During their history, Mozambicans have experienced two separate periods in terms of the objectives and content of, and access to, school education. During the colonial period, official education was used basically as a vehicle of domination, becoming one of the factors that helped to shape a nationalist awareness. The post-independence period which began in 1975 was characterised by gambling on mass entry into education so as "to make the school a base for the people to take power", as urged by the slogan of the time, cited in Machili's special contribution that closes this chapter.

Like any other human collective units, African communities, over their history, developed educational practices and systems that made possible the transmission of knowledge and values, thus guaranteeing their reproduction and development.

For centuries, the education of the majority of the Mozambican population was based on a model characterised by its integration into the totality of life, and by its close connection with the natural and social environment. This type of education was effective in its function of guaranteeing the socialisation of new generations through the transmission of values, knowledge and practices accumulated throughout the history of the various communities (Dias, 1990: 283).

According to Mondlane, traditional and pr e-colonial education, because it was integrated in the reproduction of lifestyle and of African world views, catered better for the needs: "The great virtues of the African pr e-colonial education were mainly that it was oriented towards the needs of society, it was fully integrated, and it was aimed at everyone equally" (Mondlane, 1975: 196).

Unfortunately, the positive aspects of this source of knowledge accumulated over centuries, were not, nor could they be, made use of, for reasons inherent to the very nature of the colonial system. First, it was not the vocation of the colonial regime to care about the all-round development of Mozambicans; and second, the modernist version of colonial education was designed only as an instrument for broadening capacities in aspects where this consolidated cultural alienation and served to perpetuate domination over Mozambicans.

In this context, it is understandable that the colonial system purely and simply ignored the existence of "native" education. To legitimise domination required the denial of the history and the knowledge, in short the culture, of African societies, and the use of educational institutions as instruments to "civilise" and "nationalise" the natives (Hedges, 1999).

Indeed, of all the methods aimed at depriving the natives of Mozambique of their human development, education is among those that per haps best reflects the deliberate policy of exclusion. The educational system implanted in the territory bore the stigma of domination that it enshrined, not only in the contempt for the knowledge and values of the indigenous population, but also in limiting access, and in blocking the progress of the few who managed to enter this education system.

It thus comes as no surprise to find that, when Mozambique became independent in 1975, about 93% of its 10 million inhabitants had not enjoyed access to the "modern" school. This fact is one of the indicators that reflect the low level of "modernisation" that the colonial regime managed to implant in the territory, and the "under developed" nature of Portuguese colonialism itself. Since the development of this colonialism rested on the exploitation of cheap labour, it could dispense with generalising school education.