Independence as Discovery: Mozambique's 1975 Nationalization of Funeral Services

Abstract

In July 1975, a month after Mozambique's independence from Portugal, the state nationalized all health care, schooling, and legal counsel, so that all Mozambicans would have equal access to these key services – at least theoretically. The fourth, seemingly anomalous sector to be nationalized on the ‘Day of Nationalizations’: funeral services. The inflationary costs of burial in the capital, Lourenço Marques (today's Maputo) came to the attention of cabinet ministers only during the few weeks they had been ministers. Reacting with disgust, they decided there would be no ‘commercialization of death’ in the People's Republic of Mozambique. Based largely on interviews with the former minister of health and with Isaac Araújo, whose family ran perhaps the first African-owned funeral services business in Lourenço Marques, this article uses the episode to discuss the nature of government decision-making during the very earliest days of independence, a period that I argue deserves special attention. Emphasized is the role that Lourenço Marques played as context: how for neophyte ministers, learning to wield the levers of state was also a process of discovery about life in the capital city.