The background for very low prestige of national languages in Mozambique:

The colonial period.

In 1888 Mozambique was allocated to Portugal at the Berlin conference. Many aspects were considered before the borders were drawn, but these considerations did not include the indigenous languages: The borders cut across the language groups.

During the first many years, Portugal did not control the area, but gave concessions to different companies, who got the right to exploit the natural (and human) resources in return for some payment to the Portuguese state. Any type of education of the local population was evaluated in accordance to the benefit of the company, which meant that it was mostly practical training that took place. The Christian Mission did use some of the Mozambican languages for their purpose, and this established some tradition for writing and reading.

In 1926 there was a revolution in Portugal, where António Oliveira Salazar became the “Prime Minister”, a despot with absolute power. He made Mozambique - just as the other Portuguese colonies - a Portuguese province and gradually took away the privileges of the companies.

In 1940 an agreement between the Catholic Church and the Portuguese state was made (“Acordo Missionario”). The church took over the responsibility for all teaching in Mozambique as part of the overall policy of assimilation, which had the purpose to “civilize” the indigenous people – civilizing meant introducing the Portuguese culture – language, religion, history etc. The Church got monopoly to evangelize with full support (also economical) from the Government and in return, the Church guaranteed, that only the Portuguese language was used for teaching. The existing languages were given the pejorative term “Dialectos”.

During the colonial time, only a few indigenous people were educated, and given the status of “assimilados”, and became Portuguese citizens. By independence in 1975, it is estimated, that it was less than 1%. There was no research in the languages of Mozambique, and there were only very few books written in the languages or about them, mostly Christian texts.

Independence:

In Jan 1975 a seminar under the transition government defined the rules for the school system, and in July 1975, the President Samora Machel announced the nationalization of the educational sector:

1. The Catholic Church was deprived their privileges.
2. A school system was created, that was open to all, secular and free.
3. The ministry of education and culture had sole responsibility for the school system.
4. The curricula were altered from schooling in the Portuguese culture, history and language to introduction into the Marxist-Leninist ideology, with emphasis on the Mozambican society.
5. The only language of instruction was Portuguese.

The overall educational policy was to use the school to create the “Homen Novo” in the Marxist sense, and to liberate the people from old traditions and superstition. Therefore the “tribal” languages were seen as a relic from a time of backwardness and banned from the teaching. The Portuguese language was promoted as the only tool of development and national unity, even if it was mastered by a max 1% of the population in 1975.

Education became a very popular cause, and there was an adult literacy campaign without precedence, where more than half a million people were taught to read and write between 1974 and 1978. Still: ”Alfabetização” was about Portuguese only!

During the first decades of independence everything on the official level was expressed in Portuguese. The national languages were seen as a cultural heritage to be preserved.

Only academic circles, foremost the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, took up seriously the study and research of the national languages: In 1981 NELIMO (Nucleo de Estudos de Linguas Mozambicanas) for research is founded at UEM.

In the early 80’s, the civil war began to influence Mozambique. Over the years it became devastating for the schools and for the whole educational system, especially in the rural areas, where more that 50% of the schools were destroyed and many teachers were killed.

In the mid 80’s, there was some interest from UNESCO in the use of national languages in teaching in Mozambique, but it seems to have had no practical impact.

1988: The first attempt to get a formalized overview of the language situation in Mozambique is made through a NELIMO seminar on orthography. 20 languages are mentioned, of which 15 are treated in detail.

In the 90’es the ideological climate changed.

1. The breakdown of the Soviet Union took away both practical and ideological support to the Marxist Leninist ideology.
2. The breakdown of the apartheid system in South Africa, which took away the support from RENAMO and the civil war came to an end in October 1992.

In 1992 the parliament acknowledged the role of the national languages in teaching. A pilot project form 1992 to 1995 on the use of two of the languages (Nyanja and Tsonga) in primary teaching was set up.

In 1995 the work with changing the curriculum in accordance with the new ideological situation was started . The syllabus for history and social science particularly was difficult to agree upon between the former opponents in the civil war.

In 1999 the formal decision of introducing ”Educação Bilingue” nation wide was announced. 16 languages were chosen.

In 2002 the new curriculum was introduced in some pilot schools, initially with Portuguese only.

In 2004 the national languages were introduced as medium of instruction in some of the pilot schools. The problem of choice of language was at this stage solved for all the provinces.

In March 2006 there were only 14 schools of a total of 8000, which were practising the EB-project. (IBIS-MEPT seminar March 2006).

In April 2007, INDE informs that the EB project is being implemented in 16 languages, in all the provinces and that in 2006 there were a total of 64 EB schools.