Multiracial Women and the African Press in Post-World War II Lourenço Marques, Mozambique

Abstract

Based on original research of the biweekly publication of the women's pages in Lourenço Marques' only ‘African’ newspaper, O Brado Africano, this paper addresses racial and class dimensions of urban ideals of feminine modernity in the colonial capital of Mozambique. Between 1948 and 1958 the Pagina para a mulher produced rich and at times radical content. During this period, an urban multiracial middle class of Christian, educated women used the Pagina para a mulher to transmit, discuss, and debate ideas of what it meant to be a modern woman, mother, wife, daughter, and contributing member of society. The article looks specifically at feminine ideals of modernity that gave meaning to colonial categories of ‘civilised’ and ‘non-civilised’ Africans within an assimilationist legal framework of ‘native’ African subject and ‘non-native’ African citizen, and the racial tensions produced by a colonial ideology of European racial and cultural superiority. I argue that the content of the women's pages of O Brado Africano merits scholarly attention as a site of female social and political discourse and aspiration in a post-WWII era of possibility.