The Denial of Modernity – The Regulation of Native Labour in Colonial Mozambique and its Postcolonial Aftermath
Elísio Macamo
Entwicklungssoziologie
Universität Bayreuth
95440 Bayreuth,
Germany
Tel: (49)921 55 4117; Fax: (49)921 55 4118
Elisio.macamo@uni-bayreuth.deCODESRIA 10th General Assembly, Kampala 8th-12th December 2002
I. Introduction
This paper is on how colonialism, far from being the vehicle for the "civilisation" of Africa through the modernisation of African "traditional" society was an important factor in denying modernity to Africa. Work and societal, it will be argued in this paper, can be usefully studied if seen in the context of a dialectical relationship. The analytical challenge which this paper poses consists in the ability to explain how a specific set of conditions and factors led to a specific set of outcomes and not, as has often been the case, in attempting to account for large-scale changes in terms of a transition from tradition to modernity. This is an argument against such notions as Jean-François Bayart’s "extraversion" or, more recently, Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz’ "instrumentalisation of desorder".
Work, we assume, can be defined as a social relation that is both the substance and result of social action. In this sense it seems fair to assume that the relationship between work and societal order can best be looked at as attempts at ordering social relations on the basis of notions and practices of work. In fact, seen from this perspective work appears to be a privileged site for making out and describing how societies, individuals and, indeed, science are created. Just as it sounds perfectly plausible to argue, as some have indeed done (Ewald 1993; Zimmermann, Didry and Wagner 1999; Conrad, Macamo and Zimmerman 2000) that the way in which labour relations were re-organized and the particular attention attached to work in European society towards the end of the nineteenth century had a profound impact on the nature of the society, individuals and scientific pursuits that ensued thereof, one could claim, as a working hypothesis, that interventions in the sphere of work and work relations in the same period in Africa had a massive impact on the nature of societal order. This is, indeed, the story of this paper.
It is a story that has several protagonists and a rich narrative without an end. It involves not only Africans, but also two types of Europeans, namely Portuguese colonial administrators and Protestant Swiss missionaries. The story is about how conflicting definitions of, and expectations from work produce a very particular type of social order or, to say it with Elias, a figuration that ends up not only defining work in a particular way but also shaping the protagonists themselves and writing their roles in the narrative in new ways. The plot centres around three distinct interests. First, there are the colonial interests of the Portuguese, who place their hopes of grandeur for Portugal in their ability to make Africans work. Second, there are the Swiss missionaries, who went to Africa in search of a "New Jerusalem" and hope to achieve this by converting Africans to their God through the inculcation of a Protestant work ethic. Finally, there are the Africans, who far from being awakened from an eternal slumber without history, see both the Portuguese and the Swiss missionaries as resources in the domestication of fate. All these interests come together to form a context Shalini Randeria has described as one of entangled modernities to produce what she refers to as shared histories.
II. The Portuguese and the golden rule
In the late 1950s Portuguese settlers in Mozambique would tell one another the story of a letter written by a local administrative authority to another informing it that it was sending "50 voluntary workers duly handcuffed…" (Castro 1980:324). Since a law on native labour had been passed in 1898, making it illegal to force Africans to work against their will, Portuguese authorities in Mozambique prided themselves on the absence of forced labour in their colony. To be sure, both this piece of legislation as well as subsequent ones were clear in prohibiting forced labour in Portuguese colonies. In practice, however, this as other pieces of legislation were massively flouted upon, as the story of handcuffed voluntary workers suggests.
History books claim that Mozambique, a Southern African country on the Indian ocean, was a Portuguese colony for five hundred centuries. This is an exaggerated claim, which neither the Portuguese nor the Mozambicans themselves seem interested to correct. It is likely that the former see in this claim a statement of their achievements while the latter use it to give even more coherence to their claims of nationhood. Whatever the case, historical evidence does suggest that this is indeed an exaggerated claim. While it is true that ever since the first Portuguese sailor set foot on the territory that was later to be known as Mozambique various Portuguese rulers claimed possession of the territory by right of discovery, in practice relations between the Portuguese and the native population were actually limited to trade exchanges, shifting alliances and petty wars. There is evidence that more often than not local Portuguese garrisons had to pay tribute to local chieftains and warlords (See for instance Rodney 1971).
The period running between the end of the 15th century all the way up to the second half of the 19th century can hardly be described as one of Portuguese colonization of Mozambique. Indeed, it was both the Berlin conference of 1885, which saw the partition of Africa amongst European colonial powers, and renewed Portuguese attempts at establishing themselves in the territory that mark the beginning of colonialism. The partition of Africa as well as the creation of a colonial state apparatus were the larger context within which this occurred. Within the framework of this watershed a number of policy initiatives based on the regulation of native labour took shape and eventually contributed in a decisive way towards the successful establishment of the Portuguese colonial state not only in Mozambique but also in the remaining Portuguese colonies of Angola, Cape Vert, Guinea-Bissau and the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Not only did the regulation of native labour produce the colonial state but also the colonial subjects themselves. It produced the colonial state in the sense that, over time, the institutional requirements for the implementation of the regulations became consistent with the management of social relations within the framework of Portuguese authority claims over their subject populations. In other words, the regulation of native labour became the raison d’être of the Portuguese colonial state and to the extent that this was so it was the main vehicle for the management of social relations. Over and above its role in the possibility of the colonial state the regulation of native labour constituted a massive intervention in the lives of Portuguese African subjects to such an extent that it played a major role in producing new types of individuals and identities more consistent with the central role work came to occupy in the political economy of colonialism.
1. The regulation of native labour
It is worthwhile to take a closer look at this regulation of native labour, as the conditions under which it came about are quite eloquent about Portuguese motives and also about the specific shape that ideas and practices of work were forced upon Africans. As already indicated above, the watershed in the development of Portugal into a colonial power in Mozambique was the regulation of native labour. Throughout the nineteenth century Portugal had come under enormous political and economic pressure internationally to abolish slavery and forced labour in the territories under its purported control (a good account of this can be found in Hammond 1966 and Duffy 1961). At one stage, to mention but a simple example, Cadbury, the British chocolate making company, faced with the threat of a consumer boycott in Britain, had to stop buying cocoa from the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, where the Portuguese were known to use slave and forced labour from Mozambique and Angola in contravention of international labour laws and one of the Cadbury brothers undertook a trip to Portuguese possessions in Africa to ascertain the situation for himself (Duffy, op. cit. 161-63). No issue was debated in a more passionate way in the Portuguese press and within administrative circles throughout the nineteenth century as well as during the entire colonial period than Portuguese native labour policy in Africa.
Considering the pride with which the Portuguese defended their colonial policy as one based on spreading Christianity and European civilization, accusations of slavery and forced labour were a constant source of embarrassment. From the middle of the first half of the nineteenth century onwards, the Portuguese authorities adopted a strategy against international pressure based on two lines of reasoning. One sought to justify the use of slave and forced labour in Portuguese controlled territories on the grounds that Portugal needed this type of labour in order to catch up with such countries as Britain, which had prospered on slavery (Andrade 1975). Put differently, calls for the abolition of slavery in Portuguese controlled territories were seen as unfair competition. The second line of reasoning was to prove more enduring. Indeed, the Portuguese held that their colonial policy was not geared towards economic exploitation of the colonial possessions. Slavery and forced labour were mere, so the argument went, instruments of a civilizational project that would initiate Africans into the rational and emancipatory habits of working hard for one’s living (see Pitta e Cunha 1961). Throughout all the stages that Portuguese regulation of native labour went through the belief in the redemptory aims of forcing Africans to work was the one element that remained stable and never changed significantly.
From 1820, the year a revolution toppled the ruling monarchy and forced a written constitution onto the Portuguese kingdom for the first time ever, all the way up to 1910, when yet another revolution established a Republic, Portuguese politics were characterized by a slight liberal orientation. As far as colonial policy was concerned, this liberal orientation found its expression in a series of laws that were passed and were to culminate in the formal abolition of slavery and forced labour in the year 1879. In Portuguese colonial historiography this period is known as the liberal and assimilationist stage, for during this time Portuguese overseas territories were officially designated as "overseas provinces" and the law made no distinction between Europeans and Africans. In other words, these territories were not "colonies" and the Portuguese civil law applied just as well to the Portuguese living there as to the Africans who had become Portuguese by virtue of Portugal’s claims over their lands.
While not directly relevant to the story that concerns us here it should be noted that the so-called liberal period in Portuguese politics coincided with the independence of Brazil, in 1922, ironically in the same year as Portugal acquired a written constitution. Not surprisingly, this was considered a loss by many politically active Portuguese, some of whom, especially colonial officials, turned to Africa in search of what they called "new Brazils" (Serrão 1975, 155). To put it another way, to the extent that the liberal period coincided with the "loss" of Brazil it also signaled the birth of a renewed Portuguese interest in Africa as a matter of national pride and sense of self. Indeed, against the charm offensive of assimilationist politicians, who by granting their African subjects the same status and rights as their own citizens in the metropole hoped to live up to what they believed to be Portugal’s fate in the world, i.e. spreading Christianity and civilization, many politically active Portuguese, especially colonial officials, bore a grudge and believed the best way to reassert Portugal’s standing in the world would be through a better economic exploitation of their overseas territories. This is certainly one among many reasons why in spite of a growing body of legislation making slavery and forced labour illegal both thrived and continued to be a source of embarrassment for the country.
The stalemate lasted until just before the Berlin conference for the partition of Africa, when effective occupation was stated as a precondition for the recognition of a country’s claim over African territory. In Portugal itself the tug-of-war between so-called liberals and conservatives over Portugal’s standing in the world had slowly been building up. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century newspapers are replete with heated exchanges between proponents of these conflicting positions. One measure of this increased interest in the overseas territories was the foundation at around this time of several institutions such as the Geographical Society of Lisbon with the clear purpose of furthering knowledge of these lands for the sake of a better colonial policy. In a representation made by the Society’s first secretary, Luciano Cordeiro, in 1880, the Society deplored the absence of a colonial policy and petitioned the government for more funds to carry out studies of Portugal’s overseas territories which could serve as the basis for the formulation of the much needed colonial policy (Cordeiro 1980, 44-52).
In Mozambique, where Portuguese claims were still challenged by several local polities, particularly by the famous ruler of Gaza, Ngugunyan (Liesegang 1967; Rodney op. cit.), colonial officials had lost all illusions about the merits of an assimilationist policy and were actively canvassing their superiors in Lisbon for a different approach. The spokesman for these officials was António Enes, a man of letters who had come to fame in Lisbon through his newspaper criticisms of his own government’s colonial policy. He was appointed Royal Commissioner to Mozambique in 1891 and soon after his appointment called and chaired a commission which was entrusted with the task of looking into the problem of native labour and drawing up proposals for its reform. António Enes, along with a number of other colonial officials, had long been arguing against the way in which Portugal had abolished slavery. While declaring himself not to be in favour of slavery as such, he argued that Portugal could not do without native labour. In a manner reminiscent of what was the Portuguese standard argument against international pressure to abolish slavery, Enes insisted that work was the only tool the Portuguese had to carry out their civilizational mission in Africa. Labour power was, in his view, the only valuable resource the African native population had and, therefore, it was up to Portugal to use this resource in an intelligent way to fulfill its twin objectives of achieving glory and civilizing Africans (see Enes 1893).
The law that emerged from the deliberations of the commission on native labour in 1899 bore both the mark of its chairman, António Enes, as well as that of the critics of liberal assimilationist politics. It was based on two central concerns, namely introducing the obligation to work on the part of the native and making the colonial state responsible for the well-being of the native. In the first instance the single most important innovation introduced by the Regulamento do trabalho indígena was the "obligation to work" along the lines argued for by Enes. In other words, the relationship between the Portuguese colonial authorities and their African subjects was mediated by what the former saw as their duty towards the African, namely forcing him to earn his living from his own toil. As for assimilationism the new law on native labour was premised on a distinction which legislators made between Europeans and Africans and what they perceived to be a legal framework more consistent with the civilizational stage of Africans. To put it differently, the law presumed the African not to be Portuguese until he had proven himself civilized through work.
- The obligation to work
Let us take an even closer look at this piece of legislation. The law comprised 65 paragraphs, reasserting the obligation to work on the part of the native population and calling for the institutions that would ensure its fulfillment. Having declared the labour of the native population as its main resource – decades later a French commentator remarked that making natives work was the golden rule of Portuguese colonial policy (Aurillac 1964, 243) – the law defined wage labour as work, which all male natives between the age of 14 and 60 had to be engaged in. Women were excluded from this definition, although in the absence of a male breadwinner they might – as indeed they were – be forced to work for the state in order to meet their tax payment duty. Wage labour was described as employment on a Portuguese settler’s farm, migrant work through officially sanctioned channels and cash crop farming for export. Traditional political authorities, the handicapped and those serving in the Portuguese army were completely exempted from the fulfillment of their obligation to work.
This definition of work by a process of elimination was quite a problematic one in several respects, chief amongst which was the assumption that people who were not engaged in wage labour were idle. Indeed, colonial officials at the time saw the introduction of the obligation to work as part of a moral crusade against male Africans who were thought to live off their female relatives. It had come to the attention of several observers that most agricultural work was done by women. Henri-Alexandre Junod, a Swiss missionary who wrote an influential two-volume monograph on the Tsonga of Southern Mozambique, estimated male contribution to agricultural work to have been three months of the year on average (Junod 1913). Portuguese colonial officials assumed, therefore, that male Africans spent the rest of their time idling away. Defining work as wage labour was, in this sense, probably also a way of liberating female Africans from their slave status in traditional domestic arrangements.
An American anthropologist, Marvin Harris, who conducted a study of the causes of male labour emigration in Southern Mozambique in the 1950s reached, however, different conclusions to those drawn by the Portuguese (Harris 1959). Marvin Harris was struck by the fact that in spite of dismal working conditions in South Africa as well as long stretches of time away from their homes and families, many male Thonga poured into South Africa in search of employment. In his opinion two factors seemed to explain the high rates of emigration among the native population. One was internal to the social and political structure of the Thonga and had to do with the laws of inheritance that favoured the eldest son from the first wife. Along with trade and employment in European settlements migrant labour offered all those who did not inherit from their fathers a vehicle for social mobility. The second factor, however, had to do with the sexual division of labour, itself, as the South African historian, Patrick Harries, who has written a history of Mozambican labour migration, would corroborate, highly influenced by the local environment. Southern Mozambique was not blessed with enough farmland to support intensive forms of agriculture. Agricultural activity was concentrated, therefore, on very restricted areas where women were able to carry out a form of subsistence agriculture that did not seem to require much input from men (Harris op. cit., 57-9). Patrick Harries, the South African historian, adds to this political factors such as the fact that the whole region was ruled by Ngungunyan, the ruler of Gaza, who conscripted males into his army and whose regiments lived mainly from looting (Harries 1994; see also Vilhena 1996).
For the American anthropologist Marvin Harris, therefore, the sexual division of labour made migrant labour an attractive proposition to local males, who moreover could acquire riches that would enable them to climb up the social ladder. Their long periods away from home did not disturb their families’ chances of survival, since the little farming that their wives were able to do was enough to feed them. The decisive factor, however, was the introduction of the obligation to work, since by defining work as wage labour the law assumed the existence of several employment alternatives where there were in fact only two, namely either working for Portuguese settlers or migrating. Most Africans preferred migrant labour to employment on Portuguese farms because pay and conditions in South Africa were despite everything much better. Thus, the justification of the introduction of the obligation to work on the grounds that it contributed towards the relief of women was misleading. In fact, and again following Marvin Harris, since pay both in South Africa and on Portuguese farms in Mozambique was premised on the belief that African families could meet all their subsistence needs from farming, the obligation to work burdened women even more, as their husbands were not paid family wages (see also Schaedel 1984 and First 1983).
Migrant labour has now been mentioned several times without any explicit reference to its importance for the formulation of the Portuguese labour policy. To a large extent, the regulation of native labour was also a pragmatic response to the emigration of labour. For generations, male Africans from Mozambique had been engaged in it, first in search of employment on South African sugar plantations and later, with the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in search of employment of the mines. The role of migrant labour in the industrialization of South Africa has been extensively discussed in the literature, particularly within anthropology, notably the Manchester Marxist school, which has tended to emphasize the process of proletarianization that the phenomenon unleashed.
As far as Mozambique is concerned Patrick Harries’ work has been the most comprehensive (Harries 1994). He has not only looked at the process of proletarianization, but also at forms of cultural expression that resulted from it. His most important contribution to the subject, however, is to have shown to what extent migrant labour flowed logically from a combination of cultural, environmental and political factors to establish itself as a central element in the political economy of Mozambique. Indeed, when the Portuguese were drawing up the law that regulated native labour one of their hopes was also to tap on this golden egg. Up until then emigration outside of the country had been unregulated and private recruiters, both South African and Portuguese, earned a living as intermediaries between employers in South Africa and Africans looking for work. One measure of the importance of migrant labour to the economy of Mozambique in those days was the observation made by a British consul who was astonished by the trade induced prosperity of Lourenço Marques, the main urban centre then, in the absence of any visible cultivation. A local trader told him that "…the produce of this district is English gold. The native pays for everything here in hard cash" (quoted in Harries, op. cit., 103-4).
The law on native labour set out the conditions under which labour from Mozambique could be recruited and, not surprisingly, placed the interests of the workers under the tutelage of Portuguese authorities. In other words, labour emigration that had been going on for generations was transformed into an act of condescension by the Portuguese authorities, who, of course, expected to be rewarded accordingly. Recruiting agents had to pay fees to the Portuguese authorities for every labour contract and moreover agreements were entered with the South African employers and authorities for migrant labourers to be paid part of their salary (50%) on their return home. This ensured partly the liquidity of the Portuguese administration and also spending at home. Later, as a study carried out by a Portuguese economic historian shows, Portuguese and South African authorities reached an agreement for payment of part of the salary of migrant workers to be made in gold which the Portuguese could freely sell on the world market. The proceeds from this system, which was known as "deferred payment", were used by the colonial administration to pay its debts towards Portugal (Leite 1990).
The Portuguese administration did not only profit from licensing recruitment activities. By defining work as wage labour the introduction of the obligation to work established a different kind of relationship between native workers and the authorities. This relationship was based on their obligation as Portuguese subjects to pay taxes. In actual fact, the requirement to pay taxes was the way in which the obligation to work was translated in practice. Only through wage labour could one pay his taxes. Consequently, those who were not engaged in wage labour were not able to discharge their duties as citizens and could, under the provisions of the law, be forced to compensate the state by being forced to do public works.
And this is what indeed happened. There are many independent reports (Ross 1925) which are unanimous in showing how the authorities used the failure of Africans to pay taxes as an important justification for forcing people to do public works. Private and official recruiters organized raids into the most remote areas of the country to conscript "idle" natives, i.e. people who did not pay taxes, for government work or sale to private employers. Usually, those compelled to work were not paid a salary, since this was seen by the authorities as compensation for the failure to pay taxes (Castro op. cit., 326).
In sum, then, the regulamento do trabalho indígena, defined work as wage labour and in so doing it was responding both to a perceived need to turn African labour into the backbone of the economic exploitation of the colony and also as the framework for the institutionalization of colonial rule. Work, as it came to be defined and practiced, became the means through which Portuguese claims over Mozambique were given substance and legitimacy. The substance derived from the way in which the management of labour became the raison d’être of colonial rule. Throughout Portuguese colonial rule Mozambique was nothing more than a labour reserve for neighbouring countries and Portuguese claims over the country relied almost entirely on the ability of its colonial administration to control the movement of labour. At the same time, however, the belief in the civilizational effects of the obligation to work was the main argument for Portuguese colonial rule. Brito Camacho, a Portuguese governor of Mozambique in the 20s, argued for instance that civilization was about creating new needs and the means to meeting them. Only the creation of such needs would make the African see the value of work and make it easier for Portugal to take better advantage of the native’s labour (Camacho 1926, 212).
- The regulation of labour and the notion of tutelage
The regulamento do trabalho indígena had another important aspect. If the introduction of the obligation to work constituted an important element in the new law the departure from earlier assimilationist policies was another. Indeed, the solution to the problem of native labour seemed to require an entirely different approach in the eyes of the commission. In contrast to earlier Portuguese legislation, the new law did not assume the equality of all Portuguese before the law. While accepting that Africans from the overseas territories were just as much Portuguese as those of European descent, the commissioners argued that this should not necessarily translate into all out equality. The law, they argued, had to acknowledge that Africans were much lower in the scale of civilization and could not be expected to understand and live according to the higher standards enshrined in European law. For their own good and for the sake of an effective colonial policy the law should provide for a different set of rules according to which Africans could be governed until such a time as they were able to properly assimilate. In other words, the fact that Portugal’s colonial policy did not discriminate with regard to race did not imply that people declared to be Portuguese were also de facto Portuguese. Assimilation was a process, a long one, that would require Africans to first understand European norms and values before they could be considered assimilated (see Aurillac op. cit.; Munido 1949; Silva e Cunha 1952; Moreira 1961).
To this end the law called for work to be done in the study of native customs and mores which would be the basis for drawing up legislation that would govern native life. The magic word in this enterprise was the notion of "tutelage" which Portuguese authorities claimed over Africans. Put differently, the Portuguese authorities placed all natives under their tutelage by which they meant that the former could represent the latter in all matters. In the labour contracts between natives and employers, for example, the former were represented by the authorities upon whom the law had placed this responsibility, since Africans were not yet ready to understand such matters.
It took some time for the notion of tutelage to acquire a legal basis in Portuguese legislation. Only in 1914 was a corresponding law passed, which not only placed Africans under the tutelage of the state but also provided for a civil and penal code that set different legal norms and standards for Africans. Of particular interest to us, however, is the role played by work in this legislation. As a matter of fact, while acknowledging the importance of traditional African legal sanctions – so long as they did not conflict with European norms – the native civil and penal code provided for work for the state as the right punishment for criminal offences. The rationale for this was provided by Enes, who in his famous report on his administration in Mozambique had argued that mere imprisonment was not punishment enough, for lazy as they were, the natives would see life at the expense of the state as a welcome relief from their much worse living conditions (Enes, op. cit., 70).
Portuguese colonial officials hailed this notion of tutelage as the distinctive mark of their country’s specific form of colonization and contrasted it with French assimilationism and British indirect rule. They argued that unlike both the French and the British their colonial approach was a combination of assimilation and indirect rule, which not only lived up to the ideals of spreading Christianity and civilization that had always guided Portuguese colonial endeavours, but also provided a much more solid basis for achieving these objectives. Portuguese colonial policy, so the argument went, took native culture seriously, and much in the way the British policy of indirect rule allowed Africans to govern themselves according to norms they were familiar with, a separate legal code for natives ensured that this also was the case in Portuguese overseas territories. Unlike the British, however, and more like the French, the Portuguese policy was assimilationist to the extent that it held the door open for natives to rise up to the European level of civilization. It differed from the French in the sense that it made no tabula rasa of local culture (see Moreira op. cit.). In theory, the idea was that Africans could move from their native status to one which the Portuguese called "assimilated". Although this policy was hailed by colonial officials as a major development in terms of colonial policy, in practice it did not amount to much, as relatively few Africans managed to achieve the status of an "assimilated" (see Aurillac op. cit., 255-6). The requirements were not easy. One had to be able to speak, read and write Portuguese, be a Christian, have abandoned native customs such as polygamy and witchcraft, eat at the table and speak Portuguese with one’s children. Eduardo Mondlane, a Mozambican sociologist and anthropologist, who fought for the independence of Mozambique from Portugal would write, in the sixties, about the Portuguese assimilationist policy that it only accepted the African as a person if the African renounced himself (Mondlane 1995, 48-9).
The logic of the notion of tutelage was deeply ingrained in the decision to use work as the main tool for the economic exploitation of the colonies. In this respect one may be tempted to see an elective affinity between this overriding economic concern and the ideological construct of a primordial native culture. Martin Schaedel, a German historian, who has written an otherwise convincing history of native labour in Portuguese colonies slides into this conspiratorial form of argument (Schaedel 1984). Indeed, he sees a direct link between the control of labour, on the one hand, and the projection of an ideal traditional way of life, on the other, the purpose of which, in his view, is to transfer the reproduction costs of the labour force on to the traditional African communities whence the workers come from (Schaedel, op. cit., 15; see also Webster 1978; Vail & White1980 and Isaacman 1976). The same line of reasoning is favoured by Ruth First, a South African sociologist who has written extensively on rural labour migration in Southern Africa, who in her appropriately titled book "The Mozambican Miner – Proletarian and Peasant" (1983) actually argues that it was neither in the interest of South African mining capital nor Portuguese colonial administration to see the labour migrant develop into a proletarian. Keeping him both proletarian and peasant was a way of ensuring his docility towards the effects of capitalism in the mines and billing his family for the reproduction of his labour.
This is a point of view which cannot be lightly brushed aside. The regulation of native labour did create a specific political economy of colonialism, which in the particular case of Mozambique gave a new meaning to the obligation to work and the notion of tutelage. Both the colonial administration as well as mining capital were dependent, for several reasons, on migrant labour. And just as in other parts of colonial Africa, where in the 1930s and 1940s the so-called problem of the native became a source of worry for colonial officials who felt that natives who spent too much time away from their homes lost the moral guidance that tribal life afforded them (see Cooper 1996), the design of a special legal code for Africans may have come to be seen as a welcome antidote. The more stable the traditional environment, the more surplus value, to stick to Marxist terminology, could be extracted from native labour.
Nonetheless, one should not forget that Portuguese colonial interests were not restricted to exporting labour. In fact, the purported primary objective of reforming the laws governing the use of native labour was to make it available to Portugal itself in the colony. In other words, the idea was to use native labour in Mozambique itself and export the surplus. Governor after governor, settler after settler, all were united in the litany concerning how much labour migration was damaging Portugal’s own interests (Saldanha, op. cit.; Camacho op. cit.; de Albuquerque 1934; Araújo 1920). Colonial officials licensed local recruiters to conscript native labour for local demand and often added fiscal incentives to that effect .
Moreover, with the advent of the corporate State, which saw António de Oliveira Salazar come to power in the early 1930s and saw its end in 1974, Portugal attempted to wrest more economic control of the colonies (Lopes Galvão 1920). There was a modicum of investment in the colonies, especially in Mozambique, which became one of the leading industrial countries in Africa, and this required a flexible and unfettered labour force (Schoeller 1992; see also Wuyts 1989). Such requirements conflicted with the conspiracy theory of the political economy of labour migration. While this in itself may not be enough to question the plausibility of this conspiracy theory, it at least suggests a much more complex picture.
To be sure, the sociological analysis of the role of the regulation of native labour in the possibility of the colonial state craves for such complexity, as it may allow for a richer appreciation of the complex relationship between work and societal order. Indeed, the regulation of native labour had four important elements which should be considered more closely. First of all, it had an impact on individuals, particularly their self-perception. Secondly, to draw on Foucault’s notion of governmentality (1991), society became an artifact of the regulation of labour without thereby being an illusion. Thirdly, it was the basis upon which the state was created and, finally, it contributed in more ways that one to produce certain types of knowledge (for a clearer conceptual statement of the problem see Conrad, Macamo and Zimmerman op. cit.).
2. The Impact of the Regulation of Native Labour
The impact of the regulation of native labour on the individual was threefold. To begin with it created an institutional framework within which work became the defining moment of an individual’s status. We have seen how the regulamento do trabalho indígena defined work as wage employment. To the extent that this represented a departure from the normative context within which purposeful action had been interpreted, wage employment lifted those engaged in it out of their traditional normative context and gave a new meaning to their sense of self. In other words, wage labour created individuals out of undifferentiated social contexts and placed them before the need to find a personality within the new context. Secondly, however, wage labour did not only become ascriptive of status, but it also bound single individuals to an entity larger than their own families, clans and ethnic groups. The requirement to pay taxes, in particular, established a relationship between the individual and the state. The overwhelming size of the state, magnified by the atomized sense of self that the individual acquired through his status as wage labourer, made it imperative for the individual to consciously create his own social environment. Finally, wage labour made personal biographies possible in the sense that individuals were able to pursue individual projects of self-fulfillment within the framework of the political economy of modern consumption. In sum, then, the regulation of native labour turned the individual into a site for conflicting claims of community and personhood to play thereby bringing issues of social change under the conditions of modernity into bold relief.
Another important aspect of Portuguese work practices and notions was the way in which the regulation of native labour also contributed towards the invention of society in a particular way. Regulating native labour was not just about making natives work, but also ordering social things in a very specific manner. The differentiation of individuals was one aspect, which questioned the nature of community and community claims on the individual. Another was how social relations were organized according to the demands and needs of the management of the new labour relations. Put differently, the social landscape of the country was transformed into a uniform mass of communities and individuals tied to one another by the obligation to work and such practical consequences of this fact as the payment of taxes and submission to Portuguese tutelage. Elsewhere, I have argued that Mozambique is a modern concept to the extent that its territorial, political and social coherence were brought about by the political economy of colonialism (Macamo 1998).
Thirdly, Portuguese claims over Mozambique were given substance, as we have already seen, by the practical needs of managing native labour. Colonial domination was based on the ability to manage native labour and the institutions that came to form the backbone of the state were, in the main, almost exclusively related to disciplining and exploiting labour. One feels tempted to venture the hypothesis that the nature of the colonial sense cannot be adequately understood without reference to the history of native labour. In a nutshell, the colonial state was a product of the regulation of native labour.
Finally, one should mention the effect that the regulation of labour had on knowledge production. Already during the long controversies over the best policy options for Portugal one strategy adopted by some was to favour a deeper understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-political environment of the overseas territories. The foundation of the Lisbon geographical Society is a case in point. Furthermore, the critique of earlier assimilationist policies was based on the assumption that Africans were fundamentally different, which in practical terms meant that knowledge about them should be acquired. In a forthcoming paper on the history of Portuguese anthropology I argue precisely along these lines by noting that unlike in Britain and France, where anthropological interest preceded colonialism, in the case of Portugal it was the made necessary by the regulation of native labour. Having assumed the fundamentally different nature of Africans, Portuguese colonial officials needed a way of gathering knowledge about Africans which corresponded to what they perceived to be their civilizational status. Accordingly, they set about collecting information about the customs of the natives, systematized and codified them into bodies of legal, social and political norms. On a much more practical level, however, colonial authorities took a keen interest in the well-being of their natives. This took the form of a concern with their health, particularly those working in South African mines. and also with their fertility, which the Portuguese felt to be too low. In sum, the regulation of native labour was an important factor in the production of knowledge of a certain kind, chief among which was an understanding of the different nature of Africans as well as the means through which they could be bred in a healthy way.
III. The Swiss and the "new Jerusalem"
The history of the Swiss in Mozambique is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the country in general. It is about a missionary community that sets out to found a New Jerusalem in Africa and in the course of its efforts it is appropriated by the local population in the grips of rapid social change. One hundred years after the first Swiss missionaries set foot in Mozambique the African members of the Swiss missionary church – the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique – are amongst the most influential citizens in the social, economic and political sphere. One is tempted, given the deep Calvinist roots of the original mission as well as its relentlessly Protestant theological practice in Mozambique, to assume with Max Weber an elective affinity between the higher standing of its African members and the Protestant ethic.
One of the most striking features of the success of this church is, ironically, its Protestantism. Being a Portuguese colony Mozambique was at least in theory a catholic country. Portuguese colonial policy was also influenced by the need to spread Christianity, particularly of the kind practiced by the majority of the Portuguese themselves. To that effect Portugal and the Vatican signed a Concordat in 1940 granting the latter privileged access to the missioning of natives. In practical terms this meant, for example, that the education of those considered native – i.e. not "assimilated" – was wholly delegated to the Catholic Church, which was the colonial State’s church. On several occasions in the course of its missionary work in Mozambique the Swiss mission had to struggle against hurdles placed by the Portuguese authorities, who resented its Protestant orientation as well as feared that it might educate the natives into rebellion (van Butselaar 1984; Gonçalves 1960).
The Swiss mission is very proud of its record and achievements in Mozambique. These, as modesty and piety oblige, are entirely ascribed to Providence (Biber 1987). The agency of Africans themselves, particularly the way in which they seem to have transformed the mission into a local resource for coming to terms with social change appears to be ignored. And yet, precisely this aspect of the history of the Swiss mission seems central, especially in its relationship to the regulation of native labour. This already suggests an analytical approach to the problem of understanding the impact of and the context within which the Swiss mission was able to produce the kinds of outcomes it did. Two aspects seem central to this endeavour, namely the conditions under which Africans came into contact with the mission and the strategy that the latter adopted in order to go about its missionary work.
1. A Society in Crisis
As far as the conditions are concerned it is essential to start by stating that Swiss missionaries were not originally based in Mozambique. They came into contact with people from Mozambique, mainly migrant workers and refugees from the many wars wreaking havoc in the country, in South Africa, where they had been doing missionary work for some time. It was these refugees and migrant labourers who came up with the idea of going back to their ancestral homes to spread the kind of Christianity preached by the Swiss.
Initially, these African Christians were embued with a religious fervour that saw them leading awakening movements that sought to create new forms of community life out of the anomic conditions into which life in rural and urban areas had degenerated in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. They were known as "ceux de la prière" (Butselaar op. cit., 188), a tribute to their religious fervour, but already a recognition of a budding sense of community. The social composition of this community is of utmost importance for an understanding of its nature.
As already indicated, refugees and migrant labourers formed the bulk of the movement. Although sources are silent on the reasons that led people into Christianity it is fair to assume in the case of refugees, who had been forced to flee their places of origin, that they may have found in it something which would allow them to create a sense of identity that was much more than just place of origin and culture. One of the early African missionaries, who settled in Mozambique, seems to have been motivated by a personal desire for material fulfillment. but also in the hope of winning the allegiance of those he saw as his brethren on the basis of a new community of faith. Although Christianity was very important to him he laid emphasis on acquiring the skills that the mission could make available to them (Mapope 1925).
The same applies to migrant labourers, whose new material status made their integration into their traditional communities quite problematic. The community of Christians was an alluring alternative for those who, like them, felt constrained by their original community. This, to be sure, was not a rejection of tradition, as one might be tempted to assume, but rather an answer to a real problem of orientation in a rapidly changing world. Most of my narrative interview partners in the small study I conducted on the influence of the Swiss mission on the work ethic in Southern Mozambique emphasized this aspect. Two teachers, who at the time of the interviews – 1998 – were well over 90 years old and two migrant labourers in their seventies pointed out to me that what they found most attractive about the Swiss mission was the possibility of pursuing a career and marrying into a stable and morally upright community. A story reported by a missionary in 1913 is illustrative of some of the difficulties faced by Africans in their efforts at emancipation. M. H. Guye tells the story of an African by the name of Byamombo who had joined the church along with his family. Byamombo was dying of a tuberculosis acquired in South African mines and was worried that upon his death his family might dispossess his wife or even force her to marry a "heathen" brother of his following traditional custom. The Swiss mission tried to prevent this and went to the Portuguese authorities for assistance but these refused to help on the grounds that Portuguese law respected native institutions and could not interfere in the case. What saved Nkothasi, the dying Christian man’s wife, was the discovery made by Swiss missionaries that their convert was actually an adopted son of his traditional African family, an argument which they used to convince the Portuguese to set limits to the validity of native law in that particular case (Guye 1916, 139).
If one adds to these motivations the ravages wrought by the implementation of the law on native labour, with its constraining effect on the kinds of activities that would fall under the legal definition of work, it is not hard to understand why the Swiss mission might have been seen by Africans as a refuge against the Portuguese, a place where they could live out their experience of modernity. Joining the church was not an act of rebellion against the Portuguese, but rather a rational calculation based on the experience of the arbitrariness of the Portuguese and their native labour laws.
2. The Missionary Position
The missionary zeal with which the Swiss went into Mozambique in 1888 played right into this rational calculation by Africans, albeit by accident and not by design. We have seen that one important motivation for missionary work outside of Europe was a longing for a return to what they perceived to be a true Christian community. The Dutch theologian and historian of the Swiss missionary church has suggested in quite plausible terms that political factors in Switzerland may have played a major role in stimulating this longing. Indeed, the persecution of the free church of Vaud looms large in this respect (see Butselaar op. cit. for the early history of the Swiss mission).
Whatever the reason, it is clear that a major factor behind the departure of the missionaries was definitely a religious one. Most of these missionaries, as Patrick Harries has pointed out (Harries 1989) were both theologians and scientists. A particularly poignant example is Henri-Alexandre Junod, whose established himself as an authority in several areas of scientific inquiry. Not only did he write the most complete and widely acclaimed monograph of the peoples of Southern Mozambique – one which became an important quarry for the construction of Frazer’s evolutionary edifice (Junod 1913) – but was also well known as an entomologist – as can be seen from the fact that many insects, plants and butterflies in Southern Africa were named after him – and moreover was well versed in the Tsonga language, for which he wrote an authoritative grammar.
The combination of science and theology was no coincidence. Much along the lines argued for by Keith Thomas (1980) the kind of Protestantism that Swiss missionaries championed led them to see no contradiction between religion and science. Indeed, in an attitude reminiscent of Thomas of Aquinas they saw it as their duty as Christians to read the book of nature. Scientific pursuit was a form of service to God and this conviction influenced much of their missionary work in Mozambique.
Unlike the Portuguese Catholic church, which in the early years was more concerned with christening as many Africans as possible, the Swiss mission pursued a strict policy of only accepting into its fold those who appeared to have internalized its precepts. In practical terms this meant that the process of membership into the Swiss mission family took a long time to come into fruition, as the Swiss missionaries tried to ensure that those who claimed to have been converted had to show, through their way of life and how they managed their social relations that they had indeed become Christians.
The missionaries were particularly adamant on the issue of witchcraft, on which they never compromised. While respecting magical practices as part of the cultural background of the peoples they were trying to convert to Christianity and often admiring the ingenuity of some of its premises (Junod op. cit.), they insisted on its rejection as a pre-condition for membership of the church. Not only did they rant against it, but they also saw it as an expression of a rather erroneous way of seeing the world and, consequently, they tried as much as possible to instill in their converts scientific habits of mind. A favoured strategy in this connection was the building of hospitals, vocational schools and the training of their converts in several relevant professions such as nursing, agricultural work and education.
In my study of the influence of the Swiss mission on the work ethic in Southern Mozambique, a full one hundred years after the inception of the mission, I was struck by the fact that most members of the Presbyterian community seemed to believe in magic and witchcraft, in spite of the principled stance of the official leadership of the church and, what is more, in total opposition to years of Swiss missionary endeavour. Belief in magic and science simply coexisted, as was poignantly pointed out to me by a witch-doctor I interviewed, who was an active and committed member of the church, who wished the church and witch-doctors would come together to fight superstition (Interview held in August 1998). Moreover, this apparent syncretism did not appear to affect the leading social position of members of this church in Mozambican society.
In an earlier paper (Macamo 2000) I argued that this was so because the mission had been used by the local population as a resource in their attempts at coming to terms with rapid social change. To be sure, this does not mean that people were hypocritical and cynical in their embrace of Christianity. Most are firm believers and see Christianity as their main source of identity. Nearly all my interview partners described themselves first as "vakristi" (Christian") before they mentioned their ethnic background. The strong Calvinist orientation of the Swiss missionaries provided a framework within which all those who had been unsettled by the experience of Portuguese colonial rule with its emphasis on the regulation of native labour could find firm ground upon which to pursue individual life projects and build new communities. Swiss missionary Protestantism did not bring any new ethic, rather it provided an economic and social framework within which hard working and pious Africans could find alternatives to the constraining environment of regulated native labour. The apparent success of the mission is thus in a certain way a tribute to the ability of Africans to find a sense of purpose under the most difficult circumstances.
It is in this sense, therefore and to summarize, that one can see the Swiss mission as a local resource. As wage labour fostered the pursuit of individuality the Swiss mission provided a normative framework within which individuals could work on their projects of personhood. In response to a new society created by the regulation of labour the Swiss mission established its community of faith not so much as an alternative society, but as one more adapted to the new circumstances. Within this new community based on faith individuals could escape the most blatant abuses inflicted by the colonial state at the same time as they positioned themselves to make the best out of their situation. Finally, the mission allowed its members to produce alternative knowledge bases, as the flourishing literature in Tsonga about the Tsonga bears testimony to (e.g. Mucambe 1988; Mnisi 1975; Baloyi 1967; Rikhotso 1985; Shilubane 1958).
IV. Africans, Social Change and the Denial of Modernity
So far, we have concentrated our attention on two of the protagonists of the story of the relationship between work and societal order that is being told here. We have reported on the conditions that led to the regulation of native labour by the Portuguese and how the latter went about it. We have also reported on Swiss missionary endeavours in Southern Mozambique with particular emphasis on the motivations and the actual practices. These are Portuguese and Swiss narratives, which even in their own terms would remain incomplete without a look at the role played by Africans in them. It is tempting to see the role of Africans in all these narratives as a supporting one, as one made necessary by the fact that these stories play out in Africa. To a certain extent this is true. Nevertheless, it is also true that a real understanding of the full story seems impossible without a narrative that gives Africans a much more prominent role than the Portuguese and the Swiss were ever prepared to grant them.
Indeed, both Portuguese as well as the Swiss narratives only make sense because they are about Africans. Portuguese dreams of international glory and national identity were premised on what Africans could do for them. The same goes for the Swiss, whose longing for a "New Jerusalem" and a world with fewer mysteries, depended on their ability to carry Africans along with them. It appears then that the question concerning the role of Africans in both enterprises refers to something much deeper than just its nature as a supporting act. It is in fact about how Africans themselves perceived their role in these different projects, indeed, if they saw them as distinct projects at all or whether they too, like the Portuguese and the Swiss, saw their own project and wrote everyone else’s role into its narrative.
Hints of how Africans might have written other peoples’ roles into their own narrative were given during the discussion of the Portuguese regulation of native labour and Swiss missionary work. As far as the former is concerned we noted that in certain respects the obligation to work played right into changes that had occurred in African society and had made migrant labour an interesting option for Africans. As for the latter we indicated that Christianity came to be seen as a resource in Africans’ attempts to cope with social change. It would be fair to suggest that while the Portuguese and the Swiss represented major constraints on the ability of Africans to construct their social reality they were also part of the world that Africans lived in and tried to transform. The world of Africans had long ceased to be an introverted one. Any realistic account of the role played by Africans in their own narratives should be able to acknowledge external influences as part of their real world, and not as some momentary distraction from the blissful isolation of their cultural island. And it is precisely on this point that work becomes an interesting starting point to discuss issues of social change, for it is indeed with social change that we are dealing.
What is interesting about the discussion of the relationship between work and societal order is not, in fact, the opportunity to learn about Africans’ notions of work or society, for that matter. Just as in the rest of Africa one would have to come to terms with the perennial problem of sources. The only reliable accounts we have of pre-industrial forms of work in Mozambique are those written by European travelers and missionaries. While they may allow us to gain important insights into ancient ways of life and social organization they cannot really tell us with any degree of certainty what Africans’ notions of work were. To put it differently, they cannot give us a description rich enough to allow us to paint alternative scenarios to today’s notions and practices of work.
This is not to say that the past is uninteresting. What appears more relevant in the African case is not what people thought about work and how they went about it, but rather how Africans came to terms with ostensibly new forms of work. It is in the analysis of the specific consequences of a particular way of organizing and managing work relations that one can perhaps draw conclusions of relevance to other societies. Indeed, the current concern with the so-called crisis of employment in industrialized countries of the North provides a suitable background against which the African experience with new notions and practices of work can be fruitfully analyzed. Jürgen Kocka and Claus Offe (2000) have produced a clear statement of this problem in their volume on the history and future of work. Unlike in Europe, where the codification of work went hand in hand with the recognition that society had to change accordingly, the regulation of native labour in Mozambique was premised on the assumption that modern forms of work could be foisted upon Africans without a corresponding change in their social organization. In practice the regulation of native labour went hand in hand with an attempt to recreate forms of social organization that could not support the new social structure created by wage labour. Whereas, then, in Europe the regulation of work towards the end of the nineteenth century was accompanied by the gradual establishment of a welfare state to mediate between labouring men and their society, in Africa it was assumed that traditional forms of solidarity and social cohesion should continue to mediate between labouring individuals and society.
Careful readers will notice a parallel here with what some aspects of deregulation in the industrialized world, where both the state and employers desingage from their social responsibility towards workers while expecting them to continue making their labour power available. The regulation of native labour in Mozambique was a massive intervention in people’s lives not only in terms of the police and disciplining apparatus that was necessary to make it work, but also in terms of what it meant to individuals as such with regard to how they managed their lives. The regulation of native labour was also a promise that held the prospect, on an individual level, of emancipation from certain forms of social control and personal fulfillment.
This promise was shattered by the assumption, soon transformed into actual policy, that Africans were different and required distinct social forms of organization. While wage labour defined them more closely in terms of the authority claims of the colonial state the policy of separate development extricated the state from its responsibility towards them. The state absolved itself from its responsibilities by denying Africans the possibility of social change consistent with the extent of transformation wrought by the introduction of wage labour. The Portuguese insistence on the recreation of an imagined African past denied Africans not only the possibility of social change, but more importantly it was a denial of their modernity. More than a function of the political economy of colonialism the idea that Africans had to be elevated into civilization in a gradual manner expressed a European ambivalence towards the conditions under which Africans were to be brought into modernity. It has become fashionable in African studies to argue for Africans’ agency by interpreting Africans’ actions as a critique (Comaroff 1993; White 1993; 1995) or resistance to modernity (e.g. Behrend 1999). Less attention has been given to the other aspect of the problematic, namely the way specific policies actually denied modernity to Africans (see Macamo 1999). Portuguese labour policy was a compromise between a basic belief in the primitive nature of African society and the colonial state’s needs in terms of wage labour.
Postcolonial African history has been characterised by Africans’ attempts at recovering and reconstituting political spaces. This has been Africans’s experience of modernity and social change. It seems that if there is a lesson to be learned from this form of antecipated modernity then it will be one that will not see the crisis of employment as a technical issue, one that can be solved by simply investing more in the creation of jobs or finding an optimal distribution of available ones, but rather as a political issue, namely how to preserve a political culture that will ensure that everyone is heard in the debate over the desirable type of society.
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