ABSTRACT
The classification of people as “illiterate” in Mozambique took on resonance only at the point when the newly established colonial government set out to consolidate its control and to open up social life to regulatory and controlling practices. Portugal itself exhibited the classic features of underdevelopment, functioning on the periphery of Europe as an exporter of raw materials and labour and an importer of finished industrial goods. From late in the nineteenth century, it was South Africa that exerted the main economic control over Mozambique. In the case of Mozambique, the concept of “native” was constituted, embedded in a reconstructed “traditional” setting. The colonial state’s role in setting up institutions to rent out Mozambican labour to neighbouring countries through the contract labour system was clearly the most dramatic instance of state intervention in the labour process.
