Blackwell Reference Online

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Born in Magule, Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa), João dos Santos Albasini was a mulatto, the leading intellectual in the main center, Lourenço Marques (today, Maputo), the editor of O Africano (The African) founded 1908, and O Brado Africano (The African Voice) founded in 1918, and a champion of worker and African rights. Often characterized as a republican and a moderate, Albasini had a basic education and an appetite for ideas. He was an avid reader of republican theory, syndicalism, and anarchism – all influential in Portugal – and was familiar with a range of radical ideas circulating in the city's thriving café culture. Albasini was of mixed descent. He was the grandson of the Portuguese trader and explorer João Albasini, who was one of the first European traders in the interior, and later the vice-consul of Portugal in the Afrikaner republic of the Transvaal. His father, Francisco Albasini, married the granddaughter of a wealthy régulo (chief) of the Maxaquene clan, part of the Ronga-speaking groups. Little is known about his childhood: the 1894 census has João and his brothers listed as sons of Agueda Manuel da Silva, who shared premises with the influential director of the Mozambique Postal Office, José Aniceto da Silva. Albasini attended the Catholic Mission of St. José Lhanguene, but secondary school education was not available in Mozambique. Despite his limited ... log in or subscribe to read full text