Football and Colonialism. Nuno Domingos

inspired by the Greek gymnasium, had been adapted to modern times. According to the first commissioner of the Mocidade Portuguesa, Francisco Nobre Guedes, inspired by Pierre de Coubertin’s ideas, “You must protect the gymnasium from the twofold danger represented by the proximity of school and sports society. Both, were they to penetrate its walls, would lead it astray from its objective and neutralize its main action.”¹⁴⁵ The chaotic city, where football thrived, was described in 1928 by António Faria de Vasconcelos, a psychologist and educator, in a text where the purifying benefits of the Ling method were praised: “We need only look at our own life, its zigzags and jerking curves, its haphazard rhythms, a fleeting flame of will and work, sometimes ablaze, sometimes slumberous, shifting from enthusiasm to despondency at a stroke, a life, in short, lacking spirit, balance, control, and discipline.”¹⁴⁶

      FIGURE 2.3. Sketch of a modern gymnasium. Author: Ana Estevens. Source: Adapted from Celestino Marques Pereira, A educação física na Suécia, 163.

      MAP 2.3. Plan of the city of Lourenço Marques, 1929. There are obvious similarities between the structure of the modern gymnasium shown in Pereira’s 1939 original sketch and the principles behind the geometric layout of Lourenço Marques’s cement city. In a way, both these spaces were conceived as modern, confined, and organized spaces where life is produced. Caminhos de Ferro de Lourenço Marques. Source Wikimedia.

      Movements molded by unregulated spatial contexts, such as sports associations, football grounds, and school playgrounds, had a negative impact on the teaching of symmetry.¹⁴⁷ Schoolteachers were also to take part in this control of space by monitoring breaks between classes, on the playground, to “avoid excesses and deviations in children’s spontaneous activity,” especially in the course of “very dynamic games.”¹⁴⁸ More dubious, from an educational point of view, were the movements executed in spaces such as football pitches, where players competed, in a more or less institutionalized way, before an audience. The football field had proven to be an unregulated space, not easily controlled by the state.¹⁴⁹

      The practical implementation of this model did not depend solely on the actions of state institutions vis-à-vis state-sponsored activities but also on their ability to regulate sports activities promoted by private associations, to change their principles, and to convert them into instruments of a “proper education.” The moral principles once prevalent in amateur sports matches had been corrupted by the growing popularity of those activities. For the Portuguese physical education theorists, body movements associated with popular games such as football reflected an urban space that was unhealthy, unpredictable, prone to conflict, hesitant, filled with disordered actions: daily movements executed by individuals who left the steady pace of country life for the uncertain rhythm of the city; individuals who lived in insalubrious houses and attended subversive associations and spaces where politics were discussed. The structural problem of sports games, according to Marques Pereira, rested in the acknowledgment that the movements they generate have a “utilitarian purpose,” an “ill-defined” trajectory, and are asymmetrical.¹⁵⁰ This utilitarian purpose was connected with their competitive nature. Individual movements, syncretic (and synthetic), were driven by the intent to beat the opponent. Because sports games were interactive, specific gestures could not be predetermined, nor could they become the rational outcome of an ideomotor principle, as defined by Leal de Oliveira. The game’s structure relied on immediate experience and empirical knowledge, which meant that its technical progression emerged out of an “experimental basis.”¹⁵¹ A product of a school of vices, outside the scope of state pedagogy, this alternative motor habitus did not fit into the project of a respectable citizen, educated by a nationalist school, the Catholic Church, and the corporative system.

      Although ambitious, this educational project was not very effective, especially when translated into the colonial context. Policies on the colonial ground highlighted the potential benefits of a control over sports associations, a cheaper and more effective form of ruling. Basic institutional structures of social life that provided a structure for social participation and identification, sports associations maintained an ambiguous statute: they could be loyal servants of indirect-rule policies but, when not properly surveilled, could turn into hubs of anticolonial resistance.

       In Mozambique

      In Mozambique the Mocidade Portuguesa became responsible for overseeing the statutes of all associations whose activities entailed youth participation.¹⁵² In 1942 a new decree integrated “within Mocidade Portuguesa’s educational centers all school associations, canteens, school funds, excursion funds, secondary school philanthropic funds or associations, professional schools, farming schools and agricultural management schools.”¹⁵³

      The principle of exclusion inherent in the activity of the Mozambique MP persisted in the 1956 law for the reorganization of overseas sports activities, the first piece of legislation (drafted after a research mission¹⁵⁴) that sought to bring all sports practices, generally speaking, within the fold of the state. The 1956 law and the subsequent legislation that established Conselhos Provinciais de Educação Física (Provincial Boards of Physical Education) for each region, drew inspiration from DGEFDSE regulations: 63 percent of the content of the 1957 Mozambican law replicated this document.¹⁵⁵ The colonial legislation defended the use of private associations to promote the state model of physical education. Associations and clubs were expected to organize gymnastics classes, otherwise their athletes would be excluded from all competitions.¹⁵⁶ This law disapproved of sport-as-spectacle; competition was acceptable only when under the tutelage of the state.¹⁵⁷ The opinion issued by the Câmara Corporativa (Corporative Chamber),¹⁵⁸ and written by the prominent Portuguese physical education theoretician Celestino Marques Pereira, suggested the need for the state to swiftly find a frame for the problem of indígena sport:

      The physical education of the indígena populations in the overseas provinces is a current problem that has a significant impact on the future and progress of these territories. The excellent results attained in previous efforts by some private and official entities indicates that a gradual resolution of the problem is likely. The câmara considers that this is a matter of great importance in the much wider issue of the indígena’s welfare and believes that various sports entities serving the economic life in the overseas provinces may contribute effectively to the resolution of the problem, if only the state, through its own organs, helps them with the necessary guidance, stimulus, and support.¹⁵⁹

      The new Conselho Provincial de Educação Física de Mozambique (CPEF, Mozambique Provincial Council of Physical Education) was entrusted with the elaboration of “plans and solutions for the gradual integration of native gymnastic and sports activities in the current diploma’s regime.”¹⁶⁰ In the discussion that took place in the Conselho Legislativo (Legislative Council), Governor Gabriel Teixeira expressed the view that, despite the enthusiasm among indígena athletes, “even in the furthest corners of the bush,” there remained the “impossibility of, given their cultural state, [their] adaptation to the rules created by the civilized.”¹⁶¹ Although the law on the right of association published in May 1954 did not discriminate against indígenas, the fact that they did not possess any political rights contravened that legal disposition.

       Managing Exclusion

      In Lourenço Marques, the approval of the statutes of suburban football clubs by the colonial state—for the most part in the thirties—brought about a situation where official recognition was made along discriminatory lines: in local competitions, settlers’ clubs were separated from African clubs. Gradually, however, local authorities would adopt a policy of reaching out to populations discriminated against within the field of sport. This was a slow process defined by tensions and indecisions within the colonial state and its institutions, which were permeated by conflicts such as the one that opposed a metropolitan state struggling to demonstrate the nonracist character of Portuguese