Luis Bernardo Honwana

Luís Bernardo Honwana (born 1942) is a Mozambican author and statesman. He published one book, Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso, a seminal work of Lusophone African literature, appearing on the Zimbabwe International Book Fair list "100 Best African Books of the Twentieth Century" of 2002.

Biography

Luís Bernardo Honwana was born Luís Augusto Bernardo Manuel in Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo), Mozambique.[1] His parents, Raúl Bernardo Manuel (Honwana) and Naly Jeremias Nhaca, belonged to the Ronga people from Moamba, a town about 55 km northwest of Maputo.

In 1964 he became a militant with FRELIMO, a front that had the objective to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule. Due to his political activities he was arrested by the colonial authorities and was incarcerated for three years. In 1970, he went to Portugal and did a law degree at the University of Lisbon. For some time, he worked as a journalist. In 1975, upon independence, he became Director of the Office of President Samora Machel. In 1982, he became the Secretary of State for Culture of Mozambique. In 1986, he was appointed Minister of Culture of Mozambique. In 1987, he was elected a member of the Executive Council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

He served on the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1987 to 1991 and was chairman of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for the World Decade for Culture and Development. In 1995, he was appointed director of the newly opened UNESCO office in South Africa. Since he retired from the organization in 2002, he has been active in research in the arts, history, and ethno-linguistics.

In 1991, he founded Fundo Bibliográfico de Língua Portuguesa and later founded Organização Nacional dos Jornalistas de Moçambique (National Organization of Journalists of Mozambique), Associação Moçambicana de Fotografia (Mozambican Photography Association), and Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos (Mozambican Writers Association). He was also the executive director of Fundação para a Conservação da Biodiversidade (BIOFUND, Foundation for the Conservation of Biodiversity).

Works

Honwana is the author of a single book, Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso (1964), translated into English by Dorothy Guedes as We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories (1969) and the tale "Hands of the Blacks". He self-published Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso when he was 22.

We Killed Mangy Dog is a collection of short stories set in the (Portuguese) colonial era at the turn of the sixties and is reflective of the harsh life black Mozambicans lived under the Salazar regime. Several of the stories are told from the point of view of children or alienated adolescents and most feature the rich mix of races, religions and ethnicities that would later preoccupy Mozambique's most internationally celebrated writer, Mia Couto. It "denuncia e contesta a realidade brutal de Moçambique na época do colonialismo" (denounces and challenges the brutal reality of Mozambique in the era of colonialism).

It was illustrated first by Mozambiquan artist Bertina Lopes and then by Pedro Guedes.

It was first published in Africa and it was a long time before the book was published in Portugal:

◊ Original edition: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (Lourenço Marques: Publicações Sociedade de Imprensa de Moçambique, 1964), 135p. Illustrations by Bertina Lopes (1926-2012).

◊ Portuguese edition, with revisions. Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso: contos moçambicanos (Porto: Afrontamento, 1972), 147p.

◊ 2nd Mozambican edition: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (Lourenço Marques: Académica, 1975), 124p. (Colecção «Som e Sentido»; no.7)

◊ New edition, labelled 2nd ed., revised by the author: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (Maputo: INLD, 1978), 109p.

◊ Brazilian edition: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (São Paulo: Ática, 1980), 96p. (Coleção «Autores Africanos»; no.4)

◊ New edition, labelled 3rd ed.: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (Maputo: INLD, 1984), 109p.

◊ Another Portuguese edition: Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso (Porto: Afrontamento, 1988), 144 p.

Reception

His book has been called "é um marco da literatura moçambicana" (a landmark of Mozambican literature). The book "exercised a massive influence on the subsequent generation of Mozambican prose writers" and Honwana is considered "an iconic figura in the development of Mozambican literary prose style."

When it was published, "a obra foi alvo de polêmica, sendo criticada por parte daqueles que defendiam o colonialismo e simpatizavam com o regime do ditador português António de Oliveira Salazar, e aclamada por aqueles que, portadores de ideias nacionalistas, defendiam a liberdade e a autonomia do país" (the work was the subject of controversy, being criticized by those who defended colonialism and sympathized with the regime of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, and acclaimed by those who, with nationalist ideas, defended the country's freedom and autonomy). Indeed, it it "provoked a storm of outrage among right-wing Portuguese settlers." He was arrested not long after its publication by the colonial authorities. But others "praised him for having captured demotic Mozambican patterns of speech."[2] The original texts of this early debate about the book are available.[3] Abudo Machude published a book in Portuguese about the critical reception of Honwana's book.

Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso has been translated into English, French, German and Russian, and has been produced in the theatre.

Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso won first place in the international literary contest of The Classic magazine in South Africa in 1965.