Last modified: 2005-12-17 by bruce berry
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Here are the old flags of Maputo, then Lourenço Marques, the
first one, green, before 1962, and then (until 1975) in the classic Portuguese
gyronny.
Jaume Ollé, 19 Oct 2002
Are you sure that the Coat of Arms is correct? On Ralf
Hartemink's page the top quarter is gold/yellow, not red. The sails
are red, not white. Moreover the motto on the banderol below the Coat of Arms is
virtually illegible, almost Arabic...
There seem to be two different mottos on the Coat of Arms, for the first image
something like Cidade de Lourenço Marques, for the second image
a similar motto in quite different lettering, whereas on Ralf's site it
reads: DESCOBERTA SOBERANIA PORTUGUESA.
Jarig Bakker, 21 Oct 2002
I'm not the author of this images. They were made by the Spanish vexillologist
and editor of Gaceta de Banderas, Jorge Hurtado who generally well informed
and accurate. These images came from a series of local colonial flags researched
by the Catalan vexillologist Adolfo Duran and published in Banderas.
Jaume Ollé, 22 Oct 2002
I indeed remember the motto "DESCOBERTA E SOBERANIA PORTUGUESA" ("Portuguese
Discovery and Ownship") applied to Lourenço Marques, though it may
later have been changed to the more standard "Cidade de Lourenço
Marques".
A note on Portuguese colonial sub-national flags, or rather the arms
thereon, is that they come in two types: Older ones, usually created unofficially
by local elites and brought into use before the normalization of Portuguese
sub-national heraldry in the 1930s (which officialized these much more often
that it did to its metropolitan equivalents); and much later ones, created
by official state heralds and attributed in the 1940s and later to some
of the colonial cities and towns.
The second type is usually much better designed with real "reborn"
heraldry (massive British influence, I'd say), with clear esthetical and
theoretical improvement when compared with the metropolitan arms created
a couple of decades before. (One of these traits, is the frequent use of real
mottoes on the motto scroll.)
The first type (to which the arms of Lourenço Marques belong)s
were usually pieces of tacky amateurish heraldry, and I wouldn't be surprised
to see them changed at whim at least on details such as colours.
Perhaps the two images by Jorge Hurtado, after and before the normalization
(hinted by the swap of a monocoloured background to a gyronny one) use incorrectly
the same arms? Perhaps the arms before1930 are as shown in Ralf's Hartemink
site?
As for the motto Portuguese Discovery and Ownship, it stresses
Portuguese sovereignty over the city - not against any native claims (towards
whom the argument "discovery" would be risible, even in the time when it
was created) but against British South Africa. Maputo has an excellent
deep water harbour and lies near to the South Africa-Mozambique border. For
that reason the provincial capital was put there (most asymmetrically situated,
compared to, Beira), away from the Mozambique Island in
the north.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 28 Oct 2002
Matola is the seat of Maputo Province, in Mozambique. According to this
website (reported by António Kitabulu Teixeira), its flag is
approx. 1:2, 1V 2W 1Y, with the municipal emblem in the middle. This displays
a river border scene and includes a book, a cogwheel and a hoe, also found
in the national emblem, and also what looks like a smoking pipe, and a
scroll reading "CIDADE DA MATOLA / PAZ E PROGRESSO".
António Martins-Tuválkin, 10 Dec 2004