control from the respective authorities’ in Chemba
(Sofala) on the shore of the Zambeze river (IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, SC SR 337/46, Testemunhas de Jeová, Pt.30, PIDE/DGS’ Beira Sub-Delegation to PIDE’s Lisbon subdirector, Official
letter 156/67 GAB, 37).
All the colonies had received a copy of the sentence handed down in the Lisbon Plenary
Court in 1966 by which the entire WTBTS congregation in Feijó (Setúbal, Portugal) was sentenced to prison penalties, fines and suspension of the civic rights of its members for ‘crimes
against the safety of the State’ and ‘encouragement to disobedience, regarding the laws of
public order, both civilian and mitary’ (IAN/TT, Tribunal da Boa Hora, 3. Court, File
17386/65, vol. 5, p.933, 933v; also see Pinto 2002 and Cahen 2000).
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, SC SR 337/46, Testemunhas de Jeová, Pt.30, Mozambique’s PIDE,
Information 699-SC/CI(2), 3 July 1967, A Problemática Religiosa na Província – Testemunhas de
Jeová, 9-15. Also quoted in Cahen 2000.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
107
sectarian activities’. The measures suggested included an open and sincere
dialogue with the leaders of ‘sects’ in order, on one hand, to allow for more
efficient monitoring of their behaviour, and, on the other hand, to make them
understand that religious freedom ‘was only admissible as long as it did not
collide with the established social order, habits, and laws’.155
Reality on the ground was different however. In May 1968 Ernesto
Chilaule was detained and questioned by PIDE. Although his participation in
‘political-subversive’ activities was not established, the police considered that
both he and his companions in Lourenço Marques ‘were spreading undesirable
ideas which could negatively influence the natives’. By the end of July, by order
from the Overseas Minister, PIDE in Lourenço Marques notified Chilaule and
other elders who were also known by the police in the town ‘that they were
forbidden to propagate ideas of this nature [WTBTS teachings] or to attract
“believers” for their “sect”, under penalty of being punished with the law’s full
severity, in case of relapse’.156 At first, the Witnesses’ acted in a more careful
manner. They only preached incidentally and informally, and their meetings
were only held at dawn, often only with relatives of members. Later, when they
sought to obtain further clarification from PIDE on the restrictions, they were
told that the Government would never approve their religion, not because it
contained any immoral teachings, but because it was not convenient for the
Government. In face of this, the Jehovah’s Witnesses decided to resume their
preaching activities and gatherings more boldly.157 This increased their visibility
and resulted in a wave of detentions in Lourenço Marques. In March 1969,
eleven elders were detained, three months later another five, and another ten at
the beginning of 1970. The accusation raised against them was based on
disobedience of instructions to stop exercising their responsibilities as
congregational elders, the reception of literature from the WTBTS, and
preaching from house to house.
The interrogations of the detained members went on for months on end.
The analysis of the police records on these interrogations demand caution, as is
155
156
157
Cahen 2000, 553-555. In Tete the local PIDE defended similar measures, but argued that,
among all the ‘sects’, only the Witnesses were connected with subversive movements
(IAN/TT, M9, PIDE – Tete, Report 24/67/GAB, 7 January 1967, 46).
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, 206-208.
This decision led to a split within the congregations in Lourenço Marques. Some Witnesses
felt that the elders had erred by signing the notification issued by the authorities. The elders
claimed they had done so only as a precautionary measure. Some dissidents followed an independent path thereafter, calling themselves ‘Free Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 129-131).
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usual with these kinds of sources. The comparison of these records with later
testimonies of some of the people questioned confirms, however, that the
political police was interested mainly in the following issues: the flag salute, the
fulfilment of military service, and support given to Frelimo (the main
movement of independence in Mozambique). Police officers went as far as
arguing with the detainees about the correct interpretation of biblical passages,
using other translations of the Bible to compare with quotations used by the
WTBTS. They aimed to ascertain the role that Bible reading and bible-based
literature from the WTBTS played in the believers’ process of making
decisions, striving to bring them to a ‘more correct’ understanding of the
Scriptures through scriptural reasoning!158
With the resumption of religious activities came an increase in the number
of believers which led to the formation of new congregations. As far as the
police was concerned, these new congregations resulted from ‘the present
circumstances in this province [...] favourable to the propagation of such
religion’, the persistence of the believers, and the WTBTS magazines that was
published in Zulu and Portuguese.
Given their persistence in carrying out the above mentioned religious
activities, and quoting the dispatch by the Overseas Minister Silva Cunha of 22
April 1967, administrative measures of security were applied as allowed by the
decree-law No. 31.216 of 14 April 1941. The main Witnesses’ elders were
arrested and sent to the Machava prison for about two years, and separated
from the other prisoners so they would not ‘make new disciples’. They
continued to hold their meetings inside the prison none the less.
Hundreds of letters sent by sections of Amnesty International in various
countries and addressed to the Portuguese political leaders, insisting on the
release of the prisoners,159 led the general director of PIDE in Lisbon to
demand an explanation from the PIDE delegation in Mozambique. It seems
indeed that Marcello Caetano, the President of Council in Portugal (who had
replaced Oliveira Salazar in 1968) wanted to know what was happening.
158
159
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, Act of questioning to Ernesto
Chilaule, 8 April 1969, 132-134; interview with Ernesto Chilaule, Maputo, 2003, page 3; Interview with Abel Arrais, Amora, 12 Dec. 2003; Interview with Ernesto Chilaule, 11 Jan.
2004; 1996 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 129-132. Cahen mentions this wave of arrests (Cahen 2000).
Regarding the pressure exerted and help given by Amnesty International, see 1996 Yearbook of
Jehovah’s Witnesses, New York, WTBTS, 131-132.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
109
In its reply, PIDE in Lourenço Marques assured that Amnesty
International was an organisation that was being controlled by ‘International
Communism’ disguising its true intentions behind the defence of so-called
human rights.160
Most interesting is the fact that PIDE admitted that it was using illegal
procedures. It admitted that the 21 believers were imprisoned without trial
under a decree which established the administrative security measure of
fixation of residence within the province. Yet, as the Jehovah Witnesses’
attorney in Lisbon (hired to defend their brothers in Mozambique) declared:
the General Governor had transformed ‘that administrative measure into a
actual criminal sentence’ by confining them to a prison establishment when the
administrative measures did not admit ‘internment’.161
PIDE acknowledged that the attorney was right and it explained that if he
was ‘legally correct, […] the prevailing situation Overseas fully justified the
“internment” in these cases’. Considered a political affair, the remittance of the
detained to court was considered undesirable, being ‘easier, if not “more
efficient”’, to opt for the administrative security measures. In its defence, PIDE
alleged that the Witnesses’ activities were pernicious and thus punishable by the
Penal Code, and it concluded by invoking the dispatch of Silva Cunha from
1967 ‘absolutely forbidding’ Witnesses’ activities.162
Obviously, flexibility had its limits. 163
160
161
162
163
The consequences of bad publicity were inevitable, an example being that the case was referred to in Amnesty International’s Annual Report of 1972 (IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, ‘Amnesty International’, Del A P Inf. 11.22 A.4).
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, Letter from the sub-director of
Mozambique’s PIDE to the general director of Lisbon’s PIDE, 2 April 1971, p 32-33.
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Francisco Zunguza, SC SR 3206/65, Letter from the sub-director of
Mozambique’s PIDE to the general director of Lisbon’s PIDE, 2 April 1971, p 32-33; exposition from Vasco de Almeida e Silva addressed to the Overseas Minister, Lisbon, 12 November 1970, 34-36. On the illegality of administrative measures of imprisonment, see Mateus 2004, 120-123.
Another case is that of Francisco Zunguza who was arrested in 1965 with hundreds of copies
of the Portuguese edition of the magazine Awake!. The volumes in his possession (from
8.8.1964 and 8.11.1964) described the persecutions meted out by the authorities in Portugal
and Angola. At the Lourenço Marques’ prison Zunguza was confronted with the cover articles. The PIDE officers were furious, stating that the articles were all lies since Portuguese
people were all Christians. They beat Zunguza and eventually deported him to Nova Sofala
where they kept him until 1967 (Statement by Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 12 Sept. 2003, 3,
4; Pinto 2002).
110
PEDRO PINTO
Military service. Several of the tenets held by the Witnesses’ worried the
regime: conscientious objection, refusal to salute the flag and sing the national
anthem, and the belief that the fall of the existing order was imminent. Indeed
the regime saw saluting the flag, singing the anthem and defending one’s
home country as duties of any ‘true Portuguese’; not to fulfil these patriotic
obligations was seen as a denial of one’s own country, and to live as if the latter
did not exist.164
The Witnesses’ neutrality was considered unacceptable, all the more as it
was preached openly. The military and ultra-integrationist sectors of the regime
felt apprehensive in view of these ideas which they considered subversive,
fearing they would lead young men into a passive state which could put the
nation’s integrity in war at risk.165
In Portugal, dozens of young Witnesses were arrested, tried, and some of
them sent to the war fronts in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique.166 Although
the Portuguese army had never had difficulties in forcing African natives to
join their forces in Mozambique, the fears of dissemination of ‘pacifist’ ideas in
the quarters justified some measures, mainly when an increasing number of
natives were recruited into the colonial army (after an initial resistance within
the regime).167 The Army organised some lectures on the ‘dangers’ posed by
the Witnesses. The series Soldado! As coisas importantes que deves saber! (Soldiers!
The important things you have to know!), published by the Psychological
Action Section of the Portuguese army’s General Chief of Staff, published an
issue dedicated to the Witnesses. It alerted the soldiers about their ‘clearly
subversive character’” since, as ‘horses of Troy’, they aim at ‘achieving the
164
165
166
167
Moutinho 2000, 108-119; Souto 2003, 666-678.
A military report stated that, as the enemies of Portugal tried to ‘shake the moral forces of
[Portuguese] military institutions, spreading defamatory and demoralising rumours, instigating
indiscipline and desertion alleging the war is unfair, exploring consciencious objectors
through religious sects like Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (Arquivo S. Julião da Barra, SGDN box
6303.4, General-Staff of the Army, 2nd Rep. Lisbon, Periodical Report of Psychological Action No.1, Official Letter 1943/NC, 24 June 1965. I thank Amélia Neves de Souto for having
allowed me to use her notes taken on this archive).
We have knowledge of only one case in Mozambique. A young man, who after having been
sent to several prisons in Portugal, was sent to Beira and to Nampula, but carefully placed far
from the troops, so he could not propagate his ‘subversive’ ideas (Interview to Fernando
Lopes, Caramulo, 5 January 2004. See Pinto 2002). There is also evidence in the Public Security Police in Lourenço Marques of some desertions after having started to study the Bible
with the Witnesses (Interview to Acácio Ramos, Albufeira, 13 Dec. 2003 and Domingos
Oliveira, Vila Nova de Famalicão, 30 Dec. 2003).
Cahen 2000, 561-562; Coelho 2002, 129-150.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
111
moral disarming of the nations, and the disintegration and discredit of the
institutions that govern them’ in order to install their own ‘Kingdom’.168
The military institution believed that the ‘guidelines imposed on the
members of the [WTBTS] in Mozambique ‘is identifiable with the doctrine and
objectives of the “KITAWALA” movement’169, that is: they sought the end of
religious and political authorities and the pursuit of Pan-Africanism.170 The
speech and practices of the Jehovah Witnesses were thus seen as a menace to
political and colonial domination. To the Portuguese colonial authorities,
preaching a new order was equivalent to prophesising the end of the
Portuguese Empire.
Note that many young Witnesses also chose to run away to Rhodesia or
South Africa. This explains the scarce records found regarding conscientious
objectors. According to the limited evidence available, conscientious objectors
were usually arrested, interrogated, and beaten. One individual also lost his job
as a result.171
In contrast, Portugal Jone Dede told us in an interview how during the
1940s he explained to the local authorities that the ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses
comply with government obligations, such as paying taxes, building schools,
cleaning roads, and other civilian nature activities, even though they do not
fulfil military service’.172 Yet, during the war against the liberation movements
(1961-1974), some of these obligations had acquired a military component,
which led to problems between the Witnesses and the regime.173
While we do not know the full extent of these problems (it is likely that
many of them were never reported), some examples might be considered as
paradigmatic. For instance, in 1967 some Witnesses refused to attend the
168
169
170
171
172
173
Vaz 1997, 291-293. IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Testemunhas de Jeová, Del P, Vol. 160, Pt.4. The influences of Silva Cunha are evident, since he had described the WTBTS as an ‘organisation
which aspires to universality’ (Cunha 1959, 73).
On Kitawala, see footnote 143.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 291, Mozambique’s Military Region, HQ, 2nd Rep., Supintrep No. 23,
‘Panorama religioso de Moçambique’, 1967, 115-116 [ff. 95-95v]. The report cited Ferraz
Freitas's works.
Written Statements by António Micas Mbuluane, Maputo, 9 Aug. 2003, 3; interview with
António Tovele, Maputo, 2003, 4; interview with Francisco Zunguza, Maputo, 12 Sept. 2003,
p.3; interview with Portugal Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, 2; interview with Alberto Cumaio,
Maputo, 2004; interview with Vasco Manhiça, Maputo, 2003. There is also a record of some
young men who abjured their beliefs and fulfilled their military service.
Interview with Portugal Jone Dede, Tete, 2003, 1.
For instance, the cleaning of roads in certain areas in a period of war might be seen by an individual Witness as a contribution to the war effort.
112
PEDRO PINTO
hoisting of the flag in Macamba’s circumscription (Tete). In Moatize, in 1964,
Witnesses who had a problem with ceremonies that involved the national flag
were accused of not respecting it as a symbol of the nation. In 1966, in Moatize
again, Jehovah’s Witnesses did not participate in scouting activities. In 1969, in
Moatize still, a Witness was handed over to PIDE after refusing to attend the
visit of the District Governor of Tete, a ceremony during which the flag was
raised and the national anthem sung.174
Denunciations by priests and missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant,
were not uncommon as many shared the state’s repulsion towards Witnesses.
In 1962, for instance, Boane’s Military Company reported how Witnesses had
been preaching in a nearby town and had been threatened by a Catholic priest
who, among other allegations, accused them of being Communists because
they taught that ‘it is a sin to salute the Flags of Nations, except the one from
Russia’.175 Two months later, the same military company sent an implausible
report commenting on the connection between Frelimo’s leader (Eduardo
Mondlane) and the Swiss mission and asserting that the ‘white pastors’ from
the Swiss Mission maintained contact with the Witnesses, thus trying to
connect the latter with Mondlane.176
Another field of confrontation was schooling. The priest in Milange,
Zambezia, denounced for example two young Witnesses in 1972 for refusing
to participate in marching exercises during the gymnastics classes. The young
men argued those exercises were a kind of pre-military physical training which
violated their Christian neutrality.177 In another situation, in 1973, six children
were expelled from Marracuene Primary School for refusing to sing the
national anthem.178
As far as Frelimo was concerned, the Front initially stated that it had no
intention of discriminating against any citizen on the basis of religion. Yet,
174
175
176
177
178
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 291, Mozambique’s Military Region, HQ, 2.nd Rep., Supintrep No
23, ‘Panorama religioso de Moçambique’, 1967, p.117 [f. 96]; IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 35, Perintrep. 29/66 dated 1 November 1966, p.42; IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, Secretary of
Zóbuè’s Post, Bulletin of Information 28/64, 17 December 1964, p.266; IAN/TT, SCCIM,
Box 35, Bulletin of Information 32/969 from the Zóbuè Post (Moatize), p.536.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, Boane’s Hunters Company, Report 17/61, Service Communication B-89, 8 March 1962, p.71.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 177, Boane’s Hunters Company, Report 1/15/62, May 1962, p.88.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 35, Zambezia’s SCCI Bulletin of Information 6/72, 23 May 1972,
p.566.
IAN/TT, SCCIM, Box 478, Marracuene’s Council, Bulletin of Information 43/73, 30 November 1973, p.565.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
113
opposing opinions on these issues arose within the party, among them a group
that favoured the removal of religions considered as ‘divisive and completely
contrary to the spirit of scientific Socialism’.179
Later, at Frelimo’s first Health Services conference held in Tanzania in
1973, the party made the following recommendation (pointing to the divisions
that still existed within the party): it proposed an ‘intensification of the
campaign of political and scientific explanation to Jehovah’s Witnesses, so that
they may continue to attend our sanitarian centres, to be treated, and may
gradually integrate the fight for national liberation’. In the party’s view, this
would cure not just physical diseases, but also lead to the purification of their
mind.180
Cahen argues that this conference recommended a ‘patient and
pedagogical attitude’ which stood in contrast to the ‘impatient’ measures that
had been taken on the ground in areas in the north of the colony that were
controlled by Frelimo in the 1970’s. For instance, a Jehovah’s Witness had his
thatched hut burnt when he refused to give up his religion and join the Frelimo
guerrilla. It is likely that there were more cases like this one considering what
happened after independence when Witnesses were persecuted and deported
by the thousands to camps in Milange where Malawi Witnesses who had
escaped from Banda’s regime had been since 1972.
After 1975, the Witnesses were accused of being ‘destabilising agents’
who, under the ‘cover of religious fanaticism’, defended both the interests of
the old regime (as collaborators of PIDE) and the imperialist interests of the
USA. For Samora Machel, the Mozambican president, the proof of their guilt
was that they had not fought alongside Frelimo, disturbing the work of its
political “dynamising groups”, and the fact that they would salute neither
Frelimo nor its president.181
Epilogue
Tolerated or repressed during late colonialism? Up to the first half of the
twentieth Century, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had been clearly repressed in
179
180
181
Helgesson 1994, 357, 386.
IAN/TT, PIDE/DGS, Pastas Organizadas por Províncias - Moçambique, Pt.24, UI-8957, p.46.
Cahen 2000, 567-568; Interview with Américo Paulino, Alfeizerão, 11 Dec. 2003;
“Testemunhas de Jeová – Ignorância e Obscurantismo nos Filhos de Deus”, Tempo, Maputo,
9 November 1975, 56-61; and Alfredo Tembe, “Testemunhas de Jeová. O Regresso à Terra
Natal”, in Tempo, Maputo, 14 June 1987, 16-21; Hodges 1976, 10.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
115
the divine creation of the first man, Adam. Though the book did not give
specifics, speculations arose whether the year 1975 would bring the much
expected ‘New World’. And many were converted because of this
perspective.184
An comparison between 1961 to 1980 of the growth of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses’ in Mozambique and worldwide illustrates the point :185
Year
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
Growth rate
worldwide
3,9%
4,1%
3,9%
4,7%
3,2%
2,4%
3,4%
5,6%
8,7%
10,2%
9,1%
5,7%
3,8%
13,5%
9,7%
3,7%
-1%
-1,4%
0,5%
3,7%
Growth rate in
Mozambique
20%
1%
17%
11%
8%
28%
23%
10%
34%
23%
26%
26%
4%
25%
-1%
-58%
-
Publishers in Mozambique:
average/peak publishers
633/784
638/805
745/982
830/960
899/1181
1150/1369
1419/1633
1565/2093
2090/2838
2563/3145
3227/3801
4077/4620
4251/6167
5298/6373
22.632/25.790186
9.532/15.692
-
The worldwide growth rate of the Jehovah’s Witnesses varied between
2,4% and 4,7% in the years 1961 to 1967, and between 3,8% and 13,5% in the
years 1967 to 1976. In the subsequent years, a marked decrease ensued, caused
by the defection of those who considered their expectations regarding God’s
promises had been unfulfilled. The case in Mozambique was not very different.
184
185
186
Watch Tower and Bible Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1966, 26-35; “Why Are You Looking
Forward to 1975?”, The Watchtower, 15 August 1968, 500-501.
Data taken from the WTBTS Yearbooks from 1949 to 1975.
The figures for the years 1975 and 1976 several tens of thousands of Malawi refugees who
had been living in Northern Mozambique and were now returning to their homeland since
Frelimo had ordered their repatriation.
116
PEDRO PINTO
At the beginning, the growth of the Witnesses was irregular, fluctuating
between 1% and 20%. But, from 1966 to 1974, the rate reached between 20
and 30%.187 This increase suggests that the growth of the Witnesses in
Mozambique, like in the rest of the world, was determined (in good part) by
the expectations of what was going to happen in 1975.
If the growth of the Witnesses needs to be analysed under the light of
several conditions, so do the regional incidence of persecution in Mozambique.
In effect, the treatment experienced by the Witnesses seems to have varied
according to region between the years 1959 and 1974. Though this needs
further research, the largest numbers of detentions occurred in Lourenço
Marques (in 1961-62 and in 1969-70) where dozens of believers were arrested.
Lourenço Marques was the colonial centre which received orientations from
the metropolis. Other areas with large population density, such as Beira and
Inhambane, were also the locations of similar incidents.
What moved the authorities, especially the military ones, against the
Witnesses in Tete district was the aim to combat ‘subversive’ ideas where the
proximity of the colonial war forced them to act in defence of nationalist rituals
and attitudes. In Zambezia, Nampula and Manica detentions were frequent,
but to a lesser degree than in Tete. I have not found any records of incidents in
Cabo Delgado where WTBTS presence seems to have been nil. In Niassa, I
have also not found any record of incidents though this was the district where
Witnesses were settled for a long time with significant numbers of believers. It
seems here that the authorities’ familiarity with the Witnesses worked in their
favour, as suggested earlier with the case of the truly tolerant attitude of
Metangula’s Chief of Post and Maniamba’s administrator in 1955.
We should also not forget that the final years of the regime in
Mozambique were characterised by a disarticulation of its forces in the field of
co-ordination and distribution of information, and by an accumulation of
tensions between civil and military hierarchies on account of conflicts of
competences and dispute of areas of intervention. The insufficiency of agents
and means, and the decadence of the system of communication, contributed to
a ‘cleavage between the civil and the military powers, with regards to
competence and attributions, as a result of which confusions and paradoxes
resulted which undermined the efficacious articulation’ between all powers in
Mozambique. This phenomenon, which prevented the establishment of a
187
From 1975 onwards the reports are incomplete due to Frelimo’s attack against Witnesses;
also see Cahen 2000, 567.
JEHOVA’S WITNESSES IN COLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE
117
uniform position and criteria, may also be responsible for some of the nonintentional tolerance towards religious minorities. It was something Freitas and
other colonial administrators and officers complained about from the 1950s to
end of the regime in April 1974.188
Whilst it is true that the atrocities meted out in Malawi did not occur in
Mozambique, nor the ferocious repression of Angola, it is reducing to argue
that the Witnesses were only hassled in Mozambique.189 As we have seen
above, the authorities took three different positions at various points in time
and place (repression, flexibility with a view to control the movements of ‘sects’
according to the purposes of the regime, and tolerance), with the prorepression current being the dominant in certain periods and regions.
Not all the documentation from the Estado-Novo regarding Mozambique
is available today since much of it has been destroyed and many incidents were
not recorded officially. Still, the occurrences found so far allows us to conclude
that the Witnesses were more than ‘hassled’ by the regime. Therefore, a reevaluation of the experience of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Mozambique is
necessary. As future studies on other religious minorities during the
dictatorship in Mozambique are written, we may hope that a more accurate
picture of the policy of Mozambique’s colonial government regarding religion
will emerge.
188
189
Quote in Correia 2000, 84-85, 132-141; Souto 2003, 706ss; Mateus 2004, 74, 376-381.
Cahen admits having found references to some detentions of Witnesses in the period studied.
But he devaluates the value of these arrests because they were only divulged in the WTBTS’
publications and printed after Mozambique’s independence, i.e. during the violent repressive
wave meted out by Frelimo’s government. Cahen implicitly considers it to be a manoeuvre by
the WTBTS to show the new government that the Witnesses had also been persecuted by
PIDE and accused of belonging and supporting Frelimo (2000, 561).
118
PEDRO PINTO
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