Alexander, Bonner, Hyslop, Van Der Walt - Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa

African Studies, 68, 1, April 2009
Introduction: Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa

Peter Alexandera, Philip Bonnerb, Jonathan Hyslopb and Lucien van der Waltb1
a
University of Johannesburg; bUniversity of the Witwatersrand
This special focus presents a selection of four papers presented to an international conference on Labour Crossings: World, Work, Society, organised by the History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand, and the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg, from 5 to 7 September 2008. The conference drew in participants from four continents, with the East Asian and Latin American presence a particularly noteworthy development. The intellectual agenda of the conference was to explore a wide range of labour crossings: between time periods, between regions and continents, between types of work, and types of worker, both free and unfree, between different imagined worlds, religion and labour, and gender and class as well as between intellectual disciplines and traditions. The transnational turn in labour history was a key inuence on the framing of the issues. Looking globally, and thinking beyond the traditional analytical framework of the nation-state, the very character of the working class and its making (Thompson 1991) needs to be rethought.
Mobility and control A key issue is that of labour mobility: what frees and freezes movement of labour, and how and why does this happen? As the keynote address by Phil Bonner observed, for industrial capitalism generally and not just for its offshoots, variations and repercussions across the world the freeing of potential workers to labour was vital, yet unfettered freedom presented an equally great threat to capitalist economic stability and political control. Mobility, while desired, had also to be controlled in what became South Africa. This took the form of vagrancy acts and pass laws, and similar systems were put in place in imperial Britain itself (see, for instance, Elbourne 1994). Elsewhere, it was enforced through contract law, more pervasive surveillance and policing and, of course, the ubiquitous system of industrial time discipline.
This conundrum of worker mobility under capitalism so closely tied to but so subversive of labour mobilisation merits more systematic attention. The mobilisation of wage labour in colonial India offers an object case study. As Ajuha
ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010079 7 # 2009 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827456
80 African Studies, 68:1, April 2009
writes, a troubling feature of most writings on the colonial period is they disconnect Indias pre-colonial and colonial pasts (2002:793 826). The pre-colonial period is often romanticised as harmonious, stable, self-sufcient and communitarian, and as locked in particular localities. This approach creates a history that lacks any real sense of mobility and change. As Bremen (1985), Ludden (1994) and Kerr (2006) have pointed out, this is fundamentally misleading. Ludden (1994), for example, asserts that half of Indias population in the eighteenth century was made up of mobile people, ranging from seasonal migrants to hunters, herders and pilgrims, living out lives in a terrain of perpetual movement. Kerr instances the activities of construction workers (known to the British as Tank Diggers or Wudders), perhaps the most numerous group of migrant workers, travelling repeatedly from countryside to town, or from town to town (2006:93 6). Washbrook (1993:68 86) likewise contends that spatial mobility was as prevalent as sedentarism in pre-colonial India. Such itinerant groups, these studies agree, were perceived as actual or potential threats to social stability and political security in colonial India, and a variety of legal mechanisms were instituted to settle and peasantise them (Osella and Gardener 2006:xiixvii). Since access to rural resources was invariably inadequate to sustain family life, such a pre-existing life of circulatory migration had to be replaced by oscillatory migration to centres of colonial employment, something more predictable, regular, controllable and less threatening than itinerancy. An equally illuminating and analogous pattern of labour mobilisation can be seen in the southern states of the United States of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Wilham Cohen (1991) identies four successive waves of legislation being enacted in the south designed to limit the mobility of black labour in the post-reconstruction period. The fourth wave, which took shape between 1900 and 1910, was of such ferocious intensity that it dwarfed the other three. Its central features linked vagrancy and contract enforcement laws to the criminal surety system. Once these laws were set in place any black man found loitering or outside of formal employment risked being arrested as a vagrant and sentenced to a heavy ne or a lengthy spell in prison. Those who entered into sharecropping contracts found any attempt to escape these fraught with similar hazards. Yet this system could only circumscribe black mobility, not restrict it altogether. Southern farmers seem to have reconciled themselves to at least a modicum of mobility amongst their black tenants and workers, provided that it was piecemeal and short-haul, but they found it difcult to contain longer distance movements from, say Georgia, to the newly opened cotton elds of Mississippi. One problem facing southern planters was that a measure of mobility was inscribed in the seasonal agricultural rhythm. The months of July/August and November/ December were slack periods in the agricultural cycle and many black sharecroppers exploited them to secure seasonal work in fertiliser plants, cotton-seed
Introduction: Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa 81
presses, sawmills, logging camps, turpentine camps, coal mines and even steel and other industries in the rapidly growing southern cities. In July and August farm owners supplied no food on credit, expecting sharecroppers to meet their own needs (Gottlieb 1987:19 20; Pleck 1979:60 7). Similar dynamics are visible in African farm labour stability and mobility in South Africa between the 1890s and 1930s, where pass laws and debt bondage conspired to anchor African labour tenants on white land. Each of these case studies forces us to ponder, as did Wilham Cohen, the paradox of the co-existence of a considerable measure of black mobility and widespread semi-enslavement. The relationship of mobility and freedom would probably repay more attention in other societies in other times. Countless life histories of South Africans who ended up settling in the towns in the middle decades of the twentieth century are punctuated by repeated moves in search of new, or better, kinds of employment and constant mobility. In their cases moves were so common despite the encompassing frame of the pass laws and inux control that it is difcult to escape the conclusion that they lived out their lives within a culture of mobility. Such cultures require much closer scrutiny; only then will we start to fully understand the social, political and labour histories of these times. Rockels article, presented here, engages with the issues of the co-existence of a considerable measure of black mobility and widespread unfree labour directly. His subject is the caravan trade in nineteenth-century East Africa, where slaves and free labourers worked side by side, in a context of multiple crossings. Both carried out identical functions, and slaves could, and did, cross the boundary between bondage and freedom by buying themselves out. The key to the slave porters anomalous status was their vigorous assertion of their rights to mobility, and their ability to roam over great distances and escape the direct supervision of the master. It was this that allowed them to negotiate and subvert the limitations of slave status, and to enlarge their sphere of freedom. Sabeas article, in this journal, takes some of these issues through into twentiethcentury Tanganyika focusing upon labour recruitment to the sisal plantations of the area. Following the displacement of German rule in the latter part of the First World War, she remarks, the colonial authority and the colonial economy rested on very shaky foundations. One key concern was the reliable provision of recruited labour to the coastal sisal plantations, the German period having resulted in the loosening of controls over African movement, and to use an evocative colonial phrase, the roaming around of up country natives in the sisal districts. In other words, the issue was precisely unconstrained mobility. The new British overlords quickly set about reinstating controls over movement via the Masters and Servants Ordinance, proclaimed in 1923, and the institutionalisation of contracts for recruited migrant workers. A prime objective of the contract, besides curtailing free movement, as Sabea makes clear was to impose a predictable kind of time-discipline over its migrant
work force, an issue which rarely commands enough attention in the literature. However, such efforts at controlling mobility and curbing freedom were constantly frustrated by the subversive activities of the labour force itself. Firstly, workers successfully exploited loopholes in the operation of this system, and its illegibility to those subjected to it (and those who operated it) meant a key mechanism designed to achieve colonial ends the Kipands or pass laws were subverted and effectively rendered unworkable within a few years. Secondly, the colonial authorities proved incapable of trapping or anchoring recruited migrants into contract status. The phase of Manamba status variously meaning migrant, worker, or novice was both temporary and permeable, and could be escaped over time. For migrant workers it became a period of learning to negotiate the system, and to undertake a deliberate crossing of social status to voluntary labour which translated into a multi-layered notion of freedom. Dhupelia-Mesthrie focuses on issues of mobility in an entirely different context, linking south Asia and southern African experiences. Her subject is the movement of labouring passenger Indians who crossed the Indian Ocean from India to nd work in the Cape Colony in the early twentieth century. Up until the passage of the 1902 Cape Immigration, she notes, such mobility was relatively unobstructed, with immigration controls and passports having not yet made their appearance (although, of course, an internal pass system was long established). Even after restrictions had been imposed on the movement of such workers, passenger labourer Indians insisted on maintaining the right to mobility. The issue of domicile certicates, which should, in theory, have anchored passenger labourers in South Africa (much as Immigration Controls in the post-First World War United States served to anchor European immigrants to their new places of domicile) proved fairly ineffective. Most, as Dhupelia-Mesthrie shows kept their wives and families in their home village in India, where they retained access to plots of land. Almost universally, they returned to their places and families of origin in India one or more times. This not only throws fresh and unexpected light on ongoing connections with the crossing to India Dhupelia-Mesthrie observes, but also breaks down the standard stereotypes of different categories of South African labour. The dominant image of African migrant workers, she points out, is of those alienated for long periods from their wives and children and aged parents on the reserves. The study of the Indian migrant, however, reveals a similar pattern of migration but one that crosses the ocean and is worthy of recognition in the labour histories of both countries.
Connecting worlds and workers Throughout this entire period much that was urban was linked to shipping. In 1780 the basic pattern of the city was the same as at the outset of the great sixteenth century expansion emporium-type ports and bulking centres.
In 1880, well into the industrial revolution, most urban centres such as Naples, Alexandria, Calcutta, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires were commodity bulking centres and import distribution points. This meant that these port cities were as closely connected to other port cities in other parts of the globe as they were to towns in their own countries and often far more so. The national territory was less a smooth and at space of shared experiences and unied processes than the site of overlapping grids, forged by ongoing human movements around multiple nodes. The ocean and its crossings thus constitute an important focus of labour history, telling a story that cannot be captured by a methodological nationalism that assumes the nation-state to be the key unit of analysis. Braudel pointed the way in this regard, showing how maritime space can provide an arena for dense social and economic overlapping of political entities (Braudel 19723). More recently Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (2000) have explored what they term the Atlantic working class in the eighteenth century a working class centred on plantations, quays, docks and sail ships. The connections explored are multiple: between free and unfree labour, between black and white, between occupations, and between nationalities. In the eighteenth century, as they point out, a mixed mass of sailors and navvies formed a key part of wage labour, quintessentially engaged in the business of crossings and connections. Critical here was the crossings of ideas and experience, which the authors see as circulating eastwards from the American slave plantations, Irish commons and Atlantic vessels and connecting back to the streets of the metropolis, London. This experience, these ideas and these crossings connected sailors, slaves, coal heavers, dockworkers and many others of diverse national and ethnic origins, in a linked set of slave revolts, shipboard mutinies, agrarian risings and prison riots which fed into a broad cycle of rebellions in the eighteenth century Atlantic world. As elsewhere, a central component of this cycle was a struggle against connement, which was intimately connected with and to some extent premised on mobility. Rockels article shows that the complex crisscrossings of the African interior which slave and porter parties undertook had important political and cultural expressions and repercussions, analogous to those discussed by Linebaugh and Rediker for an earlier period in the Atlantic world. Slaves who had been socialised into a Swahili coastal world, after having been snatched as children from their home societies in the interior, now stood in the forefront of forging a new transregional supra-elite culture of a very modern type. Thus, caravans became sites for the emergence of new ideas and meanings that penetrated much of East and Central Africa. The reshaping of identities and ideas via labour crossings is also touched upon in Sabeas article, which draws attention to the way in which colonial labour mobilisation, ironically, expanded aspirations. Besides an extensive understanding of conditions on the different plantations, the workers were able to
construct both their own social spaces and their own ideals of manamba: free to choose employer, free to move around the country and around estates in search of the optimal conditions of work. Such cultural and political expressions and repercussions need not, of course, generate the transnational solidarities and identities that Linebaugh and Rediker stress. Arringtons contribution has a much more contemporary focus, and examines competitive divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean workers in the Victoria Falls area divisions often expressed in national and gendered terms. Her article shows how wars and civil dissension can radically reverse long-term patterns of migrant and labour crossings, and generate a multiplicity of social tensions and identity shifts. In this particular case, Zimbabwe had traditionally drawn labour from Zambia, in part due to its more sophisticated economy. The contemporary Zimbabwean crisis has, however, seen substantial Zimbabwean immigration onto the Zambia side of the Victoria Falls. This takes the form of repeated crossings and returns, and is undertaken in a particular if familiar social form: the movement of single men and women, or at least men and women without their families. For both, the article shows, involves a crisis of self-valuation. Zimbabwean male immigrants experience an extraordinary blow to their sense of masculinity involving a reversal of who sets the standards of masculinity. For Zimbabwean women, it involves a catastrophic sense of marginalisation as they are presented with few means of subsistence and survival other than sex work. This in turn subjects them to a second form of negative stereotyping, that of purveyors of HIV/AIDS. For their part, Zambians, long the ugly step sisters of Zimbabwe(ans) revel in the reversal . . . feeling a combination of revenge and fear. The likely outcome of all this, seen all too graphically in South Africa in 2008, is xenophobic attitudes and xenophobic attacks. The making of the working class need not imply its unity.
Note 1. All of the guest editors were equally involved in the project that gave rise to this special section.
References
Ahuja, R. 2002. Labour Relations in an Early Colonial Context: Madras, c.1750 1800. Modern Asian Studies 36. Braudel, F. 1972 3. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. London: Collins (2 volumes). Bremen, J. 1985. Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers: Rural Labour Circulation and Capitalist Production in West India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, W. 1991. The Great Migration as a Lever for Social Change, in A. Harrison (ed), Black Exodus: the Great Migration from the American South. Jackson: Jackson University Press of Mississippi. Elbourne, E. 1994. Freedom at Issue: Vagrancy Legislation and the Meaning of Freedom in Britain and the Cape Colony, 1799 1842. Slavery and Abolition 15(2). Gottlieb, P. 1987. Making Their Own Way: Southern Black Migration to Pittsburgh 1916 1930. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kerr, I.J. 2006. On the Move: Circulating Labour in Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and PostColonial India. International Review of Social History (Supplement 14). Linebaugh, P. and Rediker, M. 2000. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso. Ludden, D. 1994. History Outside Civilization and the Mobility of Southern Asia. South Asia 17(1). Osella, F. and Gardner, K. 2006. Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in South Asia: An Overview. Contributions to Indian Sociology 37(1&2). Pleck, E.H. 1979. Black Migration and Poverty: Boston, 1870 1900. New York: Academic Press. Thompson, E.P. 1991. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin. Washbrook, D. 1993. Land and Labour in Late Eighteenth-Century South India: The Golden Age of the Pariah? in P. Robb (ed), Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century East Africa: The Case of Waungwana Caravan Porters
Stephen J. Rockel
Department of Humanities/History, University of Toronto Scarborough
The nineteenth century East African caravan system was organised around the labour of itinerant caravan porters, most of whom were free wage labourers. However, a minority of the caravan labour force and a section of the populations of new market and caravan towns on the coast and in the interior were slaves or freed slaves known as Waungwana, or gentlemen. Waungwana caravan porters and retainers of Muslim traders were mostly coast-based, although many travelled for years in the far interior of Central and East Africa. To some degree the Waungwana were assimilated into Swahili culture, with its urban Muslim characteristics. Yet the Waungwana were from diverse origins across East Africa. They were also very mobile, and they were wage earning and often entrepreneurial. Paradoxically it is this very mobility and frequently great distance from the centres of Swahili culture that gave the Waungwana social and economic opportunities, status, and a role as cultural brokers. They were men of the world, and lived their lives alongside the free caravan personnel of the non-Muslim interior. Waungwana were able, therefore, to negotiate limitations to their slave status and enlarge a sphere of freedom for themselves. They were also founding inhabitants of the new centres of urban modernity along the caravan routes. The Waungwana perfectly illustrate multiple conceptions of labour crossings. First, they transcended the rather blurred boundaries between free and slave labour in nineteenth century East Africa. Second, they utilised space and mobility in a uid way to negotiate the conditions of slavery and freedom. Third, they were partners in processes of transregional, transnational and supraethnic interactions in Central and East Africa. Key words: caravan porters, East Africa, itinerant wage labourers, porterage, slavery, supraethnic, transnational, transregional, Waungwana
In my book Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa (Rockel 2006), I show that the East African caravan system was organised around the labour of tens of thousands of professional caravan porters, most of whom were free wage labourers from the interior. However, a minority of the caravan labour force, and a section of the populations of new market and caravan towns on the coast and in the interior, were slaves or freed slaves known as Waungwana, or gentlemen. CT Wilson and RW Felkin of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) dened the term as follows:
The word Wanguana [sic] means gentlemen, and has been appropriated by these negroes to distinguish themselves from the slaves who work on the mashamba or plantations. These Wanguana are not, as a rule, natives of Zanzibar, but slaves
who have been brought from the interior when young, and have become to a great extent naturalized, and have learnt Kiswahili . . . A few of them have obtained their freedom but the majority are still slaves, allowed by their owners, on condition of their receiving a part of their wages, to engage in the service of European travellers.1
The point of appropriation was the coastal elite who in this period had adopted an ideology of uungwana, coastal civilisation, which they believed gave them a special status in comparison to the lower classes of the coast society domestic and agricultural slaves, farmers, shermen, artisans as well as the ubiquitous caravan porters and traders who descended seasonally from the interior, and were often temporarily resident in the coastal towns. Uungwana meant membership in a well-connected network of elite and sometimes rich families, familiarity with Islam, rhetorical ability in Kiswahili, and a relatively leisured urban existence. Visitors from upcountry, in contrast, were disparaged as washenzi (barbarians). They were speakers of Kinyamwezi more than Kiswahili, most likely not Muslim, and were seen as different in their clothing and habits.2 This article investigates what slavery and freedom meant to the Waungwana, and elucidates their roles in the caravan system and the emerging centres of urban modernity along the caravan routes. The Waungwana perfectly illustrate multiple conceptions of labour crossings. First, they transcended the rather blurred boundaries between free and slave labour in nineteenth century East Africa. Second, they utilised space and mobility in a uid way to negotiate the conditions of slavery and freedom. Third, they were partners in processes of transregional, transnational and supraethnic interactions in Central and East Africa, partly through their commercial activities and partly through their participation in the labour culture of the caravans. The historical experience of the Waungwana with its complex interplay of individual and local initiatives was intertwined with wider histories of the caravan system and slavery in East Africa, themselves driven by the acceleration of commercialisation in the western Indian Ocean from the late eighteenth century, the spread of market relations into many parts of the East African interior, and links to industrial and nance capitalism in Europe, the Americas and South Asia. In East Africa commercialisation meant a combination of the penetration of the market and the impact of ideas of prot making and wage earning with a new kind of power resting on the accumulation of measurable wealth, guns and followers. East Africans responded to the rising external demand for ivory, slaves, gum copal and cloves, and to the consumer driven internal demand for mass-produced cloth, manufactured iron goods, guns and beads. These forces reached their peak during the middle decades of the nineteenth century and were ultimately fueled by industrialisation in Europe and North America which led to rising export prices for ivory simultaneously to falling prices for imported machine-made cotton cloth. By that time the caravan routes stretched between the Indian Ocean coast and the eastern Congo, even reaching across Africa to the Atlantic. In East Africa goods were carried on the heads and shoulders of
Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century East Africa 89
professional porters due to the absence of alternative forms of transport and, particularly, infestations of the trypanosome carrying tsetse y that killed domestic animals including oxen, donkeys, horses and mules. The caravan system relentlessly expanded into new territories as the elephant frontier meaning the distant regions in which unexploited elephant herds could still be found was ruthlessly extended and remote populations were brought into the market system, either by choice or force. In Carriers of Culture I argue that long-distance caravan porters working the central trade routes in nineteenth century East Africa were itinerant wage labourers, and can be usefully compared with workers in other contexts during the early stages of capitalist development. By utilising the concept of crew culture I show how caravan porters developed a specialised East African labour culture that nevertheless had characteristics found in crew or gang cultures elsewhere, for example, in the maritime world. Deconstruction of the notion often still found in historical works and many colonial sources that caravan porters were either captive slave labourers or marginal and unsophisticated sojourners suggests the lasting inuence of the imperialist rhetoric of conquest and subjugation. In contrast, I argue that professional porters were at the cutting edge of African engagement with international capitalism, that they were the prime movers in the economic, social and cultural network building of the period, and that they expressed an alternative East African modernity (Rockel 2006). Waungwana caravan porters and retainers of Muslim traders were mostly coastbased, although many travelled for years in the far interior of East and Central Africa. Some settled permanently in the towns and settlements of central and western Tanzania, especially Tabora in the most commercialised Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe, Ujiji in Buha, parts of the eastern Congo (Kasongo, Nyangwe), northern Zambia and Malawi (Nkhota Kota). To a considerable degree the Waungwana were assimilated into Swahili culture, with its urban Muslim characteristics. Yet the Waungwana were from diverse origins across East Africa, particularly the heavily slaved Lake Malawi region. In Zambia they called themselves and were known by the identication Alungwana. There as elsewhere in the interior, Swahili and Zanzibaris who were born at the coast, spoke Kiswahili from birth, and were perhaps of free status, were frequently caught up in this catchall category (Wright and Lary 1971:547). The Waungwana should also be distinguished from the Manyema of eastern Congolese origins, who also made up a portion of the slave and ex-slave populations of towns such as Ujiji, Tabora, Bagamoyo, Saadani and Dar es Salaam. Manyema identity was itself constructed through processes of removal or travel from a wide variety of social and cultural settings in the eastern Congo and resettlement in the towns and entrepots of the caravan system. Although also Islamized and to a large degree integrated into East African Muslim urban culture the Manyema retained a separate Congolese identity.3 Having roots even if largely forgotten in the far interior, and often brought to the coast as children, the Waungwana asserted their rights to mobility. They were
wage earning and often entrepreneurial.4 Paradoxically it is this very mobility and ability to roam great distances from the centres of coastal culture that gave the Waungwana social and economic opportunities, status, and a role as cultural brokers. They were men of the world, and lived their lives alongside the free caravan personnel, especially the Nyamwezi, of the non-Muslim interior. A large proportion of the long distance trading caravans included both Waungwana and Nyamwezi porters, traders and askari. The frontier settlements of the ivory and slave trading system included signicant elements of both groups.5 For example, Tippu Tip employed hundreds of Nyamwezi in Manyema country alongside his Waungwana retainers, and Nyamwezi rugaruga dominated the military establishments of the great coastal traders Abdullah and Kabunda in Tabwa country and Ulungu at the south end of Lake Tanganyika (Wright and 1971:547, 550, 559 60). The opportunities of commerce, frequent access to rearms, and the social prestige of attachment to powerful employers or masters combined with spatial distance from the hierarchical coastal towns to give the Waungwana an unusually high degree of autonomy for an ostensibly servile caste. They were able, therefore, to negotiate or impose limitations to their slave status and enlarge a wide sphere of freedom for themselves.6 HM Stanley noted this active preference expressed by many Wangwana (who he misleadingly refers to as the natives of Zanzibar):
There is a class of Wangwana living at Ngambu, in the small gardens of the interior of the island, and along the coast of the mainland, who prefer the wandering life offered to them by Arab traders and scientic expeditions to being subject to the caprice, tyranny, and meanness of small estate proprietors. They complain that the Arabs are haughty, grasping, and exacting; that they abuse them and pay them badly; that, if they seek justice at the hands of the Cadis [sic], judgment, somehow, always goes against them. They say, on the other hand, that, when accompanying trading or other expeditions, they are well paid, have abundance to eat, and comparatively but little work. (Stanley (1899) 1988:40)7
But even in the most conservative coastal towns there were opportunities for local Waungwana to rise up the social scale both in terms of status and material prosperity. Jonathon Glassman writes of the Waungwana of Pangani that porterage on caravans was an occupation essential to Shirazi notions of prestige. A Mwungwana typically negotiated with his master for the right to work as a porter, offering to share any prots from successful independent trade in addition to carrying the masters own trade goods (Glassman 1991:291). Others took their own freedom in their hands: Much of the labor of the booming Pangani ivory trade was performed by what were essentially petits marrons (Glassman 1991:292),8 runaways, nding an enlargement of freedom absent at the coast, Glassman writes.9 In 1874 large bodies of escaped Arabs slaves, who were well armed turned against their former masters and joined other runaways who infested the vicinity of Unyanyembe. A few years later runaway slaves of Arab traders perhaps some of the same individuals and probably
Waungwana, found service with the great Nyamwezi chief Mirambo, who welcomed the skills of artisans such as carpenters, blacksmiths and gunsmiths (Cameron 1877:212; Wolf 1976:46). Nevertheless, the Waungwana were relative latecomers to the main central caravan routes, and were a minority of the caravan work force, which continued to be dominated by the Nyamwezi and related peoples including the Sukuma, Sumbwa and Kimbu. Indeed, there was a direct relationship between the dominance of the caravan system by free people, and the potential for advancement through caravan work by slaves or the recently emancipated. Jan-Georg Deutsch argues that in nineteenth century East Africa, including the coast, boundaries between slave and free in the context of rapid commercial change were blurred, and social marginality could be reduced by struggle and conict. In fact, earning relative personal freedom was an in-built feature of the various forms of pre-colonial slavery. A number of possibilities existed: manumission by the owner, ight, slave (self-)ransoming and the integration of slaves into their owners kinship group or patronage network (Deutsch 2006:5, 7, also 41, 73).10 Caravan labour offered potential access to all of these routes towards greater autonomy or freedom, but it went beyond them in that it offered participation in an occupation with its own notions of honour and freedom based on experience of the customs of the road and emersion in a well established labour culture, as well as chances for petty trade and accumulation (Rockel 2006:passim).11 Coast-based slave porters were particularly aware of these opportunities for personal autonomy and enlarged freedoms. They worked for wages, had considerable autonomy from their owners, and adopted most aspects of the caravan culture of the interior peoples. In comparison, there is little evidence that trade slaves or captives were used for porterage, except sometimes on the southern (Kilwa) routes, despite the assertions of many contemporary European observers. Demoralised, sick and feeble captives were hopelessly inefcient and could not be used by traders for a round trip. They lacked the skills and experience required for long distance caravan travel. Finally, captives had a greater tendency to abscond than did free or professional porters. Even at Tabora where Arabs and Nyamwezi alike owned many slaves, there were few captive porters in the last decade of the nineteenth century.12 Yet despite the domination of the caravan system by free porters from the far interior, the Waungwana played a major role in the history of nineteenth century East and Central Africa as coastal caravan operators joined Nyamwezi traders in the rush for ivory and prots, and Waungwana porters worked for European travellers, missionaries, and imperial agents.
The setting: Coastal entrepreneurs and the nineteenth century caravan system13 The true pioneers of long distance trade and porterage in East Africa were interior peoples including the Bisa, Yao, the Sumbwa, Nyamwezi and Kimbu. However,
by the late eighteenth century, the Swahili and Arabs of the southern coastal regions were venturing into the Kilwa hinterland in search of ivory and slaves. Further to the north, the Swahili of the Mrima coast and Omani Arabs from Zanzibar as well as Indian entrepreneurs from Gujarat and Beluchistan had by about 1820 penetrated to the far western interior of modern Tanzania. Some coastal caravans had even crossed Lake Tanganyika. The Indian Khoja Musa Mzuri the Handsome was one of those who played a major role. During the early 1820s his caravans, no doubt employing a combination of slave and free porters, utilised the old central caravan route through Ukutu, Ruaha and Isanga in Ukimbu.14 Musa was a founder of the important trading station of Kazeh (later Tabora) in the Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe in about 1852, and played a prominent role along the route from Kazeh to Karagwe and Buganda from the 1840s (Burton 1859:181; Burton (1860) 1971:4234; Gray 1957:228; Sheriff 1987:175 7). Zanzibar, from 1840 the permanent capital of Omani Sultan Seyyid bin Said, with its links to the Indian Ocean world, America and Europe, was the pivot of East African commerce. In 1828 a visitor to Zanzibar wrote that he had frequently seen the elephant hunters return from thirty days journey into the interior and the governor of Zanzibar occasionally sends presents to negro kings a long distance inland (Edmund Roberts, quoted in Gray 1957:228). By 1831 caravans from the coast regularly travelled to Ujiji on the east coast of Lake Tanganyika or places nearby. Lief bin Said, a pioneer caravan operator of Nyamwezi and coastal parentage was familiar with the goods traded in the countries to the west of the lake (MacQueen 1845:373). Sometime during the 1830s the paternal grandfather of Tippu Tip the greatest of the coastal ivory traders visited Uyowa in western Unyamwezi and, in the 1840s, Tippu Tips father married into the ruling family of Unyanyembe.15 Sultan Seyyid bin Said continued to take a close interest in the caravan trade. In June 1839, 200 of his men departed for the interior to trade on his behalf. The expedition no doubt included many slaves. In the 1840s a French sailor noted that Swahili and Arabs from Zanzibar frequently joined Nyamwezi caravans in order to benet from the trading opportunities in the far interior and the greater security that cooperative ventures offered. Many of them remained in Unyamwezi for two or three years.16 No doubt such lengthy stays created the conditions in which permanent coastal settlements in Unyamwezi and elsewhere could be established. These communities such as the one at Kazeh included signicant numbers of Waungwana in their founding populations. There is at least one case in which there is clear proof that coast-based caravan leaders crossed the continent and returned to tell their story. In early 1845 a large Arab caravan under the protection of a great force left Bagamoyo for the far interior. By the time it crossed Lake Tanganyika it consisted of several Arabs and Swahilis and two hundred armed slaves, no doubt Waungwana. One of these Arabs was Said bin Habib of Zanzibar. Seven years later a section of this great expedition under the leadership of Said bin Habib arrived at Benguela
on the west coast of the continent. Said bin Habib continued his slave and ivory trading business in the interior for several more years, at Kazembes, Katanga, and the Zambezi Valley, among other places, visiting Luanda three times in the process. In 1860 he arrived back in Zanzibar, completing a double-crossing of the continent that had taken sixteen years.17 More typical than these dramatic exploits was for the Swahili and Waungwana of the coastal towns to combine caravan trading in the nearer interior with farming. For example, the people of Sudi, a small town on the southern coast, operated plantations worked, in part, by slave labour. They sold some of the surplus food to buy more slaves. They also hunted elephants for ivory. The traditional History of Sudi says that the townspeople borrowed trade goods from merchants and walked to their former homes where they bought ivory and slaves (Freeman-Grenville 1962:231; Alpers 1969:48 9). This probably meant the Lake Malawi region, which was a major source of slaves, or perhaps Makonde or Makua country nearer to the coast. By mid-century the demand for porters at the coast and in the interior was rising. The value of going on safari as opposed to staying at home was highlighted in the Swahili History of Former Times in Bagamoyo. According to the text, The strongest men went on safaris up-country, while the fools occupied themselves washing their clothes and swaggering about the town with no food in their homes (Freeman-Grenville 1962:239). Caravan work and long-distance trade made economic sense. All sections of society stood to benet, as Burton tells us:
The coast Arabs and the Wamrma have, besides deceiving caravans [i.e. Nyamwezi caravans from the interior], another . . . escape from poverty. The lower classes hire themselves to merchants as porters into the interior; they receive daily rations of grain, and a total hire of 10 dols., half of which is paid in advance . . . Respectable men, by promising usurious interest to the Banyans, can always borrow capital enough to muster a few loads, and then they combine to form one large caravan. The wealthier have houses, wives, and families in Unyamwezi as well as upon the coast. (Burton 1859:58).18
Clearly economic incentives were important. Further details on domestic slaves in coastal caravans are noted by Burtons travelling companion, Speke:
The Arabs travel in bodies, consisting of several caravans joined together, for mutual protection, of a number averaging from 200 to 800 men, of which a considerable portion their own domestic slaves, carry muskets, very often the condemned Indian Arab ones . . . whilst the common porters, like all the natives of the interior, carry a bow and a spear. (1860:142)
Spekes observation offers a further point of comparison. Waungwana porters travelling with (or without) their owners or masters were armed. Thus not only were they a part of the wider world of professional porterage and commercialisation in East Africa, with its afnity to the crews and gangs of the ships, ports, railway camps, lumber yards, whaling stations and shearing sheds of early capitalist development in much of the Americas and Australasia (Rockel 2006:238, passim), but they should be compared with slave soldiers in other parts of
Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.19 Allen and Barbara Isaacman have described a somewhat similar world in which Chikunda slave soldiers, police, porters and boatmen in the Zambezi Valley fullled a variety of roles in the service of Portuguese colonialism from the eighteenth and into the twentieth century, at the same time creating a new ethnic identity and masculine pride that compensated for their slave origins (Isaacman and Isaacman 2004).20 In contrast with the Chikunda, the Tirailleurs or the Mamluks of the Ottoman Empire the Waungwana were never organised into professional military units by either the Zanzibari Sultanate or the German colonial state, and more typically served in slave militia in the armed retinues of large traders or even as askari in mission and other caravans. Nevertheless, many individuals did follow a martial career, as the well-known example of Rashid bin Hassani shows. Rashids career began with enslavement as a child in northern Zambia and transportation from Kilwa to Zanzibar. As a youth he worked on the clove plantation of Bibi Zem Zem, a relative of the Sultan. He was then recruited as a porter by Smith Mckenzie and Co., a British caravan outtter and trading company and served on Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) caravans to Uganda in the 1890s. He then saw service with the Uganda Ries, as a Kenya policeman, as a hunter in German East Africa and worked as a forest guard for both the British and Germans. He was freed on Bibi Zem Zems death. His biography is notable for a number of instances of resistance to European authority (Bin Hassani 1963). In the middle of the nineteenth century Waungwana identity was still evolving. Yet Burtons account of a band of slave musketeer/porters he refers to as the sons of Ramji, illustrates all the themes highlighted here, although nowhere does the label Waungwana appear. Ramji, the Cutch entrepreneur and clerk at the Zanzibar customs house offered to hire out ten of his slaves or sons for the charge of thirty Maria Theresa thaler (MT$) per head for six months. Another ve ass-men were also hired in this way at MT$30 for the whole journey (Burton (1860) 1971:26, 32 3, 49 50).21 The sons of Ramji were each armed with obsolete Tower Muskets and German cavalry sabres, and equipped with small leather boxes attached to a belt and a large cow horn for their ammunition. Most of them took the free mans title of Mwinyi (master). They had all been pawned to Ramji by their parents or uncles (no doubt euphemisms) as security for loans, and then became his property when their relatives failed to redeem them (Burton (1860) 1971:10910). Their leader was Mwinyi Kidogo or Mr Little, a man with great inuence over his brother slaves, a xed and obstinate determination and abundant self-esteem. According to Burton his status had no bearing whatsoever on his independence of mind: His attitude is always humble and deprecatory . . . he rarely speaks, save in dulcet tones, low, plaintive and modulated; yet in agreeing in every conceivable particular, he never fails to introduce a most pertinacious but, which brings him back precisely to his own starting-point (Burton (1860) 1971:110). Even the expeditions caravan manager, the Arab Said bin Salim, evaded his browbeating.
Mwinyi Kidogo was of Doe origin from eastern Tanzania, had a family in Unyamwezi, and his travelling experience had given him considerable knowledge of the languages and customs of this most important region. His and his fellows disregard for their formal slave status and their assertion of freedom once on the road is clear in the following:
As a chief, he would have been in the right position; as a slave, he was falsely placed, because of his determination not to obey. He lost no time in demanding that he and his brethren should be considered askari, soldiers, whose sole duty it was to carry a gun; and he took the rst opportunity of declaring that his men should not be under the direction of the jemadar [Beluch ofcer]. Having received for answer that we could not all be sultans, he retired with a ngema a very well, accompanied by a glance that boded little good. From that hour the sons of Ramji went wrong. Before, servilely civil, they waxed insolent; they learned their power without them I must have returned to the coast and they presumed upon it. They assumed the swashing and martial outside of valiant men: they distained to be mechanical; they swore not to carry burdens; they objected to loading and leading the asses; they would not bring up articles left behind in the camp or on the road; they claimed the sole right of buying provisions; they arrogated to themselves supreme command over the porters; and they pilfered from the loads whenever they wanted the luxuries of meat and beer; they drank deep; and more than one occasion they endangered the caravan by their cavalier proceedings with the fair sex . . . they had one short reply to all objections, namely, the threat of desertion.
Only on the return journey to the coast were the sons of Ramji amenable to a measure of discipline (Burton (1860) 1971:11011).22 Likewise, the travellers right hand man, Seedy (Sidi) Mubarak Bombay, technically a slave of Yao origin, had tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty. He was a slave merely in origin and had been adopted into the great family of free men to which he identied all his interests (Burton (1860) 1971:5189).23 In January 1859 the two travellers Burton and Speke encountered a large coastal caravan of the type described above near Zungomero (now Kisaki) on the old southern, Ruaha river, route to Unyamwezi.24 This expedition, originally of 600 free men and slaves, had been a year and a half journeying to Ubena, in the highlands of southern Tanzania, and back. Its personnel, including 150 men armed with muskets, had been hired at the coast for eight to ten dollars per man, with half paid in advance. The leaders, Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami, a coast Arab and Mohammed bin Gharib, a Mswahili, had not been able to convince Nyamwezi porters to accompany them to this as yet relatively unknown country. In Ubena there were ample opportunities to accumulate captives and slaves, and the caravans porters including no doubt many of the Waungwana (once again, they were not called such) were able to afford the very low prices.
At Ubena the caravan made considerable prots in slaves and ivory. The former, mostly captured or kidnapped, were sold for four to six fundo of beads, and merchants being rare, a large stock was found on hand. About 800 were purchased, as each pagazi or porter could afford one at least. On the return-march, however, half of
the property deserted. The ivory . . . sold at 35 to 70 fundo of yellow and other colored beads per frasilah . . . cloth was generally refused, and the kitindi or wire armlets were useful only in purchasing provisions.
On the homeward journey 150 members of the caravan, mostly slaves (possibly meaning the captives?), were tragically lost when a ash ood swept over their camp, unwisely situated in a broad stream bed (Burton (1860) 1971:4534). Burtons description highlights several relevant issues. First, Waungwana porters and askari were central to the expansion of the long distance trade into new regions not yet fully integrated into the commercial and cultural networks of the nineteenth century caravan system. Second, they were just as opportunistic and entrepreneurial as were the free porters and the better nanced coastal merchants. By purchasing ivory and slaves they were not only able to enter into the trading economy, but they were also in a position to accumulate property, even if on a small scale. Purchases of one or two slaves lightened a porters workload and added to his status in the hierarchy of the caravans and the trading centres en route. In Ujiji twenty years later, many Waguha (Holoholo) and Warua from the eastern Congo found themselves enslaved to local Waungwana and Arabs through the accumulation of gambling debts. Waungwana porters were also able to gain access to slave women who cooked for them and provided sexual services in return for cloth to wear and food (see Wolf 1976:118, 18 July 1879 and 1976:106, 29 April 1879).25 French-Sheldon wrote of her Zanzibari slave porters, many of who were supplied by the Sultan himself:
In my caravan there were men, not in my employ, but the slaves of some of my porters, who were themselves slaves, and were taken on safari to relieve their slave masters of their packs, and to do odd jobs for the headmen and others, remunerated by a mere stipend given to their owners, or remnants of food that would otherwise be thrown away. They seemed merry and contented to lead the nomadic life of a safari [sic] in companionship of the regular porters. (1892:1601)26
In fact during the early and middle years of the century it was not uncommon for such amateurs to ll out the ranks of coastal caravans. When Speke and Grant left Zanzibar on their epic journey the caravan included thirty-three Wanguana [sic], or freed slaves here is the rst reference to the identity Waungwana applied to professional porters in the European travel accounts and thirty-six Watuma [sic] gardeners taken directly from amongst the Sultan Majids agricultural workers.27 Ten of these, afraid of the white men whom they believed to be cannibals deserted on the rst day on the mainland (Speke 1864:45, 3 October 1860). Third, membership of the caravan itself, an institution with its own culture and customs, and recognition of a certain status as wasafari, men of the world, workers in a far ung trading and cultural system, gave slave porters and askari a degree of power that they often lacked in their coastal homes. In one case Speke and Grant met a slave of one of the Indian merchants of Kazeh (Tabora) who led his masters caravan to the coast and had many servants of his own
(Grant 1864:50).28 It was not unknown for an Mwungwana, freed by the death of his merchant master, to start an independent career by rst working as a porter for other traders, eventually raising a little capital, and then entering into trade on his own account (Speke 1864:xxvii). Slave and free porters while on safari could express themselves with a degree of freedom not possible in more settled circumstances, although they were generally restrained by the power of inuential chiefs in the main trading regions and subject to the limits of the customs of caravan labour culture. Indeed, they were at the forefront of the emergence of a new transregional and supraethnic culture of a very modern type.29 The caravan system itself operated as a kind of cultural sorter and caravans were sites for the emergence of new ideas and meanings that penetrated much of East and Central Africa. One only needs to consider the creation of Nyamwezi and Swahili Diasporas, the spread of Kiswahili and Islam, and the participation of communities and peoples along the caravan routes in integrating cultural practices such as utani (ritualised joking relationships).30 Social and cultural links were also cemented by blood brotherhood rituals and in western Tanzania in institutions such as the Nyamwezi iwanza, the kaya or village mens club, where passing strangers such as caravan porters were welcomed to receive hospitality and pass the time with storytelling and games.31 We can also think about nineteenth century urbanisation and even slavery in these terms, because most East African slaves stayed in the region, especially in commercialised chiefdoms and emerging urban centres along the main caravan groups. Waungwana caravan personnel were one of the most important groups of cultural brokers that played a major role in these processes of the building of new interregional multiethnic linkages and were at the forefront of the emergence of a unique East African modernity along the caravan routes. Integration occurred on many levels among slaves and their comrades, and in commercialised slave-owning communities. For example, in Mbwamaji, south of modern Dar es Salaam, (and no doubt other coastal entrepots) a number of clans originated from processes of integration between slaves and the inhabitants of the town.32 In Bagamoyo slaves were owned not only by the towns business elite, but also by local Doe (and no doubt Zigua and Kwere) farmers who employed slaves in their mashamba and as domestic workers.33 In caravan and mission towns such as Mpwapwa and Tabora, both Islamicised slaves (Waungwana and Manyema) and Christian ex-slaves formed the basis for new communities centred around church, mosque, markets and traders compounds.34
Slavery, freedom, and the Waungwana We have established that in contrast to the rare use of captives or trade slaves for porterage, caravans bound for the interior frequently included coast-based domestic slaves or freed slaves, the Waungwana.35 Here East Africa ts into the broader African pattern noted by Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy. Along with other subordinate groups such as poor but able members of society who wished
to advance themselves, and young men frustrated by restrictive lineage ties, domestic slaves used the income-earning and trading opportunities of porterage to buy their freedom or accumulate a little capital. In this sense they were similar to free porters. As Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy note, The difference between free and slave was dened by their social status more than by the nature of their work or even the means of payment (1995:17 8).36 The Story of Rashid Bin Hassani contains a perfect illustration of how caravan work offered opportunities for enlargement of freedom:
I saw one day an amazing sight. There were Goan shops that sold wines and cognac and this day I saw Swahilis spilling money and throwing about rupees. We asked where they got their money and were told You are all fools here; you will only get women; go abroad and you will get money. We went with a European from Smith Mackenzies. Have a drink rst and then we will go along. We sat and drank two or three days and were given money; these men were like Europeans. Eventually we went and saw three Europeans at a table; one had no left hand. Some of us were written on for a safari to the mainland. We were to get 10 rupees a month; half we drew and half was paid to our masters. (1963:99100)
As this example shows, whether slave or free, it usually made little difference to caravan operators looking to hire porters. Glassman notes for Pangani that, The sources are rife with incidents in which slaves took employment on caravans without rst securing their masters consent; in these cases the slave would have contracted with a load of trade goods from an Indian merchant without informing the master (Glassman 1991:291). Most European caravans leaving Bagamoyo, Saadani or Dar es Salaam employed Waungwana porters. They were hired on exactly the same basis as other carriers. Burton writes, For the evil of slave-service there was no remedy: I therefore paid them their wages and treated them as if they were freemen ((1860) 1971:54).37 The rst Royal Geographical Society expedition of 1879 80 recruited slaves just as if they were free men. No attempt was made to ascertain or to interfere with the arrangements made between them and their owners, and according to the wage list in only two cases was half the advance wage the usual proportion paid directly to the master. In only one or two cases did the owners prevent their slaves from departing with the caravan (Thomson 1968:67 8).38 Another example shows how slave porters often evaded their owners who had not given permission for them to travel upcountry. In June 1880, representatives of Boustead Ridley and Co., agents for the London Missionary Society, recruited 320 porters for the missionaries and sent the men in dhows from Zanzibar to the mainland. One slave owner, Karihadyi (Karihaji), had already successfully removed three of his men from among those already signed up, and their advance wages were returned to the company. But just as the dhows set sail he attempted to take two more porters from the last dhow. Muxworthy of Boustead Ridley wrote:
We could not get him to come here and examine them, but after they were all shipped he went on board and claimed two men as slaves. I told the Captain to weigh anchor
but Kari dragged the men into my boat. However, as soon as the dhow was under weigh I ordered the men to jump on board which they did, and I shoved the boat off before Kari could stop them amid the cheers of the men. Karihadji [sic] complained to the Sultan but both Dr. Kirk and Captain Mathews said I was quite justied.39
Domestic slave porters were just as independent on the mainland coast, as an example from Saadani shows. An LMS missionary wrote after recruiting porters that Two slave owners came up to claim their slaves we had had three previous cases similar but as the men preferred to go with us and held us to our agreement with them we could not move in the matter. So the owners had to carry their disappointment home (see Bennett (1969:50), 24 December 1877). Later, during the early 1880s, the LMS took a more conciliatory approach to slave owners who believed their slaves had joined a mission caravan without permission. An agent appointed by the Sultan witnessed the signing on of porters, and any Arab slave owner looking for runaways could attend as well. If a slave porter failed to obtain his owners permission to join a caravan, and the caravan leader discovered this, the porter in question could choose release from his contract, or stay with the caravan. In the latter case, the slave owner had to produce an order from the British consul for the slaves return.40 Conversely, in same cases large slave owners contracted to supply porters to a caravan leader against the slaves wishes, and by doing so avoided the normal division of wages and trading prots and thus the incentive for the vibarua (contracted wage earning slaves) in question. In such cases the unwilling slaves having little in hand and nothing to look forward to but hard work and numerous dangers, escape at the rst opportunity. The master, having received payment for the slaves future labour from the caravan operator then had little interest in the whereabouts or performance of his slaves.41 In the 1890s the English anti-slavery lobby fastened on the use of paid slave porters by European employers arguing that this stimulated the slave trade (Cooper 1980:34, f.n. 28). The intervention had a short-lived impact on recruitment in Zanzibar during a period of very high demand stimulated by European military and mission expansion. In June 1891 CS Smith, the British consul, temporarily restricted a large Belgian caravan departing Zanzibar to hiring only free men, delaying Captain Stairs expedition to Katanga (see Konczacki 1994:188, 15 June 1891 and 1994:190, 29 June 1891; Moloney 1893:22-3).42 Yet former Consul Holmwood defended the earlier practice, observing that the technical status of domestic slaves in no way affected their work as professional caravan porters. Once a caravan was beyond the reach of coastal authorities, Waungwana porters were not compelled to return to their master.43 The reality is that Zanzibari slave porters were quite independent, often joined caravans without their owners permission, and frequently did not pass on the usual half of their wages demanded of vibarua. Such behaviour was symptomatic of the general expansion of opportunities for domestic slaves during this period (Cooper 1989:48 52). In
fact coastal slave porters could use their wages to buy their freedom (Cummings 1973:1123; Beidelman 1982:613).44 One way to consider what notions of slavery and freedom meant to the Waungwana is through an examination of questions of professionalism and honour associated with professional caravan workers. Holmwood argued,
It is true that a large proportion of the porters, guides and guards of all expeditions from Zanzibar to the interior is composed of slaves, in a technical sense. Whilst representing England at Zanzibar, I engaged, both for the company, for Mr. Stanley, and for other travellers, more than a thousand of such porters. These men are professional travellers whose livelihood is gained by such work, and the fact of their being slaves or otherwise has no bearing on their engagement, for no master can compel a slave to travel, and, practically, the moment he is outside the coast region he can desert and settle as a free man in the interior.
Yet, Holmwood continued, most Waungwana and Zanzibari slave porters, as trusted retainers of the Arab or Swahili elites, found their relatively privileged status too advantageous to be given up lightly. In cases where they pay to their owners a stipulated proportion of their wages, they do so voluntarily, and always retain for themselves much more than they could earn by ordinary work. In discussing this question with them over the camp re, they always frankly acknowledged that the arrangements suited them, and that they received a very practical return for it in the shape of food, clothing, shelter and freedom from anxiety when unable to obtain employment.45 Holmwoods argument was no doubt self serving, given his role in organising caravans including large numbers of Waungwana and Zanzibari slave porters for the IBEAC, yet it contains a degree of truth. Virtually all employers in Zanzibar and on the coast hired vibarua or other slave labour when required. Even Bishop Steere of the militantly antislavery Universities Mission to Central Africa employed vibarua labour for the construction of the Anglican cathedral in Zanzibar (Johnson (1924) 1970:33). A brief examination of biographies of individual porters and other caravan experts suggests both the professionalism of Waungwana and what the caravan life offered in terms of enlarged freedoms. Among the porters in Count von der Deckens Kilimanjaro expedition in 1861 was Muansalim (Mwana Salim), a slave of a coastal Arab. Muansalim had travelled to numerous countries in what is now northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, including Upare, Dageta, Arusha, Ukambani and had worked in others as an elephant hunter (Von der Decken 1978:229). The kirangozi in Oscar Baumanns expedition of 1891 2 typied the professional Waungwana caravan worker described by Holmwood. Mkamba, a slave, roamed uninhibited through Massailand year in year out. To Baumann he was the typical msafari (caravan man) of Pangani. He returns from Lake Rudolph only a few days later to set out again for Kavirondo; in one caravan his poor wages are counted out to him and in the other he names his advance for the next journey (Baumann 1894:45). Like other experienced
European travellers Baumann respected the competence of such experts as Mkamba. In another example of Waungwana independence, in 1892, a few days after the return to Zanzibar of WG Stairs Katanga expedition, numerous headmen and porters, unwarned by experience, signed on to a Uganda-bound caravan (Moloney 1893:277). Many of their friends had starved to death in the famine associated with the collapse of Msiris empire in Katanga. Most of these men were technically slaves, yet their lives on safari clearly to them represented freedom, to be preferred to the tighter controls of existence in coastal society. Waungwana, as professional caravan porters with a certain status to maintain, defended their dignity and honour. Such behaviour is further evidence of how the caravan life offered them a large degree of freedom. Questioning the honour of porters, even slave porters, could have serious consequences for caravan leaders. In one case in 1879 near Mahenge mass desertion almost resulted from an unintentional smear by Joseph Thomson on his Waungwana porters honour. Describing the incident the youthful explorer wrote:
Seeing a porter offering beads of a kind suspiciously like my own to a woman to pound rice for him, I asked Chuma [his headman] where the man got them. The latter, who heard what I said, immediately went off among the men, telling them I was accusing them of stealing beads. A dreadful row was at once raised, the drums were beat frantically, and the horns blown to call all the men together. From all sides they came rushing, bringing their guns, etc. These they laid down at my feet with the air of injured innocence. They had never been accused of stealing before! Here are our parcels, cried they; look and see if we have anything belonging to you. Now give us our tickets of discharge, that we may go back to the coast, for we cannot go with you to be looked upon as thieves! Every one was in the utmost excitement. Personal articles were packed, and preparation for a general return made, as if an unpardonable aspersion had been cast upon their unsullied honour, which as immaculate men they were bound to resent.
Thomson was forced to back down and apologise (1968:1, 195 6.) What then, can we conclude about questions of status within the caravan system with reference to caravan personnel of slave origins? A formal separation between notions of slavery and freedom is fruitless. Slave and free porters did the same work, developed the same skill set and generally accepted the customs of the caravan system (for more see Rockel (2006) passim). Both slave and free took advantage of wage earning and commercial opportunities, although usually for different purposes. Both slave and free used their mobility and spatial and social distance from the conventions of their home communities to construct alternative lifestyles and participate in the emerging and modern lifestyle of the multicultural world of the caravan system and associated market towns and caravan stops with its emerging systems of intersocietal networks and linkages. Yet all this rested on a ne balance. Conict as well as cooperation was common. Friction arose when resources were scarce, and large caravans at times threatened to overwhelm hard-pressed peasant communities with incessant demands for food
and water. For decades caravans from the coast were welcomed in chiefdoms and villages along the main routes, as local people beneted from trading opportunities and an opportunity to prot from the supply of provisions. By the 1890s a total shift in the balance of power between inland communities and coastal caravans was apparent in favour of the latter, as caravans plundered and raped their way into the interior, protected and encouraged by colonial militarism (see Rockel 2006a:18 21 for details).46 Accompanying this dynamic was a change in attitudes in which porters and askari, many of whom were of slave origin, sometimes expressed a kind of chauvinistic or aggressive attitude towards the peoples of the interior. We see an early hint in this quote from Burton, thirty years earlier.
No caravan can safely traverse the interior without an escort of slave-musketeers. They never part with their weapons, even when passing from house to house, holding that their lives depend upon their arms; they beg, borrow, or steal powder and ball; in fact, they are seldom found unready. They carry nothing but the lightest gear, the masters writing-case, bed, or praying-mat; to load them heavily would be to insure desertion. Contrary to the practice of the free porter, they invariably steal when they run away; they are also troublesome about food, and they presume upon their weapons to take liberties with the liquor and the women of the heathen. ((1860) 1971:517)
Here was an early manifestation of the power of the gun and dollar or rupee overcoming older forms of authority. Slaves with guns and backed by the violence of the early colonial state could lord it over interior peoples threatened on all sides by environmental collapse, the decline of the political power of their chiefs, military defeat, and marauding and hungry coastal porters, freed from their old inhibitions. As Deutsch (2006) argues, colonial rule hastened the decline of a system of slavery that already contained within it the seeds of its own destruction in the context of the entry of international capitalism. The Waungwana therefore occupied a somewhat contradictory role. They were agents of change, but some of the changes they helped introduce ultimately undermined their own position as representatives of commerce and the market in the interior. More importantly in retrospect the various crossings that they made in negotiating the transition from servile to independent labour, as pioneers in commerce and wage labour, as builders of linkages and networks between the coast and the interior, and as agents of a new transregional and multiethnic culture across East and Central Africa helped build bridges to the Tanzania of the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries.
Notes 1. As we will see, many Waungwana porters travelled far into the interior without necessarily receiving the approval of their owners. 2. See the useful discussions in Deutsch (2006:40 1) and Seesemann (2006:23940). The ideas of uungwana on the coast gradually gave way to concepts of Arabness (ustaarabu) emanating from the Zanzibar-based Arab elite.
3. For Manyema slaves at the coast during the German period see Deutsch (2006:64); also Burton and Brennan (2007:26). Interviewees at Bagamoyo, Saadani and Mbwamaji mention residents of Manyema origin who intermarried with local people: Mzee Kitwana, Saadani, 13 March 2005; Ayubu Selemani, Mbwamaji, 29 June 2005; Ramadhani Abdala, Mbwamaji, 29 June, 2005. 4. In early colonial Buhaya in northwest Tanzania White Father missionaries described Wangwana as always in cahoots with a motley crew of social types Indians, Baswahili, Muslims, Baganda who engage in commercial practices (Weiss 2002:401). Weiss shows clearly how the disapproving White Fathers were obsessed with the disturbing examples of independent and collective action that the Waungwana of Buhaya aunted before the newly converted Haya Christians, who were expected to conform to their missionary mentors views on the virtues of hard work without material gain. But note that the number of people claiming to be Waungwana increased in the early colonial period. Deutsch believes that this was a wider strategy to hide slave origins as slavery declined, and as the distinction between waungwana and washenzi diminished. See Deutsch (2006:231). However, it is unclear whether or not this applied to Buhaya. 5. For more detail see Rockel (2006) passim. 6. For more on various categories of wage and income earning slaves at the coast including the Waungwana, see Glassman (1988:97101) and (1995:612); Deutsch (2006:71 4); Sunseri (1993:481 511) and (2002); and Cooper (1977). 7. Ngambu (more correctly Ngambo) is the other side of Zanzibars Stone Town, and home to much of the citys working class. Stanleys reference to the comparative ease of caravan life is somewhat self-serving, given his own very poor record as an employer. 8. For an early discussion of these themes see Burton ((1860) 1971:5167). 9. Thus they must also be contrasted with the watoro, fugitive slaves of the coast regions, who were always under threat of re-enslavement or the violent dispersal of their communities. For the watoro of Kenya and southern Somalia see Morton (1990). 10. For elaboration of these ideas in relation to the Waungwana. For an interesting view of the vocabulary of servitude in coastal East Africa and the complex but changing array of status labels historically used in opposition to uungwana see Eastman (1994). 11. The comparison with the maritime world is valid, as I have argued elsewhere. Some Waungwana served as sailors in the Indian Ocean. Speke observed, The life of the sailor is most . . . attractive to the freed slave; for he thinks, in his conceit, that he is on an equality with all men when once on the muster-rolls, and then he calls all his fellow-Africans savages (1864:xxviii). 12. Interview: Chief Abdallah Fundikira, Tabora, 4 July 2000; Roberts (1970:61); Roberts (1968:128); Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy (1995:156). 13. The rst part of this section draws on Rockel (2006:4952). 14. For the Ruaha route see Rockel (2006a:125). 15. Hamid bin Muhammed (Tippu Tip), Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu Tip trans. and ed. WH Whiteley, 1974, Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam: East Africa Literature Bureau, 99 130, 13 2; Roberts (1970:50). 16. Journal of Richard P Waters, 24 June 1839, in Bennett and Brooks (1965:211); Guillain (1856:380); see also A Visit to Zanzibar, 1844: Michael W. Shepards Account, in Bennett and Brooks (1965:263). 17. For the full story see Bontinck (1974). There is a brief discussion in Sheriff (1987:1867). Said bin Habibs own account is in Bin Habeeb (1860:1468). 18. Deceiving caravans refers to touting and sharp business practices once upcountry caravans arrived with their goods at the coast. 19. For an account of slave soldiers in North Africa and the Mediterranean see Hunwick and Trout Powell (2002:139 43).
20. In West Africa the Tirailleurs are a well-documented case of a colonial army founded on the employment of slave and ex-slave soldiers. See Echenberg (1986:31133) and (1991). A recent collection on slave soldiers is Brown and Morgan (2006). 21. It is not clear whether this amount was to be divided equally between Ramji and his sons, as would have been usual. The terms were later the subject of a dispute between Burton, the government of Bombay and British consul Captain Rigby. See Rockel (2006:215, f.n. 78 for sources). For more on such agreements see below; also Rockel (2006:91). 22. In similar fashion, Waungwana employed by the London Missionary Society at Ujiji objected greatly to agricultural work, which they say belongs to slaves. Hore to Mullens, London Missionary Society (LMS), School of Oriental and African Studies, London 2/1/A, 10 January 1879. 23. Sidi Bombay is a well-known gure in the nineteenth century travel literature. Among others see Burton ((1860) 1971:4312); McLynn (1990:137); Simpson (1975:1112, 192, and passim). 24. For the mid-century spatial reconguration of the central caravan routes, especially the northward shift from the Ukutu, Ruaha River (Uhehe) and Ukimbu corridor, so that they instead traversed Ugogo via Mpwapwa to reach Tabora (Kazeh) see Rockel (2006a). 25. Also see Decle (1898:319) for Waungwana porters purchasing six Manyema children each for the purposes of prot making. For more on caravan women and children see Rockel (2006:11730) and (2000:74878). 26. It is difcult to decide if French-Sheldons slightly ippant account misrepresents the hardships represented by the slaves of the waungwana, or whether they also saw an improvement in their relative status and freedom by going on safari. 27. See the caravan muster list in Speke (1864:553 4). Speke uses Wanguana (Waungwana) to refer to freed slaves and watumwa to refer to all categories of slaves. As we have seen, this is not strictly correct, as it ignores the various gradations of slave status and draws an arbitrary line between slave and free. 28. Condential slaves also represented their masters at the important trading centre of Iendwe in Ulungu at the south end of Lake Tanganyika, while their masters had their main residences at Tabora. Also see Thomson (1968:167). 29. For more on caravan organisation, its hierarchies, social order, and labour culture, see Rockel (2006). 30. For utani see Rockel (2006:198 208). 31. For kwiwanza see Rockel (2006:207 8). 32. Interview: Ramadhani Abdala, Mbwamaji (Gezaulole), 29 June 2005. 33. Interview: Samhani Kejeri, Bagamoyo, 29 March 2005. 34. See examples in Rockel (2006a). 35. Glassman (1995:74 8) has dealt comprehensively with the northern route. 36. Even this must be qualied as in the East African caravan business some slaves earned high status. 37. A porter list dated September 1888 includes details of wage rates and advance payments for a large caravan leaving Zanzibar. The identied slave porters were engaged according to the same terms as other porters. See Men engaged for Masai Caravan, Notebook, Stanleys Expedition, Zanzibar Museum. 38. For the porter list see Royal Geographical Societys East African Expedition 1879: Draft of Agreement with Porters at Zanzibar, Alexander Keith Johnston, Jr., Corr. 1870 80, RGS; copy of contract with a list of 128 names dated 17 May 1879 in AA9/10, Consular Records, Zanzibar National Archive; printed in Rotberg (1971:307). For slave porters handing over part of their wages, usually half, to their owner see Muxworthy to Southon, Zanzibar, 28 June 1880, LMS 3/4/E; Last (n.d.:14); Swann ((1910) 1969:31); Bin Hassani (1963:99 100, 103). In some cases, however, the owner was less generous and seized a greater part of
39. 40. 41.
42.
43. 44. 45.
46.
the slaves wages. See Parke (1891:285), 18 October 1888; OL McDermott to Under Secretary of State, Foreign Ofce, 22 January 1890, MacKinnon Papers, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Box 94, File 56. Muxworthy to Wookey, Zanzibar, 28 June 1880, LMS 3/4/E. Dr Kirk was the British consul in Zanzibar and Captain Mathews was commander of the Sultans forces. Stokes to Lang, 26 July 1884, CMS G3A6/01; Hore (1886:603). Joseph Thomson reported that GA Fischers caravan was thus crippled: As it is he has to march large numbers in chains and then once he is fairly into the country it will be found that he will have to march when they please, and stay when they please and that in his own caravan he will be simply helpless. (Thomson to Bates, Zanzibar, 26 February 1883. Thomson Corr. 1881 1910, Royal Geographical Society, London). In the same year, American traveller May French-Sheldon made a personal arrangement with the Sultan, in which the latter supplied volunteer slave porters for her journey to Mombasa and then Maasailand. See French-Sheldon (1892:91, 96, 1023). Zanzibar and East Africa Gazette (ZEAG), 26 April 1893:10 (reprinted from The Times). For a general discussion of porter motivations see Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy (1995:17 8). ZEAG, 26 April 1893:10 (reprinted from The Times). My italics. Holmwoods assertion that slave status had little impact on the professionalism of caravan porters is borne out by the case of slave porters in the Merina kingdom. See Campbell (1980:34156). German ofcials blamed much of this behaviour on Manyema porters, originally from the Congo, who due to their foreign and typically slave origins perhaps felt little compassion for East Africans. Yet it was European-led caravans that did most of the damage. Michael Pesek (In Press) has done important work on the violence of the early colonial state in German East Africa; see also his Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militar und Verwaltung seit 1880 (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2005).
References
Alpers, Edward A. 1969. The Coast and the Development of the Caravan Trade, in I. N. Kimambo and A. J. Temu (eds), A History of Tanzania. Nairobi: East African Publishing House. Baumann, Oscar. 1894. Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle. Berlin: D. Reimer. Beidelman, T. O. 1982. The Organization and Maintenance of Caravans by the Church Missionary Society in Tanzania in the Nineteenth Century. International Journal African Historical Studies 15(4). Bennett, Norman R. (ed). 1969. From Zanzibar to Ujiji: The Journal of Arthur W. Dodgshun 1877 1879. Boston. Bennett, Norman R. and Brooks, George E. (eds). 1965. New England Merchants in Africa. Boston. Bin Habeeb, Said. 1860. Narrative of Said bin Habeeb, an Arab Inhabitant of Zanzibar. Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society 15. Bin Hassani, Rashid. 1963. The Story of Rashid bin Hassani of the Bisa Tribe of Northern Rhodesia recorded by W.F. Baldock in Margery Perham, (ed). Ten Africans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Bontinck, Francois. 1974. La double traversee de lAfrique par trois Arabes de Zanzibar (1845 1860). Etudies dhistoire africaine VI. Brown, Christopher Leslie and Morgan, Philip. D. (eds). 2006. Arming Slaves from Classical Times to the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press. Burton, Richard F. 1859. The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society XXIX. Burton, Richard F. (1860) 1971. The Lake Regions of Central Africa. (New York: Harper and St. Clair Shores), republished Michigan: Michigan Scholarly Press Burton, Andrew and Brennan, James R. 2007. The Emerging Metropolis: A History of Dar es Salaam circa 1862 2000, in Brennan James, Andrew Burton and Lawi Yusuf (eds), Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis. Dar es Salaam and Nairobi: Mkuki na Nyota and British Institute in Eastern Africa. Cameron, Verney Lovett. 1877. Across Africa Vol. I. London: Daldy, Isbister. Campbell, Gwyn. 1980. Labour and the Transport Problem in Imperial Madagascar, 1810 1895. Journal of African History XXI. Cooper, Frederick. 1977. Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cooper, Frederick. 1980. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890 1925. New Haven: Yale University Press. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. and Lovejoy, Paul. E. 1995. The Workers of Trade in Precolonial Africa, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and E. Paul Lovejoy (eds), The Workers of African Trade. Beverley Hills: Sage. Cummings, Robert J. 1973. A Note on the History of Caravan Porters in East Africa. Kenya Historical Review 1(2). Decle, Lionel. 1898. Three Years in Savage Africa. London: Methuen. Deutsch, Jan-Georg. 2006. Emancipation Without Abolition in German East Africa c.1884 1914. Oxford: James Currey. Eastman, Carol M. 1994. Service, Slavery (Utumwa) and Swahili Social Reality. Swahili Forum 1. Echenberg, Myron J. 1986. Slaves into Soldiers: Social Origins of the Tirailleurs Senegalais, in E. Paul Lovejoy (ed), Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Echenberg, Myron J. 1991. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 1857 1960. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Freeman-Grenville, G. S.P. (ed). 1962. The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Centuries. Oxford. French-Sheldon, May. 1892. Sultan to Sultan. London: Saxon and Co.
Glassman, Jonathon. 1988. Social Rebellion and Swahili Culture: The Response to German Conquest of the Northern Mrima. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison Glassman, Jonathon. 1991. The Bondmans New Clothes: The Contradictory Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast. Journal of African History 32(2). Glassman, Jonathon. 1995. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856 1888. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Grant, James Augustus. 1864. A Walk Across Africa. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons. Gray, John M. 1957. Trading Expeditions from the Coast to Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria before 1857. Tanganyika Notes and Records 49. Guillain, Charles. 1856. Documents sur lhistoire, la geographie et le commerce de lAfrique Orientale II. Paris. Hore, Annie. 1886. To Lake Tanganyika in a Bath Chair. London. Hunwick, John and Trout Powell, Eve. (eds). 2002. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. Princeon: Marcus Wiener. Isaacman, Allen and Isaacman, Barbara. 2004. Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750 1920. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Johnson, William Percival. (1924). 1970. My African Reminiscences, 1875 1895. (London) Westport CN: Negro Universities Press. Konczacki, Janina M. 1994. Victorian Explorer: The African Diaries of Captain William G. Stairs 1887 1892. Halifax NS: Nimbus. Last, James T. n.d. Polyglotta Africana Orientalis. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. MacQueen, James. 1845. Visit of Lief Ben Saeid to the Great African Lake. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 15. McLynn, Frank. 1990. Burton: Snow upon the Desert. London: John Murray. Moloney, J. A. 1893. With Captain Stairs to Katanga. London: S. Low, Marston and Company. Morton, Fred. 1990. Children of Ham: Freed Slaves and Fugitive Slaves on the Kenya Coast, 1873 1907. Boulder: Westview Press. Parke, T. H. 1891. My Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa as Medical Ofcer of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. London: Low. Pesek, Michael. In Press. Colonial Conquest and the Struggle for the Presence of the Colonial State in German East Africa, 1885 1903, in Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern (eds), Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War and Empire. Toronto: Between-the-Lines Press.
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Wilson, C. T. and Felkin, R. W. 1882. Uganda and the Egyptian Sudan, Vol I, 14. London: Sampson Low. Wolf, James B. (ed). 1976. The Central African Diaries of Walter Hutley, 1877 1881. Boston: Boston University African Studies Centre. Wright, Marcia and Lary, Peter. 1971. Swahili Settlements in Northern Zambia and Malawi. African Historical Studies IV(3):547.
The Passenger Indian as Worker: Indian Immigrants in Cape Town in the Early Twentieth Century
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Department of History, University of the Western Cape
The article argues that the term passenger Indian has contributed to a divisive understanding of migration from the Indian subcontinent to South Africa. It has led to the stereotype of the wealthy Gujarati trader and it excludes much. By focusing on Indian migrants in Cape Town, the argument is made that the term must be redened to include workers who came from not only Gujarat but also from Maharashtra and the Punjab and that those marginalised by simplied denitions need to be given a place in the historiography. Biographical sketches of workers are provided freeing one from the narrow chronological choices historians have made and include family where possible. Details are provided of what kind of employment Indian immigrants found in Cape Town and the severe effects of the permit system and immigration laws on the free mobility of Indians. The article points to the migrant (and circular) nature of Indian labour in Cape Town with consequences for wives and children in the villages of India and argues that parallels may be made with African migrant labour. Key words: Cape Colony, circular migration, migrant workers, passenger Indian
In 1902, Bhana Poonja (also known as Barnard Manners) left India for the Cape Colony. The twenty-three year old Gujarati Roman Catholic rst worked as a stonebreaker at the Newlands reservoir in Cape Town. After this he worked as a labourer in the building trade for two years. Thereafter he worked for three years with Ohlssons Breweries as a bottle sorter.1 Gopal Uker, a Gujarati Hindu, came to Cape Town in 1902 age twenty-seven. He soon found work with the Cape Town and District Gas Light & Coke Co, which operated from Dock Road in the city centre and also at Woodstock. He remained with this company for a total of eleven years if not more.2 Ebrahim Bassa (also known as Ebram Basar) came to Cape Town in 1900 at the age of twenty-seven. He was a Muslim and his home was Rajwadi in the Kolaba District of the Bombay Presidency. For some fteen years he worked with the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company as a donkeyman tending to the machines producing steam.3 Another Muslim, twenty-six year old Ebrahim Amin, left his village Dabot in the Ratnagiri district of the Bombay Presidency arriving in Cape Town in 1902. Between 1902 and 1919 he worked for W&G Scott Ltd Timber Merchants in Salt River as an engine driver, but he also had a one-year spell with the South African Candle Works and a few months as a hawker.4 Bareyam Singh came
from Shoepur in the Punjab at the age of twenty-seven. A Sikh, whose language was Gurmukhi, he secured work between 1903 and 1908 as a groom and stableman with AR Mackenzie & Company, custom and delivery agents whose stables were at Upper Canterbury Street.5 All these individuals were what the literature on Indian South Africans denes as passenger Indians, migrants who paid their own way to the colonies of South Africa as opposed to the indentured who came under contracts to work in Natal. This article begins by looking at denitions of the passenger Indian in the literature and its central argument is that the term has become very simplied and has lent itself to the development of stereotypes. It excludes more than it elucidates. The article focuses specically on those who have been marginalised from denitions these were the labouring poor. The passenger Indian apart from being a misunderstood category of migrant is also much neglected in the historiography. Indentured workers are better served by the historiography studies have elaborated on the journey by ship, the nature of work in Natal, the conditions on the estates, the experiences of the women, the cultural adaptations taking place and the use of leisure time (Bhana 1991a, 1991b; Brain 1985; Mesthrie 1991; Brain and Brain 1982; Vahed 2001). While some studies tended to be quantitative, the recent work of Desai and Vahed (2007) humanises the indentured worker instead of seeing him or her in the abstract by providing snatches of biographical information. The social world of the passenger Indian in colonial times, by contrast, is hardly understood and knowledge of those who came to the Cape Colony in particular is documented in but a small number of published works (see Bhana and Brain 1990; Bradlow 1979; Davids 1981). This article draws attention to the kinds of work that poor passenger Indians found in Cape Town,6 the extent of upward mobility, the pattern of migration and the nature of family life. In doing this it also points to the way in which restrictive immigration laws passed by the Cape Colony in the aftermath of the South African War (18991902) affected the mobility of the Indian labouring class. Cape Town was nonetheless an important port in the Indian Ocean interregional area and that movement of human beings between Bombay and this port occurred in the colonial period needs to be recognised. A biographical approach, as Desai and Vahed have shown, has advantages. Biography, as some of the sketches in this article show, also breaks down the tight chronologies that historians have favoured they transcend these and provide a greater understanding of migration patterns.
Dening the passenger Indian Eminent historians Surendra Bhana and Bridglal Pachai were necessarily brief in their documentary collection about the complex process of migration from the Indian sub-continent to South Africa:
The Passenger Indian as Worker 113
It is common knowledge that Indians came to South Africa in two categories, namely as indentured Indians and as free or passenger Indians. The former came as a result of a triangular pact among three governments [Natal, India, and Britain] and the latter, mainly traders ever alert to new opportunities abroad, came at their own expense from India, Mauritius and other places. (Bhana and Pachai 1984:2)
The use of the term passenger Indian had gained currency amongst academics by this time but this had not always been the case. There is some evidence that those who came in as migrants who had paid their own ships passage used the term passenger themselves though this was far from frequent.7 The word was not employed in earliest writings about Indians in South Africa. Gandhi ((1928) 1950:21 3) made a distinction between two groups of Indian migrants in early colonial Natal: the indentured workers who came under contract and the free traders and their free servants. The free servants referred to the Hindu accountants who came to serve the Muslim traders. He also recognised the category of those indentured Indians who had served out their contracts. They were, in his opinion, not really free. He distinguished between the traders and accountants who were absolutely free and the workers whose indenture had expired as a qualied free.8 Works by Joshi (1942:46 9), Burrows ((1943) 1952:2), Wetherell (1946:8) and Calpin (1949:10) do not employ the word passenger Indian instead they refer to free Indians embracing at times both traders and ex-indentured. Mabel Palmer (1957:42 3) may well have been the rst academic to dene the passenger Indian. She writes of the free immigrant Muslim and Hindu traders and argues to distinguish these from other classes of free Indians, those who had served their period of indenture, these are commonly called passenger Indians. All subsequent published works then favour this term and it solidies so that passenger and trader become synonymous. Hilda Kupers denition though became the most adopted description (1960:3). Passenger Indians were those who entered the country under the ordinary immigration laws, and at their own expense. The majority came specically to trade or serve in commerce . . . She, like Gandhi, recognised that the ex-indentured or time-expired Indians were hardly free9 Meer (1969:7), Pachai (1971:7, 11) Pillay (1976:1), Swan (1985:1), and Bhana and Brain (1990:22 3) all adopt the term passenger Indian. Most follow three categorisations of Indian immigrants 1) the indentured worker, 2) the ex-indentured or free Indian (the status free is no longer questioned), and 3) the passenger Indian or, as Pachai put it, the free passenger Indian. Bhana and Brain also trace the movements of free Indians and absconding indentured labourers to the various port cities and to the diamond-elds. About Cape Town, in particular, they note that the vast number of Indians were passenger Indians (mainly Muslim) while free Indians moved there from Natal after 1897 and engaged in labour on the docks, on the railways and on farms. Later, free and passenger Indians were engaged in various occupations, particularly trade (Bhana and Brain 1990:127). Bradlow argued that Indians in the Cape Colony
are exclusively from passenger origin and that lacking skills of other kinds, the Cape Indians almost without exception became traders and shopkeepers . . . The Moslems tended to become wholesale and retail general dealers and butchers. The Hindus . . . set up as fruit and vegetable hawkers, and shoemakers . . . (Bradlow 1979:134, 136 7). In these works and more so in that of Pillay on the Transvaal (1976:2) the impression is created that a worker in the Transvaal or the Cape was of indentured background while the passenger Indian was a trader or hawker. Maureen Swans work contributed to a further equation: the term passenger Indian became associated with wealth for she focused on the richest merchants who had extensive trading networks and owned substantial property. While she recognised that there were smaller traders and hawkers whose fortunes were inextricably connected to the merchants by credit loans she did not pursue this category with any signicant interest. We are left with the dominating image of the passenger as a migrant of much resource, inuence and investment (Swan 1985:38). Others like Padayachee and Morell (1991:77, 81 2) have argued for a nuanced denition of passenger, a two tier one: the wealthy merchants and the small trader or hawker. But here too, we are not offered much more. In this work and that of Kalpana Hiralal (2000:135 6) the denition passenger equals trader (with levels of gradation) endures. Hiralal, in fact, provides a rigid passenger Indian equals trader equals Gujarati denition whereas an earlier work like that of Kuper (1960:7 9) provided a much more comprehensive listing of regional and linguistic origins.10 There are some pointers in the literature to avoid simple denitions of the passenger Indian. Joy Brain compiled a list of Christian passenger Indians to Natal among whom were traders, teachers, interpreters, catechists (1983:150ff, 243, 245). Kuper also provides an important detail there were some indentured Indians who on expiry of their contracts returned to India and came back to Natal as passenger Indians (1960:8). There is also the aforementioned reference by Gandhi to the free servants of the merchants. Bradlow, too, writes about the Indian employees of Indian traders in the Cape who were on contract. She provides a further intriguing sentence, which unfortunately she does not expand on. Indians, she argues, were prepared to do any manual labour including heavy work on railway & dock construction for lower wages than other coloured labourers [but] as soon as they were able . . . they did go into business independently or worked as shop assistants (Bradlow 1979:134, 136 7). In many works we are also left with the impression that the passenger Indian is a male.11 While Bhana and Brain refer to the men and women who arrived in various ships from western India at their own expense (1990:23) their book is singularly silent about the female passenger immigrant. The statistics reveal that there were female immigrants from India even if they were few in number before 1910 (Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2007:17). The historiography neglects the
small storekeeper, hawker, shop assistant, accountant, priest, women and children.12 That the passenger Indian could also be a worker is not a scenario contemplated by historians. The following section moves to discuss the Cape Colonys attitude towards securing labour from India and immigration restrictions which affected the ow of passenger Indians.
Stopping the ow: The Cape Colony and Indian immigration Indian immigration to the Cape Colony never quite reached the numbers in Natal, understandably, since the former chose not to import indentured labour.13 Bradlow has shown how, on several occasions in the 1870s, a debate surfaced about the use of such labour but that the colonial government was against it. There was a reluctance to comply with the strict regulations set up by the imperial government and government of India. Employers of labour were urged to look within the colony for black unskilled labour and to whites for skilled workers (Bradlow 1979:1323).
Indian immigrants had been coming to the Cape from the 1870s and 1880s, some from Mauritius but many directly from India. There was a growth in numbers in the 1890s and more especially during and immediately after the South African War (1899 1902). In 1904 the Cape Colony seems to have overtaken the Transvaal in numbers: 10,242 to the Transvaals 9,979. Indians were to be found in many small interior towns of the colony such as Swellendam, Oudtshoorn, Beaufort West, Colesberg, Preiska, Barkly West, Upington, Vryburg, Middelburg, Mafeking and the eastern Cape towns of Uitenhage, Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, Somerset East, Cathcart, Burgersdorp, Aliwal North, Indwe and Engcobo. In the early years, between the 1870s and 1880s, Kimberley was the most favoured city in the colony for Indians. In later years, the port cities especially Port Elizabeth and Cape Town became more popular (Bhana and Brain 1990:78, 109, 194; Bradlow 1979:1345). Indians in Cape Town came mainly from the Bombay Presidency, an extensive area along the west coast of India that included the then Districts of Surat and Broach (now in Gujarat), and the Districts of Kolaba and Ratnagiri (now in Maharashtra). Smaller numbers came from the Punjab, Bengal and the Madras Presidency. The languages spoken were Gujarati, Urdu, Kokanie, Mahratti, Hindi, Tamil and Gurmukhi. Tamil-speaking immigrants coming directly from Madras were more likely though to have gone to places like Kimberley and Port Elizabeth.14 The vast majority of Cape Towns immigrants came from poor agricultural villages in India. Their migration is characterised by chain migration many followed the example of others who had left from their villages and there was an extensive village and kin network. On landing many of the poor took to hawking an activity that required little capital investment. As this article will detail many became workers as well. Indian barbers, shoemakers, tailors, butchers, general dealers, hawkers and workers lived mainly around the city
centre (District Six and Woodstock having substantial numbers) but they soon spread out towards the suburbs. Ebrhaim Norodien was one of the seasoned entrepreneurs in Cape Town. He came in 1896 and in just over a decade he had twenty shops. He was a direct importer of goods, grocer and provision merchant.15 Purseram Lutcheram was based in Orphan Street. He had rst spent six years in Natal before coming to Cape Town in 1896 aged nineteen. Ten years later he was a silk merchant and owned substantial property.16 His rm Pohoomul Brothers was originally established in Durban and expanded to Cape Town. The wholesale and retail shop was located in Longmarket/Parliament Street in the city and sold silk, embroidered goods, curios, Eastern jewellery, art works and ornamental objects. Parsi Mancherji was a merchant and importer and also an agent of the German East African Line Shipping Company (Indian Department) (Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2000:13). While there were these successful individuals, there were in Cape Town many poor Indians. We fortunately have an account written in 1911 of how Osman Yjir/Vazir of Dungri village in Surat came to Cape Town in the early 1890s when he was in his twenties. He points to poverty and chance contacts:
. . . my brother, father and mother left me alone in this world, owing to their deaths and I have no house or piece of land to sustain myself thereby. I am living from hand to mouth at present and such were my condition before, too; when I could not get any job in my native place, I resorted to Bombay and there I tried my luck. But poor as I was born, in Bombay too, I failed. After a short time in Bombay, a gentleman showed his desire upon my request, and took me along with him to Capetown and I served under him for seven years with all faith. He gave me some money in return of my service and by this . . . I started for Delagoa Bay and entered Transvaal on 21st October, 1897. I stayed for a year or so in Transvaal for better earning but I failed there. And owing to my failure in Transvaal I returned to Capetown, where I had served so faithfully to my rst master beyond the sea, on 14th August 1898. I served myself here in Capetown for two years in the Frieman Co. and six years in the Gas Co as a general labourer . . .17
The numbers of poor immigrants threatened to grow in the aftermath of the South African War. Vivian Bickford-Smith has shown how the total population of Cape Town grew from 79,000 in 1891 to 170,000 in 1904, making it the most populated city in South Africa. Amongst the new migrants in this period, the vast majority were whites from Europe numbering 34,000 while 2,000 were Australians. There was movement within the colony with 2,000 Afrikaners arriving in the city. The second largest number of new migrants to the city, 21,000, were coloureds from the rural areas of the Cape. In addition, there were 9,000 new African arrivals from the eastern Cape or Transkei and 2,000 immigrants from India (Bickford-Smith 1995:11, 130). The city provided many attractions. The economy of Cape Town boomed in the 1890s and after the war (Bickford-Smith 1995:12930; Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:257). There was signicant expansion
at the Table Bay Harbour, which struggled to cope with the large numbers of ships docking. There was development in the rail and transport systems. This time was, as Bickford Smith records, a golden period for Cape Towns merchants. Imports soared from 3,000,000 in 1891 to 14,000,000 in 1902. The food and clothing industries, which dominated Cape Towns light industry registered growth; 12,000 Capetonians found work in factories in 1904. The construction industry enjoyed a boom period as new buildings, houses, schools, factories and shops were being constructed. While Cape Town may have been attractive in itself, Indian immigrants also arrived here simply because the Transvaal and Natal were far more difcult to get into. During the war, Indians like others, ed the Transvaal and there were many refugees in Cape Town. Some lived in tents at Dock Road, thereafter in Maitland and ultimately District Six (Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:13). After the war, there were huge difculties getting back into the Transvaal. As for Natal, ever since 1897, there were only three main ways new Indian immigrants could enter the colony: demonstration of writing prociency in English (which few from India could accomplish), or if one was indentured or if one was a wife and child of a domiciled Indian (Bhana and Brain 1990:1316, 142 6). The case of passengers on the steamship, the SS Nowshera, in 1901 provides an example of how some immigrants came to disembark in Cape Town and points to the eagerness evident in the port of Bombay for a ship bound for South Africa.18 The Protector of Emigrants in Bombay wrote a report on the 800 passengers due to leave Bombay in September on this ship. Those bound for Natal had papers and were returnees. They included hawkers and market gardeners. The Protector is silent about those bound for the other ports, for the ship was due to call not only at Durban, but also at East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. The ofcial was sure that three or four other ships bound for South Africa will all ll up. On 10 October the SS Nowshera arrived in Cape Town with 363 passengers, the rest having landed at the three preceding ports. The medical ofcer of health wrote about 49 Indian soldiers on board, eight visiting Indians and 306 coolies. He was concerned about the latter who, he argued, were rejected for landing at Natal and were the worst of the batch. They were very feeble and of inferior physique. Given that there were no immigration laws to prevent them from landing they were allowed to disembark. Amongst the authorities in Port Elizabeth, East London and Cape Town there arose some hysteria at the prospect of ships laden with passengers who would be rejected in Natal and then disembark at their ports. The editor of the Cape Times whipped up similar hysteria and wrote about the horde of coolies coming to the Cape ports. He argued that while Natal protected itself from the scum of the Far East the Cape, unless it acted, was destined to become a dumping ground. He called for some legislation to protect the colony from the undesirable elements from the East and European ports.19 In 1901 alone 3,311
Indians had been prohibited from entering Durban and numbers remained high for the decade (Bhana and Brain 1990:1323). In 1902 the Cape government rushed through the Immigration Act. Bickford-Smith (1995:126) has made the insightful comment that times of prosperity (like times of great economic stress) brought their own troubles to the ruling class, such as how to maintain material and social order. The Act was one such attempt. The Immigration Act of 1902 all but put paid to fresh immigration from India. It came into effect at the end of January 1903, and, as the medical ofcer of the Cape Colony, A John Gregory, explained, it was aimed to restrict undesirable immigration. It prohibited the landing of any person who could not write out an application or sign in the characters of any European language and who could not provide evidence of some nancial means to support himself/herself (the minimum sum was rst 5 but quickly raised to 20). Males and females who were prostitutes and lunatics were also prohibited. The Act did not apply to those who were already domiciled in the colony and the wife and children of such domiciled persons. It specically excluded from its prohibitions European persons who are agricultural or domestic servants, skilled artisans, mechanics, workmen or miners who could prove that they had already been contracted to an employer in the colony. Undesirable whites, by implication then, would be the illiterate and poor who just turned up at the Cape ports from Europe and elsewhere the door was open to white as opposed to Indian or Chinese labour.20 The Jewish poor arriving from Russia were also the focus of negative attention in Cape Town, but Jewish leaders in Cape Town succeeded, at least, in getting Yiddish recognised as a European language for the purposes of the Act (Mendelsohn and Shain 2008:47, 57, 60). The case of Attarsing Ralaram reects how the door to fresh immigration was shut. A carpenter from India he made his way to Lourenco Marques where he lived for three years. In 1908 he wished to move on to Cape Town to combine work and sightseeing. He wrote to the immigration ofcer of the colony: wherever I go I make my livelihood without any difculty. He was given a stock answer if he had 20 and could write in a European language he would not have difculties. Attarsing indeed had 20 but could write only in an Indian language. So he was denied entry.21 Many such examples of refusals can be provided and many did not have the 20. The Immigration Act of 1902 put paid to the desires of any employers in the colony who looked to India for labour. Already in 1902 there had been two signicant approaches to the colonial government to import labour from India. The one came from the Standard Lime Syndicate operating at Lansdowne Road on the Cape Flats. Its manager had some experience in Natal and was of the view that Indians are more reliable than Cape Boys whom we cannot depend upon. He claimed to have difculties obtaining African labour.22 A second and more substantial application for Indian labour came from the Sir John Jackson Ltd
company charged with developing the harbour at Simonstown. The proposal was for 400 to 500 Indians to come under contracts similar to the indentured. The area suggested for recruiting was the Punjab and towards the Himalayas because the company already had some satisfactory experience of workers from the Punjab who had come to Simonstown on their own means. The company claimed they could not secure sufcient African labour but also they preferred Indian labour believing the latter to be more tractable and intelligent. This request was denied.23 Another group of employers, extremely annoyed at the restrictions imposed by the Immigration Act, were Indian shopkeepers. They needed shop assistants and preferred to have young males from India people they knew from their villages rather than local youth. Evidence indicates shop assistants were indentured to their Indian employers with a specied period of service with salary plus board and lodging.24 Other employers wanted servants of a different kind: Purseram Lutcheram of Pohumool Brothers, for instance, employed two Indians Tillmal and Hermandas as valet and cook respectively.25 The traders wanted the right to import servants from India who would be bound for a few years and who would be repatriated by them at their cost. This request was not acceded to though it seems that some small exceptions were made.26 The Immigration Act excluded poor Indians but the language requirements also affected the trader, against whom there had been rising prejudice since the 1890s (Bradlow 1979:1435). Between 1903 and 1906, the Immigration Department used the Act to get rid of Indians (traders, hawkers and workers) who were within the colony. With families in India, most Indians wished to return to India for a period of time but to re-enter the Cape they required a domicile certicate. These were regularly denied them as domicile was strictly interpreted to include not just length of stay in the colony but evidence of property holding and most importantly a family in the colony. As long as wives were in India, Indians were not regarded as domiciled. On being denied a certicate, the choices were limited: they could remain in the colony or leave for India with no possibility of return.27 Abdol Cader noted a drop in the number of Indians in the Cape suburbs: in 1902 he believed there were about 5,000 Indians but six years later there were not more than 2,000.28 The drop in numbers in the Cape as recorded in the 1911 census supports this perception.29 The only fresh legal immigration that could take place after 1902 was if a domiciled Indian wished to bring out his wife and children. There was some softening later on temporary movements to India by those within the colony. In 1906 permits were issued to Indians leaving the colony at a charge of 1. The permit system was a means of state surveillance over the movement of Indians. It was like a pass and the document of identity carried a photograph, thumbprints and general descriptions of the body. The permit stated the time within which the holder had to return to the colony or forfeit a right for good to
re-enter. Initially, only a period of one year was given but after 1913 this was extended to three years. The Chinese had been subject to such monitoring for some time to the extent that it was claimed that the government knew the whereabouts of all Chinese in the colony.30 Gandhi who was involved in the satyagraha campaign in the Transvaal against the documents of identity required there regarded the Cape permits as certicates of freedom or a ticket of leave with the implication that Indians were like prisoners just given parole.31 The operation of the permit system was crucial, as we shall see, in understanding the experiences of Indian workers in the colony. The biographical detail utilised in this article are drawn from this site of power and surveillance and may be inaccurate in some respects. It was important when lling in forms for permits to say that one had arrived in the colony by 1902 for any date after that would indicate an illegal entry. Many Indians also said that they were single in the early years there was the belief, inspired by the strictness with which domicile certicates were issued, that if they indicated they had wives and families back home in India they would not get a permit. The permit applications also bear the hands of interpreters and this provides further reason for approaching them with caution. Despite the serious limitations of this source they provide useful biographies of Indians in the colony.32
Work, employers, patterns of migration and family While one cannot provide statistics of exactly how many Indian workers there were in the 1900s in greater Cape Town, one can say that while a large number of Indians were general dealers and hawkers a signicant number of them were workers. This section is based on 175 les in an archival collection that runs into the thousands so it provides but a preliminary picture. The biographical sketches reveal a pattern of circular migration with the inevitable return to India. For many individuals, Cape Town was just a short interlude in their lives. Some of this was by choice as they had families there. The permit system also required re-entry within a restricted time. The indentured worker had his/her passage to Natal paid for and, over time, the vast majority lost contact with their families in India. For those formerly indentured who returned to India on a paid passage, a return route was to re-indenture. The Indian workers in Cape Town needed to have enough for the passage back to South Africa (14 in 1924) after spending a year or more in India.
Several took advantage of the assisted emigration scheme to return to India but this paid passage had its consequences domicile had to be surrendered.33 Elderly Indians, in particular, made use of this scheme after ensuring the domicile rights of young sons who remained in the country. India at all times remained important. Even after several decades in the country, India beckoned there were visits to wives and children were born during these visits. Some maintained wives and children in both India and South
Africa while for others the circle of mobility ended once they married local women in Cape Town. In the rare instance, the Cape-born wife was taken back to the village in India. Wives and children were only brought from India when workers were well established and had secured better positions.34 There are some instances of upward mobility and substantial material progress. Of the 175 Indian workers, sixty-eight were employed at the harbour works in Simonstown. The men who worked for Sir John Jackson Ltd between 1900 and 1910 when the works were drawing to a completion were predominantly from the Punjab and were Sikhs. Ajam Chajoo,35 however, was a Muslim Gujarati from Malekpor in Surat. Abdul Ragman Mahomed Sharief36 was an Afghan and Dawood Amien37 was from Bombay. The majority were married, had young children back home and owned some land. Some of them like Kishen Singh had served in the South African War and after taking their discharge sought employment.38 A few like Rala Singh39 and Banta Singh40 worked at the Salt River Locomotive Works before moving to Simonstown. Dhar (Thakar) Singh41 rst worked at the Table Bay docks and then moved to Simonstown, while Jamet Singh rst started at Ohlssons Breweries.42 Gulwant Singh43 worked for the Cape Government Railways (CGR) for eighteen months before being employed by John Jackson. We have a few specic descriptions of what work they did. Kara Singh was a coachman, Gulwant Singh was a ganger, Dalel Singh44 was a coal ganger, Hazara Singh45 was a boss boy, Basant Singh46 was a labourer and watchman. Dawood Amien was a reman (stoker) and looked after the air compressors. Many worked for John Jackson for about ve to seven years after which the majority returned to India. Some like Kishen Singh went on to South West Africa and others like Basant Singh were making enquiries about work possibilities in Nigeria. Rala Singh returned to Cape Town in 1910 after a trip to India. By 1926 he was a greengrocer. After a short trip to India in 192627 he remained in Cape Town until 1936 when he left under the assisted emigration scheme. One hundred and seven Indians worked in Cape Town city itself and of these at least twenty three secured employment with the CGR. Some of them were general labourers like Kesir Singh, Goorndat Singh, Kisheim Singh and Sunder Singh.47 Burgas Omar48 and Omargee Mousa,49 both Gujarati Muslims, were cleaners. Mogul Jan of Calcutta also called Mongel John was a cleaner.50 Mahomed Moosa was a trafc manager.51 Chiba Daya Mitha,52 a Gujarati Hindu, from Dandi, Surat worked in the stores department, as did Puncha Boolah53, also from Dandi. Kada Desai54 whose brother Nathoobhai Bhimbhai Desai had a shop in Tyne Street worked as porter for ve years (190105). Some had very short periods of service after which they returned to India. Kesir Singh, Goorndat Singh, Kisheim Singh, and Sunder Singh all became victims of the harsh implementation of the Immigration Act and were denied domicile certicates in 1905 after which they disappear from the record. Burgas Omar worked for seven years but returned to India in 1907.
The economy of Cape Town took a downward turn so that by 1905 06 there was considerable unemployment and poverty, which manifested in the unsettling hunger riots (Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:337). The depression lasted for yet another two years. The immigration ofcer described the condition of the labour market . . . as deplorable and noted the departure of many artisans and tradesmen from the colony in 1906 and 1907 with many hundreds of men in the colony out of regular employment.55 Mogul Jan was retrenched from the CGR in 1907, worked for two years as a hawker and returned to India in 1909. Walla (Valla) Ravjee56 was retrenched in 1908 after four years of work. He went to India, returned in 1911 and worked as a hawker for the rest of his years in Cape Town. He left for India under the assisted emigration scheme in 1938 aged fty. Further into the interior, Deva Ratting, a Gujarati Hindu, lost his job with the CGR at De Aar in 1908 when all the Indians were replaced by Europeans.57 Some Indians, however, stayed with the railways for many years. Chiba Daya Mitha was with the CGR from 1902 to 1911. He visited India in 1911 12 after which he resumed his job with the CGR until 1919. He made one more trip to India in 1919 20. In 1934 when he left Cape Town, aged sixty-three, he was still listed as a labourer but his employer is not disclosed. For almost three decades, Chiba saw his wife, Daya, and son, Lalla, in Surat only on those two one-year visits to India. Nagina Sing58 worked for three years at the municipal yard in Claremont. There were several Indians working there as refuse workers as a photograph testies (Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2000:pic48). Nagina wanted to leave in February 1906 for German South West Africa where his brother was. Denied a domicile certicate he probably left Cape Town for good. Some Indians like Ally Mohamed59 from the village Peeplol in Ratnagiri worked for the city corporation. After a brief spell as a shop assistant he was a foreman in 1914 in the city engineers department. Four years later he worked at the municipal electric station. Two decades later he was a shopkeeper. During this latter period he brought out his two sons, while his wife and daughter remained in India. He left in 1937 on the assisted emigration scheme. A few Indians found work in the Public Works Department, the Army Ordnance Department, Cape Town Tramways and at the Barracks in Cape Town. Dewa Bhana60 came to Cape Town in 1901 aged thirty-one. He worked as an ofce boy rst with the Harbour Board for ten months and then from 1903 to 1908 with the Army Ordnance Department after which he returned to India. Dhik Naranji61 aged nineteen in 1903, rst worked for a land contractor as a general labourer between 1903 and 1905 and then worked till 1909 for the Cape Peninsula Garrison at the Barracks as a fuel and light labourer, after which he returned to India. A few Indians worked for the Cape Town & District Gas Light & Coke Company. Adam Ebrahim62 was nineteen years old when he left Navsari for the Transvaal.
After four years there he came to Cape Town in 1901 and rst hawked fruit. A year later he secured employment with the Gas Company and stayed with them for fteen years. In 1906 he married a Cape-born Malay named Asa and they set up home in Hanover Street, District Six. The couple travelled to India in 1907. While Adam returned to his job in 1908, Asa remained behind in Navsari giving birth to their daughter, Fatima. Adam visited his family in 1911 12 and in 1912 Asa gave birth to a son, Ismail. For ve years Adam remained in Cape Town away from his young family but returned permanently to India in 1917. This is an unusual story. Generally when Indians married a local their trips to India became less frequent and family life was constituted in Cape Town. Ohlssons Breweries (Newlands), Phoenix Breweries (Chapel Street), Castle Brewery (Woodstock), Castle Wine & Brandy Company, Van Ryn Wine & Spirit Co also employed Indians. Nathoo Bagwa (Bhagvan)63 of Navsari, Surat was thirty-ve when he took a position with Ohlssons in 1903 where he worked for four years. His employer referred to him as a good hard working boy. He remained in Cape Town until 1936 (making three trips to India in that period) but moved to hawking. He had a shop for a while in 1930 and in 1936 he was hawking sh. He returned to India that year aged sixty on the assisted emigration scheme. He had three children with his wife Pemi during his three trips to India between 1912 and 1925. The oldest son Chagan was brought to Cape Town in the 1920s. Balla Bapoo64 was an elderly employee of Castle Brewery. He came from India in 1902 aged forty-four. He was employed by Castle Brewery for a brief period in 1908 as a cleaner in the engine room but was retrenched that year. He tried selling eggs but left for India in 1908. Gopal Dya65 came from Astikagam in Surat at the age of fteen in 1902. He rst hawked fruit and then worked for Castle Brewery for six years in the fermenting and bilking departments. After a visit to India in 1909 10 during which time he and his wife Amba had a son he returned to Cape Town in 1910. For ve years he worked in the bottling department of the Beaconeld Hotel, also serving as barman and canteen-worker. In the period 1915 to 1917 he visited India and a second son was born. On his return he tried his hand at being a greengrocer but returned to India in 1920 aged thirty-ve. Gafoor Antullie66 came to Cape Town in 1902 from Chanwar in Alibag (Kolaba) aged thirty-two. He was Urdu-speaking. He worked at the docks for a year then for the next decade he was with Castle Brewery. He left Cape Town in 1931 under the assisted emigration scheme after ten years of running a butchery. In the twenty-nine years he was in Cape Town, he visited India four times: 1909 10, 1913, 1917 21, 1927. His wife Amina remained in Chanwar while three sons died during this period. H Henry Collison Ltd were wine merchants in Sir Lowry Road and EK Greene was a wholesale and family wine merchant in Somerset Road. Gullabhai Raghnathge Desai67 from Pipaldhara, Surat, worked for Collison for nine years (190312). He was an exception amongst immigrants in that he could read, write and speak English and entered in March 1903 age nineteen on that basis.
At Collison he was employed as a labeller and capsule samples maker and did general work. He left for India in 1912. Baba Bapoo68 was illiterate and aged thirty-eight when he left behind his wife Bai Sahib in Rajwari in Kolaba in 1902. He found a job with Greene as a cellar hand soon after his arrival and worked here for a total of twelve years. He visited India three times in 1909 10, 1915 17 and 192124. By 1921 he was a general dealer. In 1924 he brought out his son Shaik Allie aged seven and in 1927 he left permanently for India to rejoin his wife and the rest of his children. A few workers from the Punjab secured employment with the Hout Bay Canning Company. Mihmahl llana69 came to Cape Town aged thirty-three in 1902 and for a while he did odd jobs around the town. Then between 1903 and 1909 he worked for the Hout Bay Canning Company. Surjan Singh70 came in 1900 aged twentythree. During the war he was employed at Green Point Camp and Stellenbosch. He then worked at the Locomotive Department in Salt River and spent two shing seasons in 1906 07 with the Hout Bay Canning Company. Both Llana and Singh returned to India. Indians also secured employment with the Manolis & Paetache Mineral Water Manufacturers in Sir Lowry Road, The Freeman & Co Lemonade Factory in Sir Lowry Road, Freeman Aerated Water Factory in Hateld Street, M Smith (Mineral Water Manufacturer) in Selkirk Street, Lake Spa Aerated Water Factory in Newmarket Street, Table Mountain Soda Water Factory in Woodstock, SA Mineral Water Factory in Selkirk Street. Allie Shaboodin71 who was thirty-two in 1902 when he came from Dabot in Ratnagiri worked for M Smith as a handyman until 1908. Smith was pleased with him; he was honest and respectable. Allie later became a shop assistant to Abdurhaman Bala. The Woodstock Sweets Factory and JJ Hill & Co Steam Confectionery & Fruit Preserving Works in Sir Lowry Road, Newmarket Street and Russell Street also employed a few Indians. Mahomed Baba72 worked as a handy man for Woodstock Sweets in 1911, while Mahomed Ismail73 from Kurgawn, Kolaba was a reman with them in 1909. In 1916 he was working as a reman on the tugboats at the harbour. Camal Ismail74 worked as a labourer in the jam department for Hills between 1907 and 1908 while Ismail Ayob75 from Pabra, Kolaba worked for Hills as a reman between 1902 and 1916. In 1924 he gave his occupation as a butcher. He spent a full ten years in Cape Town before he was able to return to India to see his wife and son in 1911. He brought his fteen-year-old son out in 1913 but his wife and daughter remained in India. The son became a shop assistant. He was able to go three further times to India in 1916 18, 1924 26 and 1930 33 before he left nally for India on the assisted emigration scheme in 1935 aged sixty-four. Indians seem to have secured work with numerous individual white merchants and rms. Kooverjee Naranjee Desai76 from Besna, Surat came to Cape Town in 1902 aged twenty-two. He rst worked for the city for two years, then as a parcel boy
and messenger for ve years with W Kohling of Long Street. He was still a labourer in 1919 when he left for India. He managed to go to India between 1910 and 1911 where his wife Echa and son Chowtoo (age nine) lived and it would be seven years before they saw him again. Naran Ratan77 worked for a sh merchant W & J Greig at the Dock Road sh market between 1904 and 1906 and for B Brown of Cape Fisheries at the stall in the sh market between 1907 and 1909. He then returned to his wife Geevie in India. Abdulla Enus78 who was also known as Mattagie (he came from the village Metaghar in Chiplun, Ratnagiri) worked for nine years as a reman on an Italian vessel. He worked for a while for a fellow villager after which he secured employment between 1907 and 1910 with Nanucci Ltd in Long and Church streets. His employer found him to be a good workman, honest, sober, industrious. Ten years later he was working for Empire Steam Laundry. In 1936 he was a hawker. He lived rst in Claremont, then Athlone and later Elsies River. He maintained two families. Latifa and two sons lived in India. He visited India on three occasions, 1910 11, 1920 21 and 1936 38. Latifa died in 1921, as did his seventeen-year-old son Mohedien two years later. While Latifa was still alive he married Abiba in Claremont and they had ve children. Moosa Sonie79 came to the Transvaal in 1892 at the age of fteen and in 1899 no doubt due to the war moved to Cape Town. He rst worked as a shop assistant in Ceres then found work with Heynes Mathew & Co. This was a chemist and photographic dealership and there were numerous branches in Cape Town and Moosa had a long period of service with them from 1903 to 1915. Moosa, who was a Gujarati Muslim from Dabhol, Surat, like Abdulla maintained two families. Ayesha was his wife in India and in Cape Town he married Sabida with whom he had two children. They lived in William Street in District Six. In 1922 he, Sabida, Katija age three and Jacob age ve months went to India. It ended in tragedy, Sabida returned in 1923 a widow. Mahomet Sallie80 was thirty-seven when he came from Mobkhay, Ratnagiri. He rst worked as a hawker and then for the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company for a year. Between 1905 and 1916 he worked for Conningham & Gearing Atlas Works as a serang of native labourers. He worked as a shop assistant in 1924 and left for India in 1928 under the assisted emigration scheme. During his stay in Cape Town he made four trips to India and his wife Sharifa remained in India and bore him seven children (two of them died in infancy). The Union Castle Mail Steamship Company employed Mahomed Kassiem81 as a messenger between 1902 and 1905. Allie Dawood Shaik Nana82 of Tira in Ratnagiri was a donkey man with the company between 1906 and 1909. By 1923 when he decided to return to India to his wife of thirty years, who bore him ve children, he was a greengrocer. Several Indians secured work as gardeners and house servants. Gooka Lala83 worked for Percy O Wathes of Sea Point from 1902 to 1908. Sardar Rasool84
from Malekpur Surat was a house servant for James Burns in Buitengracht Street between 1902 and 1906. His employer found the teenager a very honest trustworthy obedient boy . . . a rst class servant. Jetta Kisha Paitel (Patel)85 came from Khandhili in the District Kaira in 1901 aged twenty-nine. He had a wife in India. He worked as a gardener for two years for a Mr Horsburgh in Wynberg then secured a job with R Neugebauer. This was a company that described themselves as merchants and engineers, contractors to the Imperial German government, the Orange River Colony (Orange Free State as it was known before the war) and to various mining and colliery companies. They imported various metal stock, electric accessories and supplied ship cables. They also had a good supply of second-hand stock. The owners were pleased with Jetta describing him as a very willing diligent labourer of some skill. He was particularly knowledgeable about the metal and iron department. Jetta went to India on a permit but never returned. Some Indians started off in Cape Town and then made their way further out. Doolab Bhika86 rst worked as a building labourer in the city when he moved out to the Hex River Valley where he was employed as a fruit packer by Cape Orchards for ve years. The Kuils River Mines drew some skilled Indian labour. Sana Rana from Surat was regarded as an expert in tin mines.87 Bareyam Singh, the stable groom mentioned earlier, provides an example of successful upward mobility. For him the pattern of circular migration did not apply. He did not make any trips to India until a brief visit in 1930 and then twenty-four years later when his sister Rajkor aged ninety-three was ill. One of the reasons for these limited trips is that he had married a local woman known as Kitty and they had two children, Francis and Nellie. By 1931 Bareyam was a produce merchant in Reform Street and lived in Walmer Estate. He had been active in politics, representing the Cape National Indian Association at a conference in Durban in 1928. When Kitty died he married Lettie in 1941 and they had two children Bareyam and Elaine. By the time he was in his seventies he had an annual income of over 2,400 and owned property over 48,000.88
Experiences of loss For those who secured a permit to visit India it was the most important document one could possess. It guaranteed a right to return to Cape Town within a specied time. Without it and if it had expired, no matter how long one had been in Cape Town, one could not re-enter. That was not negotiable. Baba Bapoo, who worked for EK Greene, understood the importance of the permit only too well. He lost the permit en route to Durban where he was due to get the steamer to India. He wrote urgently in Urdu to his friend Mohomed Janoodien in Cape Town.
Dear brother, I let you know that on the 2nd March on board the steamer we had place to sleep on deck, unfortunately my wearing coat has been stolen away at about 2 pm, and when I
have been awake at 3 pm my coat has gone away. I have searched but without avail. I have reported but could not be found; My dear brother by losing my coat that has put me in a very heavy lost as there was 5 in it; and other document and books all has gone. Since I have made the lost my heart has turned into madness. I could not sleep night and day; my dear Brother if I write to you the whole particulars it will be too long; all seem to be my luck; and at present my dear Sir be kind for me and do this work for me take the number of my permit and go to Mr Cousin [Cousins, the chief immigration ofcer] and explain to him the particulars and beg him on my behalf to issue duplicate permit; I have also wire Mr Cousin concerning this matter unfortunately I have received no reply today the boat are leaving and I am very depressed but my dear Sir for the sake of God towards this poor man try yours best to obtain my permit and send.89
After some trouble and an additional cost of ve shillings he secured a duplicate permit and was able to return from India with it. But the madness in his heart says a lot about how important this document was. Few could return in time as life in India distracted them: there was unexpected sickness, inability to raise the money for a passage in time, deaths of family members and village work. Baba Ismail who worked for W&G Scott wanted more time in 1929. He got someone in his village Dhabet in Ratnagiri to write to the immigration ofcer for him as he was illiterate. He requested an additional year in India.
Dear Sir, Immigration ofcer of Cape Town South Africa Re Very Sick Present and I could not come. in the time to Cape Town And other thing is this my wife she has been died 27/3/1929 therfor Nobody to looked for my house and e.t.c. So please available my permit for other one year . . . If you give me one year time I will be very glad & Thanks Instead of you helf me the God will save you & your childrens My Photo all so herewith.
When he was given only six months he pleaded again as he could not nish his work in India.
if you do not give me the time then Dear I am nearly Die Because No Body can loocked Me so the God will keep you well and Glad all ways and save you and your family I am always asking the god to half you Please dear Half me & give Sam six months time again and oblige
Ofcials stuck to the rules and Baba Ismail was not given that extra time. He never returned.90 Perhaps the most tragic case was that of Osman Vazir who worked for the Gas Company. He and his wife Haji Khatija left Cape Town suddenly without getting a permit as he was ill. He wrote many pleas from India to be allowed back. His losses were many as he explained:
In India I got better by Grace of God and in short my wife fell victim to some disease and succomed to death. From the death of my this faithful and loving wife I was
deeply engrossed in sorrow and pain which words cannot describe. I have two children by this wife and now being destitute of both wife and wealth, I am now living as a beggar with my children. Some day getting food or some day starvation. Such has been our condition. No doubt we had some money and estate but all this is in Capetown for the last two years. I am a lover a true lover in sense of our Indian tongue, of Capetown. And I every now and then dream a dream of it too. And so request with my both hands joined, as one to the Almighty and a father, to allow me, taking my former long residence in consideration, to enter Capetown and I will always pray to god that the Capetown Govt may still be long reigning and prosperous . . . I have got many certifcates and letters of my services there and it will, I hope, prove of my very long long residence in Capetown. I have a register of Transvaal, a pass of Free State, a certicate from Gas Co., a receipt for a pass which was received by me in 1907, a card from Somerset Hospital while I was sick there and a certicate from Gas Co., while returning to my native place. Also there will be on record in the Immigration Ofce the original copy of the pass given to me on 14th January for India. I have lived there from 21st Oct 1897 to 13th June 1909 and to prove this the above details will be sufcient, I hope.
The one document he did not have was the permit and the reply to this outpouring of grief and trouble was short, a refusal.91 Vazirs impassioned letter indicates how conditions in India could get desperate and how Cape Town offered a light of hope. Others were driven by this desperation to come back without the document. Picera Canje92 who worked for Phoenix Breweries returned in 1907, but at Port Elizabeth he was declared a prohibited immigrant. He jumped ship and reportedly made his way to Cape Town by train. He joined the uncertain world of the illegal migrant in Cape Town of whom there were many. The bureaucracy lost these individuals, the latter lost a legal life. The loss of rights was painful. Yet these are other losses. There were the women and children in India who lost years of companionship and guidance of migrant husbands and fathers. For some the loss was permanent. The story of Gunga, the wife of Harnam Singh, is one of epic tragedy.93 Harnam left his wife and son in the village of Chokra in Jallandar in the Punjab in 1902. Among his jobs in Cape Town was that of a reman and night watchman for Bingley Brickworks in Sea Point. He returned to his family in 1909 and another son was born. As he set out for Cape Town in 1911, Gunga was not to know that would be the last she would ever see him. Harnam set up home with a local woman called Syna and they had four children. He was not entirely forgetful of his family in India but according to the immigration laws he could not bring Gunga to Cape Town as he had a local family. Gungas desperation grew. After two decades of his absence she wrote directly to the immigration department to nd her now sixtyyear old husband. She wrote I am pining for his separation. She wrote again and again and by 1938 was so desperate she came as far as Mombasa hoping in vain that the immigration authorities would let her see her husband whom she had last seen twenty-seven years previously. Harnam Singh lived another decade to a ripe old age in Cape Town. Some of his children with Syna sought
and received classication as coloured at the height of apartheid. Of Gunga we know no more. Her story, while amplied by such great loss, represents also the grief and difculties in the smaller stories of separation as migrant husbands travelled to Cape Town in the 1900s and left behind, for long periods of time, wives and children in the villages of India.
Conclusion This article does not argue that Indian workers made a signicant contribution to the economy of Cape Town as academics writing about Natals indentured workers have done. The numbers are far too small in terms of Cape Towns larger economy there were far more white, coloured and African workers. However, when an audit is taken of the poor of the city then Indians have to be counted. The term passenger Indian imported into writings about the Cape from the Natal and Transvaal historiography requires redenition. Its simplied denition leads to a divisive understanding of migration from the Indian subcontinent and contributes to the stereotype of the rich Gujarati. The term needs to embrace workers and in terms of regional origins to include not just those from west India and certainly not just Gujarat but also those from other parts of India such as the Punjab. Passenger Indians secured work in Cape Town in menial positions and some remained in these for more than just an initial phase.
India was a crucial reference point at all times for most Indian migrant workers family and village commitments endured. Migration tended for the most to be a circular one with time being variable. While the assisted emigration scheme has been perceived in the literature to be a repressive one (Mesthrie 1985), the workers discussed here seem to have used it to advantage at the end of their work lives in South Africa. Some constituted family life in Cape Town with repercussions for family in India. The newly constituted family with local Cape women challenged notions of Indianness and for some, especially the children, India receded. In the South African historiography on capital and labour we have the dominant image of African migrant workers on the diamond and gold mines alienated for long periods from their wives and children and aged parents on the reserves. This study of the Indian migrant reveals a similar pattern of migration but one that crosses the ocean and is worthy of recognition in the labour histories of both countries. The Cape permit system originating from an exclusionary immigration law must be regarded as a damaging one that affected the free mobility of Indians and it tarnishes the liberal image of the region. It extinguished the dream of Africa in the poor villages of India.
Notes 1. WCAD, IRC 1/1/101 2485a. 2. IRC 1/1/216 4987a.
3. 4. 5. 6.
7.
8.
9.
10. 11. 12.
13.
14.
15. 16. 17. 18.
19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
24. 25. 26.
IRC 1/1/142 3449a. IRC 1/1/159 3833a. IRC 1/1/139 3374a. In this article Cape Town is used as it is understood today greater Cape Town rather than the small municipality that it was in the early 1900s, with Mowbray, Rondebosch, Wynberg, Claremont, Woodstock and Kalk Bay for instance all having their own local government. In 1905, for instance, Hardit Singh of Durban wrote to the Cape Colonial Secretary that he had come to Durban seven years ago with a passenger pass (IRC 1/1/116 2825a). Vendenayagum Lawrence who had worked as a clerk for Gandhi in Durban argued in 1907 that he was a passenger from India and asked to be exempt from the various restrictive laws such as the liquor, gun and franchise laws (Bhana and Pachai 1984:23). There is some justication for this separation the ex-indentured could easily slide back into indenture if they were unable to pay the annual 3 tax, the price of their freedom from indenture. She gives administrative reasons for a separation. The ex-indentured were still listed under the records of the Protector of Indians Immigrants and were subject to separate registration of marriages, births and deaths. Kuper, for instance, draws attention to passenger Indians from Madras and Calcutta and also Ceylon and east Africa. She focuses on Parsis and Jains as well as Urdu and Memon speakers. Kuper (1960:167) and Meer (1969:19) are exceptions. Badassy (2005) has, however, focused on interpreters. While Vahed (2005) has pointed to the fairly large number of shop assistants amongst the passenger Indian he does not deal with them in any substantive manner. This article recognises that many slaves came from the Indian subcontinent between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries but that historians have failed to nd any lingering Indian identity. The IRC les which deal with movement between India and the Cape indicate some movement from Tamils between Kimberley and Port Elizabeth to India and back but at this stage of the research very few Tamil names surface for Cape Town. See SC 16-1908, Report of the Select Committee on Asiatic Grievances, pp 13, 15 19, 30; also IRC 1/192 2282a Ebrahim Norodiens le. IRC 1/1/ 71 1738a. IRC 1/1/124 3076a, see letter from Vazir to Capetown Government, 21 September 1911. See WCAD, CO, Vol 7415 le 409, Report of the Protector of Emigrants, 5 September 1901; Medical Ofcer of Health to Colonial Secretary, 10 October 1901; Note from Colonial Secretary to Medical Ofcer, 11 October 1901. Cape Times 9 October 1901, editorial. G.63-1904, Report on the Working of the Immigration Act, 1902 (Cape Town, Government Printers, 1904:8, 11, 21 2, 356. IRC 1/1/141 3417a, Attarsing Ralaram to Immigration Ofcer, 28 October 1908, 11 November and reply of Immigration Ofcer, 21 November 08. WCAD, NA, Vol 511 Part 1, 281, James King to Commissioner of Native Labour, 14 January 1902 and 8 March 1902, reply to King, 7 February 1902. WCAD, NA Vol 511 Part 1, 281, Director, John Jackson Ltd, to Civil Engineer in Chief, Admiralty, London, 30 October 1902, Secretary to Native Affairs Department to Prime Minister, 24 February 1903 and to Director, John Jackson Ltd, 6 March 1903. See IRC 1/1/167 4036a, contract of Mahomed Salie and others with Hoosen Ebrahim. IRC 1/1/71 1738a, Note by A Karie, 1905 and reply of Ofcer in Charge, 6 March 1905. See SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, Appendix, pp iiiii, petition of South African Indian Association; Thawerdas Shewakram was allowed to enter in February 1909 as a cook for reasons of religion for Pohumool Brothers (IRC 1/1/177 4191a).
27. See for example IRC 1/1/137 3336a, case of Faker Ebrahim, 1905. 28. SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, pp 356. 29. By 1911 numbers in the Cape had decreased to 6,606, with Natal at 133,031 and the Transvaal at 10,048 (Bhana and Brain 1990:194). 30. SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, p 40, evidence of Hing Woo, President of the Chinese Association of Cape Town. 31. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (cd Government of India, New Delhi, 1999), Vol 6, pp 201 2, Indian Opinion, 29 December 1906 (Gujarati) and Vol 7, pp 2545 Indian Opinion 12 October 1907. 32. For a greater discussion of the issues around this archive and knowledge production see Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2009. 33. Indentured Indians were at rst the only ones offered a free passage back home but in 1914 any Indian wishing to return home was provided with a free passage on condition they surrendered their rights to return to South Africa. Bonuses were also offered as additional incentive in 1921. The state did not have altruistic motives, it wanted to reduce the size of the Indian population (Mesthrie 1985:3656). 34. The attitude of Indians to female migration needs to be explored further. There seems not only to have been patriarchal attitudes but females themselves were reluctant to relocate. After 1927 the law specied that a wife had to accompany a minor child being brought to South Africa and this raised the numbers of female migration. Some women returned to India after fullling this requirement. 35. IRC 1/1/125 3107a. 36. IRC 1/1/89 2217a. 37. IRC 1/1/159 3838a. 38. IRC 1/1/116 2833a. 39. IRC 1/1/205 4798a. 40. IRC 1/1/182 4290a. 41. IRC 1/1/214 4925a. 42. IRC 1/1/214 4942a. 43. IRC 1/1/100 2442a. 44. IRC 1/1/100 2469a. 45. IRC 1/1/214 4933a. 46. IRC 1/1/100 2441a. 47. See IRC 1/1/185 4340a and IRC 1/1/205 4797a. 48. IRC 1/1/132 3240a. 49. IRC 1/1/86 2140a. 50. IRC 1/1/222 5086a. 51. IRC 1/1/85 2090a. 52. IRC 1/1/152 3683a. 53. IRC 1/1/229 5238a. 54. IRC 1/1/216 4984a. 55. G.9-1908, Report of the Chief Immigration Ofcer for the year Ending 31st December 1907, p 6. 56. IRC 1/1/147 3540a. 57. IRC 1/1/105 2608a. 58. IRC 1/1/187 4401a. 59. IRC 1/1/225 5137a. 60. IRC 1/1/135 3290a. 61. IRC 1/1/170 4078a. 62. IRC 1/1/185 4356a. 63. IRC 1/1/21 504a. 64. IRC 1/1/160 3857a.
65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.
IRC 1/1/162 3914a. IRC 1/1/151 3657a. IRC 1/1/33 784a. IRC 1/1/148 3591a. IRC 1/1/214 4948a. IRC 1/1/116 2841a. IRC 1/1/141 3420a. For other workers in this sector see IRC 1/1/103 2533a, 1/1/166 4004, 1/1/70 1709a, 1/1/151 3652a, 1/1/163 3945a. IRC 1/1/116 2826a. IRC 1/1/182 4295a. IRC 1/1/145 3493a. IRC 1/1/178 4211a. IRC 1/1/230 5253a. IRC 1/1/105 2598a. IRC 1/1/71 1755a. IRC 1/1/117 2862a. IRC 1/1/109 2693a. IRC 1/1/198 4659a. IRC 1/1/90 2224. IRC 1/1/140 3409a. IRC 1/1/164 3966a. IRC 1/1/133 3257a. IRC 1/1/125 3098a. He worked there for four years and returned to India in 1908. IRC 1/1/104 2570a. For others working at the mines see IRC 1/1/181 4277a Mackan Bangia; IRC 1/1/31 705a Heera Dajee and IRC 1/1/120 2974a Meta Vallabh. IRC 1/1/139 3374a. IRC 1/1/148 3591a, Letter to Janoodien, 4 March 1915. This is a translation. IRC 1/1/140 3403a, Letter from Ismail, 28 June 1929; reply of immigration ofcer, 27 July 1929; letter from Ismail, 7 August 1930; reply 6 September 1930. IRC 1/1/124 3076a, Letter from Vazir, 21 September 1911; Cousins to Vazir, 21 October 1911. IRC 1/1/125 3105a. IRC 1/1/153 3699a, See Gunga to immigration ofcer, 19 July 1935 and 8 November 1935; reply of principal immigration ofcer, 7 August 1935 and 21 November 1935; secretary of the Siri Guru Singh Sabha Mombasa, 10 January 1938 and reply of immigration ofcer, 18 January 1938.
References
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Cape Colony. SC 16-1908, Report of the Select Committee on Asiatic Grievances. Documentary works and memoirs The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Cd. 1999. New Delhi: Government of India. Gandhi, M.K. (1928) 1950. Satyagraha in South Africa. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press. Secondary sources Badassy, P. 2005. Turbans and Top Hats: Indian Interpreters in the Colony of Natal, 1880 1910, BA Hons essay. University of KwaZulu-Natal. Bhana, S. (ed). 1991a. Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press. Bhana, S. (ed). 1991b. Indentured Indian Emigrants to Natal 1860 1902: A Study Based on Ships Lists. New Delhi: Promilla Publishers. Bhana, S. and Brain, J.B. 1990. Setting Down Roots: Indian Migrants in South Africa, 1860 1911. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Bhana, S. and Pachai, B. (eds). 1984. A Documentary History of Indian South Africans. Cape Town: David Philip. Bickford-Smith, V. 1995. Ethnic Pride and Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town: Group Identity and Social Practice, 1875 1902. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bickford-Smith, V., Van Heyningen, E. and Worden, N. 1999. Cape Town in the Twentieth Century. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers. Bradlow, E. 1979. The Cape Community During the Period of Responsible Government, in B. Pachai (ed), South Africas Indians: The Evolution of a Minority. Washington: University Press of America. Brain, J.B. 1983. Christian Indians in Natal 1860 1911: An Historical and Statistical Study. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Brain, J.B. 1985. Indentured and Free Indians in the Economy of Colonial Natal, in B. Guest and J.M. Sellers (eds), Enterprise and Exploitation in a Victorian Colony. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Brain, J.B. and Brain, P. 1982. The Health of Indentured Indian Migrants to Natal, 1860 1911. South African Medical Journal 62:73942. Burrows, R. (1943) 1952. Indian Life and Labour in Natal: A Survey, SAIRR. Calpin, G.H. 1949. Indians in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter. Davids, A. 1981. Politics and the Muslims of Cape Town: A Historical Survey, in C. Saunders, H. Phillips and E. van Heyningen (eds), Studies in the History of Cape Town 4. Cape Town: University of Cape Town, pp. 174220. Desai, A. and Vahed, G. 2007. Inside Indenture: A South African Story, 1860 1914. Durban: Madiba Publishers.
Dhupelia-Mesthrie, U. 2000. From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South Africans. Cape Town: Kwela Books. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, U. 2007. The Limits to Visibility: Indian Women in the Transvaal, 1870s to 1930s. The Oriental Anthropologist 7(1):1738. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, U. 2009. The Form, The Permit, the Photography: An Archive of Mobility between India and South Africa, presented to Conference on Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics of the Indian Ocean, University of the Witwatersrand. Hiralal, K. 2000. The Economic Role of the Indian Commercial Class in Colonial Natal. Alternation 7(2). Joshi, P.S. 1942. The Tyranny of Colour: A Study of the Indian Problem in South Africa. Durban: Self-published. Kuper, H. 1960. Indian People in Natal. Durban: University Press. Meer, F. 1969. A Portrait of Indian South Africans. Durban: Avon House. Mendelsohn, R. and Shain, M. 2008. The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History. Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Mesthrie, R. 1991. Language in Indenture: A Sociolinguistic History of Bhojpuri-Hindi in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Mesthrie, U.S. 1985. Reducing the Indian Population to a Manageable Compass: A Study of the South African Assisted Emigration Scheme of 1927. Natalia 15:3656. Pachai, B. 1971. The International Aspects of the South African Indian Question 1860 1971. Cape Town: C. Struik & Co, Pty Ltd. Padayachee, V. and Morrell, R. 1991. Indian Merchants and Dukawallahs in the Natal Economy, c1875 1914. Journal of Southern African Studies 17(1):71102. Palmer, M. 1957. The History of the Indians in Natal. Natal Regional Survey 10. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Pillay, B. 1976. British Indians in the Transvaal: Trade, Politics and Imperial Relations, 1885 1906. London: Longman. Swan, M. 1985. Gandhi: The South African Experience. Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Vahed, G. 2001. Uprooting, Rerooting: Culture, Religion and Community among Indentured Muslim Migrants in Colonial Natal, 1860 1911. South African Historical Journal 45:191222. Vahed, G. 2005. Passengers, Partnerships, and Promissory Notes: Gujarati Traders in Colonial Natal, 1870 1920. International Journal of African Historical Studies 38(3):44979. Wetherell, V. 1946. The Indian Question in South Africa. Cape Town: Unie-Volkspers Bpk.
The Limits of Law in the Mandated Territories: Becoming Manamba and the Struggles of Sisal Plantation Workers in Tanganyika
Hanan Sabea
Anthropology, The American University in Cairo
This article examines the limits of legal regulation of sisal plantation workers in the Mandated Territories of Tanganyika 1923 1958. By focusing on the making of the 1923 Labour Ordinance and its subsequent amendments I demonstrate the tension and conict between colonial desires to control and manage labouring subjects, while simultaneously ensuring a regular ow of labouring bodies to plantations. The failures confronted on a daily basis in managing migrant labour that originated not only from diverse provinces within the territories but also from across the boundaries of empire rendered the limits of legal codes visible and necessitated their constant revisiting. Migrating men and women capitalissed on the ambiguity of the laws, the multiplicity of regulating agents, and a dense social network among migrant workers in challenging the laws as well as the racial and gendered assumptions about native subjects that were embedded in the laws and the practice of their implementation. Key words: British mandatory authority, colonialism, kipande, manamba, migrant labour, recruitment, sisal workers, twentieth-century Tanganyika
This article examines the limits of legal regulation of sisal plantation workers in the Mandated Territories of Tanganyika 1923 1958. With the introduction of sisal in 1893 into the then German East Africa and the eventual establishment of the sisal industry by the turn of the century, sisal plantations became, as Rodney once remarked, the colonial institution par excellence. Since then the quest for controlling people and moulding them into manageable subjects on the part of the state, and establishing a steady and disciplined labour force on the part of plantations never ceased to dominate the agenda of administrators and plantation managers. In the same vein, the attempt of workers to subvert and challenge these agenda in constituting their lives also never ceased to mark workers social reality. How these diverse agenda were formulated in laws that were recongured in practices is the subject of this article. Indeed as Kaplan and Kelly argued in the case of Fiji, in colonial societies, especially, the routinization of a ruling order, however productive, is inevitably vulnerable from many angles (1994:127). And among these many angles in the case of Tanganyikan sisal plantations, was the contingency of the Mandate status of the territories, the very illegibility of the laws (following Das 2007) formulated
by competing agents of the colonial state, as well as workers relentless recourse to tactics to manage the systems of control to which they were subjected and from whose powers and structures they were ofcially excluded. Combining oral histories of sisal workers with colonial archival records, I analyse the making and unmaking of the legal codes shaping the management of sisal plantation labour in Tanganyika under British mandatory authority. In designing and enforcing the legal framework to manage sisal labour, administrators and planters had to be cognisant not only of the effects of the re-ordering of Tanganyika political economic map after the First World War, or the demands of standardisation of the sisal industry that started to take more of a shape after the Depression. Equally pertinent were extra-territorial spaces that shaped the course of labour relations in the territories. The Mandate status and the supervisory functions of the Permanent Mandate Commission (PMC) inuenced directly and indirectly the design and implementation of labour legislation and practices on sisal estates. Additionally, oscillations in the world market of sisal left their imprints on the political capital and power of plantat4ion managers, their willingness to invest in labour, and their ability to enforce discipline on workers. The Second World War brought about signicant shifts in ideas about labouring native subjects, which shaped how managers and administrators dealt with the labour question. The trade union movement in East Africa and the activities of the International Labour Organization added another layer to developments within the sisal labour sector, specically during the last years of the Mandate when trade unionism and labour strikes reached their peak. In short, the making of the 1923 Labour Ordinance the hallmark of the legal apparatus regulating labour and its subsequent amendments bespeak thus the tension between the colonial desires to manage labouring subjects, legal stipulations of the Mandate, as well as pressures exerted from global markets and various international bodies. Equally important, the failures confronted on a daily basis in managing migrant labour rendered the limits of legal codes visible and necessitated their constant revisiting. Migrating men and women capitalised on the ambiguity of the laws, the multiplicity of regulating agents, and a dense social network among migrant workers in challenging the laws as well as the racial and gendered assumptions about native subjects.
The Mandate and the legal wrangle over labour When in 1917 the British started administering the territories formerly belonging to Germany, they confronted the dilemma of administration under a Mandatory system: namely having full governing powers over the territories, while being subject to regular oversight by and annual reporting to the PMC.
Respecting the labour question, and even prior to the formal establishment of the Mandate in 1922,1 the British were keen on negating any connotations of slave-holding,2 forced labour, and compulsion in the employment of what they construed as natives. Compulsory or forced labour for private enterprise was
The Limits of Law in the Mandated Territories 137
declared impermissible, while for/of public nature was limited to particular contexts, some of which relegated to the domain of the tribe and the customary, while the rest were justied as a service to the state (for example porters, public works, government requisitions). The former was further legitimated under the pretext of preserving and respecting native customs, while the latter was construed as a moral obligation to the state equivalent (and in some cases substitutable) to the payment of taxes.3 Compulsory work within the native domain was construed as merely one part of the duty of a citizen to the community to which he belongs and is rendered as a matter of course in accordance with native law and custom. Any interference with it would be bound to disturb the course of native life and to weaken the authority of the native chiefs which it is the duty of HMG to support (PRO CO/822/ 17/7/25263).4 Moreover, since the Mandate was built around the paramountcy of native interests, administratively implemented through indirect rule, HMG have not the power to interfere in the affairs of native communities to the extent that would be necessary to regulate in any detail the recourse to forced labour; in other cases such interference would be contrary to a fundamental principle of policy (ibid.). Yet, compulsory labour in whatever form was construed as antithetical to development and progress. Steps aiming at its eradication were not only obligatory on the British Government by virtue of their undertaking under the Mandate and the Forced Labour Convention, but were essential for the future welfare of the people of this Territory (PRO CO/691/130/5125). The contours of the labour question however were not limited to compulsion and use of force, but extended to notions of free will, compensation for work, and free movement. Indeed, until the 1950s in every annual report the British authorities had to submit to the PMC evidence of the free movement of labour and justication for the use of compulsory labour was included.5 However, whatever the nature of the problematic shaping the labour question, the assumption about the inherently male nature of working bodies conjured with a racialised construction of the native, resulting in a xation in the imagination (and consequently the regulation) of labouring subjects. This inability to see the presence of women and children (or to read the complexity of the composition of the work force) was written in the laws and enacted in practice, thus allowing labouring men and women space for shaping social realities on the plantations in ways never imagined nor desired by the colonial mandatory state and its agents. By virtue of the nature through which labouring men (and women) were constructed (or rendered invisible) in the technologies of writing of the state (Das 2007:163) labouring subjects struck back at the heart of the colonial state and its institutions.
The making of the 1923 ordinance
Initially (1917 1923) while taking cognisance of the international principles advocating free labour, the British administration continued German inherited
practices and laws governing labour relations, recruiting and contracts. Labour on the sisal plantations (a total of 91,892 workers) was divided into day (or casual) labour and contract (or recruited) labour. The day labourers were not bound to any master, and worked on plantations near their homes. They were usually given piecework, and paid for it the same day. Contract labourers were recruited upcountry, and were signed on for 180 or 240 working days (TNA ES/3046/11). References were also made to up-country migrant men who were voluntarily proceeding to the coast to look for employment (TT Annual Report 1922). First World War disruptions to the sisal plantation sector reduced the demand for labour, and with it the inclination on the part of the administration and plantation managers to change inherited conditions. Recruiting workers from one district to work in another continued under the supervision and control of the government.6 This entailed the presence of administrative ofcers at the time of contracting to safeguard the welfare of workers. Ofcers were to ensure: 1) consent of workers to the terms of contract which was limited to no longer than six months; 2) provision of services including housing, food, and travel costs; 3) proper remuneration depending on prevailing local rates; and 4) accompaniment by dependents to places of work. Already during these few years the administration felt the brunt of the continuation of the German laws, which fell into abeyance rendering conditions undesirable (Tanganyika Labour Department Report 1926). These included migrant labour squatting on abandoned plantations, non-payment of wages to workers especially during the 1920s slump in sisal prices, slackened discipline on the estates, and the roaming around of alien up-country natives in plantation districts threatening the norms and morality of gendered and racial relations. Further, the 1920 regulations aiming at standardising forms of contracts for labour recruitment lacked legal enforcement. Hence, the passing of the 1923 Master and Native Servants Ordinance, which specied the meaning of contract, regulated the work of recruiters, and detailed the conditions of service under which workers were to be employed. It is worth mentioning that despite few amendments, the 1923 Ordinance (Cap 51) remained the main legal framework for regulating labour relations until 1955, when the administration passed the Employment Ordinance No. 47 of 1955. The shift reects changes in how colonial administrators reconstructed the notion of the labouring native subject during the post-war era. The terms of the 1923 legislation remained ambiguous, embodying the inherent tension between a desire for control and adherence to the principles of consent and free will of workers,7 compensation for work, and the freedom to move within the territory (i.e. between districts) and across territorial borders. The ordinance also reected the interests of capital (represented by the lobby of plantation companies and settlers) in tightening their control over the various categories of workers employed, especially in terms of length of engagement, method of pay, possibilities for prosecution, and workers eligibility for provision of services. The ambiguity embedded within the ordinance allowed employers of labour to
nd loopholes to increase their control over workers at the least cost, much as it enabled workers to defy the powers exerted on them, whether by planters or administrators. By the same token, it allowed the administration to control as far as possible the movement of Africans and the work of recruiters, while simultaneously challenging any allegations by the PMC as to its handling of the labour question.
The binding contract
One of the ambiguities related to the denition of terms, including who was the native, servant, and what constituted a contract.8 Contract of service was any contract, whether in writing or oral, expressed or implied, to employ or to serve as a servant for any period of time. Later in the ordinance, it stated that a contract of service, which or a sufcient memorandum whereof, is not in writing and signed by the parties thereto, shall not be binding on the servant for a longer period than one month from the making thereof. Moreover, for workers engaged to work in another district, a contract was not binding unless it was written and signed, and more important bears an attestation or certicate by a magistrate or administrative ofcer, for which a fee was payable. Each written and attested contract had to specify: 1) nature and duration of work; 2) place of work; 3) rate of pay; and 4) interval at which wages were due. The length of the contract was set at a maximum of two years. Offences committed under the ordinance were criminal offences prosecuted under penal code. The administrative attesting ofcer, the employer and the employed each had to retain a copy of the contract. In practice this ordinance reected prevailing constraints faced by administrators and managers in dealing with labour and its various categories. The enforcement of contracts and the settlement of disputes between master and servant became a matter of difculty, while the resuscitation of the sisal industry foreshadowed a demand for recruited labour from the interior which it was deemed wise to regulate (TT Annual Report 1923). The crux of the ordinance, in terms of possibilities for prosecution, provision of services, and demarcation of offences by employees,9 targeted primarily one category of workers, namely recruited labour on a contract. The latters terms of engagement provided for maximum control: labour recruited by licensed agents, working in a district other than its own, under a legally binding contract, lasting for a specied term, with the contract written, signed, attested, and for which copies were available, fees were payable and legal prosecutions possible.10 Although kipande11 (labour card) was not recognised as a legally binding contract, the stipulation that contracts, or memoranda thereof, lasting for no longer than a month were sanctioned under the law, allowed indirectly for the inclusion of other categories of workers (voluntary and local) under legal rubric.
Recruited and voluntary: between free will and control
While the legal construction of contracts allowed for the division of workers along recruitment lines (hence the proliferation of classications of workers as contract,
recruited, attested on the one hand, and non-contract, unattested, voluntary, kipande, local on the other), the care of servants built on the local/migrant division. Housing, food, medical services, water supply, and repatriation were obligations due by the employer for only a servant employed at such distance from his home as to render it impossible for him to return to his home at the conclusion of daily work. Although legally recruited labour was under the tightest control for the purposes of administrators and managers,12 it was also at the highest cost, in terms of recruitment fees, service entitlements and administrative infrastructure. Local labour (both alien and native) was at little or almost no cost, yet workers engaged on a casual daily basis or even on a kipande for more than one month were outside the domain carved out by the original version of the ordinance. In later amendments, the administrative arm of the state aimed at engulng them under its regulatory and coercive powers. Voluntary labour, those who made the trip to the plantations on their own, had an ambiguous status under this law: they qualied for service provision as non-local labour, yet were hard to contain within the denition of contracts and offences outlined in the law. The difference between recruited and voluntary labour for the administration reected further the inherent tension between free labour movement on the one hand, and control over labour on the other. While recruited labour represented the maximum of control, it was tarnished with connotations of coercion and force in procuring workers, lack of choice as to place of work, and the obligation of staying away from home for a long time, as charged by members of the PMC against the Mandatory Authority.13 To denounce the allegations, Sir Cameron emphasised in 1927 that there was a distinct movement amongst the natives against labour on contract. The native was showing a tendency to choose his own employers and the Government was strongly of the view that it should do nothing to destroy this spirit (PRO CO/691/89/18168). The voluntary movement of workers was further presented by the administration as a sign that the labourer was becoming sophisticated (ibid.). This was hailed by the authorities as evidence of the success of the British administration in its civilising mission of making it possible for Africans (termed natives) to exercise choice within free labour markets. The dilemmas the administration faced with regard to recruited and voluntary labour came to the fore when the movement of labour entailed crossing territorial borders, a sore point with the Labour Group at the Geneva Conference. The latter precluded any restriction on the movement of labour from one area to another, a position which was based somewhat on the general principle that capital is free to move where it will and that labour ought to enjoy a like freedom (PRO CO/691/ 105/29532). In the same light, any systematic recruiting of native labour, was an approximation of indentured labour system (ibid.). While the British certainly had no qualms with labour movement into Tanganyika, they invoked the sanctity of administrative sovereignty14 when the Belgian
authorities applied to the Foreign Ofce (FO) for recruiting 1,000 natives from Kigoma. The FO claimed it had no opposition to the free movement of labour if it was only intended to apply within the area of a single Territory, but . . . must resist any suggestion that the right of an administration to control the emigration of labour over its frontiers ought to be restricted (ibid.). However, territorial sovereignty and the desire to retain labour in the territory for public works were objections unwise to quote to the Belgian Government, as it could easily be used against us in argument and represented (with a good deal of truth) as an instance of our preventing labour from seeking its most protable market (ibid.). These objections further could mean nothing but trouble over his [Sir Cameron, then Governor of Tanganyika] abroad policy of refusing consent to recruiting (ibid.). The FO hence proposed to maintain the past distinction in Tanganyika Territory between the recruiting of labour for outside the Territories which is not allowed [unless consent of governor is granted] and the free movement of labour which is allowed (ibid.). On both fronts, locally and internationally, the British proclaimed to adopt a policy of no interference with the free ow of voluntary labour, while recruiting (within the territories and outside) remained tightly regulated by law. Control and free ow were legitimated as guarding the welfare of the so-called native.
The Kipande: regulating time and movement
Within a couple of years, the British administration passed Ordinance No. 11 of 1926, whereby kipande became legally recognised.15 This amendment to the 1923 ordinance brought a whole array of workers (voluntary and local) previously spared the regulatory machinery of the state under the force of possible criminal prosecution.16 Facing an increased rate of absenteeism and desertion (both on the plantations and on route to the plantations) and with little success in tracing such workers, the amendment aimed at tightening the grip of administrators and planters over the time and movement of workers. The law specied maximum permissible time (six successive days) during which an employee could absent himself [or herself] from work without reasonable excuse or permission from an employer, after that the worker would be liable to prosecution. Further, it aimed at enabling administrators and managers to trace workers in cases of absenteeism or desertion through the details provided on labour cards, and the daily check of completion of work/task on the labour cards.17 This ordinance as well was limited to male workers, although women and juveniles also worked on plantations, but they rarely appeared on estate books, nor considered by administrators as part of the labour pool. This gendering of labour was not limited to the Tanganyika sisal plantations, as Cooper documents in both French and British Africa, Industrial man, in ofcials eyes, was indeed a male (1996:2, 1983). In the case of sisal more specically, the gendering of the imagination of labour was compounded by the insistence on the migratory nature of workers. The myth of the male migrant worker remained a key symbol of sisal labour until the present.
Like every other piece of legislation, the limitations of these two laws were magnied in practice resulting in an endless process of amendments and calls for revisiting the original version (1923 or Cap 51). Already by the late 1920s and early 1930s and compounded by the effects of the Depression administrators and employers of labour recognised the vagueness of the legislation and their inherent limitations. For instance, ofcials within the secretariat described the 1926 Kipande Ordinance as clumsily incorporated and rather mixed up (TNA v14/18679/Vol II). The Tanga Provincial Commissioner contended, there was no control of natives on plantation by legal means (PRO CO/691/ 125/31232).18 Employers of labour, prime among them members of the Sisal Growers Association, viewed the legislation as unworkable and of no value, and the present Master and Native Servants Ordinance was ineffective in its entirety in so far as the Planters were concerned (ibid.). Indeed as Das argued in the case of India, the illegibility of the laws was not limited to the marginalised on whom the laws were enforced, but equally pertinent to the thesis of the double nature of the state, is that functionaries of the state (and in the case of sisal its main beneciaries the planters) found the laws and their practices illegible (Das 2007:169). This illegibility and confusion, Das continued, blurs the boundaries between the legal and the illegal, and institutes the possibility of forgery, imitation and the mimetic performances of its [technologies of writing] power (2007:163). I will briey note some of the illegibility of the laws and its consequences as exemplied in the case of kipande, denition of native, and enforcement of penal code. Already by 1930, administrators perceived kipande as of all documents the most liable to fraud, and those in respect of which fraud is most frequently committed, or if not fraud, illegality (TNA v14/18679/Vol II). Yet, they recognised its pervasive use and even argued that, the African looks upon his labor card as his contract (TNA v14/25939). The legality of kipande as a form of contract was questioned within a few years of the enforcement of the 1926 law. In 1933 the Chief Secretary referred to it as merely an accounting memorandum (TNA v14/20352/Vol I). By 1937 the question of kipande legality centred on the unit of time19 by which the specication of the length of contract was set. The Kipande ordinance allowed for double the period of days shown on the card, whereas the 1923 law required recruited workers to be contracted for employment for a denite period expressed in days, weeks, or months. Hence [i]t would appear that all written contracts are illegal if the words Kipande or Labour Card appear under Head 2, Duration of Service, and therefore labourers whose names are shown on such contracts can desert with impunity (TNA v14/13066/Vol II). And indeed that was the case since workers insisted on exibility in the use of time. As the district commissioner wrote in 1937 in all the contracts concerned a healthy labourer need only have presented himself for work if he wished to do so, as the wording of the contract does not compel the employee to turn out daily for work, with the result that if he neither worked for the day nor attended the sick parade the conclusion
drawn has been that he has just taken a day off (PRO CO/691/167/42191/9). Hence the call for contracts to be made for the calendar month with provision for one and a half days rest during the week on full rations (ibid.). Ironically, the monthly engagement materialised not under the colonial Mandatory system, but rather under the post-independence regime! The furthest the Mandate went was in 1954 when it specied on the card a total of forty-two days during which thirty working days (i.e. one labour card) were to be completed. This legal wrangle of kipande, much as it reects the attempt to provide maximum guarantee over a specied and legally binding temporal unit, bespeaks the centrality of prosecution of labouring natives. Yet, the question of which laws civil or penal codes to apply to natives who breach their contracts involved more than just the administration within the territories. It implicated the Home Ofce in London, with its aims at standardising laws in British East Africa possessions, shielding itself from condemnation by British public opinion, and saving face within the international arena. The latter, represented in the International Labour Conference and the League of Nations, was inuenced by reformist critics who emphasised the morality and normalcy of colonial rule with the aim of ridding member states of a kind of colonialism [that] was not acceptable in polite company as in the cases of Leopolds Congo, Portuguese Angola, and Liberia (Cooper 1996:267).
Penal sanctions and the native
Within two years of passing the Master Native Ordinance, the PMC raised in 1925 the desirability of removing penal sanctions on employees for breach of contracts, especially with regard to desertion. Furthermore, it requested the removal of the power granted to the police to arrest Africans without warrant and without formal complaints led in court by employers, as well as reduction of the punishment from imprisonment to ne. While local administrators accepted the curtailing of police powers, they advocated imprisonment on the grounds that it was in the interest of the native himself, in his present stage of evolution (PRO CO 691/ 88/18085/27). A few years later (1930) the Secretary of State of the Colonies expressed the desire that any penal sanctions applicable to labour engagements should be eliminated or reduced to an absolute minimum, and that the relations of employer and employed should be left to be governed by the ordinary law (TNA v14/18679/Vol II). The Labour Committee appointed to deliberate the matter however recommended that the peculiar local conditions governing the circumstances of employment in Tanganyika Territory were such, that it was at present quite impossible to transfer the whole matter to the domain of civil law (ibid.). The reasons were framed again in the name of the native and progress. First, they argued most of the penal clauses anyway weighed heavier on the employer and the recruiter rather than on the labourer, to secure proper treatment for the employee
(TNA v14/18679/Vol II). And it is quite essential that this should be so, in order to protect the African labourer at his present primitive condition, which would otherwise render him liable to the oppressive exploitation by unscrupulous persons (ibid.). Second, with regard to the penal clauses against workers, they were provided to meet the situation created by the fact that the labourer is hardly ever in a position where any other penalty would be feasible. Moreover, since a labourer possessed very small means, he was thus in urgent need of prompt settlement of any dispute, a possibility enhanced under penal code (ibid.). Third, enforcing criminal procedures for contract breaking was a teaching mechanism. [I]f the native is to advance to a position where he is able to take advantage of the power of collective bargaining and similar modern methods, it will only be when he has realised the nature of a contract (ibid.). Therefore, if some effort is not made to impress this upon him, his progress will to that extent be retarded (ibid.). Finally, the Committee warned against the danger of introducing unduly advanced measures, merely to furnish a plausible but ctitious appearance of progress (ibid.). By 1936 the same Labour Committee altered its stance. [E]ducation, good working conditions and the provision of amenities will do more to decrease desertion than recourse to penal sanctions (PRO CO 691/167/42191/7). The rationale for such a shift was the ease with which natives can disappear, the difculty and expense of tracing them and bringing them to conviction added to the fact that a recaptured deserter is more likely to infect a whole gang than to add to output (ibid.). Yet, the shift also corresponded to a move within international circles towards posing the labour question in different ways. The problem was really in the hands of the employers, who should dispense with old habits of treating workers as an easily replaced quantity and offer normal wages and good treatment (Cooper 1996:30). One other domain the administration had to reshufe in the successive revisions of the Master Native Ordinance pertained to the very construct of the native. The 1923 law dened native as a member of the African race and includes a Swahili or Somali. The question was raised explicitly in 1934 when pressures mounted to incorporate international labour conventions in the revisions of the 1923 law. Sir Harold MacMichael (then governor) argued that such incorporation can only be achieved by abandoning the restriction of their application to native servants(PRO CO/691/141/25259). The Attorney General added, a satisfactory denition of native in a country such as Tanganyika is extremely difcult, if not indeed impracticable, especially in the coastal areas where the greater part of the sisal industry and many other labour employing activities are to be found (ibid.). Explicitly acknowledging the conjuring of native with race, he contended it can hardly be argued . . . that race is a defensible criterion by which to judge of the applicability of the law. Although in practice the great majority of servants and labourers are natives, there are a great many who are not natives. It is both logical and desirable that the special responsibilities imposed upon servants, and the protection afforded to them, should apply to all alike (ibid.). The desirability
for such elimination was further guided by the clauses of the Mandate that prohibited discrimination against any races or nationals. Yet, the Governor cautioned that he might nd it politically convenient not to press it to an issue given the possibility that public opinion may not yet be prepared (ibid.). And the looming threat of extensive and determined public agitation retained race (as one layer in the construction of the native) as the basic principle around which labour relations were ordered.20 The elimination of native (and race) from the legal framework did not take place until 1955. Gender however remained an unmarked category in the construction of labouring subject. Technical conundrum notwithstanding, the limitations of the laws were most evident in the process of their implementation, more precisely in the practice of everyday life as Das contends. I use the stories of workers pertaining to processes of procurement and movement to the plantations to show how the legal system faced its practical limitations on the ground.
Becoming Manamba
It was in 1952. I decided to sign manamba and come to Tanganyika for work, not because there is no work in Burundi. In Tanganyika there was more money to make.21 The further you go away for work the more money you earn. (Michael)
Michael was born in Belgian Congo (now Burundi) in the late 1920s, the youngest of six living siblings. His parents were wakulima (small farmers) who tilled a piece of land and he helped along. We used to farm one piece of land until it was tired and then we moved to another plot. My brothers were much older. They had their own children and their own plots. I helped my parents farm the land. When in 1952 at the age of twenty-four Michael signed manamba, meaning signing a contract as a recruited migrant worker, he was already married with two children. Following the pattern of many migrant workers on their rst trip to the plantations (Giblin 2005), Michael left his children and wife behind. I left my children with their mother so as not to have them ruka ruka [jump from one place to another] and decided to come here for work.
Some of my neighbors and I wanted to work. We went to the Labor Ofce in Burundi, district of Asidrida and wrote manamba. Manamba was for three years. There was a mzungu [white person] who wrote the manamba. I was part of a larger group of people who were signing up for work. The manamba was for three years because we came from outside Tanganyika. We all had one contract. They gave us one passport for all of us. We were 37 people, with only two women among us. Kabembe [labour recruiter] was the one who took us. He moves around the villages and tells people about work in Tanganyika. He said we were going to work in sisal.22
The road to the coast
From Michaels words manamba for one refers to the process of singing a collective contract. As he mentioned, there was one contract for a whole group of workers, who were attested and registered at the same time. And hence the
oft-recounted version of the meaning of manamba as a common word for migrants: manamba, numbers(Iliffe 1979:306).23 In their home areas, for administrators and for staff on the plantations migrant workers were also identied by their recruiter, and another usage of manamba came to designate the recruits of a particular labour agent. For instance, manamba ya Senga, meaning the manamba of Sanger,24 one of the most famous recruiters in Kigoma. Government ofcials, plantation managers/owners, and recruiting agents referred to a group of attested recruited labour with one contract as a batch, a gang and a safari. Safari literally meaning travel was in reference to a group of travelling migrant workers who arrived together and who would be repatriated to their home areas together. District ofcers also used the term imported labour to distinguish migrant from local workers (Tanga District Annual Report 1927). When in 1952 Michael embarked on the trip from Burundi to Tanga 170,568 other natives were on the road moving to places of employment and 112,310 others were returning from employment areas, giving a total of 282,87825 natives who passed through government labour camps on major routes of travel (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department Reports 1940 65). However, not all of them, or actually the majority of them, were non-recruited labour. The latter fell under the category of voluntary or non-contract labour. When he signed his contract, Michael also was one among 11,372 natives from Belgian Congo (twenty per cent of total) who went to Tanganyika seeking work, of a total of 57,884 nonTanganyika labourers coming from Northern Rhodesia, Portuguese East Africa and Nyasaland. That same year as well, the sisal industry employed a total of 114,190 workers (twenty-ve per cent of total wage employed in Tanganyika), of whom only twenty per cent (21,937) were recruited workers on contract, the rest were non-contract labour, of whom sixty-six per cent were local (including alien natives) and fourteen per cent voluntary. In addition to the male workers on the plantations, there were 23,485 listed as dependents, which were also engaged in some form of work on the estates (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department Reports 1940 65; TSGA Annual Reports 1942 65). To place these gures historically, the 1950s represent the peak of labour in sisal, as well as the maximum reached in the numbers of recruited workers. Thus, ironically known as numbers, the numbers of manamba on the plantations even during their prime years betrays the label. With regard to proportion of workers on sisal estates, recruited workers on contract reached the maximum of twenty-six per cent of the total sisal labour force in 1953, and during most of the 1950s they stabilised between twenty and twenty-four per cent. Labour Department statistics available from 1942 onwards indicate an average of fteen per cent recruited on contract of total workers on the plantations. The rest was lumped under the category non-contract without further distinctions. Conscription for sisal work was enforced between 1944 and 1946 and conscripts constituted about twelve per cent of the total work force. Sisal maintained its average share of thirty to thirtyve per cent of total wage employment during most of its history. The areas of
supply of labour varied. While the Lake Province followed by the Western Province provided the bulk of recruits prior to the Second World War, during the post-war era the Southern Highland and the Western Provinces supplied most recruited labour to sisal, followed by Lake and the Southern Provinces (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department Reports 1940 65; TSGA Annual Reports 1942 65).
Passing the desired bodies: medical tests and tax tickets
Michael recollected:
He [Kabembe] said we were going to work in sisal. We got in his car and only 17 could t. We were given money before we left26, which was enough for the trip. We drove in his motorcar to Bujumbura and from there we got on a boat to Kigoma. There we had to go through the medical tests and only those said to be t passed.
Medical testing was enforced as a prerequisite for recruited labour by virtue of Ordinance No. 24 of 1928. Medically examined workers were divided into ve grades. Grade 1 and 2 designating those t for heavy work; Grade 3 for light work; Grade 4 for very light work; and Grade 5 was unt. According to the director of medical services, the criteria of tness of labourers were good muscular development, up to standard weight, a haemoglobin level of 80 per cent or over, and clinical tness; the presence of a few parasites in men who conform to the above-stated standard would not be any reason for rejecting them as t labourers (TNA v14/13066/Vol I).27 Michael remembered:
Before signing [the contract] medical tests had to be completed and those declared unt were returned to their home villages. Some of the unt were given treatment to qualify for the second round of testing with another gang of manamba. The testing was mainly measuring of height, weight and some body examination. We also had to give stool and urine sample and blood. We did not understand what they said. But there was a certain way of how you looked that qualied you as t. You were supposed to look above 16 years28, since children were not allowed as manamba. You had to have muscles and be tall. That was what counted most.
The procedure of medical examination undertaken by Michael in 1952 resonates with the description provided by the medical ofcer in Kigoma in 1928.
The recruits are lined up in order according to the list on the contract form. They are then brought into my ofce in pairs, leaving all clothing including caps outside. Each pair is then examined for specic diseases, and if found free they are then considered from the point of view of physique. Any who seem to be unable to carry a safari load on the day of the examination are rejected. Each man is then asked to state his name, which when found on the list is ticked off as t or deleted as unt. If considered necessary a bacteriological examination is carried out at the time for Sleeping Sickness. (TNA v14/12431/Vol I)
The passing of the 1928 ordinance was motivated by several instances where recruited labour (primarily from Kigoma) sent to the plantations was unt for work.29 This triggered uproar among planters who felt cheated of their moneys worth (fees for recruiting, attestation, advance wages and taxes, transport expenses
and rations along the road).30 Receiving unhealthy or unt bodies mitigated against the aims of plantations of limiting the ow of workers to able-bodied adult men who were strong and not suffering from any endemic diseases, to withstand the long trip to the coast, the change in climate and diet. Able-bodied healthy men were the only ones imagined as capable of completing the task of one ton of bre per worker, thus achieving optimal production, reducing medical costs and decreasing the number of sick-days per worker (TNA 304/25/6/2). The administration not only had to deal with angry planters, but equally important, bear the cost of repatriating destitute workers who wandered around the plantations (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). Passing unt workers by government employees (i.e. the medical and administrative ofcers) added to the liability bill the government had to bear, paying for the cost of repatriation and the refund of commission fees paid by the estate to the recruiter (TNA/v14/13066/Vol I).31 Further, viewing Africans as the vectors of diseases, medical examination allowed for some degree of control over the spread of diseases that were believed to be transmitted from one part of the territories to another through the movement of natives.32 Restricting diseases (especially sleeping sickness and meningitis) to certain areas were goals constantly subverted by the free and unregulated movement of voluntary labour. Medical examinations of workers allowed for selection of the kinds of bodies to move around the territories, hence the additional value from the perspective of administrators and managers placed on recruited labour in comparison with voluntary labour. Medical testing was coupled with screening of populations, imposition of quarantine, and the closure of certain districts to population movement (TNA v14/11557 Vols III and IV). Workers who intended to make the move to the coast however were not inhibited by the array of restrictions imposed. If certain areas were closed, they walked to other stations that were open or continued to the coast as voluntary workers. The would-be recruits after walking the hundred odd miles from their homes to nd work would not walk back again to their homes, they would walk on further if they were not recruited here (TNA v14/11557/Vol III). Looking at workers through the tribal lens, administrators and managers also conjured ideas about the kinds of bodies to pass and the different tribes within the territories, guided in that endeavour by the compilation of information on the different tribes. For instance, in 1928 the Waha from Kigoma were said to be not renowned for their physical powers. The people . . . have had little contact with the outer world in the past, they do not travel or at least they did not travel (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). Such images about the Waha continued into the late 1930s.33 Yet within a decade, with the increased demand for labour and the reliance on the Western Province as a major area of supply, the Waha became the source of valued labour, a quality they retain until the present. Testing was also envisioned as tightening the grip of the administration over the operation of recruiters, screening out (through permits, fees, and proof of sound
nancial standing) undesirable labour agents or touts, who scramble to seize every able bodied native (TNA v14/25516). Medical testing also constituted an additional means through which control over African taxpayers can be exerted and legitimised. Only those with valid tax tickets could be medically examined for recruiting. In sum, medical testing and attestation of workers was a means of facilitating the functions of the state in rendering society manageable and legible (Scott 1998:2). However, testing had its limitations. If every batch of recruits were submitted to full exhaustive exam and all with potential or actual disease excluded until cured, the employers of labour would have very few labour left on their estates (TNA v14/13066/Vol I). Recruiters always found ways of subverting the system and getting as many bodies as they could through to the plantations. Substituting workers, using false names, or asking would-be-recruits who did not look tting the criteria to join a safari after examination was completed,34 were not uncommon practices. One recruiter even went further threatening the medical ofcer that a strict medical examination frightened labour away. And if too close an examination was made he would stop sending his men altogether (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). What brought the question of medical examination and the resultant recruiting of the wrong stamp of native (PRO CO/691/167/42191/9) to full administrative and international attention (the PMC and the Labour Group in Geneva) were a large number of deaths . . . reported to have taken place among employees on sisal estates on the Central Line in 1937. This was followed by a number of native labourers being repatriated to their homes in a terrible state of health and suffering from extreme debility and neglect (ibid.). A series of strikes followed one after the other on several sisal plantations, which have been usually due to breach of contract on the part of the employer due to feeding and tasks (TNA v14/11168/Vol I). The explanations and justications for the incidences generally oscillated between the poor supervision and control over recruiting and the laxity of controls on the plantations over the feeding, medical care, sanitary conditions and movement of workers. The former was blamed on pressures exerted on medical ofcers who hurry over their inspections to meet impatient recruiters (ibid.). This hurried inspection was exacerbated, especially during the late 1930s, with the surge in labour demand for sisal plantations after the effects of the Depression withered away. Given this increased demand, new areas and tribes were tapped by recruiters. It appears that peripatetic labour from the Belgian Mandated Territories of Ruanda and Urundi had this year for the rst time been contracted in considerable numbers in the Western Province for work in the sisal areas . . . They were, however, unable to adapt themselves to the low altitude of the Eastern Province or to maintain working health on the diet locally available (ibid.). The unsophisticated native who viewed all medical attention with profound distrust and in some cases they would, when ill, retire to the bush rather than report sick
(ibid.) served as the second excuse. The Asiatic sub-assistant surgeons whose conception of their duties is apt to be purely formal and lacking in imagination (ibid.) added to the state of affairs. Since these incidences also coincided territorially and internationally with shifts in how the labour question was posed, the role of the industry and employers in controlling and educating their labour was paramount. More checks with regard to the feeding of workers, ning them if sanitary conditions were not followed, fencing off the labour camps, appointing of askaris in the camps to oversee workers, daily checking on the whereabouts of each worker, immediate reporting of deserters, and generally keeping in closer touch with the labour (ibid.), were recommendations made to the industry to avert similar incidences in the future. But hurried inspectors and unscrupulous recruiters were not the only limitations of medical testing. Workers who wanted to move to a place of work found their way around medical examinations. The Tabora labour ofcer observed in 1940 I am not certain men struck off the lists by the Medical Ofcer are not included in list of dependents etc. on the following contract, or perhaps given an ordinary railway ticket to enable them accompany their party (TNA v14/11557/Vol V). And Michael witnessed some of us were qualied unt, but they really wanted to come. They used to agree with others who were tested as t to declare them as dependents, so that they could cross and arrive at the place of work. Beside medical exams the administration (under pressure from powerful sisal interests) instituted in 1937 (Government Notice No. 31) valid tax tickets as a prerequisite for recruited labour on a contract. Non-Tanganyika workers were to present in addition to tax receipts, an identication certicate, also referred to as the identication book (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV). The aim, much like medical testing, was to allow only desired bodies to move around the Territories between districts and provinces. Cleansing the labour market of potential diseases and disease carriers was an undisputed aim for administrators and managers. Tax tickets were also a venue for controlling the spread of diseases. For instance, in sleeping sickness areas, natives who were vaccinated got marks on their tickets. Those who lacked such marks were considered carriers of the disease and hence not allowed to cross the boundaries of infected areas (TNA v14/ 11557/Vol IV). Additionally, tax tickets were a means of identifying natives, tracing their movement and assuring that taxes were paid in the home areas before adult males migrated. For provincial administrators ensuring a steady ow of revenue (which primarily came from African hut and poll tax) was a priority in demonstrating development within their areas of administration. Linking recruiting to the holding of a valid tax ticket also allowed for controlling the number of men leaving certain districts. District and provincial administrators were worried about depopulation and not having enough able-bodied men for the planting season (TNA/v14/11557/Vol III). Further in sleeping sickness areas, the fear
was of less bodies and reduced vegetation, and hence increased spread of the disease (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV). Through tax tickets workers were also traced for purposes of remitting wages to home areas, identifying deserters or those who committed legal offences. But much like medical tests that could be evaded, tax ticket identication had its aws. Tax tickets were borrowed and paratas were loaned so that it was frankly impossible to say with accuracy whether a-would-be recruit had a tax ticket or not, or in other words it was practically impossible to identify him by means of a tax ticket (TNA/v14/11557/Vol III). Though initially applauding the restrictions, within a year employers of labour resented the imposition, since it slowed down the ow of labour, both recruited and voluntary. Since sisal estates had been involved in the collection of taxes from alien natives living on their estates, hence allowing for the remittance of revenue to districts from which labour came, they were unable to understand why restriction should be placed on natives who have failed to pay their tax in home district with consequence that free ow of labor is impeded (TNA v14/11557/ Vol IV).35 Government ofcials also came to realise the limitations of the tax tickets. The reasons included: (a) it is by no means infallible and encourages trafc in tax tickets between natives desiring employment; (b) it associates the payment of tax with eligibility for recruitment both in the mind of the native and, strange to say, in the mind of the DO [district ofcer]; and consequently (c) it irritates employers and recruiters because they cannot or will not understand the real object (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV). The main culprit for trafc in tax tickets and the defying of medical regulations was the category of voluntary labour. While Michael came from Burundi as a recruited worker on a three-years contract, Dunia, from Upa in the Southern Highland Province came to pwani, meaning the coast in 1947, as a voluntary worker. Dunia was born during the First World War. He worked in Upa as askari nzige [watchman on locust control scheme]. The money he made was not enough to meet his needs and those of his family of a wife and three children. He started thinking of ways to earn more money. Some of his relatives from the village had already gone to Amboni in Tanga as manamba to work on sisal plantations.
There were other options for work when I decided on sisal, but the nauli [wages, money you earn] and huduma [services] on the estates were better than other kinds of work, like in coffee, cashewnut, tea or kapok. I did not want to work in coffee because it does not pay and we did not know it and its conditions. We only knew of sisal and its conditions. Wenzangu [my people, relatives] had gone to Amboni and they wrote to us about their life on the estates [mashambani].
With the resolution to seek work in sisal, particularly on Amboni Estate where his relatives were, Dunia started saving up money for the trip. Some time later:
I took a car from Upa to Mbeya costing me 30/.36 I waited for a week in Mbeya, because the train had already left and the next one was in a week. From Mbeya I took the rail to Korogwe. In Korogwe I waited for 2 days and then got on a bus to Tanga,
which was 3/. I knew that I was going to Amboni, and I asked people around and they showed me the way. I arrived at shamba la Amboni and looked for wenzangu [my relatives] who are Wapa as well. I slept with them that night in the camp and in the morning I went to the ofce and registered myself as a cutter and started to work there. My kipande was for a year. But I stayed at Amboni for three years after that.
As I mentioned above, migrant workers who made the trip from their home areas to the plantations on their own, constituted the bulk of the sisal labour force. Voluntary labour became more prominent as a form of engagement with the expansion in social knowledge about the sisal industry. This became possible through the movement of workers back and forth to plantations, the sharing of knowledge between old and newcomers about which plantations were good and which were to be avoided, and the social networks that linked plantations on the coast to villages geographically distanced by thousands of miles. The social space between villages and plantations collapsed in movement, shared knowledge, and social networks. Physical distance became socially compressed. Even for recruited labour, this expanded horizon of knowledge had its implications. In actual practice the large majority of natives, who engage on a contract, have a very fair knowledge, through village gossip, of the conditions on the estates for which they volunteer, and recruiters nd it easy to obtain labour for some estates and difcult for others (TNA v14/13948 Vol I). This knowledge and shared social space enabled workers to construct their own ideals of manamba: free to choose employer, free to move around the country and around estates in search of the optimal conditions of work. This freedom constituted one of the main pillars upon which sisal workers based their power in their encounter and negotiations with colonial administrators and estate managers. These two latter groups recognised the power of workers that came with such knowledge. It was not uncommon for administrators to acknowledge the ability of workers to nullify all our efforts at a system of control (TNA v14/11557 Vol IV). For administrators, voluntary workers, their movement and their settling in plantation areas, were a major threat. And various schemes were tried to tighten the control over such movement, especially within plantation areas. As Michael recalled: If you walked around you had to carry your cheti [identication card, permit] showing that you are working on a particular estate and that you have paid your taxes. If you dont have it with you, you can be locked up. And hence, recruited labour remained for the colonial administrators the optimal form of control over labor movement (TNA v14/11557/Vol III). It enabled the administration to deal with the labour question in ways that were manageable (Scott 1998). For plantation managers, the contract number of a gang became one of the markers of the gangs identity in as far as a lot of workers with a theoretical life span on the plantation. The marking by number was thus also a time-marking, its dening
feature being the length of the contract. The time-marking was important for estate managers to replenish their requirements of labour, since upon completion of a contract, the estate was legally bound to repatriate recruits to their home areas. Yet, in many instances, recruits decided to sign on as voluntary labour after the completion of their contracts. Still in terms of each plantation economics, prior to the termination of each gangs contract another order for workers was placed with recruiting agencies. The aim was to have a regular and guaranteed ow of labour all year round. In terms of economic and social value, not sheer numbers, recruited workers constituted the core of that body of labour. It symbolised for managers the most guarantees (in terms of possibilities of legal prosecution), the highest degree of control (in ordering a calculated number of bodies for a targeted production over a specied time, in enforcing tasks, and tracing people), and the maximum uniformity and regularity. Like managers, the contract time-marking was important to colonial administrators, who looked at workers with completed labour cards as time-expired men, whose presence was a nuisance as detribalized or alien natives in the plantation areas. For workers, on the other hand, the time-marking had a different meaning. It signied a transformation in the social status of a worker and his/her acceptance as full member within the collective. Manamba was reserved for newcomers to the estate, who were also referred to as wageni (strangers, guests). Once a worker completed his/her labour cards (vipande) they were transferred to the status of wenyeji (natives of a place, inhabitants, hosts in relation to guests, or wageni).37 Once this transformation took place, workers became recognised by their fellows as knowledgeable persons who can transmit their acquired knowledge onto others; they became full members within the community of practice (Lave 1991:29) on the estate.
When you are still a mgeni you follow your wenyeji all day. They will teach you all you need to know about work. They will tell you about the estate and its different parts and names, the elds and their numbers. They will teach you language. The wenyeji take care of the newcomers and teach them how to work and live on the estate. (Francis, sisal cutter, August 1996)
Manamba for workers thus was a social process of learning whose entry was marked by the signing of the collective contract and its end by the completion of the contract labour cards. And while manamba for workers was socially dened blurring the lines between recruited and voluntary labour, the delineation between the two was signicant for managers and administrators. On the basis of the demarcation different measures of control were envisioned and exercised. For estate managers, estate economics (output and productivity per worker) rendered also recruited labour the least problematic compared to other forms of labour.38 For most managers and administrators the labour question was summed up as one of high turnover, desertion, absenteeism, long and costly journeys and low output (TNA v14/30011). With that general outlook on labour,
managers like administrators believed that contracted recruited labour was more susceptible to control, was cost-effective in terms of training and output over a specied period of time, easier to conform to a regimented work routine, and disposed to hard work and submission to authority (TNA v14/13948 Vol I). However, managers and administrators also recognised the benets that accrued from other types of labour (voluntary and local) and its constant movement: a regular ow of experienced and willing men at lower costs, as well as a pool of labour to supplement the core of recruited workers. Managers were caught between the contradictions embedded within their own interests: having a stable permanent labour force yet enjoying the gains from a free ow of labour. Additionally, labour movement, especially of voluntary workers, and the knowledge that expanded with it, was considered one of the best means of advertisements for increasing wage employment, one of the parameters of development within the Territories. Yet, these labour categories had also their backlashes, namely desertions and absenteeism. Under written forms of contracts, desertion was illegal. Recruited labour appeared as the most vulnerable to the legal machinery designed to tighten the controls over workers. However, despite all controls, desertions and absenteeism remained high to the lament of administrators and managers, not only of sisal, but also of the various agricultural enterprises in the territory. Higher wages and claims to better working and living conditions were good enough reasons to entice labour to move. Deploring the inability to handle desertions, an estate manager wrote in 1946 all our efforts to stabilize and rationalize labour to the benet of both employer and labour . . . are about to break down and degenerate into a wage war between the various agricultural industries (TNA v14/12431/Vol II). Desertions and absenteeism at the same time resulted in cleavages between administrators and managers. The former were eager to prosecute for either offence and blamed managers for their reluctance to keep a close watch on the whereabouts of the workers on the estate or to le cases in court (TNA 4/729/1). For instance, in 1953 there were 1,276 cases of reported desertions, with only 279 cases brought to the courts (Tanganyika Annual Labour Report 1953). Additionally, labour ofcers contended that the pernicious system of weekly advances . . . is to a very large degree responsible for absenteeism (TNA 4/962/9). Some ofcers went as far as deploring conditions on the estates, which forced workers to absent themselves in order to increase their income and food resources (ibid.). Much like desertion, recruited attested labour was the least inclined to regular absenteeism,39 and hence most valued for its regularity. Yet, for the same reasons that administrators and managers preferred attested contract labour, workers detested it as oppressive (TNA 4/962/9).40 But for many, this was a timed phase, bound to terminate with the end of the contract, when workers socially passed into full members of a community of practice. Many of the workers who started their engagement in sisal as attested recruited
labour, decided to reengage, after completion of their initial contract, as voluntary labour. Others decided to settle in neighbouring villages, acquired land to farm, married within Tanga communities, and continued working as local labour on the plantations. For many workers, manamba was thus more than just a number on a contract. It was a socially marked time, that translated into multi-layered notions of freedom which allowed workers to construct and reproduce their life and work on the plantations as a way of life (Francis, sisal cutter, June 1996). Constructed as such, many workers were able to negotiate the harsh conditions under which they worked and lived on the plantations. Although the technologies of governance of the colonial state had permeated their everyday lives, it was also precisely there that they confronted the machinery of the state, rendering its limitations visible, and its coercive power and abuses explicit.
Notes 1. The Mandate clauses (Article 5, sections 34) made explicit reference to labour, prohibiting all forms of forced and compulsory labour, except for essential public works and services and only in return for adequate remuneration (The British Mandate for East Africa, PRO CO 737/2). 2. With regard to slavery, the Indian penal code, which makes the detention of a person against his will as a slave a punishable offence, was applied to the Territory in 1920 (Tanganyika Territory (henceforth TT) Annual Report 1921). In June 1922 slavery was legally abolished. The ordinance prohibits the detention of any person against his will in service as a slave or the recognition by the courts of the status of slavery, and further secures from dispossession of his property a person who may be alleged to have been a slave (TT Annual Report 1922). 3. [N]atives may commute their tax for a period of labour on the roads and on necessary works of advantage to the community, but compulsory labour in lien of tax has been instituted only sparingly and as a last resource in the case of recalcitrant natives who are suspected of habitually avoiding their liabilities to the state. In no case is labour substituted for taxation if tax is forthcoming in cash, or produce, or live-stock (TT Annual Report 1921). 4. Labour to the chiefs was also rationalised as feudal due. It is in a way incorrect to regard labour for the benet of a chief as forced labour. It is really in the nature of a feudal due or service (PRO CO/822/17/7/25263). If not for the chief per se, labour was deemed necessary for village public works. People called upon for native or public works were limited to men above the age of eighteen, their numbers being proportionate to the density of population in a given area. 5. By the 1950s the rhetoric of decolonisation shaped the debate and manner of reporting on forced labour. As all ofcers are fully aware, imperialism, or as it is now the fashion to call it, colonialism, is under constant and often hostile criticism, not only from the propaganda machines of the Soviet Union and her satellites, but from India, some of the South American nations, and (though to a decreasing extent) from the United States. The admission by Colonial powers that they employ thousands of men-days of forced labour each year can easily be exaggerated by hostile propaganda . . . It is therefore important that the numbers of those returned as being required to do forced or compulsory labour should not be over-stated (TNA 304/L1/28). 6. Except for conscription during the Second World War, the administration both German and British did not get involved in direct recruiting for private enterprise, though their support for the plantation sector never ceased. The central administration in Dar es Salaam regularly issued circulars urging district ofcers to support calls for labour by plantations; ofcers in
7.
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10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
turn summoned local chiefs to accomplish the same task. Individual private recruiters (mostly Greek, but also Indians and Germans) or trusted employees on the estates (especially headmen) would travel to recruiting areas and along the borders to enlist workers, earning the title of the scramble to seize every able-bodied native (TNA v14/25516). Though the colonial state was not directly involved in recruiting, it was immensely implicated in regulating the movement of Africans, the length and conditions of contracts, labour recruiters, as well as the provision of necessary infrastructure for Africans on the move to and from places of work. The ordinance specied: No written contract of service shall be enforced as against any servant who is unable to read and understand writing unless it bears an attestation or certicate by a magistrate or administrative ofcer to the effect that he read over and explained the contract to the servant and that he is liable to criminal prosecution for breach of the contract and that the servant voluntarily assented to the contract with full understanding of its meaning. Servant was limited to native, the latter meaning a member of an African race and includes a Swahili or Somali. Servant meant any native employed for hire, wages, or other remuneration, with a host of possible forms of work listed ranging from labourer, to herdsmen, clerk, sailor, messenger, porter and domestic servant. Offences committed by servants were divided into minor and major breaches. The former included failure to commence service, absenteeism from work, neglect of duty, use of property belonging to employer, use of abusive or insulting language to his employer/supervisor, giving false names or addresses, and refusing to obey command. Major offences included damaging the property of employers and desertion, i.e. quitting service without good reason and before working off or paying back advances obtained from an employer. Offences by employers were failure to pay wages, return property of servant or provide services as stipulated in the ordinance. For comparative instances within British Africa see Cooper 1996:44 5. Kipande means labour card and started as a system regulating labour at the turn of the century in the Usambara. Within a short space of time it spread around sisal plantations and became the main marker of its labour relations. Kipande was premised on combining time and task in setting the parameters of work, pay, and the length of the working day. The system looked like this: [T]he employer supplies the employee with a card showing the mans name, rate of pay, nature of work, etc., etc., and 30 blank spaces for days worked; as the employee completes his daily task, a space is lled in and when all the spaces are lled, the wages due are paid (TNA v14/13066/Vol II). Recruited labour for employers meant security that the men provided will remain for a reasonable time to work (PRO CO/691/99/29125). Private recruiters were also a major source of disturbance to the administration in terms of their competition for working bodies, the means used to capture labour to work on the estates, allegations of fraud, and dubious alliances with chiefs to supply workers. The law empowered administrative ofcers to issue permits for recruiters after examining their nancial standing and professional reputation. The governor was empowered to limit recruiting in certain areas, impose regulations as to feeding, advances and transport of recruited labour, and impose such conditions upon labour agents and the recruitment of natives as servants as he may consider proper for the protection of natives. Crimping of labour (also known as poaching) was declared a criminal offence. The French, similar to the British, were alarmed about the international community meddling in national territorial matters (Cooper 1996:30). A contract made under this Ordinance shall not be required to be in writing, but the employer shall give to the servant a memorandum thereof (herein called a labour card). The latter had to specify: 1) name, address and signature of employer; 2) name of servant, his father, his headman and district; 3) nature of employment; 4) number of working days; 5) daily wage
16.
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20. 21.
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rate; 6) a notication of each day upon which a days work is performed by the servant under the contract. It is worth noting that this legislation was passed at a time when the labour situation was described as the worst in the history of the local sisal industry (Tanga District Annual Report, 1925). Reasons for such a state of affairs included competition from the Lupa goldelds, railway construction, rubber tapping, cotton production by natives in Tabora and Mwanza, and restrictions on recruiting in some districts due to the spread of sleeping sickness. The law also allowed for double the time entered as length of the kipande. Recruited workers were also engaged on kipande, whereby the length of the contract was computed on the basis of so many labour cards of so many working days each to be completed within a specied period of days or calendar months (TNA/13066/Vol II). In his 1936 report on labour conditions on sisal estates, Mr Longland argued that the 1923 law has broken down (TNA H3/23544). Administrative ofcers in 1937 were instructed to refrain from taking drastic action in matters involving interpretation of the law as it now stands (TNA v14/ 13066/Vol II). The labour ofcer in Tanga complained, we do not in this Territory need very elaborate legislation to deal with [labour] matters. We require simplicity and briefness combined with usefulness and an ordinance which is easily workable (TNA v14/25475). The unit of time was also intimately related to payment of wages: wages were computed on the basis of daily tasks. However except for casual labour, wages were not set on daily basis. [I]n practice a contract is made for a monthly, not a daily, wage and the amount of the monthly wage cannot conveniently be sub-divided so as to be expressed as a daily wage. Moreover, some labour work upon a combination of piece and time work, a days work being marked on the card when a given task is performed, the labourer being free to take more or less than the time of a normal working day to perform it (PRO CO/691/99/29125). Tanganyika presented a similar case to Lourenco Marques where categories of labour, like manamba and indigenato, mixed race and class relationships (Penvenne 1995:5). Other reasons might have included the use of forced labour for public works practiced in the Belgian Congo and the labour conditions on the Belgian mines, which rendered Tanganyika attractive (TNA v14/11557 Vol III). Zakaria, a Mhutu from Burundi recounts a similar experience to Michael. He used to work as a cook at a French mission station in Burundi. I stopped that work because God had written that down for me. I thought I would get more money by coming here. He added that the group with whom he left home consisted of more than eighty people and only a few could get on the car of the same recruiter, Kabembe, who also arranged for Michaels trip to Tanga. Zakaria added Kabembe is German and he was the recruiting man in Burundi. He worked under Sanger the other recruiting man in Kigoma. Kabembe stayed in Burundi and he used to send manamba to Tanganyika from Rwanda, Congo and Burundi. This was his work, to get people to work on contract in Tanganyika. Kabembe met me near my home and told me about the work in Tanganyika. His car was small and we crossed the border to Tanganyika with him, then we took the train to Kigoma. Another version of the derivation of the term manamba is many or innumerable due to the high number of workers who were involved in sisal work, many of whom were recruited from distant areas. Sago explains that Sanger started large-scale recruiting of labour in Kigoma in 1927. This [Sanger] became a household name in Kasulu district, most long distance migrants having passed through the hands of Sangers agents. Manamba ya Senga is a phrase which survived and attested to the dominance of this individual in labour recruitment (1983:68). For similar stories of recruitment and movement to the coast see Giblin 2005. To put this gure in some context, that year there were 443,597 people in regular wage employment. Since 1926 the Labour Department compiled statistics of workers passing through government labour camps, which were built along major travelling routes to areas of employment.
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34.
35.
It should be noted however that more labourers made it to employment areas without passing through the government labour camps. Government Notice No. 39 of 1928 regulated the amount of advances paid to workers before embarking on the trip to the coast. It set the maximum at half the amount of monthly wage payable to the worker. At the same time, taxes due in home districts were also payable by the recruiter and deducted from wages on the plantations (PRO CO/691/99/29125). Medical ofcers stationed in recruitment areas argued the only criteria for tness lie in the clinical assessment and rejection of obviously unt and borderline cases (TNA v14/13066/ Vol I). The 1923 law dened child as less than sixteen years and children were prohibited from wage employment. By 1930 the Labour Committee recommended the reduction of age of child to twelve years and the addition of the category young person (ages twelve to sixteen) who were eligible for wage employment (TNA v14/18679/Vol II). Some of the workers died on the road, while others died upon arrival. There were two cases of lepers, and some were found in a destitute condition roaming the villages and the bush around the plantation (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). These cases brought to light the complacency of some recruiters in substituting workers after they were medically tested and the length to which workers would go to make their trip to the plantations, if they were declared unt. Lack of proper medical examination, the conditions of the trip, and workers gambling away their posho money or even posho itself were further factors. Hence the beginnings of the calls for the institution of identication cards for travelling natives (ibid.). Administrators and managers thought of recruited labour as property, and hence the loss to employers when batches of recruited labour were damaged. The labour commissioner wrote: In the case of this particular property, the unfortunate employer has now, in all, had some sixty men sent to him who have proved unt for work; on these he has paid recruiting fees, registration fees, the medical ofcers private emolument for inspecting the recruits and in addition, the rail fare from Kigoma (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). Failures at medical examination in recruitment areas increased government costs by adding medical examination and treatment at government labour camps (TNA v14/13066/Vol I). By 1930 compiling demographic statistics became an administrative urgency. [W]ork was urgently needed on such questions as the spread of disease from infected areas of employment to uninfected areas of recruitment; the physical effects of the introduction of the wage-earning habit on tribes previously unaccustomed to it; the alteration in the diet of the native owing to his experience on the plantations and the physical result of this; the effect on the fertility of a tribe of the absence of a portion of its male members at work at a distance (TNA v14/ 18679 Vol II). The Chief Inspector of Labour wondered in 1939: Why do sisal planters continue to get Kigoma labor. It is notoriously inefcient and there are other sources of supply in Tanganyika (TNA v14/13066/Vol I). Qualities of workers by tribe were not limited to physique. Attitudes toward recruiting and recruiters were believed to differ. The Irangi will not have anything to do with the professional recruiter; others like the Angoni, utilise his services reluctantly; others again, such as the Haa depend almost entirely on contracts for nding work (TNA v14/12215). A worker testifying before the labour ofcer said: When I was contracted at Singida by Mr. Kikkides, the recruiter, he told me not to go before the Medical Ofcer with the other natives. I did not go for a medical examination, nor did I go before the District Ofcer. When the labourers returned from the Boma [district headquarters], I was told to accompany them on the journey to Kilosa. I have a deformed ankle which is the result of a fall when I was a child. I cannot walk properly (TNA v14/13066/Vol I). Government Notice No. 33 of 1937 allowed Africans to pay taxes in districts other than their own.
36. 30/ in the 1944 were equal to a monthly wage of a semi-skilled worker in the Southern Highlands and double that of an unskilled worker. The former ranged from between 15 and 30/; the latter between 8 and 15/ (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department Report 1944). 37. Administrators implicitly reproduced this social time-marking of the workers in the practice of tax collection from alien native workers on the estates. For the rst two years, which is the legal length of manamba contract of Tanganyika labour, workers were to pay taxes at their home district rates. After that tax payments by alien natives followed local rates (TNA H3/ 41957). 38. Labour recruiters on their part and for their own interests pushed the benets of recruited attested labour. One recruiter wrote in 1933 The advantages of contracted labourers over casual labourers are too obvious to need mentioning, but it may be remarked that with contract labour, the employee has a) a xed known quantity of labour on which to draw, always available for any kind of work required; b) risk of desertion is lessened, owing to their homes being far away; c) no need to increase wages to induce good boys to remain; and the advantage of the practical impossibility of boys refusing work or going on strikes (TNA v14/11020). 39. For instance in 1938 the rate of absenteeism in Tanga Province sisal estates was sixteen per cent for attested labour and forty-two per cent for non-contract voluntary labour (TNA 4/962/9). 40. There is not the slightest doubt that the contract labourer is often obliged to work under conditions which the non-contractor will refuse to accept (TNA v14/13948 Vol I).
References
Cooper, Frederick. 1983. Urban Space, Industrial Time, and Wage Labor in Africa, in Cooper Frederick (ed), Struggle for the City: Migrant Labor, Capital and the State in Urban Africa, London: Sage Publications, pp. 750. Cooper, Frederick. 1996. Decolonization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words. Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giblin, James. 2005. A History of the Excluded: Making Family A Refuge From State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania. Athens: Ohio University Press. Iliffe, John. 1979. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaplan, Martha and Kelly, John D. 1994. Rethinking Resistance: Dialogics of Disaffection in Colonial Fiji. American Ethnologist 21(1):12351. Lave, J. and Wegner, E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Penvenne, Jeanne Marie. 1995. African Workers and Colonial Racism. Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenco Marques, 1877 1962. Social History of Africa. London: James Currey. PRO (Public Record Ofce, London). CO/737/2. British Mandate for East Africa, 1923. PRO.
PRO. CO/691/130/5125. Government Labour: Recruitment, Employment and Care, 1933. PRO. PRO. CO/691/141/25259. Labour Legislation, 1939. PRO. PRO. CO/691/167/42191/9. Labour: Labour on Sisal Estates, 1938. PRO. PRO. CO/691/167/42191/7. Labour: Legislation, 1938. PRO. PRO. CO/691/88/18085/27. The Master and Native Servant Ordinance, 1927. PRO. PRO. CO/691/99/29125. The Master and Native Servants Ordinance, 1928. TNA. PRO. CO/691/125/31232. Native Labour: Payment and Conditions. PRO. PRO. CO/691/89/18168. Permanent Mandates Commission, 1927. PRO. PRO. CO/691/105/29532. Recruitment of Natives from Kigoma for Employment in the Belgian Congo, 1929. PRO. PRO. CO/822/17/7/25263. Tanganyika Department Memorandum on Forced Labour, 1929. PRO. Sago, Laurent. 1983. A Labour Reservoir: The Kigoma Case, in Walter Rodney, Kapepwa Tambila and Laurent Sago (eds), Migrant Labour in Tanzania during the Colonial Period. Case Studies of Recruitment and Conditions of Labour in the Sisal Industry, Hamburg: Institute Fuer Afrika-Kunde, pp. 5878. Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tanga. Tanga District Annual Report, 1927. Tanga District. Dar es Salaam. Tanga. Tanganyika Sisal Growers Association (TSGA) Annual Reports, 1942 65. Tanganyika. Annual Labour Department Reports, 1944; 1953. Tanganyika Territory. Department of Labour. Tanganyika. Annual Reports of Tanganyika Territory (TT), 1921 1923. Tanganyika Territory. Dar es Salaam. TNA (Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam). H3/41957. Collection of Taxes from Sisal Estate Labourers, 1951 1954. TNA. TNA. v14/25516. Illegal Recruiting on Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika Territory Boundary, 1937 1938. TNA. TNA. ES/3046/11. Labour Department Annual Report, 1926. TNA. TNA. v14/13066/Vol I. Labour Contracts: Questions, 1939 1942. TNA. TNA. v14/13066/Vol II. Labour Contracts: Questions, 1939 1946. TNA. TNA. v14/12431/Vol I. Labour Deserters, 1928 1930. TNA. TNA. v14/12431/Vol II. Labour Deserters, 1946. TNA.
TNA. v14/11168/Vol I. Labour Matters in Tanga Province, 1927 1939. TNA. TNA. v14/25475. Labour Ordinance, 1938. TNA. TNA. v14/13948/Vol I. Labour Recruitment, Employment and Signing Off, 1929 1939. TNA. TNA. 304/L1/28. Labour: Annual Return of Requisitioned Labour, 1951. TNA. TNA. 4/729/1. Native Manpower, Tanga, 1943 1944. TNA. TNA. v14/20352/Vol I. Non-Payment of Labour Wages by Private Persons, 1931 1933. TNA. TNA. v14/30011. A Preparatory Investigation of the Manpower Position, 1951. TNA. TNA. v14/12215. Recruitment of Labour in Tanganyika Territory: Memorandum by Labour Commissioner, 1928. TNA. TNA. H3/23544. Report by Longland on Labour on Sisal Estates, 1936. TNA. TNA. v14/11557/Vol III. Restriction on Recruitment Regulations, 1935 1939. TNA. TNA. v14/11557/Vol IV. Restriction on Recruitment Regulations, 1937 1944. TNA. TNA. v14/11557/Vol V. Restriction on Recruitment Regulations, 1939 1947. TNA. TNA. v14/18679/Vol II. Revision of the Master and Native Servant Ordinance, 1931 1932. TNA. TNA. 4/962/9. Tanga Province Annual Report and Review on Labour Matters for Year Ending 31st December 1938. TNA. TNA. 304/25/6/2. Tanganyika Sisal Association Recruiting Organization, 1944 1946. TNA. TNA. v14/25939. Wages: System of Payment, 1943. TNA.
Competitive Labour: Divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean Workers1

Andrea L. Arrington
Department of History, University of Arkansas
By the late nineteenth century, Victoria Falls was a popular travel destination for Europeans, South Africans, and Americans who hoped to nd adventure amidst what they deemed a wild physical and cultural landscape. Although a tourism industry was rst established on the northern side of the Zambezi (Zambia), the southern side of the Falls (Zimbabwe) quickly joined in commercial development. Victoria Falls is now one of the most visited sites in Africa, and labour patterns around this site continue to be strongly inuenced by developments in the tourism industry. Because the waterfalls served as a natural border between Northern and Southern Rhodesia, the colonial policies and development strategies on either side led to different commercial activities. The imbalanced nature of the development of tourism at this border continues to affect the working lives of local populations today. The Zimbabwean side of the border dominated the tourist market for decades, and Zambians living just across the Zambezi often crossed into Zimbabwe hoping to nd employment or customers for their goods. Over the past eight years though, that trend has reversed, and Zimbabweans living in the border town of Victoria Falls Town are ooding Zambias tourist town of Livingstone. The recent economic, political, and social upheavals in Zimbabwe are forcing Africans in this area to search for employment, stability, and resources on the Zambian side of the border. In this article, I focus on the rather strong tensions between Zimbabweans and Zambians and men and women who are trying to earn money around the Falls, specically in Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe and Livingstone, Zambia. I am particularly focused on those who earn money by working in what some scholars identify as the informal sector, or less commonly as the semi-formal sector. It is clear that gender and nationality are playing an increasing role in the competition among workers, and that the intensity of such tensions are reaching a boiling point. In the tense political landscape of the region, the contemporary divisions between (and among) Zimbabweans and Zambians serve as a reminder that the problems in Zimbabwe are quite clearly not contained within that countrys borders. This analysis also contributes to a growing literature on Zimbabwean migrants living and working outside of Zimbabwe. Most studies on the Zimbabwean Diaspora focus on the activities of Zimbabweans in South Africa, which is host to the largest number of migrants, and Britain, where a strong network of Zimbabweans exists. No studies dealing explicitly with Zimbabweans in Zambia are available, yet this is an increasingly popular destination of Zimbabweans forced to ee their country but without the means to travel abroad or too afraid to go to South Africa. This article adds another dimension to the growing attention on Zimbabwes economic refugees. Key words: colonialism, gender, HIV/AIDS, informal sector, Livingstone, masculinity, migrant labour, tourism, transnational, Victoria Falls Town, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean Diaspora, xenophobia
Victoria Falls is one of Africas most recognisable tourist destinations. For over 100 years, people from all over the world have ocked to the waterfalls, and most come with hopes for an African adventure.2 The Falls serve as a natural border between modern Zimbabwe and Zambia (known in the colonial era as Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia respectively), so visitors have the option to get two new stamps in their passports instead of one. Tourists delight in white water rafting down the Zambezi, not only because it is a fun component of the adventure tourism offered by the Falls area, but also because they are told by the raft guides that depending on which side of the river they are positioned, they may be in Zimbabwe or they might be in Zambia. Likewise, the ever popular bungee jump on the bridge that links Zimbabwe and Zambia offers tourists another opportunity to straddle the two countries sharing Victoria Falls as a border. After the jump is executed, the brave tourist literally swings back and forth into Zimbabwe and Zambia before being reeled back onto the bridge. This transnational experience that seems to bring great pleasure to tourists only speaks to a fraction of the depth of the transnational character of this area. Tourists from around the world, rafting or swinging between two African countries, provide an important reference to international or global connections that occur at tourist sites, but it is hardly the only one. Zimbabweans and Zambians, as well as a smaller number of people from South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, are creating a transnational labour experience by participating in the dynamic economy around the Falls.3 With these exchanges and migrations, competition among labourers seems unavoidable. In this article, I focus on the rather strong tensions between Zimbabweans and Zambians and men and women who are trying to earn money around the Falls, specically in Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe and Livingstone, Zambia. I set the study in the context of mounting tensions developing at the porous border between tumultuous Zimbabwe and a much calmer Zambia. I am particularly focused on those who earn money by working in what some scholars identify as the informal sector, or less commonly as the semi-formal sector.4 It is clear that gender and nationality are playing an increasing role in the competition among workers, and that the intensity of such tensions are reaching a boiling point. In the tense political landscape of the region, the contemporary divisions between (and among) Zimbabweans and Zambians serve as a reminder that the problems in Zimbabwe are quite clearly not contained within that countrys borders. This analysis also contributes to a growing literature on Zimbabwean migrants living and working outside of Zimbabwe. Most studies on the Zimbabwean Diaspora focus on the activities of Zimbabweans in South Africa, which is host to the largest number of migrants, and Britain, where a strong network of Zimbabweans exists. These Zimbabweans are thought to be the one thread keeping Zimbabwe from total collapse because of their nancial contributions to their families still in the country (Bracking and Sachikonye 2006). Hundreds of millions of United States dollars are sent back into Zimbabwe each year as
Competitive Labour: Divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean Workers 165
remittances provided by the Zimbabwean Diaspora.5 Migrants are experiencing varying degrees of alienation and support in their host countries. No studies dealing explicitly with Zimbabweans in Zambia are available, yet this is an increasingly popular destination of Zimbabweans forced to ee their country but without the means to travel abroad or too afraid to go to South Africa.
Background Since the late 1990s, Zimbabwe has undergone a dramatic transformation from a relatively dynamic economy and stable society into what many scholars and world leaders label a basket case and country in crisis. Since independence in 1980, Robert Mugabe ruled over the country with an increasingly tight st. By the late 1990s, Zimbabwes economy showed signs of strain, and Mugabe invoked rhetoric over land rights to gain support from citizens that were weary of his stale leadership. White farm owners, still in possession of large tracts of arable land, were targeted by campaigns to reclaim land for Zimbabwes sons of the soil. Mugabe and his supporters argued that for Zimbabwe to succeed, black citizens must be reinstated to the land. Through legal and violent manoeuvrings, white farmers were evicted from their farms and the land occupied by either landless squatters (some proclaiming to be veterans of the independence struggle) or high-ranking ofcials and business partners of Mugabes cronies. Agriculture came to a stand still, and an already stagnant economy slid into crisis. The situation worsened during elections in 2002, 2005 and again in 2008 when more Zimbabweans voted for opposition candidates. The elections were marked with violence, harassment, and determined by many foreign observers to be unfree and unfair.
Instability, and later, chaos, ensued in the 2000s, not just because of the land invasions but because repressed economic tensions nally surfaced and foreign currency became scarce. One writer explains the state of affairs in 2004:
Just ve years earlier the country had been a major exporter, but repression and misrule had led to the collapse of the agricultural, mining and tourism sectors. As a result, money sent home by exiles was now the largest source of foreign earnings. One third of the total population of 13 million had ed the country. (Hill 2005:2)
As more Zimbabweans search for relief in other countries, Zambia is experiencing a large inux of migrants. The border at Victoria Falls is particularly porous because of tourism. It is a place of historical transnational exchanges; there is less security and strictness at the actual border because of tourism trafc and the tourism industrys informal sector provides migrants with hope that there is space for them to earn a living. The shared history of tourism development and Zambias relaxed immigration laws makes this border an ideal crossing point for desperate Zimbabweans. Tourism is hardly a new sector of the economy for either of these two countries. For 100 years, entrepreneurs focused their energy on promoting this part of the
continent as the Real Africa, a place where romanticised images and stereotypes about Africa come to life. After David Livingstones widely publicised visit to the Falls in 1855, a wave of explorers and early traders went through the area, to be followed by a group of entrepreneurs who saw the location, with the Falls as the piece-de-resistance, as the perfect place to exploit a growing European interest in leisure and travel. The northern side of the Falls, or Zambia, was the rst to develop a tourism infrastructure, but much to the dismay of those entrepreneurs, the southern side quickly joined suit and by the 1910s, an intense competition developed between the two sides, as both vied for the tourism trafc. The divergent paths of tourism development are reective of the colonial policies and commercial activities that created two very different colonies. The development of Southern Rhodesia into the Second Rand might not have come to fruition, but the settler colony certainly experienced a different economic and social evolution than did Northern Rhodesia. Both colonies were rst administered by the British South Africa Company (BSACo), and the policies set by the company and British Foreign Ofce sent the two colonies down very different paths of development.6 The result was noticeable to residents and visitors alike. One writer noted in a 1917 magazine publication that, . . . between Northern and Southern Rhodesia a much greater gulf is xed than the bed of that river [the Zambezi], for the south is older, has a greater population of white people, and talks derisively of the Black North.7 In fact, administrators argued against allowing European settlement north of the Zambezi,8 leaving the small number of entrepreneurs in Livingstone vulnerable to unsupportive and restrictive colonial regulations. White settlement in Southern Rhodesia, on the other hand, was encouraged even after the disappointment that there was no Second Rand to exploit (Alexander 2006:20 1).9 The land itself presented ample opportunities for colonial development under the tight control of minority rule. Victoria Falls became a location of dynamic development and tension as the BSACo offered more exibility and allowances for Southern Rhodesias entrepreneurial efforts to create a tourist destination. It also became a site where the energy and wealth created through entrepreneurial efforts in Southern Rhodesia quickly and steadily outpaced the activities just north of the border. A newspaper article in 1934 suggested that the project to construct a road from the Limpopo River to the Zambezi demonstrated that the rst shots have been red in the battle to attract a valuable tourist trafc to [Southern] Rhodesia . . .10 This may have been less of a rst shot and more of a fatal blow to Northern Rhodesias tourism industry around the Falls. Southern Rhodesias administration began strongly promoting tourism to what they labelled the open air Paradise of the world and Unspoilt Playground of Africa11 at a time when Northern Rhodesians felt increasingly less supported by their government in their economic efforts. To be sure, the town of Livingstone worked hard to promote itself as the Tourist Centre for the Victoria Falls,12 a title it was still claiming in the early 1940s, but the decision of the Southern Rhodesian government to endorse and promote
tourism allowed Victoria Falls Town the support it needed to outshine Livingstone. The commitment of the colonial state to tourism development was clearly stated in a memo from the minister of internal affairs, when he wrote to the prime minister, It appears to me that one of the ways in which prosperity can surely be brought to this Colony is by a thorough, systematic and courageous development of the Tourist Trafc.13 There is no comparable exchange between ofcials in Northern Rhodesia, and the differences in development became increasingly stark between the two tourist destinations until the late 1990s. It was evident that the involvement of Africans in the development of a tourist industry was essential to the tourism project, regardless of which side they lived. African labour made possible the building of roads, hotels, restaurants, and shops that were necessary to accommodate the growing number of visitors. By the early twentieth century, African men and women found work in the town of Livingstone, about ten kilometres from the Falls. Just as Livingstone served, and continues to serve as the hub of Zambias tourism economy, Victoria Falls Town also quickly developed as an important centre for Zimbabwes emerging tourism market. With the establishment of hotels and restaurants on the Zimbabwean side of the Falls, the competition between the two sides was quick to follow. African labour was utilised to keep the tourist towns running the hotels, shops, and restaurants relied on the cheap labour proffered by members of the local population. Work in these towns, particularly in Livingstone, was an appealing alternative for men who would otherwise migrate to mines in Zimbabwe. African women found a space to generate their own income, and interestingly, their activities were not criminalised in these towns to the degree that we see in urban areas throughout southern Africa during this time period. Africans outside of these urban settlements also accessed the new colonial economy by growing vegetables and fruit desired by the European residents, and by brewing beer and producing local food for urban Africans to purchase. African labour was essential to making tourism work, and the local population met those needs. What scholars would eventually label as the informal sector thrived as the tourism industry in the area grew.14 While Victoria Falls Town ourished, Livingstone languished and Zambians increasingly crossed over the border to participate in the thriving tourism economy. Historically speaking, Zambians were much more likely to migrate into Victoria Falls Town than Zimbabweans crossing into Zambia. The Zambian migrants earned money as traders, food preparers, temporary construction workers, and domestic workers. These migrants contributed signicantly to the development of Zimbabwes extremely strong tourism economy. Their ight south of the Zambezi also likely negatively affected the strength of Livingstones economy. I visited Victoria Falls for the rst time as an undergraduate student participating in a study abroad programme in Zimbabwe in 1999. It became clear that the area deserves recognition and further examination as an important example of a
transnational economy and the backdrop of a multifaceted, important migrant experience. It was during this rst stint in the eld that I realised how competitive and profound the migrant experiences were for Zimbabweans and Zambians trying to get a piece of the tourism pie. In addition to nationality, it was obvious that gender also affected transnational competition and experiences. In 1999, Zambians crossed into Victoria Falls Town to nd work in the informal sector. This ow of labourers was cushioned in a long history of Zambians moving south to nd work. Starting in the late nineteenth century, the British South Africa Company pushed into modern day Zambia, where the company hoped to export cheap labour for the mines and factories it had established in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia [Zimbabwe] (Todd and Shaw 1980:411). Although during this period, most of these migrants found work in mines and commercial farms, a small but slowly increasing number found themselves in the growing tourist town of Victoria Falls. Although Livingstone started off as the hot spot for visitors, by the 1930s, development shifted to Victoria Falls Town, and Zambians moved across the border to nd work there. These migrants worked alongside Zimbabweans producing and selling curios, preparing food for fellow informal sector workers, hawking produce and sweets, and working in hotels and shops and private residences. Some went home every night to Zambia, while others lived in Chinotemba, the high-density township outside of Victoria Falls Town. Livingstone essentially became a backwater, crumbling town that simply could not compete for tourist trafc. By the late twentieth century, it was inconceivable for Zimbabweans to head north into Zambia and Victoria Falls Town was a popular destination of Zambian workers.
Men against women: Gender-based competition In 1999, the most obvious source of competition among informal sector workers in Victoria Falls Town was gender, not nationality. I created the term the informal sector of the informal sector to identify and describe the role of women in this part of the tourism economy. Women described to me the problems they experienced because the men insisted that they remain in the background of labour activities. Here is one example to demonstrate this: Dozens of women sat outside in a cleared eld a few blocks away from the large open air curio market and off the main roads of town. The women were surrounded by countless wood and stone sculptures, which the women sold, for a minimal prot, to men who would take the sculptures and sell them in the market or on the street. These men could expect wildly inated prots they reported earning sometimes a hundred times more than what they paid the women.15
When asked why they did not just go out and sell the items themselves to increase their prot margins, the women responded that it was not womens work to go and do that. When pressed, a few indicated that if they competed with the men for selling directly to tourists, they would be beaten or have their supply stolen from
them.16 Thus, these women took a backseat to men who dominated the informal sector. At the time, tourism was still an extremely strong industry in the area, and market men were enjoying the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded by their involvement in the informal sector. Women, on the other hand occupied a different, even less dened and recognised sub-section of the informal sector.17 They sold unnished products for low prots, cooked and sold food to the market men, and sometimes received small pay for polishing and cleaning the crafts. They participated in the informal sector at what was deemed, in this local context, a lower position. In many ways, they were the backbone of the informal sector, but suffered economically and sometimes physically because of their lower status. This type of competition is even ercer in Victoria Falls Town today, where the tourist trafc is down to a trickle and traders must ght hard to make a sale. In June 2008, two afternoons spent at the large in-town crafts market revealed the potential for violence between Zimbabwean men and women battling for sales. In the main lines of stalls, most sellers are male (probably around ninety to ninety-ve per cent). These stalls are the easiest to identify and access, and allow for prominent displays of the curios and goods. Curious about the lack of women, I approached one seller and asked him where the women were. He laughed and asked why I wanted to know. I persisted, and eventually he guided me to an unmarked metal structure with a small doorway leading into a narrow barn-like building. The only light came from the doors at either end, which revealed dozens of women seated on the oor with their items for sale. As I ventured into the building, the man who took me there got in a heated exchange with two of the women standing outside the building. He yelled that they needed to send me back to him to buy his products or he would come and nd them later.18 These women sold curios and crafts that were essentially the same as the variety in the main market. I sat with one woman, Peace,19 for a total of four hours over a period of two-and-a-half non-consecutive days to observe her economic activities and discuss the state of her business.20 Peace revealed that market men insisted that the women occupy a different space. She laughingly explained that the men suggested the women needed protection from the environment, but pointed out that the dark, dank room was sweltering in the summer and chilly in the winter, and that the roof leaked during the rains. Peace then suggested that the women all know it was not for protection but to keep them from competing with the men. She has seen market women beaten for trying to sell their items outside the womens market, and also recalled a couple of times when she saw market men physically deter potential customers from entering the womens market. The women have often put up signs advertising their space in the public market, but the men repeatedly tear the signs down.21 As the ow of tourists slows down and the economy continues to deteriorate, Zimbabwean men and women in Victoria Falls view each other as enemies in the struggle to survive. The women believe they are at a major disadvantage
being tucked away in an uncomfortable building. During my observation periods, no tourists came through the womens market. To be fair, there were not that many tourists in the entire market, but the few that were there stayed at the mens stalls. One of the women next to Peace told me that she is being forced to sell her items to men for extremely low prices because she has no real customers. Peace and one other woman said they sometimes take their items to the border to sell them to Zambian market men and women to try to get at least a bit of money for their products that are not selling. The few men I spoke with at the market implied that it was not fair for women to take away their customers. When I pressed them on why both were not equally entitled to try to sell their goods, the men had little response. One said that he had to provide for his whole family and thus needed business more, though of course women are as responsible for their families livelihoods as men.22 The tensions I rst noticed between men and women working in Victoria Falls Towns informal sector are much more apparent now. My claim that women are reduced to the background of the informal sector is further substantiated, as I observed the ways that women are increasingly positioned as the informal sector of the informal sector. They are nding it even more difcult to assert themselves, and perhaps most importantly, they are nding it nearly impossible to make any money as they get edged out by their male counterparts.
Good neighbours? Competition between Zambians and Zimbabweans Gendered competitions are only one part of the story of competitive labour around Victoria Falls. In 1999, though Zambians were not welcomed with open arms by Zimbabweans, they were tolerated as part of the inevitabilities commensurate to such a strong local economy. One scholar estimates that by the late 1980s, approximately one fth of the immigrants in Zimbabwe now come from Zambia which has overtaken South Africa as the major source within Africa (Zinyama 1990:760). Obviously these Zambian migrants fanned out throughout Zimbabwe, but many found work in Victoria Falls Town, where tourism was a booming economic sector.
On the surface at least, Zambians and Zimbabweans coexisted, probably because the booming tourism economy was big enough for both groups to benet. In an interesting and historic reversal of migration patterns, now Zimbabweans are ooding into Livingstone in search of work. This is, undoubtedly, unsurprising to any of us, as we are aware of the mass exodus of Zimbabweans out of their country and into neighbouring countries. The political, economic, and social crisis in Zimbabwe is pushing men and women from all over the country into Livingstone. And Livingstones tourism industry is beneting greatly from the instability in Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls Town is steadily fading, and foreign investors are pushing millions of dollars into Livingstone to raise its standards
and amenities. In June this year, I conducted interviews with Zimbabwean and Zambian informal sector workers in Livingstone to better understand this new trend in border crossing and labour competition. Gender remains an important divisive category, but nationality is becoming equally signicant in the relationship between the workers from both countries. This shift in economic activity around Victoria Falls should not be underestimated. Tourism at the Falls brings in highly desired foreign currency, something Zimbabwe is in dire of need of these days. It seems obvious that with Zimbabwes recent political and economic crisis, tourism would suffer. Eric Neumayer reiterates the relationship between political strife and the success of tourism in developing countries. He explains that political crises
harm affected countries also indirectly by signicantly lowering tourist arrivals . . . Violent conict is well known to be detrimental to economic growth in developing countries . . . and the negative impact on tourism is one of the ways in which violent conict harms the economy. (Neumayer 2004:278)
Although Zimbabwe is not experiencing a full-blown civil war, the reports of politically motivated torture, kidnappings, and killings certainly affect the decisions of would-be tourists. Throughout the 1990s, Zimbabwe far outpaced Zambia in terms of international stay-over arrivals. At that time, Zimbabwe had a well-developed infrastructure and itinerary to attract tourists not just to the waterfalls, but to other parts of the country as well. Zambia, on the other hand, had a less developed tourism industry that was not comprehensive enough to lure a large number of tourists. According to one survey, Zimbabwe had 664,000 international visitors compared to a mere 171,000 in Zambia (Weaver and Elliott 1996:209). By the beginning of the 2000s though, Zambia saw an upswing in tourism trafc and Zimbabwes hold on the market began to falter. The increase in tourist numbers into Zambia, coupled with Victoria Falls Towns declining hotel occupancy rates demonstrate the negative impact of political conict on Zimbabwes tourism industry and the boost that it gave Zambia.23 As the situation deteriorated in Zimbabwe, tourist arrivals continued to decline. The slow death of Zimbabwes tourism industry has meant the rebirth of Zambias, and the Zambian government and people are well aware of what the crisis in Zimbabwe means for their country. One Zambian interviewed by a journalist said, Tourists who were supposed to go to Zimbabwe would now rather come to Zambia, and as a result our business will boom.24 The Zambian government began programmes to add infrastructure and amenities to serve the growing number of tourists. Through these programmes, the government hopes to bring in a million tourists annually by 2010 a move which could generate more than $520 m in revenue alone.25 While the news stories covering the rise of Zambian tourism give credit to the economic signicance of this opportunity,
they fail to recognise that Zambia was the original tourist destination around Victoria Falls. They also tend to ignore the question of what will happen to Zambias tourism when Zimbabwe pulls out of its political and economic crisis. The Zambian government is more sensitive to that particular concern, as demonstrated by a recent parliamentary debate during which the minister of tourism, environment and natural resources was questioned about how his ministry planned on sustaining tourism growth after Zimbabwes crisis is over.26 Zambians around Victoria Falls are also concerned, and their worries over the future of Zambian tourism are likely contribute to the tensions developing in this area.27 For several years now, I have been interested in this reversal of fortune, and even more intrigued by the impact Zimbabwes crisis is having on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia at Victoria Falls. During my last few trips to Livingstone, I noticed an increasing number of Zimbabweans working as traders in the market places and on town roads, and became aware of a mounting sense of resentment held by Zambians who feel Zimbabweans are edging them out of the tourism boom they so desperately need. To better understand the relationships and conicts among Zimbabwean and Zambian informal sector workers around Victoria Falls, I conducted interviews in three Livingstone locations, and in all three, I was forced to end my interviews prematurely. When my assistant and I selected Zimbabwean interviewees, we found that it generated tensions based on both gender and nationality, and quite frequently, these two factors intertwined. These interviews exposed several ssures that are gradually intensifying between Zimbabwean and Zambian workers. My interviews were cut short when verbal and physical altercations developed between my Zimbabwean informants and Zambians who are feeling increasingly irritated by the presence of these economic refugees. Before speaking with Zimbabweans, I visited the immigration ofce to nd out how substantial the ow of Zimbabweans really is to this small town. On the condition of anonymity, an immigration ofcer with about thirteen years experience in Livingstone and twenty-three years with the ofce of immigration spoke with me about the inux of Zimbabwean migrants. He explained that legally, Zimbabweans can be in Livingstone, but that they are not legally allowed to work, although they are allowed to trade. That is why so many Zimbabweans are seeking work outside of the formal sector they do not have the paperwork that allows them to work with businesses that report to the government. I asked him how many Zimbabweans are now in the Livingstone area. Although he did not have exact gures, he reported that
There are thousands of Zimbabweans here. Last month in just a few days over 800 came over . . . After the March election many unregistered voters crossed to avoid problems. When results still werent released 3 days later, there was a queue 2 kilometers long of Zimbabweans trying to get in.28
The immigration ofcer conrmed my observations that Zambians no longer cross into Zimbabwe. He said, Zambians used to cross to Zimbabwe, but they are
stopping that because of Zimbabwe customs making it too difcult.29 He also explained that Zambians were frightened by the reports of violence and terror and that many who used to live in Zimbabwe were returning home to Zambia to avoid problems. Zimbabwe is clearly the pariah of southern Africa. All of the men I interviewed have some professional or vocational trading. At home, during better times, these men worked as welders, painters, teachers, and one held a degree from the University of Zimbabwe. Under the current situation in Zimbabwe, their jobs dried up, and they felt forced to leave because of economic pressures. The men expressed discontent with basically every aspect of their experiences in Zimbabwe. First, they identied that they felt forced to move into Zambia because of the economic and political situation in Zimbabwe. Tonderai30 was a welder who left Zimbabwe last year to try to nd work in Livingstone. He was unable to get a job as a welder and now sells biscuits, sweets, and cough drops. He shares a room in Dambwa, a high-density township outside of Livingstone, with about ten other Zimbabwean men. When he earns enough money, he takes a short trip back to Harare where he shares his earnings with his family, and then returns back to Livingstone.31 It is interesting to note that many of the Zimbabweans living and working around Livingstone are not from just across the border, but instead come from all over Zimbabwe. My original hypothesis was that most of them would come from Victoria Falls Town across the border, but it seems many Zimbabweans feel the tourism economy in Livingstone has room for them. It is also more affordable than travelling abroad, and perhaps less nerve-wracking than moving to South Africa. Michael also comes from Harare, and he decided to move to Livingstone along with his wife. Their children now stay with his mother in a rural area. They stay in Dambwa, where they share a room with a number of other Zimbabweans. Michael said the number changes by the day, and that the owner of the room will put as many Zimbabweans as possible in the room to increase his prots from rent. He charges by person rather than a set rate for the whole room. Michael worked as a welder, road paver, and painter in Harare, but in Livingstone he sells sweets and bananas.32 This was one of the few people I interviewed who had travelled with a spouse to Zambia. Most were separated completely from spouses and children. Two men in particular stood out during these interviews Andrew and Nelson. Andrew was trained as a print designer and Nelson had a bachelors degree from the University of Zimbabwe. Although I tried to hide my surprise that these two young men with vocational and college degrees were now selling sweets on the streets of Livingstone, I would guess that they are even more shocked than I am by their circumstances. Both seemed somewhat dazed by it all, and were embarrassed by their present situation. They reminded me numerous times that this was not the way their lives were a few years ago. Andrew is single and from Harare. He saves up his small earnings to travel back to Harare to give money to his parents, and then returns to Livingstone to earn more. He spoke
extensively about the skills and work experience he has, and at those points in the interview he sounded enthusiastic and proud. The rest of the interview though he was at and aloof.33 Nelsons interview was never nished because his was one that caught the attention of Zambians passing by the interview site. Nelson sought me out after hearing that a college professor was in the area talking to Zimbabweans. He seemed worried that I would not believe that he had a degree from the University of Zimbabwe and kept telling me the names of professors there, campus building names, and courses that he took to prove to me that he was a college graduate. Nelson is Ndebele and returned to Bulawayo after nishing his degree. He is married and has one child, and both still live outside of Bulawayo. He stays in a room with thirteen other men. When I mentioned my interest in the growth of tourism in Zambia, his eyes lit up. His BA was in tourism and hospitality and he said he came to Livingstone thinking that one of the hotels or shops would hire him because of his eld of expertise. No one would hire him though, which might be due to a lack of working papers or simply because he is a Zimbabwean, and now he sells sweets.34 These men were soft spoken and appeared embarrassed when I asked questions about their jobs and living situation. They report being harassed by the police, but even more so by Zambian men and women who ridicule the Zimbabwean men. Tonderai reported being teased by Zambians and implicitly blamed for the problems in Zimbabwean. He said, they will taunt us to vote for Tsvangirai and to make things better for ourselves.35 These men are called dogs and are told to go home and ght like men against the government. There is less divisiveness between the Zimbabwean men and women, or so it appeared, and may be the result of the two groups leaning on one another for support. Zimbabweans, as pointed out by several attendants at the University of Witwatersrand Labour Conference in September 2008, are stereotyped around the region as arrogant and prideful people, and Zimbabwean men hold a reputation of being particularly proud and condent.36 Up until this last decade, Zimbabweans living in neighbouring countries were often there as trained and highly desirable workers in the formal sector. The situation in Zimbabwe that has forced so many to ee to neighbouring countries and work as small-scale traders puts these once condent men in an uneasy position. A couple of the men mentioned that they are called dogs by Zambians, but I also saw that rsthand numerous times. During my interviews, interested Zambians, upon realising what I was discussing with my interviewees, began heckling both men and women informants, and they often yelled out dog. In informal conversations with Zambians about the growing number of Zimbabweans around Livingstone, I often got sneering responses about them coming and trying to take the money and jobs of Zambians. They described Zimbabweans as low, dirty, and as dogs. It appeared that both men and women are described in those
terms, but that the dog reference is most often directed towards the men. These Zimbabwean men, all who felt great pride in what they used to do to earn money, are experiencing an extraordinary blow to their sense of masculinity. They come from a country where other Africans used to ock; now they are working as the lowest level sellers in a host country that is in many ways beneting from Zimbabwes problems. The immigration ofcer I spoke with said, point blank, Originally Zimbabweans are proud people, but now they have lost their self sufciency. They are put at the level of dogs now.37 There is not just a reversal in migration ows and tourism trends; there is a reversal in who gets to set the standards for masculinity, and Zimbabwean men are nding themselves in a vulnerable position as economic refugees. This goes beyond competing for resources Zambian and Zimbabwean men are now engaging in a battle over masculinity. The relationships between Zimbabwean women and men seemed friendly and supportive, but I believe that below the surface, there are some conversations among Zimbabwean women that also speak to questions over the masculinity (or lack thereof) of Zimbabwean men. Many of the women I spoke with were separated from their husbands. They were not explicitly critical of their spouses, but I could discern what may be a subconscious discourse over the loss of Zimbabwean masculinity. Several of the women recalled earlier phases in their married lives when their situation was much better, and they related that to their husbands providing for them and their families. Mary told me that life was better for her in the 1980s and 1990s because her husband worked and I was enjoying being at home. I was a housewife and stayed there. We could eat well and shop well.38 Now Mary works as a market woman in South Africa and Zambia, where she travels and lives without her husband. She reports such little income that she cannot afford rent in one of the group rooms, and instead sleeps outside wherever she can. Another woman, Kuda, shared a similar story. She also offered a demarcation between a good life as a housewife and a much more difcult life as a market woman in Zambia. Although these women are not explicitly questioning their husbands ability to provide for their family, it does raise a question over how Zimbabwean women now view their husbands. It may be that Zimbabwean masculinity is not only vulnerable to outsiders perspectives. Zimbabwean women are also nding themselves in tense relationships with their Zambian hosts. Like the Zimbabwean men interviewed, the women informants also sell sweets and fruit, perhaps the lowliest of all the items sold on the streets and in the markets. The women I spoke with did not share the same enthusiasm as their male counterparts for talking about their working lives prior to coming to Zambia. Instead, they focused their energy on telling me about the challenges they face in nding housing and money in Livingstone. One consistent theme was that of access to restrooms. There are no public restrooms in Livingstone, and local businesses are not allowing them into their premises. Many women expressed concern about not having relief throughout the day.39 Obviously, there are Zambian women and men who share the same working
conditions, and my understanding is that there are toilets at the marketplaces in town, but my assistant and I suspect that they are often blocked from using those facilities.40 Another issue that the men touched on but the women emphasised was the housing situation in Livingstone. It was evident that housing is a major concern to the women. About twenty per cent of the interviewees (all whom were women) reported sleeping outside on the street, and the rest rented rooms, sometimes sharing a small room with up to thirteen other Zimbabweans. Gloria said that she stays in a two-room place with fourteen other Zimbabweans. Of her dwellings she said, we are fteen, so it cant be expensive but it is just a room with no electricity and no real oor. Even this oor here is better than in my room [pointing to the crumbly concrete under her feet].41 While it is clear restrooms and housing are real concerns of these Zimbabwean women, I suspect it is creating strong tensions between would-be landlords and would-be renters. This is another relationship in which Zambians exercise power over Zimbabwean refugees. Whereas it used to be Zimbabweans who could set the standards and prices of housing for Zambian migrant labourers, now Zambians are in the position of authority. Although I did not visit any of the lodgings my informants live in, I found out through my interviews and through informal conversations with Zambians that there is a boom industry in quickly (and shoddily) built rooms in Dambwa, Linda, and Maramba, the high-density suburbs outside of Livingstone proper. Entrepreneurial homeowners and tenants are building rooms, often as four walled boxes with no water, ooring, or electricity and renting them to the ood of Zimbabweans entering Livingstone every day. Zambians are eager to prot from the need for cheap housing, and Zimbabweans feel exploited and resentful of the position they nd themselves in when looking for lodging. The immigration ofcer also commented on the exploitative nature of the new housing situation. He believes that as long as more people are coming in, the situation is going to get even more critical. He explained,
Zambia cant cope with this. We need help to offer these people services. Right now no services are being offered. We are supposed to be strict on these people but we cant turn people away.42
Housing is not the only issue the women feel particular concern about as they navigate life as economic refugees in Livingstone. They are having serious problems with business practices that are clearly targeting their vulnerable group. Several said that Zambian traders are buying their sweets and fruit on credit to supply their own stands. The Zimbabweans feel forced to agree to the credit arrangement, but most said they have yet to be paid for any of those transactions. Chipo told me that, these days business is a problem. Big problem. Customers try to buy on credit . . . My biggest problem is people not paying.43 Her concern was shared by many others. Joy also complained that sometimes they [customers] take things on credit and then they wont pay us for the things.44 Tendai was more
to the point. She believes they are being targeted as vulnerable. She told me, problems are of people buying on credit and not paying for it. They take advantage. They know we are foreigners and struggling.45 Clearly Zimbabweans are not only being taken advantage of in rental agreements. Zambians are exploiting their weak position and proting greatly from it. Once again, the stratication of the informal sector is evident. These Zimbabwean women are on the lowest rung of this economic activity, and simultaneously support and get exploited by their vulnerability. They exemplify the concept of an informal sector to the informal sector mentioned above. I asked the women how they were treated by Zambians. A few responded positively, and said that the Zambians were very nice and welcoming to them. More responded in a negative way though, and from my observations it is clear that Zambians are becoming progressively more hostile to the growing number of Zimbabweans working around Livingstone.46 Joy said of the treatment she experienced, Sometimes its tough, sometimes its better. Some they hate us, dont like us.47 Rita said that some people are not good to us at all. They will yell at us and chase us.48 Women also reported being taunted about the political crisis in Zimbabwe. Veronica explained that they harass us about our president and tell us to leave and push him out.49 Harassment by Zambians was one problem Zimbabweans reported, but there were also comments about problems with the Livingstone police. Gloria told me that sometimes the police council will chase us . . ..50 and Farai also described being caught and chased by the police.51 Although no major altercations have occurred between Zimbabweans and Zambians, it feels like the situation could escalate into a real problem for both sides. During each set of interviews, tensions erupted as Zambians felt rejected by my interest in interviewing only Zimbabweans. In the main market, a large group of Zambians surrounded the area where I was set up and started screaming insults at my interviewees. Two young men began throwing stones at us and I decided to disband. Sadly, one of my interviewees was a woman who until recently worked in South Africa. She left out of fear of being attacked in the xenophobic riots that broke out in South Africa. She said she thought she might have to try Botswana next because she was getting afraid again. Of the insults I heard, there were references to Zimbabweans being the dogs of the region and of stealing Zambians money. But there were also accusations of Zimbabwean women working as prostitutes and bringing HIV/AIDS with them to Zambia. None of my informants discussed this with me, but through informal conversations with Zambians and a discussion with the immigration ofcer I interviewed, it is clear that Zimbabwean women are regarded as suspect in terms of prostitution and disease. Although the accusations are often misplaced, there is obviously a reality to this issue. Impoverished and without resources, many women are offering sexual services in exchange for cash and housing. The immigration ofcer spoke at length about the issue of prostitution. He said,
It is traumatic for Zimbabweans [coming into Zambia]. Many are coming as prostitutes. In one operation last month between the police and immigration there were 88 Zim prostitutes caught and deported. From short interviews conducted then they said they took as little as 20,000 kwacha [$6.19 US] for their full services, or for an overnight 50,000 kwacha [$15.47 US].52
Many other Zambians expressed concern to me that Zimbabweans were bringing HIV/AIDS into the country, highlighting another source of tension between Zimbabweans and Zambians. While there is evidence that Zimbabwean women are engaging in prostitution in Livingstone, it is unfair of Zambians to suggest that these women are mainly responsible for the spread of STDs. Zambia has long been on the list of countries with high infection rates, and Livingstone itself is known to be a town hit especially hard by HIV/AIDS.53 Certainly, the number of Zimbabwean women engaged in the sex industry could result in more infections, but it is hardly the cause for Zambias already staggering HIV/AIDS infection rate.
Conclusion The concerns expressed by Livingstonians, many who remember too well the lean days before the decay of Zimbabwes tourism industry, demonstrate their inclination to blame the inux of Zimbabweans on problems that certainly existed prior to the last ve years. There is likely anxiety about the pressures these economic refugees put on an already weak economy, and a sense of foreboding over what will happen to Zambias tourism when Zimbabwes crisis is resolved. Until that happens though, Zimbabweans are nding themselves at the centre of public scrutiny and a perceptible attitude of hostility and wariness from their Zambian hosts.
Is it surprising that there are growing tensions between these two groups of people though? Since early colonialism, Zambia existed as the ugly step sister to Zimbabwe. Aside from copper exploitation, Zambia was seen as a source of cheap labour and not much else. Very little development occurred under colonialism, while in Zimbabwe, the economy thrived and development progressed to meet the needs and whims of the large white settler population. Although colonial rule in Zimbabwe was obviously harsh and unjust, Zimbabweans beneted much more than Zambians because of economic and educational advantages. Before 2000, Zimbabwe had the upper hand on tourism development and prots while Zambia remained relatively stagnant, despite sharing Victoria Falls. As Zimbabweans will admit and Zambians are quick to remind, Zimbabweans developed a regional sense of superiority that they held over their neighbours for decades. Zambians around Livingstone are now seeing and beneting from the political and economic turmoil across the border and they are revelling in it and extremely protective of it. I believe Livingstones residents are feeling a combination of revenge and fear as tourism grows and Zimbabwe spirals into economic despair. Zimbabweans, on the
other hand, are feeling vulnerable and ashamed as they eke out livings in ways similar to how migrants used to work and live in Zimbabwe. The informal sector of this transnational tourism economy offers a particularly important insight into the survival of an extremely vulnerable section of Zimbabwean society. For those that remain in Victoria Falls Town, the pressure to capture scarce tourist dollars is heightening tensions between men and women, and women are nding themselves increasingly vulnerable to harassment, isolation, exploitation, and even violence. They are being forced further into the background of a sector of labour already severely disadvantaged by the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. In Zambia, informal sector workers are not battling each other along gender lines, but are instead facing a host town that is becoming less hospitable. Male and female Zimbabweans alike are susceptible to the unenviable position of serving as the underbelly of the informal sector. This is not just a critical moment in Zimbabwes future; Zambia has much at stake and the relationship between these once friendly neighbours is in jeopardy. This historical reversal in migration patterns is uncovering deeper tensions that speak to issues of masculinity, economic exploitation, and public health hysteria. While the number of Zimbabwean migrants in Zambia is nowhere near that in South Africa, the conditions and needs of this population must be addressed. Zambia is too poor, and perhaps too busy working on its own economic development, to provide for these economic refugees. With the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorating by the day and more citizens leaving, it is clear that interactions between Zimbabweans and their host towns will become further strained. Zimbabwes crisis is bleeding over its borders, and migrant labourers are likely to continue their suffering because of it.
Notes 1. I have several people and entities to thank for providing funding for this critical period in my research programme. The University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences was most generous in making sure I could make the trip. In particular, I thank the deans ofce under outgoing Dean Don Bobbitt and the outgoing and incoming chairs of the Department of History, Jeannie Whayne and Lynda Coon who were exceedingly helpful and enthusiastic about this research and made sure I secured funding to make the trip. Elliott West of the Department of History also provided nancial support. My time in Zimbabwe was stressful to these supporters, and I am most grateful for their nancial, intellectual, and emotional support. 2. For an insightful introduction to tourism development around Victoria Falls, see McGregor (2003). 3. This is by no means a new labour experience or industry. Tourism around Victoria Falls has existed for over a century now, and has proven to be an important aspect of both Zimbabwe and Zambias colonial and postcolonial economic development. My manuscript, Turning Water into Gold: Tourism and Economic Development around Victoria Falls, 1880-2008 examines the evolution and importance of the tourism economy. 4. Informal sector is a much debated and contested term among scholars today. Kamrava (2004) offers a succinct denition of the formal and informal sectors, but makes the case for the inclusion of a third category of sector, the semi-formal sector. Under this tri-level categorisation of retail enterprises, the informal sector is identied by the general characteristics of
5.
6.
7. 8. 9.
10.
11.
12.
13. 14. 15. 16.
mobile vendors and stationary stalls, the semi-formal characterised by informal shops and bazaar shops, and the formal sector characterised by formal shops and supermarkets (Kamrava 2004:67). Kamrava and others who are critical of the binary and arbitrary identication of either a formal or informal sector remind us that these categories must be further studied and the denitions need to be rened to reect a much more complex reality. I further contend that it is difcult to denitively place workers themselves in one of these categories. For example, around Victoria Falls, many people are engaged in multiple incomegenerating activities and at various levels if formally and informally. It is impossible then to determine the sector in which they t. Another problem with the discussion of different sectors of economic production is that there is an implication that the less formal sectors are less organised and more vulnerable to dysfunction, thereby creating a sense that the most desirable sector to work in is the formal sector. In this article, I am not debating the usefulness or problems with these identications; instead I only use the term to dene the activities of the workers interviewed, which are for the most part, small-scale trade. The International Association of Money Transfer Networks was told by one money transfer company that they process remittances valuing over $1.5 million per day. IAMTN website ,http://www.iamtn.org/press-release/zimbabwes-people-kept-alive-by-remittance-market.. Although it would be misleading to suggest that the divisions between these two colonies focused signicantly on ideas about tourism around Victoria Falls, my dissertation Power, Culture, and Colonial Development around Victoria Falls, 1880 1910 and manuscript in progress Turning Water into Gold: Tourism and Economic Development around Victoria Falls, 18802008 offer abundant colonial documentation that does support my claim that development around Victoria Falls was well discussed by colonial authorities. The overall visions for these two colonies most certainly helped dene the policies for economic activities around the waterfalls, and, I argue, can explain the two very different states of the tourism industries of Zambia and Zimbabwe in the post-colonial era. NAZ S/AF 751. The Far North. A Trip to the Falls, Cape Argus. The African World Annual, December 1917:147. National Archives of Zimbabwe. No. 126 and enclosure in No. 126. (CO 879/102, Public Records Ofce, Kew), 166. Correspondence between High Commissioner Selborne and BSACo ofcial Wallace. In this impressive analysis, Alexander discusses the making of the settler state, arguing that control over land (and thus resources and labour) was of paramount importance to the creation of the colony. The authority given to the government and settlers alike exceeded that given to white settlers living in Northern Rhodesia because of the different aims of the two colonies. S 914/12/1. Yeoman [pseudonym of writer]. The Worlds Wonder Game Reserve: Wild life of the Wankie Park Development will Make an Outstanding Tourist Attraction, The Sunday News V(18), Bulawayo, 9 September 1924. National Archives of Zimbabwe. Full page advertisement with picture of Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe, and Eastern Highlands, created by the Director of Publicity, Salisbury. British South Africa Annual. December 1936:146. National Archives of Zimbabwe. GEN/LIV 1937 Livingstone Publicity Bureau Publications. Tourist Brochure Published by the Livingstone Publicity and Travel Bureau, Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company Ltd. Bulawayo, 1941. S 246/682. Letter from the Ofce of the Minister of Internal Affairs to the Prime Minister, 12 October 1933. National Archives of Zimbabwe. This narrative of the early days of tourism development can be found in my dissertation Power, Culture, and Colonial Development around Victoria Falls, 18801910. Arrington, Andrea. Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe, June 1999. Authors possession. Arrington, Andrea. 2000. Zimbabwes Working Women. Unpublished Honours Thesis.
17. To be sure, some women did engage in protable tourism trade, competing with men in the high-prot sales of statues, carvings, batiks, and baskets. But most women working in the main public markets sold lower priced items or did not engage in direct trade with tourists. 18. Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe. 15, 17, and 18 June 2008. Authors possession. 19. Pseudonym, as requested by the respondent. 20. I did not conduct any formal interviews with Peace, but rather asked if I could sit and observe her work and ask questions as they developed. Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe. 15, 17, and 18 June 2008. Authors possession. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Travel Advisory: Correspondents Report; Zambia Strives to Lure Victoria Falls Visitors, The New York Times 17 June 2001. 24. Zambia Cashes in on Victoria Falls, BBC News 12 October 2001. 25. Zambia Beckons New Wave of Tourists, BBC News 13 June 2006. 26. Daily Parliamentary Debates for the Second Session of the Tenth Assembly, Thursday 7 August 2008. Session on Zambias Tourism Earnings from 2005 07. 27. While in Victoria Falls Town, I met with three high level ofcials working with a privately organised tourism business bureau. The three interviewees, all who requested to remain anonymous, spoke with me for about two hours about their organisations plans to lure tourists back to Zimbabwe. They do not blame Zambians for seizing the opportunities provided by Zimbabwes current crisis, but they also asserted that they were not afraid to make sure they regained the upper hand as soon as the problems in Zimbabwe are resolved. They spoke of international campaigns and promotions they will initiate to bring tourists back, and showed little concern about their ability to win back their position as the more successful side of the Falls. Zambians I spoke with seemed to understand that the crisis is, though prolonged, only temporary and expressed anxiety about sustaining the advancements Livingstone has made in the past eight years. Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe. June 17, 2008. Authors possession. 28. Arrington Interview Notes, Ofce of Immigration Livingstone, Zambia. 20 June 2008. Authors possession. 29. Ibid. 30. I use pseudonyms for all my informants in Livingstone, Zambia. I was accompanied by Wendy Inyambo, a Livingstone resident who has assisted me during three research trips in Zambia. Ms Inyambo works at the Ofce of the President, Southern Province. She is conversant in Lozi, Tonga, Shona, Ndebele, and English. Most informants chose to speak to us in English, code switching occurred with Shona and Ndebele. In instances when my Shona comprehension was uncertain, and with all the Ndebele, Ms Inyambo translated. 31. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Tonderai. 21 June 2008. Authors possession 32. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Michael. 21 June 2008. Authors Possession 33. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Andrew. 21 June 2008 and Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Nelson. 21 June 2008. Authors Possession. 34. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Nelson. 21 June 2008. Authors possession. 35. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Tonderai, 21 June 2008. Authors possession. 36. I would like to thank those who attended the panel in which this article was presented as a paper. The comments about the once high standing Zimbabweans enjoyed in the region helped me further contextualise the signicance of the insults and harassment Zimbabweans are subject to
37. 38. 39. 40.
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.
in Livingstone. I emphasise though that these are regional stereotypes, employed not always as blunt insults but as a descriptive mechanism to differentiate Zimbabweans from their neighbours. I do not mean to perpetuate stereotypes, but rather wish to point out that there is a history of regional categorising, and that Zimbabweans are sometimes considered in those terms. Arrington Interview Notes, Immigration Ofce Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Mary, 21 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Maramba Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Kuda, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. My assistant, a Livingstone resident, discreetly questioned a couple of Zambian market women who would not admit to blocking the Zimbabwean women but instead talked about having to pay fees to use the facilities. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Gloria, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Ofce of Immigration, Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Chipo, 21 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Joy, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Joy, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. This article is not meant to be overly critical of the reaction of Zambians to the growing number of Zimbabweans. After conducting research in Livingstone over the past eight years, I appreciate and sympathise with how strained the economy of an already struggling town must be due to the increase in migrant labourers. For decades now, Zambians have felt slighted by their neighbours to the south and seen their development suffer as Zimbabwe expanded, so it seems natural that there would be resentment and perhaps even feelings of revenge with this change. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Joy, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Maramba Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Rita, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Veronica, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Gloria, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and Farai, 20 June 2008. Authors possession. Arrington Interview Notes, Ofce of Immigration, Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008. During previous stays in Livingstone, this discussion often came up. Livingstone is a site of transnational exchange because of tourism and because of its proximity to a border crossing. Truck drivers from all over southern and eastern Africa pass through that border and often stay for several days while awaiting clearance. This location is, unfortunately, a vulnerable site for STD infection to occur.
References
Alexander, Jocelyn. 2006. The Unsettled Land: State-making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe, 1893 2003. Athens, Ohio, Oxford, and Harare: Ohio University Press, James Currey, and Weaver.
Bracking, Sarah and Sachikonye, Lloyd. 2006. Remittances, Poverty Reduction and the Informalisation of Household Wellbeing in Zimbabwe. Global Poverty Research Group of the Economic and Social Research Council, GPRG-WPS-045, June. Hill, Geoff. 2005. What Happens after Mugabe? Can Zimbabwe Rise from the Ashes? Cape Town: Zebra Press. Kamrava, Mehran. 2004. The Semi-formal Sector and the Turkish Political Economy. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 31(1):6387. McGregor, JoAnn. 2003. The Victoria Falls, 1900 1940: Landscape, Tourism and the Geographical Imagination. Journal of Southern African Studies 29(3). Neumayer, Eric. 2004. The Impact of Political Violence on Tourism: Dynamic CrossNational Estimation. Journal of Conict Resolution 48(2). Todd, David M. and Shaw, Christopher. 1980. The Informal Sector and Zambias Employment Crisis. The Journal of Modern African Studies 18(3). Weaver, David and Elliott, Katherine. Spatial Patterns and Problems in Contemporary Namibian Tourism. The Geographical Journal 162(2). Zinyama, Lovemore M. 1990. International Migrations to and from Zimbabwe and the Inuence of Political Changes on Population Movements, 1965 1987. International Migration Review 24(4).
Contributors
Peter Alexander is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg. He is currently working on a history of South African coal miners and on class perceptions and class positions in Soweto. Andrea L. Arrington is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas. She is currently completing her manuscript Turning Water into Gold: Tourism, Economic Development, and the Commercialization of Victoria Falls, 18802008, which is a transnational study of development in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Andrew Bank is an Associate Professor in History at the University of the Western Cape. His research in recent years has focused on the history of anthropology in southern Africa. He is the author of Bushman in a Victorian World: The Remarkable Story of the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman Folklore (2006) and co-editor with Keith Dietrich of An Eloquent Picture Gallery: The South African Portrait Photographs of Gustav Theodor Fritsch, 18631865 (2008). He is currently working, with his brother Leslie Bank, on a collection entitled Interpreters, Intermediaries and Indigenous Intellectuals, which will explore the complex and changing relationships between Monica Hunter Wilson and a wide cast of research assistants and native scholars at her eld-sites in South and Central Africa. Philip Bonner is National Research Foundation Research chair in the programme Local Histories, Present Realities and Head of the inter-disciplinary Wits History Workshop. He has published extensively in the eld of comparative and social history. Janine Clark is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the International Politics department at Aberystwyth University. She has a PhD from the University of Nottingham and has recently published her rst book, Serbia in the Shadow of Milosevic: The Legacy of Conict in the Balkans (IB Tauris 2008). Her research interests include post-conict societies, in particular the former Yugoslavia; reconciliation; war crimes tribunals and transitional justice. Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is a Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape. She has written widely on Indian South Africans and is author/ editor of Not Slave, Not Free: Indentured Labour in South Africa (1992); From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South Africans (2000); Sita: Memoirs of Sita Gandhi (2003) and Gandhis Prisoner? The Life of Gandhis Son Manilal (2004).
Shireen Hassim is Associate Professor in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is the author of Womens Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (2006). Jonathan Hyslop is Professor of Sociology and History, and Deputy Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is currently working on two research projects, one on ideas about war in twentieth century South Africa, and another on Indian Ocean sailors in the steamship era. Stephen J. Rockel teaches African History at the University of Toronto and previously taught Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. He is a specialist in Tanzanian and East African history, but maintains strong interests in South African history, African labour history, slavery, and war and society throughout the continent. His book, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth Century East Africa, was published in the Heinemann Social History of Africa series. An edited collection (with Rick Halpern), Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War and Empire, is in press. Hanan Sabea is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo. She received her PhD in Anthropology from The Johns Hopkins University in 2001. Her research examines the dynamics of land and labour on plantations in colonial and postcolonial Africa, their implications for remoulding state-subject relations, and the production of histories thereof. Lucien van der Walt is coordinator of the postgraduate programme in Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Winner of the 2008 international Labor History dissertation prize, he has recently published Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism, volume one of Counter Power: new perspectives on global anarchism and syndicalism (with Michael Schmidt).

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African Studies, 68, 1, April 2009

Introduction: Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa

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