On that rainy morning, Professor Mahlemba stood before a large, colorful map, covered in straight lines and foreign names. “Mario,” he said, “between 1880 and 1900, the fate of Africa was decided at tables where no African sat.”
Mário approached, intrigued. "You're talking about the Scramble for Africa, aren't you?"“
Mahlemba nodded. “Yes. In 1884, the European powers met in Berlin—Germany, France, England, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. The official objective was to 'organize trade and avoid conflict,' but the real purpose was to divide the continent. They used rulers and inks to draw borders on maps they barely knew. They cut kingdoms in half, separated peoples who shared language and faith, and united enemies under the same flag.‘
He pointed to the map with a firm finger. “Look, Mario: the line that crosses East Africa passes through territories that existed centuries ago — the Kingdom of Gaza, the lands of Maravi, the Zambezi routes. Everything became a colony, a district, a province. In 1891, Portugal signed the Anglo-Portuguese Agreement that established the borders of Mozambique — borders that we still carry today.”
Mario watched in silence. "It was at that point that we stopped being just peoples and started being countries."“
Mahlemba smiled sadly. “Yes, Mario. But countries drawn by people who never visited us. Each line on the map was a cut in memory. And the empire called that civilization.”
He closed the book slowly. “The continent was auctioned off in the name of progress. But progress, when born without freedom, is just another form of prison.”
Final message: Between 1880 and 1900, Africa was divided into pieces of paper.
Borders were born in European salons and grew as wounds across the continent. But the land never forgot its true owners.
