Links to Mozambican
and Related Content

This is a page of links to other Web and Internet resources that MHN considers interesting and useful, either for their opinions and commentary or for the documentation that they provide. This selection is not limited to sites of purely historical interest, and includes sites of relevant or related Portuguese and Angolan content. The list does not claim to be exhaustive or even consistent with any particular principles of selection. If you have any suggestions for other sites that might be linked here, please contact us.

Decoration

General Interest

◊ Agência de Informação de Moçambique
This site offers access to the regular fortnightly [bi-weekly] news bulletins of AIM, the official Mozambican News Agency, starting with no.109 for 8 May 1997. From no.391 for 1 December 2009, the numbered bulletins (but not the news-flashes) are downloadable in PDF format. The site also offers some AIM photographs for commercial use. Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Diário de um Sociólogo
Carlos Serra’s quirky and engaging blog, covering (in his own words) «um pouco de tudo». In Portuguese. Serra believes that sociologists are dreamers, always searching for the laws that govern the social, but also wanting to reform society. The blog constitutes a form of rapid intervention sociology but also includes ‘filosofia, dia-a-dia, profundidade, superficialidade, ironia, poesia, fragilidade, força, mito, desnudamento de mitos, emoção e razão’. Click here to jump to the blog.

◊ Mozambique: Reports and Documents
Pages in English, downloadable documents in both English and Portuguese. The site is run by Joseph Hanlon, a journalist and academic who has been writing on Mozambican affairs since the early 1980s, and is the author of several indispensable books on the country. This website, hosted by the Open University in the United Kingdom, is described as «an archive of documents on Mozambique not readily available elsewhere, and references to Mozambique articles on other websites». Some of the topics covered (as of March 2011) include Mozambique minimum wages from 1996, including April 2010 increases; the carbon-credits driven development project near the Gorongosa park; flooding in the basins of the Zambezi, Pungue and Buzi rivers in March 2010; and so on. Also available on the site is a complete run of the Mozambique Peace [later Political] Process Bulletin, from no.1 (January 1993). The documents are mostly in PDF format. Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos
This institute, IESE, is a genuinely independent research centre led by the senior Mozambican scholars Carlos Nuno Castel-Branco and Luís de Brito. It is highly productive, with a well-designed, active and constantly updated website that is always worth a visit. IESE publishes a substantial annual survey on the state of the nation under the title Desafios para Moçambique, of which three volumes had appeared by the end of 2012. Most IESE publications, including Desafios and other full-length books, mainly in Portuguese but sometimes in English, may be downloaded free of charge in PDF format. Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Portal do Governo de Moçambique
The Mozambican government portal leads you to the websites of all the different ministries, and to a range of interesting downloadable official documents, including current issues of the Boletim da República. Have a look – for example – at the Ministério de Planificação e Desenvolvimento, which runs a research centre, the Direcção Nacional de Estudos e Análises de Políticas, and publishes a wide range of official documentation. Click here to jump to the site.

◊ MOZLII
MozLII is an abbreviation for the Mozambique Legal Information Institute, a project created by the Ordem dos Advogados de Moçambique in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. The goal of MOZLII is to provide access to the legislation and jurisprudence of Mozambique – online at zero cost. This project also aims to shorten time spent searching for specific legislation. The website will soon have all post-independence issues of the government gazette (Boletim da República) online as PDF files. Click here to check the current status of this project.

Historical

◊ Cadernos de História de Moçambique [Maputo]
An interesting house journal produced by the Department of History at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. An earlier print journal from the same source was entitled simply Cadernos de História, and, according to MHN’s sources, ceased to appear mainly because of production difficulties. Articles are freely downloadable in PDF format. The first issue, available here, includes articles on Operation Production (1983- ), women and imported textiles in the late 19th and 20th centuries, colonial policy regarding sugar production, and the impact on Mozambique of sanctions against Rhodesia during UDI. The editors write that «o objectivo dos Cadernos de História de Moçambique é difundir artigos científicos originais ou de divulgação, documentos comentados, apreciações de livros e outras informações em relação às diversas problemáticas da pesquisa e docência da História em – mas não apenas sobre – Moçambique».

◊ Departamento de Estudos Históricos e Políticos [CEA, Maputo]
A new blog organised by the Centro de Estudos Africanos at Eduardo Mondlane University. The blog is put together by a team consisting of Miguel Moto, Tereza Cruz e Silva, Amélia Neves, Hélio Maúngue, Chapane Mutiua, Carlos Serra, Jonas Mahumane and Calisto Pacheleque, and posts texts, pictures and links to forthcoming events and publications. Click here to jump to the blog.

◊ Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril
This site is run by the University of Coimbra and offers access to a wide range of resources on the 25 April coup, recent history and the Portuguese transition to democracy. It is offered in both Portuguese and English. Click here to jump to the home page of the site.

◊ Centro de Pesquisa da História de Luta de Libertação Nacional
«O Centro de Pesquisa da História de Luta de Libertação Nacional [foi] criado através do Decreto nº 3/2008, de 9 de Abril [2008], do Conselho de Ministros, e [é] uma instituição pública de investigação científica da história da luta de libertação nacional, com autonomia administrativa e subordinada ao Ministério dos Combatentes. O CPHLLN dedica-se igualmente à pesquisa e divulgação dos factos históricos da luta pela defesa da soberania, integridade territorial e da democracia, registados após a proclamação da independência nacional.» Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Memórias de África
Run by the Universidade de Aveiro, this website «tem como objectivo principal a criação de um catálogo que reúna as referências da memória dos conhecimentos em arquivos, centros de documentação, bibliotecas e ficheiros de instituições, individuais e organizações». The site aims to create a «biblioteca digital para colocação on-line de obras raras ou únicas de difícil acesso com software que possibilite a pesquisa dentro dos textos». Absolutely essential for periodicals and other publications from the colonial era. Click here to jump to the home page of this site.

◊ Os Comprometidos
« … throughout most of its short history, the Mozambican state has pursued a nation-building policy that includes the political adoption of an official history grounded on a set of public (and intensely publicized) memories about its colonial past, both recent and distant. The Mozambican state thereby seeks to eliminate or make invisible the diversity of memories generated by the complex social interactions between the colonizers and colonized over the long period of Portuguese colonialism. Such silencing has never been fully accomplished and even less so in more recent years. This project seeks to reveal and discuss [the] multiple political tensions and antagonisms [that] permeate … Mozambican society at different levels, being especially visible in the politics of belonging. These tensions reveal how a national history is, at best, part and parcel of a process of nation-building; as such, they reflect more or less intense struggles and debates over the politics of history and memory. The focus of the research will be placed upon a rather large and extremely heterogeneous group of people acknowledged, [at] independence, as ‘collaborators’ with colonialism. The project will seek to unveil the silence over the process of ‘the comprometidos’. Looking into life stories and trajectories of several comprometidos, and comparing them with archival and documentary information … the project aims to develop a denser and more complex cartography of memories and social fractures …» Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Salazar: o Obreiro da Pátria
An excellent site if you want quick access to the speeches and articles, interviews, and even photographs of the former Portuguese dictator. The owners of the site write somewhat defensively that this ‘compilação de dados … não tem qualquer intenção tendenciosa, tão só e apenas de elucidar a ignorância histórica imposta pelas inteligências adversas à realidade da nossa História. Muito menos de impor a verdade ou qualquer facto histórico …’ Click here to jump to the site.

◊ Independência de Angola
This site is run by the Brazilian historian of Angola, Marcelo Bittencourt, with the assistance of his students, and offers images of newspapers and documents, film, photographs and music. In the words of the site’s introductory text, the site «pretende analisar as crises e transformações ocorridas no interior do Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) e na sua relação com a sociedade angolana e os demais movimentos de libertação, de 1975 até 1979. O primeiro marco temporal, o ano de 1975, consagra o MPLA como o vencedor da luta pela independência. Dois anos após essa vitória, em 1977, o movimento transforma-se em partido marxista-leninista e enfrenta uma tentativa de golpe de Estado. O ano de 1979, que encerra o percurso proposto para a pesquisa, é o da morte de Agostinho Neto, Presidente da República e seu líder histórico, quando o MPLA assume uma nova correlação de forças». Click here to jump to the site.