Jorge Rebelo

Born in Maputo, Mozambique, revolutionary and poet Jorge Rebelo was educated at Coimbra University in Portugal.

He is still renowned as one of the country’s freedom poets. After studying at Coimbra University in Portugal, he returned to his country to edit the Mozambique Revolution, the official paper of the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), a liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rulers. His writings, especially the well-known piece “In our land, the bullets are beginning to bloom” regularly appeared on FRELIMO’s posters in 1974. After the country’s revolution which led to Mozambique’s independence in 1975, Rebelo served as the country’s minister of information. Jorge Rebelo is still known in Mozambique as "the poet of the revolution.”

Presently, he has retired from FRELIMO and gone back to practicing law. He is also now very critical of the leaders of Frelimo, whom he considers tolerant of corruption. He remains a senior and key figure in the country’s politics and a respected voice in the country’s affairs and literary history.

Rebelo’s poetry appears in several prestigious anthologies such as Literatura Africana de Expressao Portuguesa (Periodicals Service Co., 1967) by Mário de Andrade and When Bullets Begin to Flower (East African Publishing House, 1972) by Margaret Dickinson. In the English-speaking world, his poetry appears in The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (2007).