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

Biography

Da Silva was born in Laurenço Marques (today

Maputo Maputo (), formerly named Lourenço Marques until 1976, is the Capital city, capital, and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a popul ...

) to a Portuguese father and a mother. 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. 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 Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (20 June 1920 – 3 February 1969) was the President of the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) from 1962, the year that FRELIMO was founded in Tanzania, until his assassination in 1969. Born in Mozambique, h ...

in 1949, although he never joined it. He served in the

Portuguese Army The Portuguese Army ( pt, Exército Português) is the land component of the Armed Forces of Portugal and is also its largest branch. It is charged with the defence of Portugal, in co-operation with other branches of the Armed Forces. With its ...

from 1965 to 1968 in

Nampula Nampula is the capital city of Nampula Province in Northern Mozambique. With a population of 743,125 (2017 census), it is the third-largest city in Mozambique after Maputo and Matola. The city is located in the interior of Nampula Province, approxi ...

. He began working for the newspaper ''Notícias'' and ''

Tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

''. He founded organizations such as ''Tchova Xi Ta Duma'', a theatre troupe where he was a director and an actor, as well as the . In the 1990s, he became a professor at

Maputo University The Maputo University ( pt, Universidade Maputo) is one of Mozambique's principal universities. The name of the university is abbreviated to UniMaputo or UM. As a university, it was the first and the only public fully dedicated to teacher educatio ...

. In 2003, he published a book detailing the contributions of

Ronga Ronga (XiRonga; sometimes ShiRonga or GiRonga) is a Bantu language of the Tswa–Ronga branch spoken just south of Maputo in Mozambique. It extends a little into South Africa. It has about 650,000 speakers in Mozambique and a further 90,000 i ...

, his native language, to the speaking of

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

. He defended a thesis at the University of Porto in 2009 titled ''Do lexico à possibilidade de campos isotópicos literários''. Calane da Silva died of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

in Maputo on 29 January 2021, at the age of 75, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique.

Distinctions

* (2010) *

Order of Rio Branco The Order of Rio Branco (''Ordem de Rio Branco'') is an honorific order of Brazil instituted by decree 51.697 of February 5, 1963. It is named in honor of the Brazilian diplomat José Paranhos, Baron of Rio Branco. The President of Brazil serves ...

(2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:da Silva, Calane 1945 births 2021 deaths People from Maputo Mozambican writers Mozambican journalists Mozambican poets Mozambican people of Portuguese descent Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique