Wind of Change in Nós Matámos o C o-Tinhoso

This article reads the collection Nós Matámos o C o-Tinhoso as an example of ‘colonial mimicry’. According to Bhabba, ‘mimicry […] is never far from mockery’. Indeed, Honwana skillfully appropriates the famous image of the ‘wind of change’ advocated by Macmillan in South Africa in 1960 to suggest that in the context of Mozambique a cleansing storm (alluding to armed struggle) was in fact unavoidable. Within this framework, the article relies on close textual analysis to consider more fully the intricate way in which Honwana structures his collection and combines subtle shifts in first person narrative with ambiguous imagery in order to successfully convey a dissident message despite a censorship context.