July 2008

Julian will be taking a sabbatical from TCA starting on 8th August 2008 for approximately 15 months. Julian and his wife Annie depart to Oporto in Portugal on 27th August to undertake 3 months of language training. The national language for Mozambique is Portuguese so they will be staying in Oporto before moving on to Angoche in northern Mozambique.

                          

Location and History

Angoche is located in the north of Mozambique, about two hours on a plane from the capital, Maputo to Beira and then another two hours to Nampula. It’s then a 5 hour drive on a dirt road to reach the town of Angoche. Angoche is rather run down and questions like “shops, what shops?” come to mind. A town abandoned by the Portuguese in 1975 and one of the last bastions of slave trading in the 1965. The main diet is fish and cassava. Infrastructure is very poor but the housing is OK but somewhat run down as little has been done in the last 30 years.

The original inhabitants were migrants from the Niger Delta in the 1st century AD and relied on farming, fishing and raining livestock. Small chiefdoms developed and in the 8th century sailors from Arabia started to develop trading posts along the East African coast, and one of these was Angoche. Initially gold was the main trading commodity but with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498 over the next 200 years trading in ivory and then slaving developed. The Portuguese tried to strengthen their control in the late 19th century with the establishment of charter companies operated by private companies. These were largely unprofitable and became notorious for poor labour conditions. The Portuguese wrested the salving port of Angoche from its owners in 1861.

Portugal only secured the current borders of Mozambique in the 1920’s after a brief German invasion of northern Mozambique during the 1st World War. A dictatorship from in 1932 ended the power of the private companies and in their place established a planned economy (a system in which the government controls every aspect of the economy). Such changes, however, often did little to improve life for the people of Mozambique. For example, Mozambican farmers were forced to grow crops such as cotton and rice for export, and very little consideration was given to the crops needed for Mozambique’s subsistence. The government also continued the practice of sending Mozambicans to labor in South African mines. Under Salazar, white settlement was encouraged, especially in the irrigated regions around the Limpopo River. Partly as a result, the number of white settlers in the country grew from a few tens of thousands to nearly 200,000 by 1970.

In 1962 a group of exiled Mozambicans led by Eduardo Mondlane met in Tanzania and formed the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, from Frente de Libertação de Moçambique). Two years later, Frelimo launched a guerrilla war against Portuguese Mozambique. The Portuguese countered the insurrection with arms and, in an attempt to pacify the people of Mozambique, a major development program. Many roads, schools, and hospitals were built, stimulating rapid economic growth.

Only after Portugal underwent a tumultuous revolution in April 1974 did the colonial regime in Mozambique begin to crumble. In July 1975 power was formally transferred to Frelimo, and Mozambique became independent. The Frelimo government introduced far-reaching reforms, including rights for women and the collectivization of agriculture. It also introduced a Marxist-Leninist constitution that brought the economy under the control of the state, and it supported the liberation movements of blacks in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. In return, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa sponsored an anticommunist Mozambican guerrilla movement seeking the overthrow of the Frelimo government. This guerrilla group became known as the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo, from Resistência Nacional Mocambiçana). Beginning in 1980 Renamo targeted and destroyed government installations, industries, schools, and infrastructure. Within a short time, the government could be certain of control over only a few cities, and travel about the country could be undertaken safely only by air. In time Renamo gained control over much of the country as increasing numbers of Mozambicans grew disaffected with government policies or were intimidated by a wide range of Renamo terror tactics. TIn 1990 the government adopted a new constitution that firmly disavowed Marxism-Leninism, established Mozambique as a multiparty democracy, and guaranteed the freedom of expression.

The civil war lasted 12 years and subsequent elections in 1994 saw Frelimo take power. The civil war’s most brutal legacy was the hundreds of thousands of unexploded land mines that remained buried throughout rural areas of the country and continued to kill and maim civilians into the 21st century. In the 1990s the United Nations established training programs in Mozambique to help people safely identify, remove, and destroy unexploded land mines.

The Project

Julian and Annie are being sent out by their church in Maidenhead (River Church) and will be working with a missions agency called World Outreach. They will be working amongst a tribal indigenous people group called the Koti seeking to serve them in a number of different ways. These include mentoring and training church leaders, helping with literacy and language programmes, establishment of schools on the remote islands off Angoche and helping to target development funding to appropriate contexts. They also want to provide a base for visitors who want to see what this people group are really like. If you want to know more about their work or keep in touch with them then you can visit their blog www.kotijourney.wordpress.com

        

June 2008

The Clarkson Alliance has been appointed by The Heritage Lottery Fund to manage the development of Raleigh Hall in Brixton on behalf of the Black Culteral Archives to develop a national centre for black cultural heritage in Brixton.

Raleigh Hall will open its doors to the public in 2011. The centre will house two exhibition spaces, an archive and library, and will provide a much-needed resource for the study of black Britain and the history of the African diaspora.

May 2008

Fusion Lifestyle working alongside The Clarkson Alliance has been appointed as prefered bidder for a leisure management contract by Hounslow Council.

Feb 2008

The Clarkson Alliance has been awarded a contract by Jesus College of the University of Oxford to manage the development of the Ship Street Center in central Oxford. The new center is to serve as halls of residence to 31 students during the term time and as an overnight conference facility during the University holidays. The venue will serve as a day conference facility during the students periods of residency.