Raúl Alves Calane da Silva (20 October 1945 – 29 January 2021) was a Mozambican writer, journalist, and poet.[1]

Calane da Silva
Born
Raúl Alves Calane da Silva

20 October 1945
Died29 January 2021(2021-01-29) (aged 75)
NationalityMozambican
Occupation(s)Writer
Journalist

Biography

edit

Da Silva was born in Laurenço Marques (today Maputo) to a Portuguese father and a Ronga [de] mother.[2] In his most popular work, Dos Meninos da Malanga, he detailed memories of living as a black teenager in the high-crime suburbs of Maputo.[3]

As a student, da Silva followed the ideals of the Núcleo de Estudantes Secundários Africanos de Moçambique, a Mozambican nationalist movement founded by Eduardo Mondlane in 1949, although he never joined it.[4] He served in the Portuguese Army from 1965 to 1968 in Nampula. He began working for the newspaper Notícias and Tempo. He founded organizations such as Tchova Xi Ta Duma, a theatre troupe where he was a director and an actor, as well as the Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos [pt].[5] In the 1990s, he became a professor at Maputo University. In 2003, he published a book detailing the contributions of Ronga, his native language, to the speaking of Portuguese in Mozambique.[6] He defended a thesis at the University of Porto in 2009 titled Do lexico à possibilidade de campos isotópicos literários.[7]

Calane da Silva died of COVID-19 in Maputo on 29 January 2021, at the age of 75, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique.[8]

Distinctions

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ "Moçambique: Morreu o escritor Calane da Silva, vítima de Covid-19 em Maputo". Vatican News (in Portuguese). 30 January 2021.
  2. ^ Darch, Colin (2018). Historical Dictionary of Mozambique. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 74–75. ISBN 9781538111352.
  3. ^ "Crime strikes Malanga neighbourhood in Maputo". Club of Mozambique. 11 September 2019.
  4. ^ Mozambique : guerre et nationalisme (in French). Karthala: Politique africaine. 1988. ISBN 9782811101244.
  5. ^ "Raul Alves Calane da Silva, 1945-". Mozambique History Net.
  6. ^ Tão bem palavra : estudos de linguística sobre o portugeês em Moçambique con ênface na interferência das línguas bantu no português e do português no bantu (in Portuguese). Maputo: Imprim. Univ. 2003.
  7. ^ "Do léxico à possibilidade de campos isotópicos literários" (PDF). Universidade do Porto (in Portuguese). 2009.
  8. ^ "Moçambique: Morreu o escritor Calane da Silva". VOA (in Portuguese). 29 January 2021.
  9. ^ "As mil facetas de Calane da Silva, "Prémio Craveirinha 2010"". VOA (in Portuguese). 2 December 2011.
  10. ^ "Calane da Silva celebra 70 anos com "vida além desta vida"". Magazine Independente (in Portuguese). 28 October 2015. Archived from the original on 6 February 2021. Retrieved 1 February 2021.