Linguistic Re-Signification in Mozambique

Between Language, Culture, and Nyungwe Orature

Abstract

The article addresses linguistic and cultural aspects of Mozambique related to Portuguese colonization and the actions of successive governments of independent Mozambique, with the aim of identifying, correcting, and re-signifying cultural, linguistic, symbolic, and mythological inaccuracies committed during these two periods, which negatively and permanently affected the issues mentioned above. It also aims to advocate for the re-Africanization of the spirits of Africans and the strengthening of cultural identity. This approach uses a methodology that is appropriate and adapted to the oral cultures and traditions, whose sources are inscribed in nature and society, in which the author(s) are the linguistic community itself — the elders, guardians, living libraries of ancestral knowledge. Since this is research about Mozambique — Africa, it would make little sense to use a methodology disconnected from Sub-Saharan realities. It appears to be an innovative approach and may be of interest to academia insofar as it is part of the struggles of the peoples of the Global South for their liberation and cultural, linguistic, academic, epistemological, mental, spiritual decolonization, and the consequent re-Africanization of spirits (Amílcar Cabral) and the assertion of Afrocentric epistemologies, consistent with the realities of these spaces in question — a sine qua non condition for the development of these countries. The data analyzed are corruptions of anthroponyms, chrononyms, eponyms, toponyms, etc., scattered throughout Mozambique, which were deliberately destroyed and replaced by Portuguese labels, attempting to erase ancestral African memories — memories that are essential to seek to correct and restore. They imposed their names on territories and people such as the Americas, Brazil (Pindorama), Mozambique, António, Conceição, Domingos, Patrícia, through baptisms, standards, branding with hot iron, even when people already had their ethnic names. To assign another identity or name is the art of destroying authenticity, a subtle form of domination and occupation (Nêgo Bispo). The eradication of indigenous languages in colonized areas, the annihilation or looting of local knowledge, the alienation of entire peoples — these are all strategies of the same crimes against humanity. They even criminalized (prohibited) the cultures, languages, and religions of the colonized. They were to be the sole holders of cultures, languages, knowledge, religions, and civilizations. The writings of colonialists about the colonized peoples are full of distortions and traps. All peoples possess knowledge, skills, and wisdom, but the monolithic worldview of a single God, a single truth or certainty (The Principle of Uncertainty), a single way of being and existing, does not recognize polytheism, multiple and fluid truths, or other ways of being and living. For these forces, all other peoples are seen as sub-human, devoid of knowledge, pagans, etc. The absence of written records by the native peoples of Mozambique complicates the recovery of what was destroyed — but it is not impossible. Some knowledge has survived to this day through polytheistic cosmologies and oral transmission from generation to generation (Nêgo Bispo). This article, written from orality, with oral sources, is an effort towards the revitalization of ancestral memories that were destroyed and erased by invaders and colonizers, learning from orality in order to rewrite and restore what was destroyed. Because “no one can speak better about the life of a people than their songs” (Nêgo Bispo). Therefore, there are few written sources. In this sense, the concepts and methodologies used were reviewed and updated to suit spaces of oral traditions and cultures, where writing is marginal, limited, and restricted to official and elitist domains. This has direct implications for the written bibliography, which ends up being scarce; oral sources, on the other hand, are original/primary because they are obtained first-hand from the very protagonists — the cultural and linguistic community. It is unreasonable for Western paradigms to consider the millennia-old oral cultures of most peoples around the world as “non-cultures.” This notion has become widespread and has kept many valuable types of knowledge away from science.