[1] Craveirinha began his political activity at the Lourenço Marques African Association in the 1950s, an organization tolerated by the colonial Portuguese government, and later became its chairperson.

He became involved in clandestine politics in this period, and became a member of a cell of FRELIMO, the leading movement for the liberation of Mozambique from Portuguese rule.

He was imprisoned in solitary confinement by the Portuguese PIDE police in 1965, a year after his publication of his first collection of poetry, Chigubo.A[4] He was released from prison in 1969.

Craveirinha wrote numerous poems after her death that were first published under the title Maria in 1988, and in a much fuller form in a second edition in 1998.

He arranged an athletic scholarship in the United States for Maria de Lurdes Mutola, who won a gold medal in track and field at the Olympics in 2000, and his son Stelio also held the national long jump record.