Lat: -16.157509005758000, Long: 33.587015001964000

Tete

Tete, Mozambique

Historical Background and Urbanism

he city of Tete, set in the province of the same name, is one of the oldest urban cores in Mozambique. Located on the right bank of the Zambezi River, on a plateau about 500 metres high that drops to its banks, legend says that the place was formerly occupied by a wide reed (mitete, in the Nhungue language), accounting for its name. The first Portuguese houses must have been built around the second quarter of the 16th century, using Swahili emporium that supplied the caravans that went across the southern Mozambican coast and this region. The grant of the place and of a large surrounding area had been made by Monomotapa, the owner of those lands. Friar João dos Santos visited the town in the late 16th century, and wrote in his notes that he had found a church, a fort of stone and lime with seven or eight artillery pieces (Saint James the Greater, from the 16th-17th centuries), and a population of “over six hundred Christians, including 40 Portuguese, the others being Indians and Kaffirs”. The core grew at a slow pace – which was also the case of the weak Portuguese presence in the hinterlands – supported by gold mining and the axis of the Zambezi River, the main route of communication at the time. Friar João dos Santos also said that “the residents [of Tete] come to the trading post of Sena to use their gold in the goods that it has”. Later on, trade activity would shift to ivory and then to slaves, based on a route that connected the coast and the Mwata Cazembe, in Congo, and which included this place. By royal letter of the 9th May 1761, Tete was elevated to town status (with a garrison of 100 soldiers), replacing Sena as the capital of Zambezia. One century later, the new fortress was concluded, a work by captain-general Caetano de Melo e Castro, with the name of Fort of King Luís. The place was also known as Saint Peter of Alcântara Fort or Carrazedo Fort, due to the fortification that was built there through the first half of the 19th century. There is a painting in oils by Thomas Baines, dating from April 1859, which depicts the constructions from the previous centuries and the banks of the Zambezi, and in which the Fort Saint James the Greater is easily recognizable. In the late 19th century Portuguese control of the town was still unstable, threatened by the semi-independent Afro-Goan prazo-holders who devoted their time to trade with the interior. In fact, the profile of Tete as a border post would continue up to independence, and somehow remains until today. In 1917, the rebellion of the Báruè reached its gateway and its occupation was imminent, but was avoided. Some four decades afterwards, in the middle of the colonial war, the city was the seat of the Portuguese military command for this region, and even heard the rumble of the weapons on the opposite bank, right in front of it, with the attack to the Airport of Chingozi in 1972. Growing at a slow pace throughout the 20th century, due to the difficulties of location and isolation, Tete still had around 38,000 inhabitants in 1951. But its rights as a city, attributed since 1932, were only officially confirmed on the 21st March 1958, by directive 13.043 (Boletim Oficial 12/59). The evolution of the urban layout of Tete can be reconstructed thanks to the following elements: the Planta Cadastral da Villa de Tete (Official Map of Villa de Tete), from 1912, at a scale of 1:10,000, with a detailed legend, with a regular and elementary grid, by the river; the Planta de Zonas Projectadas (Map of Projected Areas); photographs of the Square and drawings of the fortification published in Monumenta (no. 6, after p. 73); the Urbanization Plan of 1950, possibly the Anteplano de Urbanização de Tete (Tete Preliminary Urbanization Plan); and the Urbanization Plan of 1973, by the Hidrotécnica Portuguesa. Throughout the 20th century, the prosperity of Tete depended essentially on the industry of coal mining in Moatize, as well as on the production of hydroelectric power of the Cahora-Bassa dam. Nowadays, the city still relies on the boost of these two undertakings for the construction of its future. With a population of something over 100,000, according to the 1997 census, the city of Tete has a relatively modest built heritage, composed of half a dozen ruined colonial manors near the river, and some buildings characteristic of the spark of prosperity that marked the last years of the colonial period, in an effort of response to the war. The most emblematic examples are the Boroma Mission and the bridge over the Zambezi River.

Military Architecture

Equipment and Infrastructures