Lina Magaia - Writer, journalist, and activist in Mozambique

campusaraujo
May 5
17 min read

Updated: May 9

Lina Júlio Francisco Magaia was an important writer, activist, and journalist from Mozambique, whose trajectory was deeply linked to the national liberation struggle and the cultural and political reconstruction of Mozambique after independence. Born in Maputo (formerly Lourenço Marques), Lina grew up in an upper-middle-class family, being the granddaughter of a traditional king of the Marraquene people. Her upbringing was influenced by her father, Francisco Magaia, a teacher and son of a régulo—a central figure in traditional African structures during the colonial period—and by her mother, Salina Fragoso, whose family was marked by historical displacements and resistance in the south of the country.

During her childhood, Lina lived in several places of symbolic value, such as Manhiça, Manjacaze, and Machava. In Manhiça, she lived with her maternal grandmother until age five and experienced peasant life through the machamba—a small family farm—an experience that awakened her social commitment and attention to rural workers. This bond with the countryside and popular experience would become central to her work and political engagement.

Lina’s father worked for the Swiss Mission and later for the colonial administration’s Meteorological Service, leading the family to settle in a modest home in Lourenço Marques. As a child, Lina was enrolled in schools known for educating young Africans in a context of racial segregation, such as the Swiss Mission School of Chamanculo and the Associative Center of Black People. Her teachers, including Marcelino Macome and Samuel Dabula, played a significant role in her education.

From a young age, Lina showed vibrant intelligence and a restless spirit. She refused to passively follow family norms and became involved in the clandestine struggle for Mozambique’s liberation. She developed close ties with key figures in the nationalist movement, such as Armando Guebuza and Cristina Tembe, and participated in the Associative Center of Black People, which, although under colonial control, became a fertile ground for African nationalism.

At twelve, when her father was transferred to Guijá, Lina was already active in the African Secondary Students' Nucleus of Mozambique (NESAM), under the leadership of Joaquim Chissano. Her academic excellence, especially in mathematics, challenged racist stereotypes imposed by the colonial regime, turning her achievements into a form of political affirmation.

While still a student, Lina joined FRELIMO and, due to her political involvement, was imprisoned for three months. After her release, she became one of the first Mozambican women to receive a scholarship abroad, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Lisbon. She later went to Tanzania, where she received military training and joined FRELIMO’s liberation army in 1975, the year of Mozambique’s independence.

In the 1980s, Lina participated in the Green Zones Project, promoted by the Organization of Mozambican Women, aimed at urban food supply. She later moved to Manhiça, where she became deputy director of the Maragra sugar factory and, later, agricultural development director for the district. Her work faced hostilities from RENAMO, the armed group behind the internal post-independence conflicts.

Throughout her life, Lina Magaia built a legacy that combines political resistance, civic action, and commitment to the most vulnerable, becoming an essential voice in the history of Mozambique and in Portuguese-language African literature.

Life and works of Lina Magaia

1945 – Maria Angelina Magaia is born in the city of Maputo (then Lourenço Marques), Mozambique.

1960s – Becomes involved with the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) while still a student.

1960s–1970s – Imprisoned for political activities. She receives a scholarship and earns a bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Lisbon.

1970s – Receives military training in Tanzania. After independence, becomes a member of FRELIMO’s liberation army.

1980 – Joins the “Green Zones” project of the Organization of Mozambican Women (OMM), promoting urban agriculture to combat food shortages.

1982 – Becomes deputy director of the Maragra sugar factory in Manhiça.

1986 – Appointed director of agricultural development for the Manhiça district. Faces attacks from RENAMO during the civil war.

1987 – Publishes Dumba Nengue: Tragic Stories of Banditry, with real and brutal accounts of the civil war.

1989 – Releases Double Massacre in Mozambique, a continuation of Dumba Nengue, with new testimonies of violence.

1994 – Publishes Delehta: Leaps in Life, a novel addressing gender issues, inequality, and female resistance.

2000s – Remains active in politics, agriculture, and culture, promoting women’s and farmers’ rights.

2011 – Passes away in Maputo. Leaves behind a legacy as a fighter, intellectual, and unwavering voice against injustice.

History of Mozambique

Mozambique is in southeastern Africa and has a history marked by resistance and profound transformations. Before the arrival of Europeans, the territory was inhabited by Bantu peoples organized into agricultural and trading societies, which maintained contact with Arabs and Persians, especially along the coast. In 1498, Vasco da Gama arrived in the region, initiating Portuguese presence, which intensified over the following centuries through trading posts and exploitation systems such as the prazos da coroa (crown land leases). However, full colonial control was only consolidated at the end of the 19th century, after the Scramble for Africa.

Portuguese colonization was characterized by economic exploitation, racism, and repression. The struggle for independence gained strength in 1964, led by FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), and culminated in Mozambique's independence on June 25, 1975. The new socialist-oriented government soon faced a civil war against RENAMO, which was supported by external forces.

FRELIMO – Mozambique Liberation Front

FRELIMO was founded in 1962 as a national liberation movement with the goal of ending Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique. Initially led by Eduardo Mondlane and later by Samora Machel after Mondlane’s death, FRELIMO launched an armed struggle against the colonial regime in 1964. Following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, Mozambique achieved independence on June 25, 1975, and FRELIMO became the ruling party, establishing a socialist-oriented government.

RENAMO: Mozambican National Resistance

RENAMO emerged in the late 1970s as an armed opposition movement, initially supported by the Rhodesian regime (now Zimbabwe) and later by apartheid South Africa. It was created as a response to FRELIMO's hegemony, criticizing its centralized government and Marxist orientation. RENAMO led a long and violent civil war against the FRELIMO government from 1977 to 1992.

This conflict devastated the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people. The General Peace Agreement, signed in 1992, ended the civil war, and transformed RENAMO into a legalized political party.

The conflict lasted until 1992, causing immense destruction and suffering. Since then, Mozambique has lived under a multi-party regime, with economic progress but also ongoing challenges such as inequality, corruption, and armed insurgencies. Its history is marked by the struggle for self-determination and the resilience of its people in the face of numerous hardships.

Most important works by Lina Magaia

Dumba Nengue: Tragic Stories of Banditry (1987)A work based on testimonies collected during the Mozambican civil war, primarily from peasants who were victims of RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance). The book was banned in several contexts due to its graphic and harsh descriptions of violence. The title, in Changana, can be translated as “man’s head” or “pig’s head,” referring to the horrors of war.

Double Massacre in Mozambique (1989)A thematic continuation of Dumba Nengue, even more explicit in its denunciation of violence and the rawness of its accounts. It contains testimonies from peasants and children who were victims of atrocities. A strong critique of the effects of war and the political manipulation of the poor.

Delehta: Leaps in Life (1994)A semi-autobiographical novel about a woman who tries to survive and assert herself in a context dominated by social and patriarchal conflicts. The novel also portrays the role of women in a changing Mozambican society.

Lina fell in love with Messias, a football player, with whom she had her first son, Julinho, in 1972. The relationship was brief but had the support of Augusto and Judite Matine. After visiting Mozambique with her son, Lina returned to Portugal, leaving Julinho with her mother, Salina, who passed away in 1973, shortly before her grandson's first birthday — as if confirming her premonition.

Later, Lina married Carlos Laisse, with whom she had four children and adopted a child whose parents had died during the Mozambican civil war. During her military training, she lost Julinho, a tragedy she attributed to colonialism. Despite the challenges, she maintained an active family life, living in Manhiça during the week and going to Maputo on weekends. Her experiences shaped her committed writing, focused on defending women, children, and Mozambican peasants, expressing a deep political and social commitment.

Political Involvement

Lina Magaia was a Mozambican underground activist, member of the cell led by Ângelo Chichava. At the age of twenty, she was arrested by the PIDE (International and State Defense Police) and imprisoned in the dreaded Cell 1, later being transferred to Cell 9. Her brother, Albino Magaia, also a journalist and writer, was persecuted by the same political police of the Salazar regime, arrested in Swaziland, and deported to Mozambique. Imprisoned in Mabalane and later in Machava prison (Ka Djamangwana), Albino recounted his experiences in the book Yô Mabalane! (1983), an essential work for understanding political repression in Mozambique.

After her release, Lina was forbidden from studying during the day and completed night school with excellent performance. She enrolled in Economics at the Higher Institute of Economic Sciences in Lisbon. There, she shared a home with Graça Machel, a prominent activist and future political leader of Mozambique. Lina also interacted with other Mozambican intellectuals, such as Salomão Munguambe, Teodato Hunguana, and Raúl Honwana, forming a network of young opponents to colonialism, who would influence the course of contemporary Mozambican history.

“She was an impetuous woman, spoke with vehemence, argued passionately, captivated with her fervor and ideas. Her eyes challenged us. They inquired about us. She left no one indifferent. She said what she thought without dissimulation or concealment. She did not shy away from disagreeing with her own or diverging from her comrades when she thought differently. She was untamable against her adversaries. She had a brilliant pen. Her writing, equally vigorous, nimbada* with her ideas and beliefs, was penetrating. She wrote on the border between journalism and literature, between narrative and denunciation, between testimony and biography. Did she divide opinions? Of course. She was assertive and generous, humanly generous. She had causes. She fought for them. She was committed to the lives and destinies of others. She was a proponent of the truth. For this reason, she was also known for denouncing the genocide that tore the country apart in the 1980s. She was undoubtedly one of the women of 20th-century Mozambique.”

(in Dumba Nengue)

Nimbada is a rare and poetic word, meaning surrounded by a halo, or enveloped in a soft and diffuse light, as if sacred or illuminated. The term nimbo comes from the Latin nimbus, which originally meant cloud, but later came to denote the luminous halo that, in religious art, appears around the heads of holy figures.

Between May and June of 1975, she participated in a course for junior officers. In June, at the age of thirty, she returned to Mozambique. She went to the Boane barracks and later to the Military Hospital. On Independence Day, she went to the Machava Stadium, even though she was ill. It was her most anticipated day, for which she dedicated her youth. She was a deputy and social activist in the years following independence.

Lina was married and a mother of four children. The first two passed away. She fought for the farmers, firmly advocated for a green revolution, and dreamed of land reform. In 1983, she moved to the district of Manhiça, remaining active and unwavering in her support for farmers. In 1986, she began to lead the Agricultural Development Region of Manhiça.

During this period, she experienced the brutal realities that would shape her book Dumba Nengue: Histórias Trágicas do Banditismo. She returned to writing for the press, especially for the magazine Tempo. As a young woman, particularly in the 1960s, she had contributed to Brado Africano (African Cry), A Voz Africana (The African Voice), Diário de Moçambique (Mozambique Diary), and A Tribuna (The Tribune), with reports, chronicles, and short stories. She wrote with fury, repulsion, and anger.

In 1987, the dreadful Homoíne massacre occurred. Lina recounts this horrific event in Duplo Massacre em Moçambique – Histórias Trágicas do Banditismo II. She writes, speaks, and rebels. She is the voice of those who have no voice. Her activism is vigorous. Her intervention is indomitable. She performs in Maputo Mulher (Maputo Woman). She is a stellar figure in the public space of Mozambique. She writes and publishes Delehta – Pulos da Vida (Delehta – Leaps of Life – 1994) and A Cobra de Olhos Verdes (The Green-Eyed Snake – 1997).

Shortly before her death, on June 27, 2011, she published Recordações da Vovó Marta (Memories of Grandma Marta) about the mother of her old friend Armando Guebuza. It was part of a project of memoirs and accounts about specific personalities or figures. She was unable to continue with this purpose. Her voice continued to reverberate, her pen remained in the newspapers and books, and the memory of her gaze lingered in the pages of the press. Her imposing figure, worn down by her final illness. The memory of her legendary Basque beret. Her sharp accounts, her precise and refined prose.

"I read it again many years later and realize that my youthful boldness was not able to give it the importance it deserved in her literary writing. Before she passed away, I had the opportunity to make this remark to her. What seemed to me like pure journalistic reporting contains literary glimpses that reveal a beautiful prose writer. I recall that her brother Albino had an admiration for the remarkable Lina. I agree with him. She was an extraordinary woman. She left a legacy. Her name. Her activism. Her audacity, her fearlessness, her courage, her passion for social causes. The nobility of her ideas and actions. Her exuberance, her vastness. She was 66 years old and had a full, dignified, and honorable life. She was an unpretentious woman with a rare nobility. Like a few others. Until the end."

Nelson Saúte

https://cartamz.com/author/nelsosaute/

Lina Magaia, female writer

Many of Lina Magaia’s writings focused on the horrors of the civil war in Mozambique. Her first book, Dumba Nengue: Histórias Trágicas do Banditismo (Dumba Nengue: Tragic Stories of Banditry), published in 1987, was inspired by her own experiences and by those recounted to her by peasants and plantation workers in Manhiça. Owens further explains that the stories in the books come from a collection of chronicles published in the "Aspectos da Guerra" (Aspects of the War) series by the magazine Tempo.

These chronicles, along with others that were not originally part of the series, were published in a single expanded volume, Dumba Nengue, within the "testimony" or "words of witness" book series by Tempo. The English edition, published in 1988, is titled Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life. Peasant Tales of Tragedy in Mozambique, and remains one of the most internationally recognized Mozambican texts about the war.

Lina Magaia’s second collection, also composed of eyewitness accounts, in addition to reports and photographs, was published in 1989 under the title Duplo Massacre em Moçambique: Histórias Trágicas do Banditismo II (Double Massacre in Mozambique: Tragic Stories of Banditry II). The work specifically documents the massacre of 424 civilians by RENAMO, which took place in the town of Homoíne, in the south of the country, in 1987.

Lina Magaia also published two novels: Delehta: Pulos na Vida (Delehta: Leaps in Life - 1994) and A Cobra dos Olhos Verdes (The Green-Eyed Snake - 1997). Delehta is a work that is part fiction, part autobiography — a first-person account of the final years of the war, the lead-up to the Rome Peace Agreement of 1992, and a tentative vision of a post-war democracy.

Recurring themes in Lina Magaia’s work

Violence of the Civil War

Condition of the African Woman

Collective Trauma

Patriarchy and Social Inequality

Resistance and Dignity of the Peasant People

Relationship Between the Individual and the State

Lina Magaia’s writing style

Lina Magaia’s work is characterized by a testimonial and engaged writing style, grounded in her experience as a fighter, activist, and journalist during the Mozambican civil war. Her texts have a strong documentary nature, constructed from real accounts, letters, interviews, and individual experiences as a FRELIMO militant. For Magaia, literature is a tool of denunciation and resistance — against the atrocities of RENAMO and against the violence of Portuguese colonialism.

One of her most impactful books is Dumba Nengue – Tragic Stories of Banditry, a collection of real-life narratives that starkly depict the suffering of civilians during the conflict. Her language is direct, visceral, and emotive, rejecting literary ornamentation to provoke the reader and confront them with the pain of the victims.

Another central aspect of her work is the valorization of popular voices: peasants, women, children, and marginalized guerrilla fighters. Her writing incorporates orality, Mozambican Portuguese, and local expressions, reaffirming the cultural identity of her people.

Despite the violence portrayed, there is a profound humanism and a strong commitment to collective memory. Her literature is an act of resistance, healing, and symbolic reconstruction, preserving the dignity of the oppressed.

Comparison of Lina Magaia with other

African or African-Diaspora women writers

Lina Magaia (Mozambique)

Style: Testimonial, realistic, direct, political.

Themes: Civil war, colonialism, violence, popular resistance.

Language: Raw, marked by orality and emotion.

Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique)

Style: Narrative, symbolic, with African oral and mythical elements.

Themes: Polygamy, women’s condition, tradition vs. modernity, spirituality.

Language: Rich in rhythm, humor, and social critique.

Comparison: While Lina documents the violence of war, Paulina dives into the feminine soul of Mozambique and the conflicts between tradition and change.

Noémia de Sousa (Mozambique)

Style: Poetic, lyrical, Pan-Africanist.

Themes: Negritude, African identity, colonial oppression.

Language: Emotional, musical, combative.

Comparison: Both are politically engaged, but Noémia uses poetry as an aesthetic weapon; Lina uses documentary prose.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

Style: Literary, fictional, psychological, and historical.

Themes: Biafra war, feminism, immigration, racism.

Language: Refined, accessible, with emotional depth.

Comparison: Both address war and collective trauma, but Chimamanda builds psychologically complex fictional characters, while Lina is more direct and factual.

Conceição Evaristo (Brazil)

Style: “Escrevivência” – writing rooted in the lived experience of Black women.

Themes: Racism, poverty, memory, resistance.

Language: Poetic, with oral and emotional elements.

Comparison: Both denounce systems of violence (colonial, racial, class-based), but Evaristo focuses on emotional structures of everyday life; Lina on the brutality of war.

These authors share the use of literature as a tool for denunciation, memory, and resistance, though their styles vary in form (poetry, prose, fiction, testimony) and emphasis (psychological, political, cultural).

Literary Work

Lina Magaia is widely known for her engaged literature, with strong political and social content. Her works are based on real events, war accounts, and the suffering of the Mozambican people, especially during the civil war that ravaged the country from 1977 to 1992.

Dumba Nengue

Published in 1987, Dumba Nengue – Histórias Trágicas do Banditismo is a poignant and visceral work about the civil war in Mozambique, written during a period of intense political tensions in the post-independence country. The book gathers real accounts collected by Magaia from farmers and civilians who were victims of the atrocities committed by RENAMO. The title, which in Changana means "head of man," already anticipates the brutality of the narratives, which deal with torture, mutilations, rapes, massacres, but also acts of resistance and overcoming.

Lina Magaia acts as a chronicler of collective pain, using a direct, emotional language of denunciation. She abdicates from aesthetic filters to scream the horror of the war, provoking indignation in the reader and assuming a clear political stance against the "armed banditry." More than just a simple reportage book, Dumba Nengue represents a literature of urgency and testimony, inscribing the violence on the body of the Mozambican nation and denouncing the deep marks left by the conflict.

Double massacre in Mozambique

In Duplo Massacre em Moçambique (Double Massacre in Mozambique - 1989), Magaia deepens her project of Mozambican testimonial literature, continuing the denunciation started in Dumba Nengue. The author documents the so-called “double massacre”: on one hand, the extreme physical violence inflicted by RENAMO, and on the other, the psychological and social consequences left on the affected communities.

Combining oral accounts, interviews, official documents, and individual experiences, Magaia reveals not only the murders and mutilations, but also the massacre of dignity, childhood, and hope. The language maintains a strong, raw, and direct tone, making the work a historical and political document about the Mozambican civil war, with a focus on the impact on women and children. It is a literature that seeks to provoke and mobilize, rather than just narrate.

Delehta: Hops in Life

Released in 1994, Delehta: Leaps in Life marks a moment of transition in Lina Magaia's work, as it shifts away from the exclusive focus on war to explore female subjectivity in post-conflict Mozambique. The novel follows the journey of Delehta, an ordinary woman who faces the challenges of living in a society marked by inequality, machismo, poverty, and instability, while never losing her strength of resistance and capacity for reinvention.

With a more introspective language, yet still engaged, Magaia constructs a sensitive portrait of the Mozambican woman in reconstruction. The "pulos" (leaps) of the title symbolize the highs and lows of existence – falls, rebeginning, and leaps towards survival. The work reaffirms the author’s commitment to representing marginalized voices, even when war is not the central theme.

Highlights:

Genre: novel / Social Fiction / Psychological Portrait

Themes: female condition, social inequality, daily struggle, post-war reconstruction

Style: narrative, more elaborate and sensitive, but still engaged

Importance: expands Lina Magaia's thematic range, humanizing her denunciations through personalized fiction.

It happened at night, as always. Like owls or hyenas, the bandits attacked a village in the Taninga region. They robbed, kidnapped, and then forced their victims to carry food, radios, batteries, and the sweat of their labor in the fields or in the mines of Johannesburg, where many of these goods had come from. Among the kidnapped were pregnant women and small children. Among the children was a little girl of almost eight years old... And the hours passed, dawn broke and finally there was a halt. They dropped their loads, and the bandits selected who could go home and who should continue. Of those who had to continue, many were boys between twelve and fifteen years old. Their destiny was the school of murder - they would be transformed into armed bandits after training and a poisoning of their consciences. Others were girls between ten and fourteen years old, who would become women after being raped by the bandits. Others were women who were being stolen from their husbands and children. To demonstrate the fate of the girls to those who were returning, the leader of the bandits in the group chose one, a little girl who was less than eight years old. In front of everyone, he tried to rape her. The child's vagina was small, and he could not penetrate her. On impulse, he took a sharp knife and opened her with a violent blow. He took her blood. The child died.

Excerpt from Dumba Nengue, a relentless account of the terror of war.

Death

Magaia passed away in 2011, but her last publication, Recordações da Vovó Marta (Grandma Marta's Memories), published the same year, was based on interviews with one of the oldest women in Mozambique, Marta Mbcota Guebuza, 99, mother of former Mozambican president Armando Guebuza. On June 27, 2011, in Maputo, the writer, Mozambican journalist and political activist Lina Júlia Francisco Magaia passed away.

Importance and legacy

Lina Magaia was one of the first Mozambican women to write with her own voice on topics traditionally dominated by men, such as war, politics, and oppression. Her writing combines historical testimony with the strength of literary narrative and reveals the silenced pains of a nation. Lina also acted in documentaries and historical memory initiatives and is remembered as a firm and courageous voice against injustice and oblivion. ֎