Source: Based on data from Anuário estatístico de Moçambique (1959–64)

      It is likely that these statistics included African clubs that had not been previously surveyed. The inclusion of their members in these figures puts the notion of openness in perspective.

      THE INEFFICIENCY OF THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION MODEL

      Even when it came to the segment of the population included in its activities—that is to say, the nonindígena population—Mocidade Portuguesa proved largely inoperative. Reports sent by its Comissariado Colonial (Colonial Commissariat) to the governor general between 1949 and 1951 reveal a difficult situation, characterized by an inability to act outside district capitals¹⁷⁶ and by a permanent lack of funds, material, and employees.¹⁷⁷ MP had to recruit specialized civilian teachers, even though these teachers and technicians often declined the post since they would earn less than what they received from the clubs.¹⁷⁸ The development of official sports policies in the final period of Portuguese domination, given the lack of direct investment, depended on the income generated through sports competitions, such as the football championships. Part of the budget of Mozambique’s CPEF came from the Fundo de Expansão Desportiva (Sports Expansion Fund), whose revenue was gathered by collecting 5 percent of sports competitions’ ticket sales.¹⁷⁹ In 1966 the introduction of a sports betting competition in the territory, Totobola,¹⁸⁰ raised the funds that would be channeled to sports.¹⁸¹ This led the state, at a time when the war effort was already eating up a great portion of the budget, to reduce direct investment in this area even further.¹⁸² Official reports from meetings taking place between 1959 and 1967 reveal that during this period a great deal of the CPEF’s work had to do with the resolution of problems related to federated competitions. One example is the validation of footballers’ transfers following requests from the respective clubs and associations.¹⁸³ Although filtered by social and racial divides, the football market managed to create its own means of labor integration.

      The disciplinary instrument, which aimed to regulate and impose a new logic on the activity of associative sports, namely football competitions, was held hostage by the actual system it strove to control. Failing as an agent that aimed to “produce” acceptable sports practices and consumptions, the state sought to regulate activities, oversee them, avoid political appropriations, and, as far as possible, to use the specific social power of associative sports to hold on to their control over the city’s populations.

      In the metropolis, given the inability to curtail the popularity of football, a sport that led young people away from schools and workshops,¹⁸⁴ the regime acknowledged, in the 1953 law that reformed “national physical education,” that sports associations promoted “a physical culture that, although lacking control and practice, had the virtue of uniting groups of people who enjoyed competition or exhibition. Here, they found a complement to an increasingly demanding social life.”¹⁸⁵ In 1960 the Estado Novo recognized professionalism in football, cycling, and boxing¹⁸⁶ so as to distinguish amateur sports, sponsored by state institutions, from professional sports, which were pedagogically and morally reprehensible.¹⁸⁷ This law was extended to colonial territories in 1963,¹⁸⁸ when it was already obvious that football had become, in cities such as Luanda or Lourenço Marques, a powerful social force.

      Even though it was not considered a good practice by state specialists, in Mozambique’s capital, in the cement city, and in its suburbs, football mobilized young men and adults, practitioners, and spectators of a popular culture that established itself as a basis for ample sociability. The number of clubs and associations constantly increased, as did their total membership (table 2.3):

TABLE 2.3. Number of Mozambican sports associations and clubs and total membership, 1930–64