Here Comes Ruy’s Steamer by Fernando Nicolas

In October 1944, a company which came to be called Arrozal was awarded (by the Rice Propaganda Division) the rice concession for the lower Zambesi valley in colonial Mozambique. This granted the concession-holder, a man called Ruy Pereira de Lima, the right to levy four sacks from every adult woman in the area, paying them one-third of the market value.

The following song two describes one of Ruy’s raids on the village of Pirira, on the north bank of the river, close to the delta. Oral testimony from the village narrates as follows:

When people used to see a boat coming, they would run away. People would say that because it was a boat, it must be Ruy. This would mean that the sepoys would be coming again like they did that other day. Everyone would run into the bush, taking no food or anything. If there was someone working in his garden, he would come to the village shouting ‘Run away! Run away! Ruy’s coming! Run Away!’ Then everyone would rush off into the grass. A small child would not cry out lest the sepoys hear it. So you had to press the child’s mouth to muffle it. People hid in the bush because of the suffering the women were enduring.

This poem was sung in chiSena by Fernando Nicolas with women of Piria village, Luabo, 5 August, 1975.

from Capitalism & Colonialism in Mozambique, 323–24.
Leroy Vail & Landeg White,
University of Minnesota Press (1980)

Footnotes

1. Kachasu: a spirit distilled from the fruit of the cashew tree. It’s production was illegal.
2. Cypaes, or Sepoys: the “native” (that is, African) police, employed by the local administrator.
3. i.e., taken under arrest in Rui’s steamer.