A Catedral das Palhotas: religião e política no Moçambique tardo-colonial

In the late 1960s, the well-known southern African architect and artist Amancio D'Alpoim "Pancho" Guedes designed a cathedral for the Anglican Diocese of Lebombo, Mozambique, inspiring himself in autochthonous architectural techniques. The cathedral was never built, as it was an utopian gesture, but it went on to have a long and distinguished life as a prototype, both for teaching purposes in Johannesburg and as a statement concerning the relationship between art and architecture in post-colonial southern Africa. Pancho's writings of the 1960s concerning the divided nature of the African cities and the profoundly deleterious implications that ensued from it remain alive in today's politically troubled Mozambique and South Africa. This paper is an attempt to show how contemporary those old debates about the nature of the built environment continue to be today.