The Objects of Life in Central Africa
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Afrika-Studiecentrum Series
Editorial Board
Dr Piet Konings (African Studies Centre, Leiden)
Dr Paul Mathieu (FAO-SDAA, Rome)
Prof. Deborah Posel (University of Cape Town)
Prof. Nicolas van de Walle (Cornell University, USA)
Dr Ruth Watson (Clare College, Cambridge)
VOLUME 30
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/asc
For use by the Author only | © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV
The Objects of Life
in Central Africa
The History of Consumption and Social Change,
1840–1980
Edited by
Robert Ross
Marja Hinfelaar
Iva Peša
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2013
For use by the Author only | © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV
Cover illustration: Returning to village, Livingstone, Photograph by M.J. Morris, Leya, 1933
(Source: Livingstone Museum).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The objects of life in Central Africa : the history of consumption and social change, 1840-1980 /
edited by Robert Ross, Marja Hinfelaar and Iva Pesa.
pages cm. -- (Afrika-studiecentrum series ; volume 30)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-25490-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-25624-8 (e-book) 1. Material culture-Africa, Central. 2. Economic anthropology--Africa, Central. 3. Africa, Central--Commerce--History.
4. Africa, Central--History I. Ross, Robert, 1949 July 26- II. Hinfelaar, Marja. III. Pesa, Iva.
GN652.5.O24 2013
306.3--dc23
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ISSN 1570-9310
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In memory of Gertie Janssen
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ...................................................................................................ix
List of Contributors ..................................................................................................xi
Introduction: Material Culture and Consumption Patterns:
A Southern African Revolution .........................................................................1
Robert Ross, Marja Hinfelaar and Iva Peša
PART I
PRE-COLONIAL TRADE AND FIREARMS
Wearing Cloth, Wielding Guns: Consumption, Trade, and
Politics in the South Central African Interior during the
Nineteenth Century .......................................................................................... 17
David M. Gordon
The Role of Firearms in the Songye Region (1869–1960) ............................. 41
Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu
PART II
MIGRANCY, MOBILITY AND INNOVATION
Sipilingas: Intraregional African Initiatives and the United
Methodist Church in Katanga and Zambia, 1910–1945 ............................ 67
J. Jeffrey Hoover
‘Walking Home Majestically’: Consumption and the Enactment
of Social Status among Labour Migrants from Barotseland,
1935–1965 .............................................................................................................. 93
Michael Barrett
Railways, Railway Culture, and ‘Industrial Work Discipline’ in
the Rhodesias ....................................................................................................115
Kenneth P. Vickery
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viii
contents
PART III
ADVERTISING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Advertising, Consuming Manufactured Goods and Contracting
Colonial Hegemony on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1945–1964..............143
Walima T. Kalusa
Fabricating Dreams: Sewing Machines, Tailors, and Urban
Entrepreneurship in Zambia ........................................................................167
Karen Tranberg Hansen
PART IV
TRADERS
Indian Traders as Agents of Western Technological
Consumption and Social Change in Mukuni: Memories
of the Sharma Brothers’ Trading Store, 1950s to 1964 .............................189
Friday Mufuzi
The Social and Economic Impact of the Fort Jameson
(Chipata) Indians on the Development of Chipata District,
1899–1973 ............................................................................................................215
Bizeck J. Phiri
Business, Consumption and Politics: Robinson Nabulyato’s
Banamwaze Store, 1949–1969 .......................................................................237
Marja Hinfelaar
Buying Pineapples, Selling Cloth: Traders and Trading Stores
in Mwinilunga District, 1940–1970...............................................................259
Iva Peša
Index.........................................................................................................................281
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, TABLES AND MAPS
2.1
2.2
3.1
3.2
3.3
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
5.1
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
7.1
8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
9.5
9.6
9.7
10.1
11.1
11.2
11.3
12.1
12.2
A Lake Mweru Chief .................................................................................... 37
Illustration of Msiri, along with one of his wives ................................ 39
Map of the Songye region .......................................................................... 42
The Songye Chief Lumpungu A Kikolo.................................................. 45
Rifle used by the Tshokwe in the Luso-African area .......................... 49
First Methodist Church in Élisabethville .............................................. 72
Second Methodist Church in Likasi........................................................ 72
Second Methodist Church in Likasi........................................................ 78
Joseph Jutu leaving church to sell books in the city ........................... 86
Interior of the second Methodist Church in 1917 ................................ 86
Start of the construction of the Wallace Memorial Church ............. 89
Placement of the cornerstone of the Wallace Memorial Church ... 89
Isha-Kashewa, a Mbunda labour migrant ............................................. 95
Canadian-built Mountain at Bulawayo, 1949......................................116
The royal train heading for Victoria Falls, 1947 ..................................120
First train to arrive at Victoria Falls, 1904 ............................................125
Passenger train from Umtali to Salisbury, 1899 ..................................129
Beira Railway Falcon .................................................................................136
Advertisement for Castle lager in Nshila .............................................149
Modern African life, Lozi, 1959 ...............................................................175
Tailors and salaula vendor in Mansa, 1995..........................................177
Male and female tailoring students, Lusaka, 2001.............................178
A designer and her male tailors, Lusaka, 2008 ...................................183
Table: Growth of the Asian population, 1911–61 ................................195
The old Sharma Brothers’ Store in Mukuni ........................................197
Nayee Brothers outside their shop, Livingstone, 1950s ....................199
Woman wearing old Leya dress..............................................................204
Woman wearing musiinsi and chibaanda ...........................................205
Women pounding grain in Malawi, 1914 ..............................................208
Woman at work on a stone grinding mill, 1860s ................................209
Table: Male Asiatic population, 1938 ....................................................224
Kenneth Kaunda ........................................................................................239
Robinson Nabulyato’s grave and store..................................................242
Map of Banamwaze in Namwala District ............................................243
Map of licensed trading stores in Mwinilunga District ...................264
The house of Thomas Kapita at Ikelenge, 1954 ..................................270
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Barrett
Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu
David M. Gordon
Karen Tranberg Hansen
Marja Hinfelaar
J. Jeffrey Hoover
Walima T. Kalusa
Friday Mufuzi
Iva Peša
Bizeck J. Phiri
Robert Ross
Kenneth P. Vickery
Curator and Researcher, Museum of
Ethnography, Stockholm
Professor of History, University of
Lubumbashi
Associate Professor of History,
Bowdoin College
Professor Emerita, Department of
Anthropology, Northwestern
University
Researcher, National Archives of
Zambia
Professor at Katanga Methodist
University and University of
Lubumbashi
Lecturer in African History, University
of Swaziland
Keeper of History, Livingstone
Museum, Zambia
PhD student, Leiden University
Professor of History, University of
Zambia
Professor of African History, Leiden
University
Professor of History, North Carolina
State University
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INTRODUCTION:
MATERIAL CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION PATTERNS:
A SOUTHERN AFRICAN REVOLUTION
Robert Ross, Marja Hinfelaar and Iva Peša
In the last years before the independence of Zambia and Malawi, the
researchers of the renowned Rhodes-Livingstone Institute were contemplating writing a book to be entitled ‘The Industrial Revolution in Central
Africa.’1 In the end, nothing came of this project. Part of the reason for this
failure of nerve, or commitment, may have been a cold-headed account of
the nature of the economic phenomena for which they were intending to
describe the social consequences. This was made by Phyllis Deane, who
had been an economist working for the Colonial Office in conjunction
with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute before she left to take up a lectureship in economics at Cambridge. There she would become one of the leading economic historians of her generation, and author of a renowned
work on Great Britain, famously entitled The First Industrial Revolution.2
Before that, however, she produced a short article on ‘The Industrial
Revolution in British Central Africa.’3 In this, she implicitly compared the
two phenomena of rapid economic growth, that in Great Britain in the
decades around 1800, and also South Africa since around 1930,4 and that in
what was then the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the period
after 1945. In the latter case, the drive towards industrialisation was
primarily in the hands of the white minority, and the mass of industrial
1 H. Macmillan, ‘The historiography of transition on the Zambian Copperbelt : another
view’, Journal of Southern African studies, 19:4 (1993), 690; c.f. R.J.B. Moore, These African
copper miners: A study of the industrial revolution in Northern Rhodesia, with principal reference to the copper mining industry (London: 1948); More generally, J-B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar
and G. Macola (eds.), Living the end of empire: Politics and society in late colonial Zambia
(Leiden, 2011).
2 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965.
3 Civilisations 12 (1962); It is not inconceivable that this article began as an introduction
for the Rhodes-Livingstone institute book which never materialised. Elizabeth Colson has
no recollection of the volume, but believes that it may have been planned by J. Clyde
Mitchell, but abandoned when he moved the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland,
around 1955. Email to Marja Hinfelaar, 23.3.2012.
4 On the use of this comparison, see J-B. Gewald, ‘Researching and writing in the
twilight of an imagined conquest: Anthropology in Northern Rhodesia, 1930–1960’, History
and Anthropology, 18:4 (2007), 459–87.
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
production was concentrated in what was then Southern Rhodesia, while
it was the copper mines of what was to become Zambia which provided
the income. As Phyllis Deane noted, the enclave of what she called the
modern economy had a tenuous relationship with ‘the rest of the community (…) It finds its major markets outside and spends most of its gross
receipts on imported goods and services.’
One of the main differences between what went on in Central Africa
and the original Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was precisely in the
extent to which production in the latter was geared to a local market.
The debates on British economic transformation around 1800 are beyond
the scope of this introduction, and recently seem to have revolved primarily around questions of energy supply and of the high wages paid in
Britain, which increased substantially the incentive for innovation.5
Nevertheless, a corollary of the high wage levels in Great Britain during
the eighteenth century was that the levels of disposable income were such
as to allow the creation of a flourishing market for the products of industry.6 The contrast with Central Africa is quite clear. There, no internal
market could allow the growth of the economy to ride out the vagaries of
the international economic conjuncture. The dramatic fall of the copper
price subsequent to 1976 was catastrophic for the economy of what was
now Zambia. There was nothing to fall back upon. The hopes of sustained
economic growth were dashed because the economy was entirely dependent upon the export of raw, or minimally processed, materials and on the
import of manufactured goods.
Nevertheless, the anthropologists of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute
saw clearly that the inhabitants of the towns on the Northern Rhodesian
Copperbelt, who they were studying, were in the process of undergoing a
major, if not necessarily permanent, cultural shift. There was an economic
revolution, but it was one of consumption, not production. The mantras
that were propounded by Max Gluckman—‘An African townsman is a
townsman; an African miner is a miner’7—and which were investigated
by his associates, above all perhaps Clyde Mitchell and the Epsteins,8 were
5 For recent syntheses see R.C. Allen, The British industrial revolution in global perspective (Cambridge, 2009), E.A. Wrigley, Energy and the English industrial revolution
(Cambridge, 2010).
6 J. De Vries, The industrious revolution: Consumer behavior and the household economy,
1650 to the present (Cambridge, 2008).
7 M. Gluckman, ‘Anthropological problems arising from the African industrial revolution’, in: A. Southall (ed.), Social change in modern Africa (London, 1961).
8 Notably, Clyde Mitchell, The Kalela dance: Aspects of social relationships among
urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, 1956); idem, Cities, society and social
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material culture and consumption patterns
3
not without power. They appreciated what was going on in the Copperbelt,
and in the villages of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This can be
described in many ways, but one of the most obvious is to claim that a
slow but decisive and shift was occurring in the material culture of the
African populations of the Southern Savanna. This obviously had a dialectic relationship with shifts in political allegiance, kinship structures, religious beliefs and so forth, but it was a major phenomenon in and of itself.
In other words, the men and women who came to live in the towns of
Northern Rhodesia did so not to produce consumer goods, but to acquire
them. As Godfrey Wilson reported, in the first great work of African Urban
anthropology, An essay on the economics of detribalization in Northern
Rhodesia,9 the people he was studying in Broken Hill (now Kabwe) had
become a ‘dressed people’, and as such, at least temporarily, they set themselves aside from the rest of the population.
In this, as in so much of the history of the Southern Savannah, Central
Africa was part of a wider regional pattern. There had of course been a rich
material culture in the region, particularly notable for its basketry and pottery, but in this there was only local consumption, not distribution. Its use
disappeared during colonial periods, except for those pots with a ritual
significance, and the basketry, especially that made by the Tonga, which
found a tourist market.10 Against this, there was the deep history of the
use of imported goods as the basis of political power. In the region’s precolonial history, this took two forms. On the one hand, there was the direct
use of imported weapons of individual destruction. Firearms and gunpowder were used in many places to kill opponents and to subjugate the
survivors. A number of the new kingdoms of the Southern Savannah, most
notably perhaps Msiri’s Yeke polity which dominated southern Katanga in
the last part of the nineteenth century, owed their considerable power to
their control of the local gun and gunpowder trade. In this case, it has
been argued, it was a temporary hiatus in the import of gunpowder which
left Msiri vulnerable to the assault by the Congo Free State. Most, though
perception: A Central African perspective (Oxford, 1987); A.L. Epstein, Urbanization and
kinship: The domestic domain on the Copperbelt of Zambia: 1950–1956 (London, etc., 1981).
For a recent laudatory reappraisal of their work, see J. Robinson, Ordinary cities: Between
modernity and development (London, 2006).
9 G. Wilson, An essay on the economics of detribalization in Northern Rhodesia
(Reprinted, Manchester, 1968).
10 E. Syabbalo, Tonga crafts in figures, no date, no place (Lusaka), gives a description of
what is available on the market. The collections of the Rhodes-Livingstone Museum,
Livingstone, including its photographic collection, provide the best entry to Zambian
‘traditional’ material culture.
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
not all other polities also relied on firearms, whether for offence or for
defence, and whether to be used against humans or in the hunt, notably
for ivory, not that these categories were exclusive.11
On the other hand, imported goods could be used to create relationships of dependency, debt and eventually slavery. This was on the basis of
a political economy within the system of value characterised by Jane
Guyer and Samuel Belinga as ‘Wealth in People’, under which power, and
indeed economic survival, were related directly on the control of dependents, or to an individual’s position within the social hierarchies.12 There
is an important argument, made first by Joe Miller for West central Africa,
that those who were able to act as gatekeepers for the import of European
commodities, above all cloth and strong drink, were able to distribute
these among their followers to ensure the maintenance of relations of
dominance and subservience. If the game was played well, then it would
be possible to create a cycle by which goods were invested in asymmetric
relationships, which in turn produced slaves, who could then be sold to
acquire more commodities. There thus existed two cycles, one of which
can be described as Commodity1—Slave—Commodity2 and the other as
Gun1—Slave–Gun2 (and indeed Gun1—Ivory—Gun2). These are in the
strictest economic sense virtuous cycles—in all other respects vicious
ones.13 Thus, power had to do with the control of imported goods. It grew
out of the barrel of a gun, but also out of the distribution of such barrels,
not just their firing.
The goods which could be converted into people, and the people
who could be converted into goods, moved along what were essentially
east-west lines of communication, which ended at the ports of either
the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean. As what was to become Northern
Rhodesia was absorbed into the empire of the British South African
Company, both these things changed. The main route to the ports now lay
southerly, on the railway across the Zambezi and on to Beira, Durban or
Cape Town. Even southern Congo was initially orientated on this route,
rather than to the mouth of the Congo river or to Benguela, as occurred
11 See G. Macola, ‘Reassessing the significance of firearms in Central Africa: The case of
north-western Zambia to the 1920s’, Journal of African history, 51:3 (2010), 301–21, and other
work by Macola, forthcoming.
12 J.I. Guyer and S.M. Eno Belinga, ‘Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge:
Accumulation and composition in Equatorial Africa’, Journal of African history, 36:1 (1995),
91–120.
13 J.C. Miller, Way of death: Merchant capitalism and the Angolan slave trade, 1730–1830
(Madison, 1988).
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material culture and consumption patterns
5
later. Furthermore, the equations between goods and people began to
change, as the power of senior men over women, children, slaves and
other dependents decreased, or at least could be less certainly enforced.
The colonial abolition of slavery, and of the slave trade, was of major
importance in this.
As a result, as migrant labour began, imported goods began to be what
attracted young men to the mines, following the opening of Kimberley,
the Witwatersrand and the Congolese and Zambian Copperbelts. Why
throughout Southern Africa, did men go in substantial numbers to work in
the mines? The classic answer is that they did so in the first instance in
order to pay the tax that the colonial government imposed on them, or to
acquire cattle and other capital goods for their agricultural enterprises.
The latter is not entirely mistaken, the cattle herd of Pondoland in the
South African Transkei was never larger than in the 1920s, and for a long
time workers were paid their wages in stock, often before they had undertaken their contract.14 But there was always also, and indeed primarily,
a demand for goods. Patrick Harries has described how Mozambiquan
miners on the Witwatersrand, early in the twentieth century, would have a
locked tin truck in the backroom of the local trader’s store, in which they
held their purchases. When their contract was finished, they collected it
and paid off any remaining debts. The contents of ten such trucks have
been listed. Harries notes that:
the buying patterns were determined by questions of symbol and status as
much as by practical concerns. (…) Over three-quarters of the sum was
spent on knives, boots, cloths and blankets, the diversity and cheapness of
which could not be matched in Mozambique. The presence of table knives
and spoons, bedspreads and table cloths, brushes and combs, vests, waistcoats, shirts, jackets, socks and belts suggest a new comportment. Most of
the men brought mirrors and knives of various shapes and sizes and several
carried iron files to reforge at home. Half the trunks contained up to 12 kilos
of soap in rough bars.15
Similar lists can be found for the Copperbelt in the 1930s. In one case a
man took home, to Chinsali district in rural Northern Rhodesia:
14 W. Beinart, ‘Labour migrancy and rural production: Pondoland, 1900–1950’, in:
P. Mayer (ed.), Black villagers in an industrial society: Anthropological perspectives on labour
migration in South Africa (Cape Town, 1980), idem, ‘Joyini Inkomo: Cattle advances and
the origins of migrancy from Pondoland’, Journal of Southern African studies, 5:2 (1979),
199–219.
15 P. Harries, Work, culture, and identity: Migrant labourers in Mozambique and South
Africa, c. 1860–1910 (London, 1994), 174.
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
1 imitation leather suitcase, 8 women’s dresses, 1 woman’s slip, 6 men’s shirts,
5 pairs men’s trousers, 3 singlets, 1 pair tennis shoes, 2 sweaters, 1 cardigan,
2 prs. Men’s socks, 3 men’s ties, 1 cap, 1 pr. Puttees, 1 sheet, 1 towel, 1 handkerchief, 3 second-hand blankets, 1 steamer rug, 6 lengths print (24 yards),
1 umbrella, 1 enamel mug, 3 wash dishes, 2 mirrors, 1 comb, 1 gillette safety
razor, 1 shaving stick, 1 bottle toilet water, 1 bottle perfume, 2 boxes blanco,
1 tooth brush, 2 notebooks, 2 pencils, 2 pens, 1 pr. Scissors, 1 box safety pins,
8 bars soap, 1 bottle salt.16
In addition, among the possessions of other miners investigated, were
two bicycles and one gramophone, but, the investigators noted, no sewing
machine—normally, apparently this would have been expected.
The incorporation of the goods which migrants brought back obviously
led to considerable conflicts. Clyde Mitchell, when he was working as an
anthropologist in Southern Malawi, records how the local aristocracy,
whose wealth and thus power had been based substantially on slave
trading, were challenged by the new wealth which came back from the
mines. Chiefs were precluded by their position from seeing a cash income.
Whereas they had previously monopolised the goods brought in, they
were now increasingly marginalised, and challenged by the young men.17
There remained all sorts of problems notably in the distribution of the
‘loot’ between the workers’ family members. Should money, clothes, and
other goods be given to the parents-in-law, as a surrogate for bride-service,
or to a man’s own parents, or simply to his wife? In one case, a wife complained that too much had gone to her mother-in-law. The conflict became
so intense that, in the end, the wife poisoned her husband’s mother—at
least so was her death interpreted.18
Conflicts and realignments were of course continuous, and at the local
level could derive from seemingly minor changes. Thus, at the conference
from which this book derives, Elizabeth Colson described how she had
observed the consequences of the opening of shops in the Tongaland
countryside where she first began fieldwork over sixty years ago. The
result was that the women were no longer dependent on their menfolk to
16 M. Davis (ed.), Modern industry and the African: An enquiry into the effect of the copper
mines of Central Africa upon native society and the work of Christian missions made under
the auspices of the Department of Social and Industrial Research of the International
Missionary Council (London, 1933).
17 J. Clyde Mitchell, The Yao village: A study in the social structure of a Nyasaland tribe
(Manchester, 1956). For a recent study, see Yizenge Chondoka, Machona: Returned labor
migrants and rural transformation in Chama District, North Eastern Zambia, 1890–1964
(Lusaka, 2007).
18 Cited in A. Kaler, ‘‘Many divorces and many spinsters’: Marriage as an invented
tradition in Southern Malawi, 1946–1999’, Journal of family history, 26 (2001).
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material culture and consumption patterns
7
provide them with the goods deriving from the Western economy, particularly cloth. For the first time the women had a choice in what they would
wear, and no doubt in a wide number of other consumption decisions.
They no longer wanted their men to bring back goods from their stays in
town; they wanted cash. Equally, they could now set about earning cash
themselves, for instance by commercialising the brewing of beer. The consequences for village life were very considerable.
It was not only at the micro level that such matters began to play a
major role. By the 1950s, the British Colonial government was beginning
to appreciate the need for a good distributive system in order to provide
initiatives for rural production. An enquiry was held in what was then
Nyasaland and Tanganyika into ‘the distribution and consumption of
commodities among Africans.’ The reason for this enquiry was to test the
widely held view that ‘the consumer goods which were being distributed
failed to constitute long-run inducements to the consumers to produce.’19
Though in the end the investigator did not endorce this argument, there
remained the question as to the relationship between labour and consumption, and on the incentives for participation in the cash economy.
It was only in the years around independence, that this became universal.
This is of course a well-known argument within the economic history
of Africa. Work within the commercial economy, whether that of mining,
cash cropping, manufacturing or the service sector, was pointless without
the means and the desire to spend the money so earned.20 Nevertheless,
there has been relatively little work on the history of consumption in
Africa, this in contrast to recent developments in Europe.21 In this book we
are attempting to help in the redressing of that continental imbalance.
The reasons for doing this go beyond the purely historical. Much of the
recent history of Zambia, and to some extent Malawi, centres around the
19 Cited in F.C. Wright, African consumers in Nyasaland and Tanganyika: An enquiry into
the distribution and consumption of commodities among Africans carried out in 1852–1853
(London, HMSO, 1955), 6.
20 See notably three articles by G. Austin, ‘Resources, techniques and strategies south of
the Sahara: Revising the factor endowments perspective on African economic development, 1500–2000’, Economic history review, 61:3 (2008), 587–624; ‘The “reversal of fortune”
thesis and the compression of history: Perspectives from African and comparative economic history’, Journal of international development, 20:8 (2008), 996–1027; ‘Cash crops and
freedom: Export agriculture and the decline of slavery in colonial West Africa’, International
review of social history, 54:1 (2009), 1–37.
21 For exceptions see: T. Burke, Lifebuoy men, Lux women: Commodification, consumption and cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe (Durham, N.C., 1995); J. Prestholdt, Domesticating
the world: African consumerism and the genealogies of globalization (Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 2008); K.T. Hansen, Salaula: The world of secondhand clothing and Zambia
(Chicago, etc., 2000); J.M. Allman, Fashioning Africa: Power and the politics of dress
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
relationship between the individual accumulation of wealth, not always
by the most honest of means, and the attempts of the state to ensure the
spread of income and services among the population as broadly as possible. Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of the republic of Zambia,
once commented that he did ‘not want to see a small group of Zambians
owning large cars, plush houses; whose conspicuous consumption is a
continuous taunt to the rest of the nation.’22 The problem was that of
a combination of economic nationalism and the hard realities of the
international economic conjuncture, particularly the fall in the copper
price after 1976. These led first to ill-founded nationalist political decisions, for instance breaking the expatriate and Indian owned retail networks, which prevented the access of rural dwellers to the consumer goods
they had enjoyed for close on half a century.23 Secondly, restrictions on
the acquisition of foreign exchange, in an attempt to cope with the difficulties caused by copper price cuts, deprived even the city dwellers of
such goods, as Zambia plunged into economic depression and hyperinflation.24 Nevertheless, many members of the elite retained access to
foreign exchange and thus many consumer goods—this may indeed
have been the defining characteristic of the elite in this period—with the
result that both economic differentiation and social unrest became more
pronounced. In his attempt to spread and to nationalise wealth, and to
make the accumulation of private fortunes impossible—an endeavour
which failed—Kaunda had inadvertently prevented the mass of Zambians
from continuing their acquisition of the simpler consumer goods to which
they had become accustomed. There can be no doubt that this contributed very significantly to the massive unrest which led to the fall of
Kaunda’s UNIP government.25
(Bloomington, IN, etc., 2004). For more general information on clothing, not only in
(Central) African history, see R. Ross, Clothing: A global history; or the Imperialists’
New Clothes (Cambridge, 2008).
22 Quoted in A.A. Beveridge, ‘Economic independence, indigenization, and the African
businessman: Some effects of Zambia’s economic reforms,’ African studies review, 17:3
(1974), 487.
23 H. Macmillan, ‘‘The devil you know’: the impact of the Mulungushi economic reforms
on retail trade in rural Zambia, with special reference of Susman Brothers & Wolfsohn,
1968–1980’, in: J-B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar and G. Macola (eds.), One Zambia, many histories:
Towards a history of post-colonial Zambia (Leiden, 2008), 187–211.
24 J. Ferguson, Expectations of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the
Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1999); Hansen, Salaula.
25 For preliminary discussions of this, L. Rakner, Political and economic liberalisation
in Zambia 1991–2001 (Uppsala: 2003); M. Larmer, Rethinking African politics: A history of
opposition in Zambia (Farnham, Ashgate, 2011).
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material culture and consumption patterns
9
Since 1991, things have been changing. In many ways, indeed, this political regime, which fits perhaps uncomfortably into the categorisation of
African states known as neo-patrimonial,26 but which has certainly been
corrupt and self-enriching,27 has been the mirror image of the old ‘wealth
in people’ political economy of the region. Power required the maintenance of a clientele, through the distribution of goods and services and by
ensuring that the state distributed its own goods in the desired way. The
relationships which were built up, however, were categorical, as much as
personal. Politicians had to service their constituencies, both geographical
and social, but could use the benefits of state power for their own personal
gain. In time, though, as the slow recovery of the economy gathered pace,
the expansion of South African capitalism to the north over the last
decade, and what could be called Shoprite imperialism, is predicated on a
previously unrequited desire for commodities.28 With the introduction of
the mobile phone, it is both a symbol of, and a major contribution to,
Central African economic transformation. Perhaps in the current phase of
re-industrialisation, it may help obviate some of the vulnerabilities which
had previously existed. What used to be known as the Westernised elite
distin guished itself from the rest of the population on the basis of its
physical possessions, as do the current mega-rich of many African countries. Possessions are thus highly politicised, as well as being economic.
It matters what sort of car one drives, or what sort of house one has
been able to build. These things—quite literally things—are the rewards
for political and economic success. But at the same time the pressures on
such individuals to share the goods they have acquired can on the one had
be seen by the successful as an onus, but on the other may well be the
cement which holds together what can be highly divided societies.
There are substantial methodological problems in the historical study
of African consumption. The study of material culture has tended to be
one which exoticises its subject, which is concerned to actively ignore
the changes to which we have been pointing. Museum collections do
not include mass-produced Chinese enamel bowls, or even three-legged
26 M. Leenstra, Beyond the façade: Instrumentalisation of the Zambian health sector
(Leiden: 2012).
27 J.K. van Donge, ‘The plundering of Zambian resources by Frederick Chiluba and his
friends: A case study of the interaction between national politics and the international
drive towards good governance’, African affairs, 108:430 (2009), 69–90.
28 See e.g. D. Miller, ‘South African multinational corporations, NEPAD and competing
regional claims on post-Apartheid Southern Africa’, African sociological review, 8 (2004),
176–202.
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
Birmingham cooking pots, despite their evident importance in African
material culture. Nor can historians of Africa fall back on the classic
European written sources for material culture, such as inventories of
property made at someone’s death. Rather Africanists have had to rely on
ethnographic accounts, with the danger, not found in the reports of the
Rhodes-Livingstone institute, that modern things are ignored; on advertisements, which perhaps illustrate aspirations more than reality; on budget studies, which again often limit themselves to the so-called essentials
of life; on oral material, which has its own problems with regard to the
chronology of memory; and on the occasional comments which archival
research can throw up. Even the study of advertisements does not lead to
many results, primarily because until well after independence most advertising even in the main newspapers was aimed at the white population,
who did after all possess a highly disproportionate amount of the country’s disposable income.29 Perhaps for this reason, this book has a number
of studies of shopkeepers, on the assumption that it is easier to investigate
the seller than the buyer and in this way gain insight into the consumptive
patters of the mass of Africans.
This collection brings together a set of essays written by historians
and anthropologists, with the objective of providing a fresh approach
towards the history of consumption in Central Africa. The contributions
are empirically based, but equally aim to further theoretical debates
in the field of study. The case studies deal with the Central African
region (including chapters on present-day Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and
Angola), but highlight the importance of seeing this region in its broader
geographical, socio-economic and political setting. The circulation of
people, goods and ideas throughout the area is one of the main concerns
of this book. Straddling the boundaries between pre-colonial, colonial and
post-colonial periods all contributions argue that consumption should be
viewed as embedded in a specific historical setting, touching on core
themes of culture, politics and economic organisation.
The first section of the book, focusing on the pre-colonial period,
takes a stand on the role of the long-distance trade. This trade made
imported goods, such as cloth, beads, but most especially firearms, accessible throughout the area. The first contribution, by David Gordon,
assesses the effects of imported goods on the local political economy of
South Central Africa. These could be both positive (state-building and
29 Though, see Chapter 7 below.
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material culture and consumption patterns
11
wealth-generating) and negative (resulting in debt, fragmentation and
war). By looking at the import of guns and cloth, Gordon argues that
their supply eventually fostered instability and the rise of warlord polities,
which would become so characteristic of the late nineteenth century
political setting. Focusing on guns in particular, Donatien Dibwe Dia
Mwembu examines the role of firearms in the Congolese Songye region,
extending his analysis up to the time of independence. Although firearms
carried a vast destructive potential, he argues, they always remained
ultimate symbols of prestige and power. In this region, located at the
crossroads of east-west trade routes (between the Arab-Swahili sphere
in the east and the Portuguese-Ovimbundu sphere in the west), guns
could be used for hunting, communication, but also became a symbol
of the emergence of a new form of military power prior to the advent of
colonial rule.
Connecting to and expanding on the above-mentioned themes, the
second section deals with issues of migration, mobility and innovation.
Sipilingas, Katangese followers of the Springer Methodist missionary
family, were mobile individuals par excellence. Both their social and geographical mobility is described by J. Jeffrey Hoover, who argues that the
power of the ‘word’ – embodied by education and possession of the Bible –
was at the same time material and immaterial. Mission workers, drawn
from Zambia, Angola and beyond, created international linkages through
migration. Understanding what attracted these labour migrants to the
mission can elucidate the meaning of imported goods in an ever-changing
local setting. Michael Barrett vividly captures how labour migrants from
Barotseland were able to ‘walk home majestically’. The purchase of goods,
enabled by wage labour, provided an opportunity for migrants to obtain
social status within their home community. To understand why labour
migration became such a strong, durable and transformative institution,
Barrett argues that it is necessary to look at material culture. In the Western
Province of Zambia, consumer goods transformed local expectations
of life, work and family relations, in addition to creating new tastes and
beliefs. Notably, consumption played a role in negotiating gender, generation and social status. The contribution by Kenneth P. Vickery looks at
the railway, the quintessential symbol of mobility. By drawing similarities
between European, North-American and African perceptions of the
railway, he proposes ways in which to approach the hitherto neglected
study of railway culture in Africa. By focusing on industrial work discipline
on the Rhodesian railways, he illustrates how a specific work culture
emerged there. Through their daily actions and practices, Vickery shows
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robert ross, marja hinfelaar and iva peša
how railway workers played a role in shaping and on occasion subverting this industrial work discipline, epitomised by the clock, order and
discipline.
Advertising and entrepreneurship is the theme of the third section.
Walima T. Kalusa deals with the advertising of manufactured goods on
the Zambian Copperbelt after the Second World War. He argues that
colonial advertisements had a hidden agenda, aiming to create a market
for European manufactured goods and to further the civilising mission, by
instilling modern bourgeois habits in the population. However, goods
could be consumed in unexpected ways and migrant labourers generally
undermined and challenged colonial intentions. Kalusa illustrates how
the consumption of goods could serve to negotiate relationships of
gender, age and identity, and ultimately to contest colonial power itself.
By looking at the sewing machine and tailors as urban entrepreneurs,
Karen Tranberg Hansen shows how dreams and aspirations were
fabricated through dress in Zambia. Technology, entrepreneurship and
consumer taste come together in this chapter which points out the social
importance of cutting a nice figure in dress. Starting with the first imports
of sewing machines during the nineteenth century, Hansen sketches
historical transformations leading to the emergence of the present design
scene and the persistent desire to produce and wear ‘the latest’.
In the study of consumption traders form a unique category, as they
link producers, consumers and commodities together. The final section
opens with a contribution by Friday Mufuzi on Indian traders in Livingstone, in which he problematises the connection between the spread
of mass-produced Western consumer goods and the demise of locally
produced handicrafts and utensils. The Sharma Brothers’ trading store is
interpreted as a motor of social change during the 1950s and 1960s, as
Indian traders created new tastes which influenced society. The desire for
consumer goods propelled labour migration and questioned established
age, gender and power hierarchies. However, Mufuzi shows that the social
differentiation which access to trade goods caused could have disruptive
effects, such as drunkenness, prostitution and marital problems. The
chapter by Bizeck J. Phiri revolves around another group of Indian traders,
this time in Chipata District in the Eastern Province of Zambia. It traces
the changing patterns of commodity production and consumption under
the influence of Indian merchant capital throughout the twentieth
century, up to the period of the Mulungushi reforms. Importantly, it looks
at the relationship between Indian wholesale and retail business and
African trade, production and consumption. Phiri argues that Indian
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material culture and consumption patterns
13
traders played a considerable role in transforming the existing African
way of life. Looking at one particularly significant trader in the Southern
Province of Zambia, Marja Hinfelaar points towards the reasons for the
initial success and the eventual decline of Robinson Nabulyato’s trading
enterprises. She aptly draws attention to the linkages between trade, culture and politics, by connecting Nabulyato’s business as a trader to his
famous career as a national politician. Counteracting narratives of failed
African businessmen, Nabulyato’s story illustrates the ingenuity and
entrepreneurship of traders in the face of prohibitive government policies. Finally, examining the impact of European and African traders in the
North-Western part of Zambia, the chapter by Iva Peša looks at trading
stores in Mwinilunga District from 1940 to 1970. The rapid increase in the
number of trading stores during this period is attributed to the unique
linkage which traders provided between production and consumption.
Not only did traders sell consumer goods, such as cloth and bicycles, but
they also bought up local produce, such as pineapples and cassava, thereby
greatly stimulating the volume of trade. Although this chapter stresses the
changes brought after independence by marketing boards and the
Mulungushi reforms, it underlines that trade and the acquisition of consumer goods remained indispensable throughout. All four contributions
in this section deal with rural traders and show that entrepreneurship was
not merely located in the urban mining centres of Central Africa, but that
throughout the region patterns of consumption have been, and continue
to be, changing, at varying rates and with varying effects on the societies
of the region.
We do not claim that the desire for new things can explain everything
that has happened in Central Africa over the last century and a half. Such
a form of reductionism would scandalously overestimate the importance
both of the objects themselves and of the demand for their acquisition.
It would, nevertheless, be easy to underestimate the importance of these
matters. At the very least they provide a particularly fascinating entry into
the questions of capitalist penetration, urbanisation, political change and
social reorganisation, which have rightly dominated the historiography
and sociology of South Central Africa over the last hundred years.
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PART I
PRE-COLONIAL TRADE AND FIREARMS
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WEARING CLOTH, WIELDING GUNS:
CONSUMPTION, TRADE, AND POLITICS IN THE SOUTH CENTRAL
AFRICAN INTERIOR DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
David M. Gordon
There are two broad schools of thought regarding the connections between the pre-colonial African polities and international trade. The first
emphasises African agency and ingenuity in the face of opportunities
presented by access to international markets. This school tends to view
international trade as stimulating the rise of centralised polities and
greater scale in political organisation.1 On the other hand, at least since
the publication of Walter Rodney’s How Europe underdeveloped Africa, a
far less sanguine view of international trade has focused on its destructive
aspects, including African indebtedness, dependency, warfare, and the
collapse of polities. The deterministic aspects of this neoMarxist argu
ment have fallen into disrepute among Africanists, even while scholars
such as Edward Alpers, Paul Lovejoy and Joseph Miller follow some of its
main contours.2
Within South Central African historiography, there are examples of
both schools. Perhaps in response to the then fashionable neoMarxist
perspective, Andrew Roberts contended that it was ‘wrong to suppose
that such a trade had a merely destructive effect or even that it served only
to make a few chiefs rich and powerful.’3 His major work on the Bemba
kingdom argues that foreign traders ‘never exerted any political influence;
on the contrary they served to increase the power of the Bemba them
selves against the surrounding peoples.’4 Giacomo Macola views the
Kazembe kingdom reaching its political heyday when it exerted control
1 An influential and relatively recent example, J. Thornton, Africa and Africans and the
making of the Atlantic world (Cambridge, 1998).
2 W. Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa (Washington DC, 1972); J. Miller, Way
of death: Merchant capitalism and the Angolan slave trade, 1730–1830 (Madison WI, 1988);
E.A. Alpers, Ivory and slaves: Changing patterns of international trade in East Central Africa
to the later nineteenth century (Berkeley CA, 1975); P. Lovejoy, Transformations in slavery:
A history of slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983).
3 A. Roberts, ‘Precolonial trade in Zambia’, African social research, 10 (1970), 715–46.
4 A. Roberts, A history of the Bemba: Political growth and change in North-Eastern
Zambia before 1900 (London, 1973), 198.
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david m. gordon
over international trade and used imports of luxury goods to extend its
patronage networks to peripheral regions. Its decline, as he also points
out, was in part a result of the loss of control over this international trade
to armed Nyamwezi and Swahili traders.5 With a focus on the fall of both
the Tumbuka and Ngoni polities in northern Malawi and eastern Zambia,
Leroy Vail concludes that ‘the failure to link local political institutions
with a meaningful control over trade weakened the state to such an extent
that it was not able to withstand pressure from without.’6 Here, in a typical
neoMarxist argument, Vail claims that international trade led to the loss
of the material underpinnings of Ngoni and Tumbuka polities.
The differences between these arguments were often more apparent
than real, as they derived from the precise object of an individual author’s
study. Furthermore, since international trade empowered some and dis
empowered others, its impacts remain a conundrum. In their works on
different polities across the interior, scholars narrate a similar historical
trajectory. The rise of polities seems linked to trading opportunities
and their fall to some change in the nature of trade. Trade at some point
in time helps to build states, while at other times it destroys them.
Historians tend to argue that when precolonial states failed to exert effec
tive monopolies over trade, competing polities or armed trading factions
within their states undermined them. International trade appears to be a
zero sum game that empowered some at the expense of others.
Since international trade affected individual polities and peoples in dif
ferent ways at different times, a comprehensive account needs to synthe
sise its impacts geographically as well as temporally. In the South Central
African interior, the emphasis on agency and opportunity seems appropri
ate for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when Luba and
Lunda expansion was influenced – but not determined – by longdistance
trading opportunities. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century
international trade led to unsustainable debt and dependency that under
mined established political relationships. Even new elites found it difficult
to maintain authority for any length of time. Governance gave way to
instability, war, and the rise of a new type of leader, the warlord. This
periodisation is geographically specific and does not apply to the entire
South Central African region. Closer to the Portuguese colonies of Angola,
5 G. Macola, The kingdom of Kazembe: History and politics in North-Eastern Zambia and
Katanga to 1950 (Hamburg, 2002), 128–60.
6 L. Vail, ‘Trade and politics in precolonial Northern Malawi: The strange relationship’,
University of Zambia history department seminar series, No. 7, 1974–5, 33.
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consumption, trade, and politics
19
west of the Kwango River, and Mozambique, east of the Luangwa River,
the rise of debt, dependency, instability, and war can be linked to a far
earlier period, as far back as the seventeenth, and certainly throughout the
eighteenth century.7
By the late nineteenth century most polities of the South Central
African interior, even those that seem to have benefited initially from
longdistance trade, such as the Bemba and Msiri’s Nyamwezi, could no
longer control the forces unleashed by trade. Their political systems
became dependent on foreign imports, and they were increasingly forced
to surrender their sovereignty to gain access to them. A convincing expla
nation for these destructive influences is required. In a broad survey of
the South Central African interior, Richard Gray and David Birmingham
argue that the failure of trade to promote economic growth and to benefit
states in this region was linked to the force of alien competition and to the
proximity of formal colonialism to market penetration.8 This argument
needs some qualification. Even from a late nineteenth century perspec
tive, formal European colonialism appeared unlikely – and certainly not
inevitable – to Central African leaders. The argument that nineteenth
century economic domination was due to the historical proximity of for
mal political domination is teleological: it does not explain the destructive
influence of trade in terms of nineteenth century forces. Instead of ques
tions concerning the nature of ‘alien competition’, what gave such alien
traders political and economic advantage needs careful consideration.
The access of these traders to new industrial imports, which circulated
rapidly across the globe and inspired a new type of Central African con
sumerism, gave ‘alien’ (or coastal traders) a decisive advantage. The expan
sive trade in and use of these commodities made it difficult to maintain
mercantile monopolies, which undermined those political hierarchies
that rested on the distribution of rare imported goods to clients. The pro
liferation of imported goods thereby eroded the old tributary relation
ships that had formed the basis of South Central African mercantile states.
This new free trade, illegitimate in terms of old and established polit
ical interests and elites, fostered a political economy of instability. In this
sense, it was the new type of commodity, the products of EuroAmerican
7 For West Central Africa in the eighteenth century, see Miller, Way of Death. For East
Central Africa, see Alpers, Ivory and Slaves.
8 R. Gray and D. Birmingham, ‘Some economic and political consequences of trade
in Central and Eastern Africa in the precolonial period’, R. Gray and D. Birmingham
(eds.), Precolonial African trade: Essays on trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900
(London, 1970).
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david m. gordon
industrialisation, which fundamentally restructured the political econ
omy of the South Central African interior. While mercantile capitalism
had contributed to the gradual growth of stable polities, industrial capital
ism – and industrial goods or their equivalent – contributed to indebted
ness, fragmentation, and often war.
The existing literature on ‘trade and politics’ in this region and beyond
generally focuses on exports – predominantly slaves and ivory.9 While
there are sophisticated anthropological studies of the use of industrial
commodities, including cloth, in the twentieth century, there is a noted
absence of an understanding of the varied political, economic, social
and cultural uses of imports, especially in the precolonial period.10 Such
an emphasis on consumption refocuses historical attention from Euro
American demand to African demand and from the politics of trade to the
politics of consumption. By appreciating patterns of consumption, as well
as the needs and desires that motivated African involvement in interna
tional trade, African agency can be shown to inform broader economic
processes, even while such agency may not necessarily lead to stable and
prosperous polities.11
By the early nineteenth century, South Central Africans consumed a
variety of international imports. The archival evidence of trade statistics
from coastal regions indicates the preponderance of woven materials
(including cloth, textiles and woollens), followed by alcohol, beads, and
to a lesser extent, guns and gunpowder. By the mid to late nineteenth
century, industrial iron and brass was also becoming significant.12 Oral
9 The classic conventional study is K.O. Dike, Trade and politics in the Niger delta,
1830–1885 (Oxford, 1956). For a study closer to this region, see Alpers, Ivory and Slaves;
S.H. Broadhead, ‘Trade and politics on the Congo coast, 1770–1870’, (unpublished PhD
thesis, Boston University, 1973); P.M. Martin, The external trade of the Loango coast,
1576–1870 (Oxford, 1972); and essays in Gray and Birmingham, Precolonial African trade.
For an exceptional focus on consumption, see Miller, Way of Death, 71–104.
10 For cloth and clothing in the twentieth century, see K.T. Hansen, Salaula: The world
of second-hand clothing in Zambia (Chicago, 2000). For an exceptional focus on precolo
nial consumption, see Miller, Way of Death, 71–104.
11 For the agency of East African consumerism in international trade, see J. Prestholdt,
‘On the global repercussions of East African consumerism’, American historical review,
30:109 (2004), 755–81.
12 To my knowledge, we lack a thorough accounting of imports. Limited evidence from
the coastal areas of the quantity and type of trade are available from J.V. Miller, ‘Imports at
Luanda, Angola, 1785–1823’, 165–246; and G. Liesegang, ‘A first look at the import and export
trade of Mozambique, 1800–1914’, 451–524, G. Liesegang, H. Pasch, and A Jones (eds.),
Figuring African trade: Proceedings of the symposium on the quantification and structure of
the import and export and long distance trade in Africa, 1800–1913 (Berlin, 1986). For British
trade from 1699 to 1808, see M. Johnson, Anglo-African trade in the eighteenth century:
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consumption, trade, and politics
21
evidence from the interior adds the Impande shells, collected on the West
African coast, and traded principally by the Mbundu. Such commodities,
acquired from international longdistance trade, were often unavailable
from regional trade, and were priced differently. Thus, the characteristics
of international commodities distinguished longdistance trade from
regional trade.13 Prior to the nineteenth century, at least in the interior, the
scarcity of such international commodities and the robustness of local
forms of production meant that the foreign commodities’ main functions
were as luxury goods, for ritual and ceremony, and for the consolidation of
political hierarchies by those leaders who monopolised access to these
goods and their distribution.
As foreign imports became more widespread, their impacts changed,
depending on local patterns of production and demand. International
imports could stimulate and feed into regional sites of production and
trading networks or undermine them. Industrial iron (mostly in the form
of wire), for example, seems to have had little impact on the ironsmithing
traditions of the Congo basin, in which workshops continued to produce
implements adjusted to local environmental conditions as well as prestige
items. Thus the production of iron may have declined but blacksmithing
traditions continued or were even stimulated.14 On the other hand, when
Birmingham brass flooded the interior market, the value of Katangan
copper collapsed along with its production.15
The two commodities with the most influence on local and regional
political economies were those crucial to EuroAmerican industrial manu
facturing, guns and cloth. Even while guns and gunpowder were but a
small proportion of the total value of South Central African imports, by
the mid to late nineteenth century they had become crucial to a regional
political economy, a factor of production for ivory and slaves, which in
turn were necessary to secure imports of cloth (or woven material more
generally), probably the most significant industrial import by value and
quantity. The availability of cheap cloth (in terms of ivory) disrupted old
political hierarchies that depended on the distribution of cloth and other
English statistics on African trade, 1699–1808, in: J.T. Lindblad and R. Ross (eds.), Intercontinenta, 15 (Leiden, 1990).
13 For the relationship between long distance and regional trading networks, see
A. Roberts, ‘Precolonial trade in Zambia’, African social research, 20 (1970), 715–46,
especially 716–7.
14 C.E. Kriger, Pride of men: Ironworking in 19th century West Central Africa (Portsmouth
NH, 1999).
15 E.W. Herbert, Red gold of Africa: Copper in precolonial history and culture (Madison
WI, 1984), 169–78.
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david m. gordon
rare goods to dependents, leading to a desperate search for more cloth as
a way of maintaining political power, however fragile.
This argument is developed with a great deal of synthesis and generali
sation. Its strength lies in the commonality of historical experiences across
the South Central African interior. These experiences are illustrated by
focusing on the Luba and Lunda confederations of the South Central
African interior, with numerous examples drawn from the principal poli
ties of the region, including the central Luba, Mwaant Yav’s Lunda, Mwata
Kazembe’s eastern Lunda, Chitimukulu’s Bemba, Msiri’s Yeke, the Lozi,
the Swahili, the Chikunda, the Chokwe, and the Ngoni.16 The actual quan
tity of this trade is not the subject of analysis. Instead, the argument is
developed by reflecting on the social, military, political and economic
implications of imported guns and cloth.
Following a sketch of the changing dynamics of international politics
and commerce that drove changes in the South Central African interior
and connected the South Central African interior to the world economy
during the nineteenth century, this chapter turns to the political economy
particular to the import of guns and cloth and their South Central African
uses. The final section considers the instability and warlordism fostered by
the supply of foreign imports.
International Influences on the South Central African
Interior17
Far removed from the more devastating impact of slave raiding nearer to
the east and west coasts, international trade from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth century had contributed to the expansion of Luba and Lunda
confederations. Commercial credit from the Atlantic trade reached the
16 The geographic and historical focus complements scholarship that examines earlier
periods of mercantile transformation on the East and West Central African coasts.
For West Central Africa, see Miller, Way of Death; Alpers, Ivory and Slaves. In addition to
synthesising several decades of scholarship by historians of South Central Africa, this
paper introduces new primary sources that allow for a detailed firsthand view of these
internal transformations. These primary sources include a unique set of interviews
conducted by the missionary and historian, Fergus Macpherson, in the 1960s and 1970s.
Interviews are deposited in the Center for the Study of Christianity in the NonWestern
World (CSCNWW), Edinburgh. While I have conducted extensive interviews across this
region, memories of precolonial events are not as reliable nor as rich as such earlier
testimony.
17 This first section of the paper is elaborated in D. Gordon, ‘The abolition of the slave
trade and the transformation of the SouthCentral African interior’, William and Mary
Quarterly Special edition on the global consequences of the 1807 abolition, 66: 4 (2009),
915–38.
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consumption, trade, and politics
23
centre of the Lunda confederation (the Musumba), and European
financed traders dealt directly with the Lunda there. The Lunda para
mount, titled the Mwaant Yav, his appointed overseers (chilol), and his
prominent military slaves exerted control over trading activities through a
network of positions that reached west as far as the Kwango River where
they met up against a militarised Portuguese network of traders. To the
east, the Luba confederation, oriented around a sacred king (mulopwe)
and an elite bumbudye society, had a more tenuous relationship with the
Atlantic trade and specialised instead in a northsouthoriented interior
trading network from the Copperbelt to the forest edge of the Congo
basin, combined with limited trading to the Indian Ocean world through
African intermediaries such as the Bisa and the Yao. Lunda and Luba
warriors and their followings were sent or migrated to strategic centres of
trade and agricultural production. Through conquest, marriage, and incor
poration, they came to political arrangements with local people, adopting
many of their older systems of decentralised rule, and religious ideas.
Away from the coast and towards this interior region, international com
merce had a definite but contained influence.18
The nineteenthcentury abolition of the slave trade and the rise of
industrial demand, both of which drove changes across the mercantile
world, came to profoundly impact the Lunda and Luba polities and peo
ples. British naval enforcement of their abolition of the maritime slave
trade after 1807, combined with a variety of international treaties prohibit
ing slaving north of the equator, led to a concentration of slave trading
activities in the Angolan ports of West Central Africa and the Mozambican
ports of South East Africa. The trade routes on which these slavetrading
ports relied stretched deep into the interior, and contributed to increases
in the internal trade in slaves. In the second half of the century, spurred on
18 J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the savanna (1966, Madison WI). For more details on the long
distance trade routes, see J. Vansina, ‘Longdistance traderoutes in Central Africa’, Journal
of African history, 3:3 (1962), 375–90. For developments leading to the establishment of the
Lunda confederacy, see J. Vansina, How societies are born: Governance in West Central Africa
before 1600 (Charlottesville and London, 2004), 206–60. For the Lunda consolidation and
expansion, see J.J. Hoover, ‘The seduction of Ruwej: Reconstructing Ruund history
(The nuclear Lunda; Zaire; Angola; Zambia)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University,
1978). For commercial credit and the Lunda relationship with the Atlantic trade, see Miller,
Way of Death, especially 71–169. For the NorthSouth trading routes and the Luba, see
T.Q. Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings: A history of the Luba empire to 1891 (Berkeley, 1981),
93–101. For longdistance trade and the Luba, see A. Wilson, ‘Long distance trade and the
Luba Lomami empire’, Journal of African history, 13:4 (1972), 575–89. For the relationship
between outsiders and autochthones, see D. Gordon, Nachituti’s gift: Economy, society, and
environment in Central Africa (Madison, 2006), 27–61.
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david m. gordon
by increased investment in the global commodity trade, the focus on legit
imate goods, especially ivory, exacerbated this internal slave trade and
promoted the economic exploitation of slaves to produce commodities.
The region offered opportunities for outside commercial agents as well as
entrepreneurial insiders, all of which contributed to revolutionary changes
in political economy and governance.
Three distinct routes of international influence can be identified. First,
changes in the Mozambican and Angolan trading colonies, influenced in
part by British abolitionist efforts and European and Brazilian commercial
interests. Second, from 1820 but especially after 1850, international dem
and for East African products, including cloves and ivory, combined with
British abolitionist treaties with East African coastal and island rulers
(especially the Omani of Zanzibar and the Merina of Madagascar) which
restructured – but did not abolish – the slave trade. Third, to the south,
the British colonisation of the Cape in 1806 and their abolitionist and
commercial involvement there. The colonisation of the Cape contributed
to the expansion of European settlement in Southern Africa, and the
movement of the Boers to the interior (in part, fleeing British abolition),
which in turn led to a chain of African migrations that reached South
Central Africa.19
These regional political and economic forces catalysed changes that
led traders and sometimes armed invaders into the South Central African
interior, effectively surrounding the region. The autochthonous peoples
of this region could only isolate themselves by migrating to the equato
rial rainforest to the north, an area for which their longstanding settle
ment patterns and agricultural activities were illadapted. If, by the
eighteenth century mercantile capitalism had not transformed the central
African interior, the newfound demand for raw materials by European
industrial capitalism and the supply of cheap industrial commodities to
Africa in the nineteenth century would do so. Changing ties to the global
economy facilitated trading opportunities that led to the emergence of
networks of debt and dependency that undermined established political
and economic relationships. New elites gathered the wealth, followings,
and armaments that enabled them to challenge established Luba and
Lunda hierarchies. Crucial to these revolutionary changes was a political
19 The changes from the South have traditionally been related to Zulu consolidation
and its aftermath (the mfecane), rather than to British and European settler agency. Since
the 1980s, a revisionist history has questioned Zulu agency and instead emphasised
European influence. For a survey of the revisionist position, see N. Etherington, The Great
Treks: The transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (London, 2001).
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consumption, trade, and politics
25
economy that revolved around the purchase of guns and cloth with slaves
and ivory.
Wearing Cloth, Wielding Guns
Before the nineteenth century, elites used international imports as luxury
or prestige items for interlinked political, status, ritual, and ceremonial
purposes. The distribution of these commodities secured clients for politi
cal rulers. As the terms of trade for ivory and slave exports improved – in
other words as Central Africans acquired more industrial commodities for
their exports – rulers found it difficult to monopolise the distribution of
these commodities. Networks of political and economic clients became
unstable and precarious. Entrepreneurial upstarts in alliance with coastal
traders gained access to slaves and ivory – and hence international com
modities. This process only increased as these commodities – the prod
ucts of the industrial world – became linked to quotidian existence rather
than ritual and extraordinary wealth and power. Guns and cloth both illus
trate this process, albeit in divergent ways.
Elites used imported cloth in the eighteenth century for ceremonial
and religious functions. It was only among the wealthiest, at centres of
power such as Kazembe’s kingdom, that cloth was worn and used for these
purposes. Blue cloth, for example, was left at the burial places of royal
ancestors.20 The Kazembe kingdom’s aristocrats distributed fine red cloth
to kalamba overseers.21 To secure such fine and politically important cloth,
Kazembe sought to trade directly with the Portuguese, instead of relying
on Yao and Bisa intermediaries.22 Even in the early nineteenth century,
documentary evidence indicates cloth was desired for its distinctive quali
ties, for luxury and fashion, rather than ordinary use. For example, in the
early 1830s, during Gamitto’s expedition the diverse values of imported
cloth in the hinterland led to such a complex system of exchange values
that Gamitto lamented, ‘To begin to analyse this subject would take a
whole book.’23 A single unit of cloth, a Bare, consisted of a dozen different
patterns and colours, each of which had very different values, which
20 ‘Journal of Dr. de Lacerda’, Lands of Cazembe, 102.
21 ‘Baptista’s report of a journey’, Lands of Cazembe, 229. This is a custom which has
remained evident through to the present day. For the 1880s description of clothing of
Kazembe and the royalty, see V. Giraud, Les lacs de l’Afrique Équatoriale, Voyage d’expedition
executé de 1883 à 1885 (Paris, 1890), 356.
22 Lacerda, ‘On the proposed Cazembe expedition’, Lands of Cazembe, 37.
23 Gamitto, King Kazembe I, 28.
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david m. gordon
fluctuated according to scarcity and taste.24 The exacting tastes of Central
African buyers indicate that the market for such cloth was limited to the
luxury consumption of elites. This was high fashion, not quotidian wear.
The provenance of imported cloth during the early nineteenth century
was from Indian weavers, transported by Banyan traders to either the East
African Swahili traders or the Portuguese colonial authorities. The most
common form of Indian cloth was kaniki, a blue cloth produced in Gujarat
specifically for the African market (although there were other varieties
produced in various parts of South Asia and the Middle East). Probably
due to the corruption of local Portuguese colonial officials in league with
traders, the quality of the Indian cloth supplied by Portuguese East Africa
was poor and expensive, especially when compared to cloth that could be
procured from Angola.25
Ordinary people did not wear such expensive imported cloth because
of the robustness and quality of local production of woven materials.
To be sure, the levels of production never reached that of areas of West
Africa, especially in cotton cloth.26 Nevertheless, there were alternatives
to foreign imports. For example, the Luba on the margins of the equatorial
forest produced and traded raffia cloth.27 Skins provided warmth – and
those of carnivores such as lions and leopards adorned political elites. The
Bisa, long active in international trade, prided themselves on their manu
facture and wearing of bark cloth.28 Other specialised traders, the Yao, had
an old tradition of cotton cloth production, especially for elites, even while
ordinary people wore bark cloth.29
This would change when cheaper international cloth became available.
Partly due to British pressure to end the Portuguese trading monopoly in
24 Gamitto, King Kazembe II, 197–8.
25 Corruption and the poor quality of cloth are reported in ‘Journal of Lacerda’, 56.
The Governor of Rios de Sena dispatched the pombeiros in 1811 with inferior Indian cloth,
claiming that cloth from Tete could not be of that of Angola, ‘Baptista’s proceedings at
Tete’, Lands of Cazembe, 237. Gamitto reports on the poor quality and expensive cloth that
the royal treasury obtained from Banyan traders. The royal treasury then distributed this
cloth to the various administrative centres, see Gamitto, King Kazembe I, 27.
26 For precolonial West African production see, C.E. Kriger, Cloth in West African
History (Lanham, 2006).
27 See the market in Viramba raffia cloth described in Hamed bin Muhammed, Maisha
ya Hamed in Muhammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu Tip Kwa maneno yake. Supplement to the
East African Swahili committee journals 28:2 (July 1958) and 29:1 (January 1959), 83–91.
28 In 1798 Lacerda reports on ‘not an inch of cotton cloth’, ‘Journal of Dr. Lacerda’, 88.
Bisa women may have worn a small piece of cotton in the 1830s. Gamitto, King Kazembe I,
202, 205, and accompanying illustrations. Baptista reports that these loin cloths were
manufactured by the Bisa, ‘Baptista’s report of a journey’, Lands of Cazembe, 228.
29 Liesegang, ‘Import and export trade’, 493.
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consumption, trade, and politics
27
their African possessions, but probably mostly due to the industrial manu
facture of cloth, new and cheaper cloth became available. From the 1820s
and especially in the 1840s and 1850s, cloth of superior quality produced
in New England, in the United States of America, became popular and
replaced Indian cloth.30 American boats went directly to Mozambique,
and sold their cloth for set prices, undermining the old Portuguese mer
cantile system.31 With American cloth, which originated from the indus
trial mills of Lowell and Waltham, Massachusetts, and was transported
through the port of Salem, an industrial commodity replaced a mercantile
one. The variety of patterned textiles gave way to a standard, but fine
industrial cloth, used not only by elites but also by ordinary people.
By the late 1860s descriptions make it clear that such imported cloth
was not only widespread but that its uses were also far more quotidian.
International cloth was no longer a luxury item. Only in remote areas or
among very poor subjects and slaves did people wear locally produced
cloth and skins, and even then the desire for imported cloth was always
present – despite having little to exchange for it, they were desperate
for imported cloth. ‘All are eager for calico’, David Livingstone observed,
‘though they have only raw cassava to offer.’32 Along the trade routes, cloth,
including attractive blue calico (kaniki) and the Merikano white cloth
(sold by the trader named after the commodity, Juma Merikano) was ubiq
uitous and used as a daily form of exchange.33 To be sure, cloth still had
ritual and political functions, especially in trading negotiations. Traders
gave finely woven cloth and silk to leaders to secure alliances and open up
trade.34 But the consumption and use of cloth now extended beyond
elites: industrial production in New England facilitated mass consump
tion in Central Africa.
30 Gamitto, King Kazembe II, 197. Towards the second half of the nineteenth century,
especially during and after the United States Civil War (1861–4) Indian manufactures began
to mimic the production of American cloth – and thus the popular Amerikani cloth found
across the region, could have come from Indian manufactures. Jeremy Prestholdt reports
on Indian Amerikani cloth imported into Zanzibar in, Prestholdt, ‘Global repercussions’,
773. Also see Liesegang, ‘Import and export trade’, 457. For an indication of midnineteenth
century Salem commercial interests in Central Africa, see Burton, ‘Introduction’, Lands of
Cazembe, 13.
31 J.M. Gray, ‘Early connections between the United States and East Africa’, Tanganyika
notes and records, 22 (1946), 55–86.
32 D. Livingstone, The last journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to his
death, Volume 2 (New York, 1875), 491, 19 February 1873.
33 Livingstone, Last journals, Volume 2, 357–8, 13 February 1871, 419, 1 May 1872.
34 For example, see the trade relationships between Giraud’s party and Chitimukulu
and Kazembe, in L’Afrique Équatoriale, 270, 379.
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28
david m. gordon
By the 1860s and 1870s cloth had become, as David Livingstone put it,
‘a universal article of barter throughout the greater part of Africa’ – a type
of currency.35 For one day’s labour or porterage, for example, Livingstone
paid about one yard of cloth; compensation for a damaged tobacco
patch cost one yard; a pot of honey and four fowls cost two yards; and hoes
were priced at two or three yards of calico each.36 The most important
trade of all, the slave trade, became closely tied to the trade in cloth.
A small boy could be bought for four yards, while his mother cost two
yards; elsewhere the given price was eight to ten yards of calico per slave.37
East of Lake Malawi, where murdered and starved slaves littered slave
trading routes, Livingstone passed ‘people who are so well supplied
with white calico by the slave trade from Kilwa, that it is quite a drug in
the market: we cannot get food for it.’38 The oral testimony confirms
Livingstone’s impressions: in addition to guns, slaves and ivory were uni
versally exchanged for cloth.39
The widespread demand for imported cloth meant that old forms of
select clientage gave way to extensive debt, dependency, and even enslave
ment. The vocabulary used to refer to slaves indicates the relationship of
trade and indebtedness to slavery.40 Payment from a master to a subject
led to a dependency that was conceived as a form of slavery, at least until
35 Livingstone, Last Journals, Volume 1, 182.
36 Livingstone, Last Journals, Volume 1, 31, 34, 39, 216.
37 Livingstone, Last Journals, Volume 1, 182, 278.
38 Livingstone, Last Journals, Volume 1, 62–64.
39 Interview Macpherson with Headman Nythande Chirwa, Petauke Boma, 17 March
1975; Interview Macpherson with Chief Chipepo and councillors, Chipepo, 13 October 1975;
Interview Macpherson with Kamushini Mpona, 26 November 1974; Interview Macpherson
with Patson Chipili, Mukupa Katandula, 27 November 1974; Interview Macpherson with
Simon Ngulube, Chief Mbuluma, Feira District, 4 September 1974; Interview Macpherson
with Ponkeni Mpanga, Kazembe, 11 September 1973; Interview Macpherson with Lukwesa
elders, Lukwesa, 16 September 1973, Boxes 2–3, CSCNWW.
40 In Chibemba, the language of several important slave and ivory raiding and trading
polities west of the Luangwa Valley and east of the Lunda heartland (most notably
among the Bemba, Bisa, and eastern Lunda), slaves were termed abasha [singular:
umusha]. The term may have derived from the same word (but in a different noun class),
musha, meaning “debt” (more commonly used in the plural form: misha). The term
for manumission (lubula, to redeem or pay debts) supports this derivation. A mushapôle
was a female slave without relatives able to reclaim her and thus completely subjected
to her master. A child of such a slave woman, a musha musana, was known as the
most loyal child, presumably since he or she had no alternatives. There were terms for
this debtbased system of slavery, ubusha, and for the process of enslavement, -lobelela
mu musha. These words and phrases were used extensively in the Chibemba transcrip
tions of the Macpherson interviews. All the terms are also listed in White Fathers,
Bemba-English Dictionary (Ndola, Zambia: Mission Press, 1991. Orig. Lusaka: Publications
Bureau, 1954).
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consumption, trade, and politics
29
the slave could repay the debt.41 In one recorded example from the mid
nineteenth century, an impoverished man, Chibanti, sold himself into
slavery for three 30yard pieces of cloth. He used two of the pieces of cloth
to purchase a woman and child, and the remainder to invest in what would
become a prosperous trading business.42 The connection between cloth,
dependency, and enslavement was symbolised in the ‘breaking of a mitete’,
when cloth was torn by a vulnerable dependent who was to be enslaved.43
Demand for cloth contributed to the sale of dependents, or even the sale
of oneself, into slavery.
Like cloth, guns held ritual and ceremonial functions before the 1850s.
The few guns found at the courts of Luba and Lunda elites were fired dur
ing court rituals. Warriors and hunters preferred spears and bows and
arrows. Through the latter half of the century, guns became a normal fea
ture of raiding and warfare, however. Ovimbundu, Swahili, Chikunda, and
Nyamwezi traders used guns to unprecedented degrees to capture people.
Those who did not have guns learned quickly of their importance – for
example, when Hamed bin Muhammed, also known as ‘Tippu Tip’, prob
ably after his firearms, defeated the Tabwa ruler, Nsama, in 1867. Or shortly
after, when during a short encounter, his gunwielding followers massa
cred approximately 700 Luba warriors and captured 1,000 women.44
As the Atlantic slave trade came to a slow end in the midnineteenth
century and the Portuguese royal monopoly over African products in
1834–5 ended, exports deemed legitimate by British abolitionists experi
enced a boon. The local price for ivory increased, in part due to the avail
ability of industrial goods, the value of which declined in terms of the high
and remarkably stable international price for ivory.45 The increased local
value of ivory had profound impacts on the South Central African political
41 For example, see the recruitment of Chikunda military slaves, Allen Isaacman,
‘The Origin, Formation, and Early History of the Chikunda of South Central Africa,’ Journal
of African history, 13:3 (1972), 443–61, esp. 451. Also see Gamitto, King Kazembe II, 145.
42 The story of Chibanti is described by David and Charles Livingstone in Narratives of
Journey to Zambezi and its Tributaries (London: J Murray, 1865), 49.
43 Gamitto, King Kazembe II, 145.
44 A. Roberts, ‘Firearms in NorthEastern Zambia before 1900’, Transafrican journal
of history, 6:2 (1971), 3–21, especially 6. For more on Tippu Tip’s conflict with Nsama,
see Hamed bin Muhammed, Maisha ya Hamed, 47–55. For another account of the conflict,
see Livingstone, Last Journals, 173–81. For the Luba massacre, see Hamed bin Muhammed,
Maisha ya Hamed, 95.
45 R.W. Beachey, ‘The East African ivory trade in the nineteenth century’, Journal of
African history, 8:2 (1967), 229–90, especially 278. For the quadrupling of the local price in
the Congo basin and its impacts there, see R. Harms, River of wealth, river of sorrow:
The Central Zaire basin in the era of the slave and ivory trade, 1500–1891 (New Haven, 1981),
24–7, 99–108.
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david m. gordon
economy. Ivory became the symbol of the new ruling class, the most pres
tigious and valued trading item. Warlord chiefs demanded all or a signifi
cant portion of ivory from the hunt or employed their own hunters to
procure tusks. Indeed, the definition of chieftaincy revolved around the
ability to impose claims for tribute in ivory.46 ‘If you had a male slave, you
sold him’, claimed Chief Mailo, ‘However, ivory was obtained from chiefs.’47
Guns were used to procure both slaves and ivory. But it was especially
with the ascendance of the ivory trade that guns became a necessary
factor of production. Guns were increasingly used to hunt elephants. The
hunting of elephants had previously been undertaken by brave men
organised in guilds with specialised techniques that included trapping,
poisons, and specially manufactured spears. But this changed in the sec
ond half of the century. Renowned Chikunda and Bisa elephant hunters
gained access to or began to manufacture primitive guns and abandoned
their old hunting techniques.48 They had little choice if they were to
compete with the gunwielding followers of coastal caravans. When, for
example, Tippu Tip’s followers encountered herds of elephants, they could
slaughter ‘countless numbers’ of elephants.49
But the use of guns to kill elephants was only one aspect of the connec
tion between guns and ivory. The export of ivory became linked to a
violent regional trade in slaves. Although exhausted and famished slaves
were not effective porters for ivory, the slave and ivory trades developed
together as predominantly male ivory hunters desired slaves, often women,
as workers and as concubines. The Lunda – Chokwe in the west of the
region, for example, purchased female slaves from the Ovimbundu cara
vans that reached the interior and had previously supplied slaves for the
Atlantic trade. In exchange they sold ivory destined for international mar
kets. Farther north, the Kuba purchased slaves for ivory.50 Chikunda hunt
ers in the east also purchased slave women to expand their lineages.51
46 In a similar fashion to the Equatorial Congo River, where village ‘guardians’ received
the tusks of any elephant killed in their territory, see R. Harms, Games against nature:
An eco-cultural history of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa (Cambridge, 1987), 36.
47 Macpherson Interview with Nansala Manteta Mwenda (Chief Mailo), Nansala
Village, 15 October 1973.
48 Isaacman, Slavery and beyond, 98–9. For the Bisa, see S.A. Marks, Large mammals and
a brave people: Subsistence hunters in Zambia (Brunswick NJ, 2005; Orig. University of
Washington, 1976), 63–4.
49 As they did in the Bemba areas, see Hamed bin Muhammed, Maisha ya Hamed, 77.
50 J. Vansina, Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880–1960 (Madison:
University of Wisconsin, 2010), 11–8.
51 For Chokwe traders, see Miller, ‘Cokwe trade and conquest’. For Chikunda, see A. and
B. Isaacman, Slavery and beyond: The making of men and Chikunda ethnic identities in the
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consumption, trade, and politics
31
Local rulers also encouraged gunwielding coastal traders to raid rivals:
they would acquire slaves and the coastal traders the stockpiles of ivory.52
The wealthiest, with plentiful guns, could even buy professional elephant
hunters as slaves.53 The ivory trade thereby consolidated the economic
and military power of those who had access to guns – or who worked in
alliance with those with guns.
Other ‘legitimate’ export commodities played a similar role. With the
boom in rubber in the late nineteenth century, the Chokwe purchased
slaves with rubber.54 The Ovimbundu also found a market for slaves on
plantations in coastal Southern Angola, where they worked on plantations
or were exported as ‘contract workers’ to São Tomé and Príncipe (where
they produced cocoa).55 From the east coast, the expansion of clove plan
tations run by Omani elites and financed by south Asians led to a similar
demand for slaves.56 Armed Swahili caravans searched for slaves deep in
the interior by forming alliances with existing or new African elites. Even
after the slave trade was outlawed, the sugarproducing plantations of
the Britishadministered Mascarene Islands demanded slaves – and a con
siderable number were smuggled there.57 In all cases, guns were increas
ingly used for, or indirectly connected to, the procurement of the labour
required for the export of legitimate commodities.
Through the late nineteenth century the ivory trade became linked to
raiding and warfare rather than trade. Swahili and other outside traders
demanded tribute in ivory. If not forthcoming African rulers were raided.
Even powerful chiefs were threatened: Tippu Tip defeated Nsama and
unstable world of South-Central Africa, 1750–1920 (Portsmouth, NH, 2004). For the general
connection between ivory and slaves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
towards the East African coast, see Alpers, Ivory and slaves.
52 An arrangement often used by Tippu Tip, for example, see Hamed bin Muhammed,
Maisha ya Hamed, 93.
53 As Tippu Tip did with his purchase of four Yao elephant hunters, see Hamed bin
Muhammed, Maisha ya Hamed, 77.
54 For Chokwe ivory and rubber trade, see J. Miller, ‘Cokwe trade and conquest’,
175–201.
55 For the Ovimbundu slave trade, see L. Heywood, ‘Slavery and forced labor in the
changing political economy of Central Angola, 1850–1945’, S. Miers and R. Roberts (eds.),
The end of slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988): 415–36.
56 A. Sheriff, Slaves, spices, and ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African commercial empire in the world economy, 1770–1873 (London, 1987).
57 For the demand from the Mascarene Islands, see R.B. Allen, ‘Licentious and
unbridled proceedings: The illegal slave trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the early
nineteenth century’, Journal of African history, 42:1 (2001), 91–116. For further the growth,
see G. Campbell, ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the slave trade of the Western Indian
ocean, 1800–1861’, W.G. ClarenceSmith (ed.), The economics of the Indian ocean slave trade
in the nineteenth century (London, 1989), 166–93.
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32
david m. gordon
other ArabSwahili deposed Kazembe, both strongmen who had raided
others, and stole their ivory stockpiles. He implemented a protection
racket through much of the eastern part of Central Africa, insisting on
payment in ivory.58 Only through military strength could ivory supplies be
protected. By the 1880s this process intensified when Europeans raided
Swahili traders alongside African rulers for ivory (often using the excuse of
‘pacification’ or of combating the slave trade).59 Thus, since ivory was
increasingly raided, and not traded, from the interior, it fuelled demand
for guns and gun powder.
All the major polities of the region relied on guns by the late nine
teenth century. The Kololo supplemented traditional weaponry with guns
acquired from Angolan traders to raid for people and cattle, often along
side LusoAfrican traders.60 By the 1860s, young and ambitious Kololo
subjects procured guns from international trade and deployed them in a
successful antiKololo uprising.61 The polity they established, renamed
the Lozi kingdom, shared the Kololo’s orientation towards international
trade. They even expanded ivory and rubber sales to Griqua and English
traders from the south for more effective guns.62 When caravans of
58 On Tippu Tip’s raiding of Nsama’s and Kazembe’s ivory, see Hamed bin Muhammed,
Maisha ya Hamed, 47–55, 79. Many examples in this memoir refer to Tippu Tip’s insistence
on payment in ivory in exchange for his military support and protection.
59 For an example of the early British South Africa Company occupation of North
Eastern Rhodesia, see National archives of Zambia, Lusaka (NAZ) A1/1/1 Ikawa collector,
J.M. Bell to P.W. Forbes, Administrator Blantyre, 3 August 1896, Drysdale, Report on Arab
slave caravan, 1 September 1896; NAZ A1/1/1 Ikawa collector, J.M. Bell to Harney, 24 April
1896. Administrators of King Leopold’s Congo also used attacks on ‘slave traders’ as an alibi
for ivory raiding. See also, Beachey, ‘East African ivory trade’, especially 278.
60 For the Lozi version see, A. Jalla, ‘A history of the Lozi’, 22. Manuscript in United
Church of Zambia archives, 17–3 Lozi history. Manuscript version of The story of the Barotse
nation (Lusaka: Publications Bureau of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland). In 1851
Livingstone witnessed ‘Mambari’ traders from Angola who traded guns for captives
(preferably young boys) with the Kololo; in 1853, he claims clothing was exchanged for
slaves and notes the permanent Portuguese presence at Katongo (Mongu?), where two
Portuguese stockades had been built with the Portuguese flag displayed; Livingstone,
Livingstone’s private journals, 42–43, 204–5, 226; also see Mainga, Bulozi, 85. Sebitwane
assumed Livingstone had come to trade guns and that their ‘teaching was chiefly the art of
shooting.’ Livingstone, Livingstone’s private journals, 16–7. Also see Livingstone, Missionary
travels in South Africa, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara, CA, 2001, Orig. New York, 1858), 207.
61 W.T. Kalusa, ‘Elders, young men, and David Livingstone’s ‘civilizing mission’:
Revisiting the disintegration of the Kololo kingdom, 1851–1864’, International journal of
African historical studies, 42:1 (2009), 55–80.
62 L.H. Gann, ‘The end of the slave trade in British Central Africa, 1889–1912’, Rhodes
Livingstone Journal, 16 (1954), 27–51, 39. George Westbeech was an English hunter and
trader who came to play a prominent role in the 1880s, supplementing trade relation
ships form the West with those from the South; E.C. Tabler (ed.), Trade and travel in early
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consumption, trade, and politics
33
Swahili traders were reluctant to sell arms that might threaten the military
dominance in the regions in which they travelled, warlords such as Msiri
turned instead to the Ovimbundu who were willing to sell arms.63 Msiri
possessed between two thousand and three thousand flintlocks. His black
smiths made bullets and repaired guns.64 The Chikunda also offered guns
in exchange for slaves and ivory.65 Virtually unknown before 1870, guns
became vital for Bemba warriors to sustain their military raids.66 Chiefs
were aware of the latest weaponry carried by European traders, and in
one instance a chief insisted that the adventurer Carl Wiese give him the
latest model of Winchester rifle.67 Even the regiments of the Ngoni, which
continued to prefer short stabbing spears (assegais) and large shields, had
an estimated two to three thousand guns available for raids and wars by
the late nineteenth century.68
Guns became necessary for the production of slaves and ivory – and the
protection of dependents, slaves, and stockpiles of ivory. Thus even while
guns and gunpowder formed only a small proportion of the total value
of imports, they became a component of political survival. Chiefs had to
cultivate allies with access to guns, otherwise they would fall victim to
increased violence. A system of extraction that relied on warfare drove the
demand for arms and ammunition. South Central Africa advanced far into
an arms race tied to production of ivory to be exchanged for cloth.
By the late nineteenth century, wealth was measured in terms of
imported cloth. South Central Africans had become dependent on imports
of cloth. And the most effective way to secure cloth was through the
sale of ivory, which in turn required guns. Because of the widespread avail
ability of opportunities to convert ivory and dependents into industrial
commodities, such goods could not be monopolised by the old elites.
This ‘illegitimate trade’, from the perspective of these old elites, led to
political instabilities and to the fragile consolidation of power by an
Barotseland: The diaries of George Westbeech, 1885–1888 and Captain Norman MacLeod,
1875–1876 (Berkeley, 1963); also see the description of Westbeech’s trade in Selous,
A Hunter’s Wanderings, 255–6.
63 As reported in Yeke oral traditions, see Legros, Chasseurs, 119.
64 Roberts, ‘Firearms in NorthEastern Zambia’, 9.
65 Interview Macpherson with John Mwelwa, Chingombe Mission, 13 August 1974.
66 Roberts, ‘Firearms in NorthEastern Zambia’, 10–12. Also, interview Macpherson with
C.P. Muluka and Emmanuel Bwembya, Bwembya Village, May 1963; Roberts, History of
Bemba, 204; V. Giraud, L’Afrique Équatoriale, 238. For details on the Swahili and Nyamwezi
caravan trade in the Bemba area, see the correspondence in NAZ NER BSAC 1/132, Slave
trade and pacification of Awemba.
67 Wiese, Expedition, 253.
68 Wiese, Expedition, 153–4.
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david m. gordon
everchanging class of economic warlords in alliance with armed coastal
traders. Imported cloth distributed to capricious dependents and follow
ers was the currency of this violent political economy.
Instability and Warlordism
The most effective way to secure power in this unstable political economy
was through violence. Economic motivations for warfare became para
mount – essentially the predation on weak and vulnerable polities to be
raided for slaves and ivory, and to secure food and supplies, as bands
that specialised entirely in militarised strategies abandoned cultivation.69
Settlements changed from open villages surrounded by farmlands to
defensive villages fenced in by palisades adorned with skulls. Travelling
through Bemba, eastern Lunda, and Chewa territories in 1884, Victor
Giraud provided illustrations of barricaded capitals and abandoned or
scattered, hidden and heavilydefended settlements.70 Warlord chiefs bar
ricaded their villages and set up perimeters of barbed and thorny bushes
to deter raiders.71 Vulnerable women and children slept in the bush to
prevent capture in nighttime raids.72 Farming was limited to small fields
close the villages.73 The settlements of the most powerful chiefs contained
and protected thousands of inhabitants. Bunkeya, Msiri’s capital, con
sisted of some forty barricaded sectors, stretching up to ten miles in length
and two miles in width, and surrounded by farms that fed the city’s popu
lation. Msiri’s officials and wives administered the different sectors, which
represented the different regions of Msiri’s conquests.74 Refugees from
the surrounding wars chose the protection of chiefs, becoming their
69 For the economic motives behind Yeke wars, see Legros, Chasseurs, 111. According
to interviewees, Chikunda, especially Kanyemba, raided for food since they had ‘hunger’
in their land. Interview Macpherson with Albino Ngulube, Albezyo Ntawa, Michael Kang
uma, Zarupango Village, Katondwe, 4 September 1974; Interview Macpherson with Tiki
Mazyambwe Nguluwe, Natondwe Mission, 4 September 1974.
70 In addition to the illustrations, Victor Giraud describes a fortified and hidden Lunda
capital surrounded by equally protected villages in L’Afrique Équatoriale, 253–5, 369–71,
531–2.
71 Interview Macpherson with headman Nythande Chirwa, Petauke Boma, 17 March
1975; Interview P. Lary with Machende and Chisambo, Mbereshi, 8 September 1973;
Interview Macpherson with Chief Shaibila, Mkushi, 14 August 1974.
72 H. von Wissmann, My second journey through Equatorial Africa from the Congo to the
Zambezi in the years 1886 and 1887, translated by M.J.A. Bergmann (London, 1891), 273.
73 Interview Macpherson with headman Nythande Chirwa, Petauke Boma, 17 March
1975.
74 Legros, Chasseurs, 99–100.
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consumption, trade, and politics
35
dependents, rather than face terror and enslavement at the hands of
brutal strangers.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, military chiefs who
monopolised international trade became the dominant form of settled
territorial government. Msiri extended armed forays into neighbouring
areas unwilling or unable to pay sufficient tribute, and traded with both
Swahili to the east and Ovimbundu to the west, or sometimes with agents
of prominent Portuguese or LusoAfrican merchants in Angola.75 Every
month, one or two Ovimbundu caravans arrived at Msiri’s Yeke kingdom
with several dozen to one thousand individuals, and left with 2,000–3,000
people, twothirds of whom were slaves, carrying 100 tons of ivory (from
1,500 to 3,000 tusks).76 In the 1860s, the Bemba had come under the rule of
Chitimukulu Chitapankwa who usurped the throne from his uncle, and
consolidated his military with the support of Swahili traders.77 Other
established kingdoms fared less well, however. Kazembe, positioned
between the Bemba and Msiri’s Yeke, and subjected to the attention of
Swahili traders, found that he could not maintain his trading monopoly
and became indebted and vulnerable to the interference of outsiders and
entrepreneurial upstarts.78
Outside of such territorial militarised kingdoms, mobile warlords,
essentially bands of warriors, conquered established kingdoms and decen
tralised polities alike. From the south, the Kololo under Sebitwane
overcame the existing Lozi ruling elite, and set up their own centralised
polity, the Barotse Kingdom. Farther north, Chokwe marauders with arms
from Angola overran Lunda principalities. The Ngoni under Mpezeni,
coming from the south east, raided vulnerable peoples in the Zambezi and
Luangwa Valleys, killing men and capturing women.79 If the subjects of
acephalous Zambezi polities escaped the Ngoni, they could be captured
by the Chikunda military slaves of Portuguese prazos who turned their
attention from the hunting of elephants to the capture of slaves in the
75 For the Ovimbundu and Chokwe in WestCentral Africa, see Miller, ‘Cokwe trade and
conquest’, 175–201; for the Ovimbundu, see Heywood, ‘Slavery and forced labor’, 415–36.
According to one interviewee from Western Zambia, the Ovimbundu bought one slave for
three baskets of salt or eight slaves for one cow. Interview Macpherson with Mwanampwaya
Nkali, Baambwe court, Namwala, 30 May 1973.
76 Legros, Chasseurs, 120–2.
77 Roberts, History of the Bemba, 125–63.
78 Macola, Kingdom of Kazembe, 136–60.
79 For the segmentary system of the Ngoni and their detailed history, see Barnes, Politics
in a changing society, 1–106.
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david m. gordon
Zambezi area.80 North of the Zambezi and east of Lake Tanganyika, armed
Swahili caravans unsettled the rule of local leaders, executing those who
refused to pay them the requisite tribute and capturing their followings.81
Luba sacred royalty, weakened by Yeke and Swahili incursions from the
east, finally collapsed due to heavily armed Ovimbundu traders from the
west.82 These are only the best known examples of a general system of
mobile warlordism that spread across the region.
In this militarised form of rule, hegemony was fragile: a competitor
with better access to guns through coastal traders could overcome a rival
and capture his people and his ivory. In the Luba case, trade with Swahili
and with Msiri led to the rise of conquest chiefs, mfumu wa bakalanga
who replaced the rule of the mulopwe, the sacred kings.83 Swahili traders
like Tippu Tip made their lack of respect for local monopolies over
trade abundantly clear.84 Ovimbundu traders and mercenaries backed
rival factions at the Luba centre as did the Chokwe at the Lunda court,
where rivalries intensified due to the declining control over trade as
caravans from the west simply overrode networks of Lunda chiefs.85
Military leaders differed from earlier political and religious leaders such
as the clan elders or shrine priests who had authority at the village level,
the titleholders and overseers who were associated with the Luba and
Lunda, or the big men and elders who enjoyed status by virtue of their
wealth, age, or lineage.86 Warlords derived the substance of their authority
from control over international rather than regional trade. While they
employed ideological strategies, the substance of their power was coer
cive. It rested on an alliance with coastal traders, the accumulation and
arming of mercenaries and hunters, and a forceful subjugation of other
dependents. When Chief Mailo, who claimed to be around 110 years old
when interviewed in 1973, was asked whether ‘ordinary people’ appreci
ated trade or suffered because of it, he replied, ‘We were very happy as
chiefs [my emphasis] because they had brought riches (…) [and] left
80 Isaacman, Slavery and beyond, 234–80.
81 For the massacres witnessed by Livingstone, especially among the Maniema, see
Livingstone, Last Journals Volume II, 125–39.
82 Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings, 159–92.
83 Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings, 169.
84 Hamed bin Muhammed, Maisha ya Hamed.
85 For the Ovimbundu and the Luba, see Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings, 183–92; for
the Lunda, see Miller, ‘Cokwe trade and conquest’, 195–8. For the declining control over
trade and intensified rivalries, see Hoover, ‘Seduction’, 353–5.
86 A vocabulary which is broadly shared but rendered in Bemba orthography as wealthy
big men, abakankâla or elder, abakalamba.
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consumption, trade, and politics
37
behind what they had brought with them (…) We exchanged slaves and
ivory for the goods they brought.’87 South Central Africans referred to the
new chiefs as mfumu and to the system as bufumu governance, a term
which had preLunda and Luba origins, and over time and in different
places had referred to a wide range of forms of authority. In the nineteenth
century bufumu came to represent the rule of political violence facilitated
by economic accumulation through contact with coastal traders. Luba
and Lunda titleholders declined in importance relative to the coercive
authority of the mfumu chief.88
Fig. 2.1 A Lake Mweru Chief, probably of the Kazembe Kingdom. Elaborate cloth
was used to indicate prestige, wealth, and political importance. From, Dan
Crawford, Thinikng Black: Twenty-Two Years without a Break in the Long Grass of
Central Africa. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1913.
87 Interview Macpherson with Nansala Manteta Mwenda (Chief Mailo), Nansala
Village, 15 October 1973.
88 The best example is that of coercive bufumu chieftaincies replacing bulopwe sacred
kingship in Luba areas. See Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings, 46. For many meanings of
‘chief’ and mfumu, and the imprecise way that they have been used, see W. van Binsbergen,
Religious change in Zambia: Exploratory studies (London, 1981), 121–2. For the pre1600 ori
gins of fumu, see Vansina, How societies are born, 241–4.
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david m. gordon
By century’s end, the indebted military elites of South Central Africa
could no longer rule beyond the few barricaded villages that recognised
their authority. Unable to ensure the regular payment of tax and tribute or
to mobilise enough force to protect their territories from neighbouring
warlords, they became dependent on the patronage of outsiders. Even the
most powerful warlord, Msiri, succumbed. King Leopold’s mercenaries
who, promising guns and gunpowder in exchange for Msiri’s recognition
of Leopold’s sovereignty, assassinated him during negotiations.89 Mostly
African and South Asian mercenaries employed by a few European entre
preneurs subdued these despotic but dependent warlords with relative
ease.90
Conclusion
The increase in the availability of cheap industrial goods and the number
of armed, coastal traders undermined previous monopolies exerted by
South Central African rulers, the basis upon which international trade had
contributed previously to the consolidation of their polities. Instead, rul
ers desperately attempted to control those export commodities that held
value in the international market – ivory, and to a lesser extent, slaves. To
do so, they needed guns; and to acquire guns, they needed alliances with
coastal traders, for which they needed slaves and ivory. Meanwhile, since
guns gave coastal traders decisive advantage, they offered cloth instead,
which was connected to a regional political economy of patronage, con
sumption, and fashion. As cloth became a mass commodity desired by
all, South Central African traders and political leaders needed to acquire
more cloth to maintain existing patronage networks. They also sought
finer quality cloth, with unique designs, which would maintain value.
African leaders became indebted to and dependent on those who had
access to such international commodities, a chain of intermediaries that
led to the industrial economies of Europe and America.
European colonialism only further accelerated these nineteenth
century transformations. At first raiding became red rubber collected by
89 See the diaries of Dan Crawford in G.E. Tilsley, Dan Crawford: Missionary and pioneer
in Central Africa (London, 1929), 196–201. Also see the published account of the Stairs’
expedition’s doctor, J.A. Moloney, With Captain Stairs to Katanga (London, 1893), 171–94.
90 For example, only 1,200 mostly African and Indian soldiers and orderlies conquered
NorthEastern Rhodesia; Gann, ‘End of slave trade’, 46. Also see NAZ NER BSAC 1/132 Slave
trade and pacification of Awemba.
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consumption, trade, and politics
39
forced labour, and then this morphed into wage labour paid for in
Europeancontrolled specie. Copper replaced ivory as the region’s most
valuable international export. Demand for industrial goods, prominent
among which remained cloth and clothing, still drove debt and depen
dency that challenged local sovereignties. In light of this longer history,
global trade and the consumption of foreignproduced industrial
commodities appears to transform Central Africa’s political economy in
predictable ways.91
Fig. 2.2 Illustration of Msiri, a nineteenthcentury warlord and importer of guns
and cloth, along with one of his wives. Note their elaborate dress. From G.E.
Tilsley, Dan Crawford: Missionary and Pioneer in Central Africa. London: Oliphants,
1929.
91 For the postcolonial instability and warlordism due to such weak states and open
economies, see W. Reno, Warlord politics and African states (Boulder, 1998).
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THE ROLE OF FIREARMS IN THE SONGYE REGION (1869–1960)
Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu
Bunduki, sultani ya balabala (The gun is the master of the road), the ArabSwahili traders used to say.
Before colonisation, anyone who possessed a firearm was a master in
areas where the people had only edged weapons such as arrows, spears,
knives, etc. Tippu Tip, the Swahili Arab freebooter in the Congo, described
the devastating effect of firearms in contest with the arrows of African
warriors:
… He (the African chief Samu) had posted many of his warriors in ambush.
Ignoring this, we went ahead; we were about twenty men, along with a
dozen carriers slaves, and I myself walked ahead. When we arrived, suddenly, three arrows whistled around me; two reached me, the third only
brushed against me. A young man, Said ben Sef el-Maamri, was hit; luckily
the wound was not serious, but two slaves, also injured, fell dead instantly.
Fortunately our guns were loaded with lead and scrap. The warriors formed
compact groups and each discharge of guns mowed them like flocks of birds.
When the guns fell silent, more than two hundred men lay on the ground,
dead; others were kicked by being trampled on by those who fled wildly.
Within an hour, there were at least a thousand deaths. On our side, we had
only two slaves killed and two wounded, including myself.1
Introduction
In the nineteenth century, Central Africa in general, and the Songye region
in particular, was located between two groups of arms traffickers. From
the west, the Portuguese, through the Ovimbundu, created the LusoAfrican area. From the east, from the island of Zanzibar, the Arabs and the
Arabised made their way into the heart of Central Africa. Both of these
groups were primarily concerned with long distance trade whose products
were, first and foremost, ivory and slaves. The arrival of these Portuguese
and Arab-Swahili traffickers marks a decisive turning- point in the political, economic, social and cultural history of Central Africa as they led to
1 François Bontinck, L’autobiographie de Hamed ben Mohammed el-Murjebi Tippo Tip
(ca. 1840–1905), Académie royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer (1974), 51.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
the fall of the old kingdoms to be replaced by new powers whose
possession of firearms was the basis of their might. The new leaders –
M’siri, Mukenge Kalamba, Ngongo Lueteta, Mpania Mutombo, Lumpungu,
etc. – became powerful through the possession of firearms and their longdistance trade. They challenged traditional leaders and thus changed the
political map of the region.
Many studies on the region have discussed the birth, the development
and the decline of the slave trade, the Luba and Songye kingdoms, or the
political organisation of chief Lumpungu’s kingdom, but not the role guns
played in the Songye community. The objective of this paper is therefore
to study the different roles that firearms played in the Songye region
between 1869, the time of their introduction, and 1960, the year that the
Democratic Republic of Congo became an independent internationally
recognised state. On the basis of such written sources as are available and
of oral material collected in Lubumbashi, in the city of Kabinda, the capital of Kabinda district, and in the urban centres of Lubao and Lubefu, this
paper attempts to answer the following questions: What are the sources
from which the black population got their firearms? What was the impact
of the coming of firearms into the Songye region, on the political, economic, social and cultural levels? And finally, what were the strategies set
up by the Belgian colonisers against the circulating of guns in the black
communities?
Maniema
East Kasai
Province boundary
Main road
River
Kasongo
River
kuru
San
a l ab
Lubao
R iver
Milembwe
Kananga
Mbuji-Myai
Kabinda
MweneDitu
Kipushia
Lu
West Kasai
a River
Lubefu
ami
Lom
DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC OF THE
CONGO
Katanga
Songye region
TANZANIA
ANGOLA
0
0
500 KM
ZAMBIA
20 km
Fig. 3.1 Map of the Songye region
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the role of firearms in songye region
43
The Songye Region
The Songye settled in the region between the 5th and 6th south parallel;
between the Sankuru and the Lomami Rivers, and even beyond that.
Because of the arbitrarily drawn provincial borders from colonial times,
the Songye currently find themselves divided between the jurisdictions
of East Kasai, where a majority of Songye currently occupy the territories
of Kabinda and Lubao,2 Maniema and Katanga. The West Kasai contains
a small fraction of Songye among its population, descended from fugitives from the repeated Lumpungu attacks who took refuge under the
leadership of their chief Nsapu Nsapu in Kananga. These areas were subjugated in the second half of the nineteenth century by the armed bands
of Mpanya Mutombo in the north, the Ngongo Letete in the east and
Lumpungu in the south. Before the rise of Lumpungu the Songye formed
a somewhat loose society without a strong central organisation. The various political groups were independent of each other and ruled by chiefs,
whose power was hereditary. However, Lumpungu was able to use firearms to conquer all these groups, and bring them together into a centralised state structure.3
Lumpungu was born, sometime in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, possibly as early as 1852, possibly as late as 1866,4 as Ngoyi Mafula,
and later acquired the nickname Lumpungu. Two versions give the origin
of this nickname. The first version associates the name with that of a fetish
with whose help Kibala, the barren wife of Kaumbu ka Ngoyi, had a child.
The couple thus gave the child the name Lumpungu in memory of the
fertility fetish.5 According to another version, the nickname Lumpungu
was used to describe a person of great charisma, imposing and hard to
2 The most important groups in the Kabinda territory are the Ben’Eki, the Bena
Milembwe, the Belande, the Basanga, the Bakankala, the Bena Majiba and the Bena Mpaze.
The Lubao territory includes the Bekalebwe, the Balaa, the Bena Ngungi, the Bapina,
the Baembe, the Bena Ebombo, the Basonge (Bena Sala, Bena Kafuma, Bena Kahuwa,
Bena Mukungu, Bena Muumbo, Bena Bwabe, Bena Muo, Bena Sangwe, Bena Kibumbu,
Ben’Eshadika, etc.
3 For a study of Songye pre-colonial history with special reference to Lumpungu, see:
Nancy J. Fairley, ‘Mianda ya Ben’Ekie: A history of the Ben’Ekie’, (unpublished PhD thesis,
State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1978).
4 For varying opinions on the date of his birth see H. Von Wissmann, Second journey
through Equatorial Africa, London, (1891), 188; Tshikutu Tshibambe, ‘L’archétype du chef:
cas de Lumpungu 1er. Kabinda, 1852–1919’, Annales de l’ISP Kananga, 1 (1994), 294 (290–310);
A. Delcommune, Vingt années de vie Africaine, T. II, (Brussels: 1922), 91.
5 Interview with Yando Kabundji, Kabinda, March 2002.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
manage. This nickname was given to him long after his birth, during his
glory years.6
The Naming of Guns
In Kisongye, the gun is known as mputu. This name is confusing in that it
means ‘Europe’. In Lingala, one speaks of Mpoto when we want to designate the European continent. It even seems that the word mpoto comes
from mpurtugeshi, a distortion of the term ‘Portuguese’. Therefore, mputu,
the gun, would mean an article of European origin. So the question we
could ask ourselves is to know why all the other articles coming from
Europe are not designated under the same name mputu. Many Songye
have said that the term mputu comes from the noise made by the gun
when firing a shot: ‘mpuu tuu’, meaning a double bang; ‘mpuu’ first and
‘tuu’ after that. In everyday language, the Songye say: abakupila mputu, ayo
kudila ashi mpuu tuu. (They fired a weapon and a mpuu tuu sound was
made.) Thus the gun was called the mputu. This term is similar to the term
of poupou (the sound of the double detonation or the double bang) in
local slang which also happens to mean ‘gun’. This second explanation
turns out to be true if one considers that with the Baluba Lubilanji, a people neighbouring the Songye, the gun is called the tshingoma because of
the noise it makes when a shot is fired, this noise resembling that of a large
tam-tam (ngoma).7 But as the noise made by the gun is much louder than
that of a big tam-tam (ngoma), it is called tshingoma.
The Supply of Firearms
The Arab-Swahili Traffickers in the East
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Songye region was
invaded by Arab-Swahili traffickers. These traffickers, acting under Tippu
Tip whose headquarters was in Kasongo on the Lualaba (a tributary of the
Congo River), sent armed gangs into the Songye region to look for slaves
and ivory. According to Nestor Kapenga,8 Lumpungu was not the only one
6 Interview with F. Yamukoko Kalunga, Kabinda, 22 March 2002.
7 This is a summary of interviews collected in Kabinda and in Shofa, between October
2009 and February 2010.
8 Interview with Nestor Kapenga (1937), Songye of Tshofa (Kabinda) in Lubumbashi,
28 August 2009.
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the role of firearms in songye region
45
Fig. 3.2 The Songye Chief Lumpungu A Kikolo (1866–1919) (Source: Archival
Project Memories of Lubumbashi)
in possession of firearms. Many Songye chiefs, in order to escape from the
attacks, allied themselves with the Arab-Swahili traffickers and became
themselves hunters for slaves and ivory. In return they were given firearms
and also gun powder (builu or nfwanda in Kisongye) in order to carry out
their work. The Songye chiefs did not use guns themselves. They entrusted
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46
donatien dibwe dia mwembu
the guns to warriors who in turn concentrated on hunting slaves. In order
to continue their supply of ammunition, each chief gave a few slaves to the
traffickers. At this time it was difficult to obtain a gun in other ways.
However, of all these Songye allies, only Lumpungu, of the Kaumbu ka
Ngoyi family, was able to distinguish himself from the rest and became the
most powerful ally of the region.
But, how did the Kaumbu ka Ngoyi family emerge? After one version of
the oral tradition, everything started with a war called Ngoshi ya Konyi
ka Mukuku (the fight over a Cuckoo),9 a war which opposed two tribes: the
Bena Tshofue and the Bekalebwe. It began, so the tradition claims, in a
dispute about the hunting of a bird:
The mwikalebwe hunter picked up his prey and put it in his basket. The
Mwina Tshofue who fired the first arrow claimed his part, but in vain.
A quarrel started and was quickly transformed into a full blown battle
between the Bena Tshofue and the Bekalebwe. An important Mwikalebwe
called Kabengiele died. The Bekalebwe looked for revenge. A few days later,
Malangu, the nephew of the deceased, and certain members of his family
killed a Bena Tshofue woman Ndalamumba and her company whilst they
were visiting a Bekalebwe village. Following this assassination, the Bena
Tshofue declared war upon the Bekalebwe.
The Bena Tshofue, placed under the protection of Mpibwe Kitengie,
claimed victory.
The Bekalebwe suffered heavy losses amongst their fighters. Ya Kilengiela,
descendant of Mudimi-a-Kapenga and privileged witness of the defeat of
the Bekalebwe, called his friend Kaumbu, from the village of Makonde. The
two men met through their economic activities: Kaumbu traded locally
manufactured salt for parrots which he sold to Arabs based in Isangi, there
where the Lomami river joined the Congo river. Kaumbu realised the sheer
scope of power held by Arabs who had guns when faced with a population
that only had arrows. So Kaumbu helped his friend and was thus involved in
the war against the Bena Tshofue. As the latter were as always very strong,
Kaumbu brought along Arabs for reinforcement, the most famous of these
being Juma Merikani. The Bena Tshofue, defeated, were pushed beyond the
Lomami river, to the place which is today called Kipushya and that was
called Kipushya maboko, which means swinging one’s arms in a gesture
which means freedom.
After Songye custom in general and that of the Bekalebwe in particular,
the guest ally was always rewarded after a war as a means of recognition.
The Bekalebwe offered to Kaumbu women, slaves, goats, sheep, pearls, etc.
But Kaumbu who, since a long time already, harboured the ambition to one
day become Ya Kitenge Kwibwe, declined the offer and declared that he
would rather prefer to be offered a part of Bekalebwe territory. And so, in
9 Probably the Jacobin cuckoo, Clamator jacobinus.
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the role of firearms in songye region
47
order to prevent other unnecessary violence his request was granted.
Kaumbu settled in the Ehata as the Ya Kitenge-Kwibwe (Chief). The
Bekalebwe gave him this title in exchange for peace. But he did not live for
very long, and he died of a dysentery epidemic. He was succeeded by his son,
Lumpungu-Kaumbu.10
This narration shows that at first, Lumpungu’s family’s power was not
established as a birthright. Helped by the Arabs, Kaumbu ka Ngoyi took
advantage of the weakness of the Bekalebwe who asked for his assistance
in order to impose themselves. In exchange Kaumbu asked for a chief
title as a concession. He thus acceded, albeit with the help of Arab-Swahili
traffickers, to the Bekalebwe royal family, and this against their will. When
he died after an illness, he was replaced by his son.
Lumpungu succeeded his father and became Tippu Tip’s vassal. Nestor
Kapenga tells us:
The great leader Lumpungu (A kikolo11) was very insightful. When the Arabs
came in search of goods or wealth, they needed someone who could facilitate their task. As this particular Songye leader was not afraid, he succeeded
in establishing a solid trade relationship with the Arabs. The latter, finding
that he had courage, began supplying him with weapons and from this
moment onwards they established relations of vassalage. The same thing
happens to someone who arrives in a foreign village for the very first time, he
will seek to ally himself with or to have a good quality relationship with the
village clairvoyant, the one who knows how to express himself, who has a
solid knowledge of how things work. It is in this way that Lumpungu was
appreciated by the Arabs. The very first guns that chief Lumpungu had in his
possession came from his Arab masters and were called Mbouledima. These
were short rifles that had found their way to where we were.12
These Arab guns, Mbouledima were weapons with ‘three rings’. Their
echo was heard from afar, several miles away. These guns took a measure
and a half of gunpowder (kitchoko ki mune na kipindji kia nfwanda). After
inserting this powder with the help of an iron rod, first a bunch of raffia
was inserted into the barrel, to prevent the powder from spilling, and
then the balls, masashi. When a shot was fired, the large quantity of
gunpowder meant that even during a hunt, the game could not escape.
10 Interview with Kamanya Ya Ngoba (1928), former employee of the Ngoyi Tshofue
High Court (1925), former agent of the Kankieza Mukomba public administration (1927),
former fighter, in Kabinda, 22 March 2002.
11 Kikolo means the chain by which animals or slaves are tied. Here, we can say that
Lumpungu had chains to tie slaves with. He chained people. The expression Lumpungu a
kikolo can also be interpreted as Lumpungu the slave driver, the one who chains people.
12 Interview with Nestor Kapenga (1937), Songye of Tshofa (Kabinda), Lubumbashi,
28 August 2009.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
The Mbouledima gun was very powerful and easily killed big game, including elephants, buffaloes, etc. It was the Arabs that brought the name of
Mbouledima.
All things considered, Lumpungu was obliged to bring to his master
Tippu Tip a heavy tribute in ivory, slaves and madiba (raffia fibre cloth).
The area occupied by Lumpungu was part of the Arabised zone of influence. The desire to amass even greater wealth, that is to say more slaves
and more ivory, inspired Lumpungu and Mpania Mutombo, slave to his
father, to conquer more land in the direction of the Ben’Eki territory in
1886.13 The first contingents of slaves were made up of people of difficult
character, amoral and rebellious children considered as a potential public
danger, who therefore their parents had decided to sell. (Certain parents
currently prefer to get rid of their difficult children by sending them to
the army.) These children had mostly come from the Luba Kasai families.
The Songye refused to send local children into slavery. Amongst the slaves
they sold, were also prisoners of war. The Arab-Swahili traffickers also
brought some slaves themselves.14
The Ovimbundu and the Tshokwe in the West
The second source of supply of firearms was towards the west. Here,
Lumpungu had come into contact with the Ovimbundu and the Tshokwe.
The Ovimbundu were ominously described:
The Ovimbundu made up the most notorious caravans and sold guns and
powder to the Songye chiefs such as Lumpungu, Pania Mutombo and Zappo
Zap in exchange for slaves. The collapsing of prices intensified the slave
trade. And in May 1887, Saturnino saw a piece of ivory of 92 pounds paid for
with 54 Songye slaves.15
Many Songye recognised the provenance of firearms from the west, specifically through the Tshokwe, but oral testimonies further allude to a war
that Lumpungu and Ngongo Leteta waged against a certain Tshokwe chief
called Kelendende. The Songye apparently chased him right back into his
original territory. Martin Kitenge tells us:
It was these very guns (from the Arabs) that enabled the chiefs Lumpungu
and Ngongo Leteta to defeat Kelendende, the big Tshokwe chief. These two
13 R. Timmermans, Art. Op. Cit., J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the savannah, (Madison: 1966),
239.
14 Interview with Jean Kabwika, Lubumbashi, 2009.
15 ‘Le Potentiel’ journal.
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the role of firearms in songye region
49
warriors laid siege to the Tshokwe right up to Angola. Some Songye stayed
on and are responsible for what is today the enclave of Kabinda.16
We are dealing here with popular memory. Anyhow, what is interesting
and important is that popular memory tells us that the Tshokwe came into
contact with the chief Lumpungu in the context of the long-distance
trade, based on slaves and ivory which were exchanged for firearms.
Having become powerful through the acquisition of firearms, the
Tshokwe became masters of present southwest Katanga, dominating their
Lunda neighbours for about ten years. They began their advance northward, towards the kingdom of chief Kalamba, of the Lulua, whom the
importing of guns was making more and more powerful. With the arrival of
the Belgians in this region towards the end of the nineteenth century, the
Tshokwe established contact with Lumpungu around 1890, and also with
the Luba Kasai of the region. It is at this moment that the Tshokwe joined
Ngongo Leteta in the Kasai and exchanged rifles for slaves and ivory.17
Fig. 3.3 Rifle used by the Tshokwe in the Luso-African area (Property of the
National Museum of Lubumbashi).
16 Interview with Martin Kitenge, Lubumbashi, November 2009.
17 J. Vansina, Les anciens royaumes de la savane, (2nd edn., Kinshasa, 1976), 168–71.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
Colonial Era
The Start of Colonial Occupation
At the beginning of colonial occupation, the colonisers were neither
numerous enough nor well armed enough to control the Congolese people or to suppress their revolts and their attacks. At the end of 1891, the
force publique had at its disposal only 60 officers, 60 non- commissioned
officers and around 3,500 black soldiers divided amongst the seven districts of the Congo Free State (État independent du Congo, E.I.C.) at this
time.18 Therefore the Free State had to resort to the services of African
chiefs who lent them their warriors in order to conquer and systematically
occupy other Congo territory. Thus in Katanga, after the assassination of
Msiri (1891), his son Mukanda Bantu, who became an ally of the Belgians,
used his warriors in order to control other hostile tribal chiefs and thus
extend Belgian influence in Katanga. These warriors fought alongside
soldiers commanded by the colonisers. In these conditions, the Belgians
had become another source of firearms supply for those Congolese
warriors recruited as militia leaders.19 As for the Busongye, Lumpungu’s
submission to the E.I.C. allowed the Force Publique to benefit from both
his warriors and from around a thousand piston guns.20 This was not only
a matter of the African chiefs supporting their newfound allies. The militia
leaders also had remarkable autonomy. Thus, when chief Katombe of
the Luba-Kasai was attacked by the rebels of Luluabourg, Katombe called
his friend Lumpungu who offered him his help and with his warriors
proceeded to defeat the rebels.21
After joining the E.I.C., Lumpungu assisted the Force Publique in their
campaign against the Arabs. Indeed, on 22 and 23 November 1892, he participated with his warriors in the battle of Tshinge against the Arab chief
Sefu who wanted revenge against Ngongo Leteta, who was considered as
having betrayed the Arab cause by joining the E.I.C. In December of the
18 État Major de la Force Publique, La Force Publique de sa naissance a 1914. Participation
des militaires à l’histoire des premières années du Congo, Gembloux (ed.) Duculot,
(1952), 208.
19 État Major de la Force Publique, La Force Publique de sa naissance a 1914. Participation
des militaires à l’histoire des premières années du Congo, Gembloux (ed.) Duculot,
(1952), 210.
20 État Major de la Force Publique, La Force Publique de sa naissance a 1914. Participation
des militaires à l’histoire des premières années du Congo, Gembloux (ed.) Duculot,
(1952), 217.
21 État Major de la Force Publique, La Force Publique de sa naissance a 1914. Participation
des militaires à l’histoire des premières années du Congo, Gembloux (ed.) Duculot,
(1952), 363.
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same year, Lumpungu once again took part in the battle of Lusunsu
against his former Arab masters.22 Three years later, on 4 July 1895, the
‘Batelela’ revolt erupted in Katanga. The rebels, en route to Ngandu,
passed by and plundered Kabinda. Lumpungu did all he could to spare his
kingdom. Thus he fought alongside station chief Bollen, who was killed.23
Moreover, Lumpungu reinforced the 150 soldiers under Brasseur by a hundred of his warriors in a military campaign organised by the E.I.C. against
Chiwala, an Arabised sultan established on the Luapula left bank.24
The Songye chief therefore appeared in the colonisers’ eyes as an essential force in the territory’s occupation and administration. He was a faithful ally. To strengthen their domination through their ally, the colonialists
organised police operations against those who showed themselves hesitant towards Lumpungu.25 Apparently, the colonisers were in favour of the
new type of power installed since the mid nineteenth century. Thus, each
side (Lumpungu and the Belgians) used the other in order to meet their
needs. The Belgians wanted to keep the status quo, because otherwise it
would be too difficult to effectively control the population.
The Belgians’ behaviour changed gradually as the colony of Congo
was effectively occupied and as the state militia became so numerous
that it was able to effectively maintain law and order and successfully
defend the territory of Belgian Congo. It is in this context that the colonial
authorities began to undermine Lumpungu’s authority. On the political
front, Lumpungu’s overlordship was broken up into several sub-chiefdoms
whose leaders took orders directly from the colonisers. Lumpungu became
more and more politically isolated. In the military, militias of African leaders had been abolished. They were either demobilised or integrated into
the Force Publique. Under the pretext of freeing blacks and fighting against
slavery, the Congo Free State intended to wipe out the slave trade by first
eliminating firearms trafficking. Thus we can understand why, in the late
1910s, the colonisers no longer tolerated the militias of African chiefs and
were no longer their source of firearms.
Local Blacksmiths
Local blacksmiths were another source of firearms. Long before the arrival
of the Arab-Swahilis in the Busongye, in Milembwe, the presence of iron
22 S.L. Hinde, op.cit., 128; F. Flamment, La force publique de sa naissance à 1914, (Brussels,
1952), 225.
23 ‘The Luluabourg troubles’ in: La Belgique Coloniale, 1895–1896, 5.
24 F. Flamment, op. cit., 180.
25 A.S.R.K., Political report of the Lomami district, 1st trimester 1918, 4.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
(called Kabanda), which was discovered and extracted from the ground
and then treated in forges, the blacksmiths, sendwe started making axes,
machetes, arrows, spears, knives etc. The presence of iron in this region
and the manufacture of knives made the indigenous population formidable warriors. Even today, the Bena Milembwe are called ‘the Germans’
by the other Songye tribes because of their strength. With the advent of
Arab-Swahili traffickers, the Milembwe blacksmiths began manufacturing
pipes and other gun parts and imitating the gun model. Over time, they
were imitated by other Busongye blacksmiths. ‘In good memory’, Nestor
Kapenga tells us:
I remember someone like Mwana Nsangwa coming from Milembwe, who at
this time lived in Kabinda, and other blacksmiths who manufactured guns
in our presence. These guns were an imitation of the guns received by Arabs.
By having used them for so long, the blacksmiths mastered the guns to the
point of being able to make them. Over time, the other blacksmiths mastered the 12 gauge model of Belgian manufacture. These blacksmiths started
taking apart these guns and found that there were actually not that many
parts and that they were rather easy to manufacture. The young blacksmiths
only needed a galvanised 0.5 growth pipe, conveniently used in the water
supply of the Regideso. The other parts were surprisingly easy to make.26
It must be noted that locally manufactured guns were very few and were
used for hunting and personal defence purposes.
Legislation on Carrying Guns in the Busongye
It is difficult to talk about the legislation on carrying guns in the Busongye
region. In fact, the legislation concerned the whole country, but enforcement varied from one region to another, given the degree of occupation of
the country. Once the effective occupation of territory was completed, the
colonisers tended to turn against their former allies in order to weaken
them and to remain the sole masters. The first strategy usually used was
the demilitarisation of warriors or their integration into the regular army.
This demobilisation was accompanied most often by a prohibition to
carry firearms. In the context of combating slavery, that is to say the slave
trade, the colonial administration, as we have noted, devised strategies
which were both coercive and persuasive in order to stop the slave trade
by the elimination of firearms trafficking. Legislation had restricted the
carrying of firearms amongst the civilian population, but did not end their
26 Nestor Kapenga, cf note 12 supra.
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the role of firearms in songye region
53
circulation in the Congolese society, given the different roles that the gun
played.
Already on 10 March 1892, the colonial government enacted a decree on
the use of firearms in the Congo Free State.27 Many other decrees were put
into place, including that of 30 April 1887 and 27 April 188928 in the context of supervising the population, both white as well as black, in the use
of firearms. By his order dated 26 March 1900, the vice-governor general
E. Wangermée granted to officers in the finance department, in their
capacity as police officers, the authority to sanction and to enforce the law
on transport, traffic, and the possession of firearms and ammunitions.29
Many settlers received authorisation to carry firearms in order to defend
their trading establishments, ships and trading capital. However, there
were a huge number of firearms which were not registered by the colonial
administration. In addition to this, there were many firearms permits that
were out of date and this was never reported to the competent authorities.30 As a result, the Congolese authorities considered that firearms
constituted a problem of insecurity to people and their property. Also, in
the same spirit, the colonial administration forbade firearms owners to
sell or donate their weapons without authorisation to blacks, including
their servants. The transfer of a firearm from one person to another would
require special permission from the Governor-General of Belgian Congo.31
Up to this time we are dealing with mainly hunting rifles. But, given the
need of the population for game meat, the colonial administration was
brought to supply teams of Congolese hunters with shotguns which were
specifically required to provide game meat. These black hunters had to
live at the colonial station or a camp. The hunting over, they had to return
the gun and the ammunition and justify their use.32
In 1910, the introduction and trade of firearms, ammunition and powder in the Belgian Congo was governed by inconsequent rules. In fact, the
introduction and trade of firearms were banned in certain areas and
allowed in others. The Songye region is situated in the zone where the
introduction and trade in firearms (flintlock and piston rifles) were
allowed. However, this held only for expatriates such as traders, agents
and servants of the colonial state for their personal defence or hunting.
27
28
29
30
31
32
Official Congo Bulletin, (1892), 14.
Official Congo Bulletin, (1887), 40; (1888/9), 87.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1900, 37.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1900, 67.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1903, Circulaire du 27 juillet 1903, 110.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1909, Circulaire du 19 juillet 1909, 183.
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No reference was made to blacks.33 It must be said that in the early 1910s,
the issuing of a permit to carry a weapon was still subject to the approval
of the Governor-General or, from 1912, the district commissioners and
local heads. The goal was always twofold: the defence of officers and servants of the colonial state or the traders and hunters during the authorised
period. The indigenous people were excluded totally and could not afford
to ask permission.34 First, they would not be granted permission anyway;
secondly, the protocol of obtaining it was unknown to them. Moreover,
did giving the indigenous people the opportunity to acquire guns and
ammunition also mean giving them the chance to rebel against colonial
authority or to start a war? In addition, who was there to defend themselves against since the administration guaranteed them their security?
In short, indigenous people were seen as people with bad character whom
the issuing of a firearm would make into a danger for the public at large.
For hunting weapons (rifles and pellet guns), the issuing of a firearms permit was conditioned, at least for the whites, on the possession of a hunting
permit. Even then, the district commissioner needed convincing about
the real intentions of the gun owner. The permit cost at least two hundred
francs, an astronomical amount for a Congolese.35 Moreover the gun as
well as the hunting permit had an expiration date and had to be renewed
each time.
Urban centres at this time resembled the Wild West as the whites always
carried their guns and did not hesitate to shoot at the slightest problem.
The Governor-General thus said:
A lot of staff members and employees, have the fatal habit of unnecessarily
wearing weapons or leaving them lying around, when they should be kept
locked up or hidden. These weapons thus become toys that are manipulated
with no caution and no concern for danger; at the slightest provocation
or excitement they are taken in the hand, so under these conditions there
are always accidents; their consequences are often serious and sometimes
irreparable.36
33 Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1910, 172–4.
34 Following the Acte Général of the Brussels Conference of July 1890 and related royal
decrees, the only firearms that private traders could legally import into the Congo Free
State and sell to black Africans were fusils à silex non rayés (flintlock muskets). In 1912 even
for flintlock muzzleloaders gun licences were introduced (see Bulletin Officiel du Congo
Belge, 15 January 1912). After 1912, officially, every weapon in African hands had to be
licensed.
35 Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1912, 199.
36 Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1912, 301.
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Moreover, it was necessary to regulate the circulation of firearms, especially amongst people who were not white. In fact, the decree signed
9 January 1913 in Boma, states that the spread of sophisticated firearms to
blacks should be strongly prohibited.
By that I mean, he adds, not only natives but also Arabs, Balouchis, Indians,
Zanzibaris, etc. As a result these people could hold only non-striped flint
guns, unless they had a special permit. So if some of these people had
enough guarantees, appropriate officials may authorise a weapon to be carried. It is important to observe closely the decree of November 22nd 1912,
which determines the limits within which gunpowder can be consented to
the locals.37
In 1918, the deputy Governor-General, L. Bureau, reminded the civil servants of the official ban on giving as gifts or selling guns to blacks.38 If the
occasion arose when it became necessary to provide an African with a
gun, the greatest caution was applied.
To summarise, the carrying of firearms has a history. It should be noted
however that over time, according to our informants, the Belgian colonisers allowed the sale of firearms in certain circles and in appropriate
stores. Their rules, it would seem, were not enforced ‘Many Songye’, Nestor
Kapenga tells us:
fuelled their guns at Yenga Yenga’s in Mpanya Mutombo. Every adult Songye,
aged above 40 and eager to have a gun, had to go and take his permission to
purchase a gun with the state services. It is only with this document in hand
that mister Anton Lard consented to sell a gun to a black man. Even gunpowder was also sold in stores. It was there that everyone went to when they
needed a recharge of gunpowder. At this particular moment in time, guns
and rifles were almost everywhere. My own, to give an example, I paid for in
1958. Those guns brought by the Belgians were called Katulushi. This second
type was found in the shops owned by Anton Lard (called Yenga Yenga) until
1962. The name given to certain guns Pupu is a Swahili word that means a
rifle for which powder needs to be used. These pupu are not popular anymore and are now replaced by 12 gauge guns because of the scarcity of powder on the market. For sizes 12, we easily find 00 bullets in shops even today
at it is these bullets that are used for hunting. Other weapons of war such as
mausers did not exist with the Songye until this day because of the difficulty
of finding appropriate bullets.39
37
38
38
39
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1913, 7.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1918, 185.
Belgian Congo, Recueil Mensuel 1912, 301.
Interview with Nestor Kapenga, cf. notes 12, supra.
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donatien dibwe dia mwembu
The Impact of Firearms40
There is no doubt that the advent of firearms was a turning point in the
political history of Central Africa. As we have noted, certain states disappeared in favour of others and small groups saw their territory grow and
invade that of others because their warriors now had firearms. Lumpungu
embarked towards the Ben’Eki territory, chief Mwana Kankieza having
called him. Lumpungu made a new alliance with the chief of the Ben’Eki
and with the Belande in south-west Busongye.41 It is thus with the Belande
and the Ben’Eki that Lumpungu resumed his incursions and enlarged his
kingdom, of which he made Kabinda the capital. It is from Kabinda and
with the help of other chiefs who were faithful to his cause that Lumpungu
started making incursions to conquer neighbouring tribes, which also had
to make a tribute payment to him. This was the beginning of the conquests that gave birth to his state and that allowed it to spread in all directions. So he was able to influence even the Lulua in the north of Katanga.42
With the guns obtained from his various allies (1869–1892) Lumpungu
managed to carve out a vast territory and restructure its political aspects.
Songye political structures changed due to the implantation of a new type
of power. Lumpungu, after taking control over Songye groups, managed,
with Arab-Swahili help, to form a society that had a centralised political
system. Setting himself up as the grand chief of Songye, Lumpungu eliminated all rebellious traditional chiefs and opposed any investiture of new
chiefs. He undertook to ennoble all those committed to his cause. He created a supreme council made up of the representatives of the subjected
leaders.
The social and political structure established by the new type of power
had a pyramidal shape with Lumpungu on top, followed by the heads of
the subjected groups, heads of villages after that and ordinary subjects at
the base. Each leader, at his level, was surrounded by a council. What
resulted was the coexistence of new power introduced by Lumpungu and
traditional power, given that most traditional leaders were kept at the
head of their respective groups.
With the coming of colonisation, Lumpungu’s kingdom practically
covered the current areas of Kabinda and Lubao. The Belgians, in order
40 This section is based on a qualitative field survey among people from the two Kasai
provinces (West Kasai and East Kasai) living in Lubumbashi, from Katanga and East
Kasaians in the urban centre of Kabinda.
41 H. Von Wissmann, Op. Cit., 200.
42 S.L. Hinde, The Fall of the Congo Arabs, (London, 1897), 93.
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the role of firearms in songye region
57
to make Lumpungu assist in the effective occupation of the territory,
pretended to consolidate his power and even gave his kingdom the title of
the Lumpungu Chiefdom. Later on they began to undermine his power,
starting by splitting his chiefdom into sub-chiefdoms, the leaders of which
no longer answered to him, but to the colonisers. In the end the subchiefdoms became independent chiefdoms. Lumpungu’s authority, by the
time he died in 1919, was limited to the confines of the capital, Kabinda.
On the economic level, Lumpungu created a national currency, the
Mitunda. He made the domestic slave a merchandise just like ivory or the
madiba (pieces of raffia cloth), and claimed a tribute payment from all
his subjects. Just like other great leaders he monopolised the trade in
slaves and ivory and integrated the Songye society into the Arab-Swahili
trade. On the other hand the city of Kabinda, the Busongye capital city,
maintained other trade relations with the Katanga kingdoms from which
he obtained copperware, known in the Kisongye language as miyinga.
Lumpungu traded slaves, ivory, raffia cloth, etc. against guns, gunpowder
(nfuanda) and other manufactured items such as clothes, shoes, hats,
blankets, etc. Kabinda, because of its dual political and economic role
became a major centre with a population, in 1891 and 1906 estimated at
15,000 and 20,000 inhabitants respectively.43
Firearms were not only used for military purposes, wars and conquest
of territory. Gun owners also used them to get game meat. Leonard Bukasa
tells us:
Concerning the dowry, if the recipient of the gun, that is to say the parent of
the woman (spouse) is a hunter, this gun will help him obtain meat regularly.
If he doesn’t know how to handle the gun, a connoisseur will show him.
Sometimes the parent can lend his gun to hunters who bring him meat after
a hunt. The gun was also lent for mourning purposes to those who did not
possess one.
Hunting could be individual or collective:
Any villager who went to the field always had a bladed weapon (knife,
machete, axe, arrow, etc.). A man does not walk like a woman. He must know
how to defend himself when attacked, and so that he can kill a snake or
lizard or small animal and bring some meat home. It is the same for women.
For those who have guns, it sometimes happens shots are heard in the forest
or the savannah. In the evening, we hear they are selling meat. He was alone
in the bush and had the chance to kill game he stumbled upon. During the
43 A. Delcommune, Op. Cit., 92; L. Frobenius, ‘Explorations du Kasai’, Movement
géographique, (1906), Col. 392.
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dry season hunting is done in groups. This takes place in the savannah.
Hunters arrive with their dogs and surround a space they think might have
game. They light a fire and place themselves in the direction of the wind.
In this way the fire is fanned by the wind and moves towards the hunters,
animals fleeing from the smoke. So the hunters shoot the animals escaping
the fire. Some die instantly, but a lot are merely wounded and it is the dogs
that finish the slaughter. There are discussions to determine who killed, or
most importantly who first shot the animal. The village chief settles these
quarrels. Those without guns use spears.
Group hunts also take place during the rainy season when we can detect
traces of game such as the wild boar. The boar is still tracked by many hunters. A group of people make a lot of noise and the frightened animals head
in the opposite direction, into the arms of the hunters ahead. I tell you all
this to show you how those who had guns were always envied. It is why a lot
of people demand a gun amongst dowry objects.44
Unfortunately, disorderly hunting has resulted in the scarcity of wild
animals in the Songye region, especially in the savannah. The colonial
government therefore created numerous decrees to regulate hunting in
the whole colony in general, and the Busongye in particular.
In Songye culture, the gun is used in various situations: in bereavement
(death), or a new birth; whilst hunting or when one wants to defeat an
enemy. In certain Congolese communities the gun is one of the objects
constituting the dowry. Several factors justify this. Firstly, guns are very
important in societies where hunting is a major economic activity. You are
either a hunter yourself or you lend your gun to someone who then gives
you a piece of meat. With the Bazela, the gun is an object that the in-laws
claim as compensation after the wife dies because of a husband’s bad
treatment, for example. As the gun is a scarce and therefore expensive
commodity, it is an important element of compensation. The gun is a
means of defence against the personal or the group enemy (family, tribal
or ethnic). Whoever has a gun is feared in the village. ‘The gun is used to
scare people. As soon as anyone pulls out a gun, even if they do not know
how to use it, everyone flees’, Kapenga Funkwa tells us.
A village that had a large number of gun-owning hunters also frightened its surroundings. It was hardly ever attacked by another village. With
the Ruund, for example, no dowry was complete without a gun. The Ruund
were long dominated by the Tshokwe, and so having a firearm protected
them against Tshokwe attacks.
44 Interview with Jean Ngoie Lukumbi (aged 45), lecturer at Kabinda University, Tshofa,
January 2010.
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During the funerals of great leaders, shots are fired in the air. In certain
tribes such as the Kete, shots are fired at funerals of the rich or the wisest
of the group or the region. Over time, this practice has been used even at
the funerals of common people. When, for example, the son in-law fires
into the air when his father or mother in-law dies, it greatly elevates the
social standing of the deceased. At the same time, he is upgraded with his
in-laws by this gesture because he is seen to have shown genuine grief.
Gunpowder is scarce in rural areas and therefore expensive, therefore to
fire shots in the air is considered both a luxury and a prestige. With time,
shots were fired at funerals not only to grieve the father or mother in-law,
but the aunts and uncles of the spouse as well. When a great leader died,
his sons, grandsons, close friends and notables joined in this practice in
order to spend on the person who was dear to them.
No dowry (bridewealth) was complete without a gun. Bukasa, talking
about the Luba Kasai culture, declares:
Before the dowry ceremony, the father of the bride inquires with his family
about the requested dowry objects on the part of the girl’s fiancé. Amongst
the objects frequently asked for are goats (Mbuji) for the two parents, clothes
(Bilamba) for the mother and father, the dowry (Biuma) in cash and of
course a gun (Tshingoma). At this time the gun was a rare item and one had
to spend much for it. The father in-law used it for mourning, hunting in the
bush, and even in conflicts for self-defence. If the father who asked for a gun
did not know how to use it, he was obliged to learn from someone who was
already familiar with hunting. Currently, the gun is replaced by the sewing
machine, bicycle and other valued goods.
Over time, because of modernisation and the influence of other cultures,
the gun asked for in dowry became less and less important, especially in
urban areas, and was crowded out by other useful goods such as a radio or
a bicycle. Who needs a gun in the city? Instead, the bride’s father asked for
a sewing machine with which he could make clothes, a bicycle for moving
around and transporting goods or a radio to listen to the news and uplift
the home atmosphere.
In the same vein, and speaking of the Songye, Kapenga Funkwa adds:
At the time, the gun had a huge importance that remains to this day.
Nowadays, the gun is substituted for the bicycle, because in time, if you own
a gun, this gun will get you meat. It is to this fact that the importance of the
gun is accorded by the Songye. The gun is like merchandise that generates
money. In areas where there are large animals present, the gun obtained
with a dowry enables you to kill an elephant, a buffalo, etc., and this is simply
priceless.
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The gun was also used a communication tool just like the tshondo (drum),
the whistle (kapudi for the Songye, kashiba or lushiba for the Luba
Lubilanji), etc. When someone dies, their in-laws are required to give
either gunpowder or the cash equivalent. This powder is used in the
crackle of weapons to break the news of bereavement to the surrounding
villages. For those who already knew that this person from that village was
suffering, the shots announce his death. Here, just like the drum, the gun
is a means of communication.
Opinions differ on this point. Some informants report that shots fired
at the death of a person cannot be seen as means of communication in
the sense that they have often been preceded by the drum (tshondo) to
announce the news. In this case, the shots confirm the relatively high
social status of the deceased. The shots fired are then a clear sign that the
deceased has a family of his own, that he was ‘well mourned’, that he was
a part of a dignified family and was not mourned like ‘a chicken’ that no
one regrets the death of, since no one cries after it. This is why shots are
not fired only at the moment the deceased passes away, but also at night,
at sunrise, at sunset and at the funeral, to show that the deceased was well
mourned.
Jean Kabwika illustrates the role of communication played by the gun
in his region:
In the case of mourning, there is what we call the ku bula (the advertisement). When a woman married far from her village dies, her in-laws or her
husband send a messenger to announce the sad news to her family. This
messenger should be very clever because sometimes messengers are beaten
by the dead wife’s family. Among the signs brought by the messenger are
official mourning clothes, another sign according to custom or gunshots
fired by the messenger when entering the deceased’s village, after which he
runs for his life. These are various signals that announce news. When there
is good news such as the investiture of a chief or a birth, the messenger is
anointed with kaolin and brings white hens, etc. In case of aggression, the
messenger is dressed in war gear. In short, there are external signs for each
event.45
Lumpungu Kasongo Ntambue notes that the shots, followed by the quivering noise of women, mark the start of mourning, after the exposing of
the deceased’s body. If the quivering noise of women can be interpreted as
a wish of a safe trip addressed to the deceased, the gunshots, on the other
hand, not only announced mourning, but also chased the spirit of the
45 Interview with Jean Kabwika (aged 63), shopkeeper, Lubumbashi, 15 January 2010.
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deceased (the Songye did not wish to see return the spirits of those infertile,
witches, lepers, the hanged, etc.) and chased away death. These signs, i.e.
the shots and the quivering noises of women, inaugurated the period of
mourning.46 Gunshots were forbidden in the case of a man struck dead by
lightning. Public opinion considered lightning as the gun of witches.47
Kalonda Ntambwe points out that the shots fired during mourning
were not free of interest:
Say that, for example, your wife looses her father or her mother, and you are
accompanied by your friends and brothers who take along their guns and
powder to mourn your wife’s parent. Having arrived, you surprise the crowd
by a few gunshots. This can go up to ten shots. Those inside the house will
want to know who is firing. When they are told that it is the husband of this
or that woman having come to mourn his in-laws, all will exclaim: “Behold a
man, a real man! He has come to mourn his wife’s parent.” As soon as the
shots are over, the wife’s family should offer a goat to their son in-law. A meal
will be prepared that the son in-law will share with all who came with him to
mourn. If, after these shots, the in-laws make no gesture, the wife concerned
will be humiliated by her husband each time she makes a small awkwardness at home. She will always be reminded of the fact that her family did not
‘pay’ the shots fired when one of her parents died. This practice is observed
in the whole Busongye region.
When, in the surrounding villages, people ask why these many shots were
fired, they will be told who had died. So, in turn, the messengers of these
villages will use the drum, called Ngoma or Lunkumbi (a kind of lokolé) to
inform other far away villages of the death. The lukumbi is like a telegram.
When a woman dies, we send the following message: “Mwana mukashi
kibamba na nkole basamba nsala batekie takuisamba shi na mpusha nsala,
teka.” This literally means: “when a woman is hungry she does not say she is
hungry but lights her fire and makes her meal.” When a man dies, the messenger uses the following code: “Kalume kakwatshile milumbu, milumbu ibidi
kabende ku mutamba mutamba wa finga finga”, which means “the one who
died is a man, he is called a man, he left for the forest of fingafinga”, meaning
he left for the hereafter, in the bowels of the earth. When a message like this
is sent, the name of the deceased is also given.48
The slave trade involved men and women who were strong, vigorous,
younger, at the age of procreation, useful in the process of development of
Africa in general and the Busongye in particular. The slave trade, causing
the mobility of peoples, also exposed the concerned areas to diseases that
46 Kasongo Ntambue Lumpungu, Les rites funéraires chez les Songye. Cas de Ben’Eki. End
of study thesis, Institut Supérieur Pédagogique of Kananga (West Kasai), (1990), 19.
47 Kasongo Ntambue Lumpungu, Les rites funéraires chez les Songye. Cas de Ben’Eki. End
of study thesis, Institut Supérieur Pédagogique of Kananga (West Kasai), (1990), 22.
48 Interview with Ntambwe Kalonda (1925), Retired, Lubumbashi, 16 May 2010.
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were imported or not, diseases that were poorly treated because they
were unknown to the local populations and therefore had disastrous
consequences on demographic growth. The Songye population was no
exception to this.
The coming of firearms plunged Central Africa into a cycle of unprecedented violence, causing a large amount of victims, but also causing some
to flee their territory. The German explorer H. Von Wissmann who crossed
the Songye region of Ben’Eki in 1884 found it to be prosperous and well
cultivated. But when he passed three years later in 1887, he found it completely devastated after the raids of Arab-Swahili traffickers.49 It is after
the raids led by Lumpungu that a relatively important fraction of the
Ben’Eki (the Sappu Sappu) left the Busongye and took refuge in the region
of Luluabourg. (This is now Kananga, the capital of the West Kasai province). The slave trade undermined the socio-cultural system of the Songye,
abused its population and made it less prolific.
The slave trade made the Songye population heterogeneous. The
Busongye thus became a multiethnic and multicultural area with the massive influx of the Luba-Kasai slaves. After having ended relations with
Arab-Swahili traffickers, and for security reasons, Lumpungu was forced to
obey the Congo Free State, whose military was now much more powerful.
Had he not assisted a crushing defeat of his powerful ally Ngongo Leteta?
An important question to pose is the reason behind the large numbers of
the Luba Lubilanji in the Busongye.
One explanation would be the policy of the transplantation of the Luba
Lubilanji populations which occurred in two stages, the violent and the
persuasive. It seems that during the submission of Lumpungu and his ally
Mpanya Mutombo, J. Dhanis and P. Le Marinel, respectively Lusambo
District Commissioner and Inspector of State, granted these two Songye
chiefs sovereignty over the Luba Lubilanji territory: Lumpungu extended
his influence to the south whilst Mpania was assigned the space in the
north. They were recognised the right to protect and organise these territories, to impose tribute and gather recruits for the police force.50 Thus in
late 1892 or early 1893 Lumpungu went to the Baluba Lubilanji in order to
procure slaves. He operated his slave hunts with the Bakwa Tshihene,
Bakwa ndoba, Bakwa Kande, Bena Tshitolo, Bakwa Kalonji. According to
the sources, these captured slaves no longer served the slave trade, but
49 H. Von Wissmann, quoted by François Renault, Serge Daget, Les traites négrières en
Afrique, (Paris, 1985), 205.
50 A. Van Zandijck, Les Baluba dans la tourmente, Archdiocèse de Kananga (1989), 31–2.
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63
were needed for repopulating Busongye, which Lumpungu and his ArabSwahili allies had devastated. This policy of transplanting the Luba
Lubilanji population would continue in more subtle ways. Indeed, in order
not to attract the attention of the colonial administration, Lumpungu
changed his tune. He no longer used violence to get slaves, but persuasion.
He would send his delegates, that is to say his well dressed slaves, to convince the Baluba Lubilanji that the Busongye offered good living conditions: that one ate well there, dressed according to the latest fashion and
that it was worth moving to live there. It seems that those Baluba Lubilanji
who feared famine in their own region went there gladly.
Many Baluba Lubilanji were thus settled around Lumpungu’s residence
in Kabinda. This was also the case with the Kamukungu district and the
villages Swedi, Kileta, Mbunda, Kitengye and Kalenga ka Mwembo. In the
Bekalebwe territory, Lumpungu settled his Luba Lubilanji slaves on all
the lands stolen from the Bena Tshofwe during the war they fought against
the Bekalebwe. These Baluba Lubilanji formed the villages Musangie,
Kiungu, Kasongo Mula, Mpiani Kasongo, Kalenga wa Mposo, Kamwama,
Kampengie, Kalondakanyi. Many other Luba Lubilanji slaves were sent to
Eshaadika, the village of Lumpungu’s father. Many Luba-Kasai were found
on Songye territory because Lumpungu rewarded his Songye warriors by
offering each of them a slave if they caught three or more slaves.51 In any
case, these spaces would have been the nurseries for the repopulation of
the Songye region devastated by the Arab slave trade. If this hypothesis
were true or justified, could one consider this gesture as a kind of compensation for the wrongs done by Lumpungu to the Songye people? Or
could these slave villages be considered as reservoirs of labour serving
Lumpungu and his various lieutenants?
Other sources believe that these cities hosting Luba Kasai slaves served
as transit centres before the slaves were exported abroad. This trade and
transport of slaves would have failed with the coming of colonisers who
were fiercely opposed to the slave trade. In time, Luba Kasai slaves were
eventually freed and integrated into Songye society. Many female slaves
were married by their former owners (masters) and bore their names.
Many male slaves were also integrated as full part members by the families
that had brought them. Thus Songye families were demographically
enriched by these foreign contributions.
51 Interview with Samuel Lumwanga Ngoyi, teaching in ISP Mbujimayi, Lubumbashi,
2 February 2010.
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Conclusion
The coming of firearms was a decisive turning point in Busongye history.
Firearms caused profound changes on the political, economic, social and
cultural level. The Busongye found itself integrated into a new political
and economic interregional environment imposed both by traffickers
(Arab-Swahili and Ovimbundu Tshokwe) and by colonisers. The advent of
firearms led to the emergence of a new type of military power that imposed
itself on traditional power structures. This new type of power has, in turn,
inserted itself between traditional power and modern rule by foreigners.
Guns have played many roles in the daily life of the Songye population.
Apart from being an instrument of personal or group defence, guns were
used for hunting and as an instrument of communication during bereavement, and even as a deterrent against evil spirits and death.
The legislation dealing with the carrying of firearms established by the
colonial and even the post-colonial administration restricted the movement of firearms throughout the colony of Belgian Congo and especially
in the Busongye region. Anyhow, the gun is a luxury article and thus an
indication of wealth and prestige within the Songye village society.
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PART II
MIGRANCY, MOBILITY AND INNOVATION
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SIPILINGAS: INTRAREGIONAL AFRICAN INITIATIVES
AND THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH IN
KATANGA AND ZAMBIA, 1910–1945
J. Jeffrey Hoover
Firearms had obvious importance in refashioning political and economic
entities in Central Africa in recent centuries, as seen in the Yeke economicpolitical empire of M’siri or the Zanzibari Swahili caravan operations of
Tippu Tip, without speaking of European colonisation itself. Cell phones
have revolutionised the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past decade.
Whether the ‘word’ in the end proves mightier than the ‘sword’, the spread
of new technologies means no Kinshasa government can control the flow
of information as under the Mobutu regime, and Congolese political life
has changed in significant ways.
This chapter will look at the ‘word’ instead of the ‘sword’ but in quite
a different context. While other chapters focus on a material history of
relations between the Central African Copperbelt and its hinterland,
my contribution flows from research in connection with the 125th year of
Methodist missionary activity in Congo and the centennial of continuous
Methodist work in the Katanga/Zambia area. It speaks less of material
aspects, far less salient in the sources currently available, but sheds
light on the widespread circulation of Africans, especially young males,
throughout this region in the early twentieth century. Not that ‘stuff’ will
not appear in this chapter. However, the attraction that books exercised
on young migrant Africans is complex. Even though the role and value of
new imported goods of any kind might not be the same in African eyes as
in those of the expatriate storekeeper who sold them, we will see books at
times associated with the non-materialistic options before young African
migrant labourers.
The Background to Methodist Missions in the
Democratic Republic of Congo
To understand Methodist mission personnel in Katanga during the early
twentieth century, a bit of ‘pre-history’ is useful. United Methodist
churches in the southern part of Congo, as those in Liberia, Angola,
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Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and many countries outside Africa, trace their
origins to the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), the major, original
Methodist body in North America. The MEC was organised in 1784 in the
wake of the American Revolution as the first Methodist body outside
the Church of England, receiving John Wesley’s reluctant blessing due to
the refusal of the Anglican Bishop of London to ordain priests for American
rebels. A British Methodist denomination only appeared after Wesley had
passed from the scene and could no longer prevent the breach. Even then
British Methodists scrupulously avoided potentially conflictual usage of
Anglican terms such as church, bishop, vicar, diocese, or pastor without
rejecting their theological validity, whereas the American church consciously took the place of both the Anglican church and the Wesleyan
movement inside it. Wesley proposed a hymn book, a body of church
law, and an abridgment of the Anglican ‘Thirty-Nine Articles’ but never
approved of the Americans calling their church officers bishops. The episcopal model, in any case, was of a collective superintendency rather than
diocesan ‘princes of the church’.
The MEC was never a purely United States church, having congregations in Canada and other parts of British North America, and one of its
two original bishops (Thomas Coke) spent more time outside than inside
the United States. African-American freedmen carried Methodism to
Sierra Leone (although once there, as political exiles they connected
rather to the British Wesleyan Conference) and to Liberia. Whether in
North America or internationally, the MEC generally spread through lay
members migrating into new areas, supported by itinerant preachers
(‘circuit riders’) who themselves were often laymen rather than university-trained clergy. Other Methodist bodies which established missions in
Central Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had either
seceded from the MEC (as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS]
in Central Congo or the Free Methodist Church in Kivu, Ruanda and
Urundi) or were descended from the Wesleyan Conference of Great Britain
(Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists in the Rhodesias). Many Methodists
also served in ‘non-denominational’ agencies such as the London Missionary Society. Wesley and his followers were pragmatists, seeking what
worked rather than pure theories.
The coming of the Methodist Episcopal Church to Katanga via Northern
Rhodesia was a delayed effect of ‘Bishop Taylor’s Self-Supporting Missions’.
Due to a half-century of internal problems in Liberian Methodism, largely
as a result of tensions between Afro-Liberians and Americo-Liberians—
the MEC was the only significant church body working among the entire
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population—the 1884 General Conference elected an assigned ‘Bishop for
Africa’.1 Who would accept assignment to such an area of frightful mortality? Why not William Taylor? As a young pastor, Taylor had followed the
1849 gold rush to California and organised Methodist churches in what
was then a Mexican province. When he sought to return home to Maryland
and Virginia after decades in the west, he responded to local invitations on
the way, stopping over as an evangelist in Australia, New Zealand, India,
and South Africa. He had considerable impact on the development of
Methodism in each of these countries, receiving little or no support from
the United States during this extended journey. Taylor quickly found the
conflicts within the Liberian church baffling and petty and turned toward
a much larger vision: Africa. At a time when many missionary societies
were taking up Livingstone’s challenge to address human needs in Central
Africa, Taylor planned a chain of missions from the Atlantic to the Indian
Ocean. The authority conferred on him by the General Conference came
with no funding; the Methodist Foreign Missionary Society was autonomous from the church structure until becoming a general agency as the
Board of Foreign Missions at the turn of the century. Although the society
had sent workers to Liberia for half a century, its means were too limited
to satisfy Taylor’s plans.2 Taylor launched a charismatic appeal for volunteers, raising funds to transport them overseas (eventually to Latin
America and India as well as Africa) where they would support themselves
by their trades.
Taylor sent scores of volunteers to the Atlantic coast south of the
equator from 1884, but his first major interior destination was the southnorth section of the Kasai River, now the border between Angola and
the Congo. He later took over a mission and one family of missionaries
from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABC)
near Inhambane in Mozambique as the eastern anchor to his chain.
With the British Baptists already established among the Kongo-speakers
around the mouth of the Congo River and the ABC and Canadian Congregationalists among the yet-independent Ovimbundu in the Benguela
hinterland, Taylor directly braved the Portuguese colony and Luanda.
By 1886 Robert Summers, one of his physician recruits, had settled at
1 Methodist bishops derive from a concept of ‘general superintendency’ and are collectively responsible to the General Conference with specific duties designated for four-year
terms, thus the term ‘Bishop for Africa’ rather than ‘Bishop of Africa’.
2 The first official missionary who was sent outside of North America was Melville Cox.
He died in 1833 after less than four months in Liberia, a pattern which was followed by most
of his successors before the late nineteenth century.
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Malindi (old Luluabourg) on the Kasai River well north of the current
Angolan border on what Von Wissmann had called the ‘Lunda Plateau’.
By then the Von Wissmann expedition had shown that the Kwa and
lower Kasai Rivers made a much easier west-east approach to the middle
Kasai than by foot from Luanda, so Taylor began his own chain of missions, parallel to the British Baptists and the Livingstone Interior Mission,
from the Congo estuary to the navigable rivers of the Congo Basin at
Kimpoko upstream from Kinshasa. This was to be the main route to the
‘District of Lunda’. These missions were often identified only in reference
to Bishop Taylor without acknowledging that he represented the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
However, the self-support model did not work as well in Africa as in
India and Latin America, and not as well for many of the enthusiastic
volunteers as for Taylor himself. Mortality was high; other volunteers were
invalided home or left Africa frustrated after months of hunger. Some
were able to support themselves: for example, teachers attracting children
of the Portuguese elite in Luanda eager to access British suppliers independently of Lisbon, medical doctors dealing with an African population
accustomed to paying healers, the cosmopolitan Swiss Héli Chatélain
who served as honorary consul in Luanda for several governments, translating for many, and carrying out linguistic and folklore research among
the Mbundu. Most were forced to live as traders, putting them in economic competition with those they were attempting to reach with their
Christian message. The number of new arrivals soon failed to replace
those who died or otherwise departed. Taylor’s movement was just that:
no administration, little in the way of financial accounting and no fixed
headquarters.
In 1896 the General Conference retired Taylor and elected a new bishop
for Africa, a pastor with long experience working with former slaves in
Louisiana: Joseph Crane Hartzell. Hartzell negotiated with the new Board
of Foreign Missions to take the remaining Taylor missionaries under salary
in return for full-time service to the church. He concentrated all the
remaining missionaries from the Atlantic side in Luanda and the Angolan
highlands, where mortality appeared lower; on the east side of the continent, he purchased the second-hand town of Old Mutare from Cecil
Rhodes (whose Beira-Salisbury railroad had passed on the other side of
Christmas Pass), intending to replace the malarial Mozambican coast as a
mission field.
Helen Emily Chapman was a Taylor volunteer in the Congo Independent
State, arriving in Vivi in the same group as a Danish colleague, Wilhelm
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Rasmussen, who returned after medical evacuation. They became one of
the first couples legally married under the colonial regime, with the
Governor-General conducting the civil ceremony, but they were forced to
evacuate by acute malaria. After their return and with the next round of
malaria, Rasmussen and his sister (also a recruit to the Taylor mission with
her Danish husband) died. Helen Emily Chapman Rasmussen and her
brother-in-law returned to Denmark; after a time she returned ‘permanently’ to the United States with her young son. After losing the boy
to diphtheria in New Jersey, Helen became an early volunteer to help
Bishop Hartzell exploit the dozens of permanent buildings at Old Mutare.
However, she still wondered about her original call to the Congo.
Another Old Mutare recruit was John McKendree Springer, son of a
pioneering Methodist preacher and superintendent on the Dakota
frontier, himself a preacher since his college days. He met Hartzell while
at Northwestern University for a masters degree, where he read all the
Central African explorers and felt pulled to establish a mission among the
Lunda of the mwant yav. During their five-year terms at Old Mutare, John
and Helen shared their respective Congo dreams, became husband and
wife as well as colleagues, and decided to return to America in 1907 via the
Lunda capital to see if such a mission would be feasible. The Board of
Foreign Missions, still struggling to sustain the diverse Methodist initiatives its predecessors had initiated, was emphatically not in agreement
with their trip, ordering them rather to return to New York by the most
direct route. Their travel was also rescheduled to the beginning of the
rainy season when such a trip would become most difficult. Ironically, a
string on the globe showed that the most direct route from Old Mutare to
New York passed across Central Africa and not that far from the Lunda
capital.
John and Helen Springer were well received in Northern Rhodesia, with
Rhodes’ ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ railroad having just reached the Broken Hill leadzinc mine. While waiting for the rains to end, they organised the first
church there, with day and night schools. Once things dried out, they
moved on to the Kansanshi copper mine near the Congo border, a base
from which to consult Belgian officials in Kambove and Ruwe. They later
spent time with the Plymouth Brethren medical missionaries at Kaleñe
Hill in the far northwest, as troops from the 1895 Luluabourg mutiny still
caused problems northwest of Ruwe, preventing the Springers from
continuing to visit the mwant yav. Back in the United States, it took most
of three years to win approval, first from Bishop Hartzell, then from
the Board of Foreign Missions, to return to the Rhodesia-Katanga border.
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Fig. 4.1 First Methodist Church on Avenue Moero in Élisabethville, 1914
Fig. 4.2 Second Methodist Church on Avenue Limite-Sud in Likasi, 1917
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This time it was to ‘reestablish the Lunda District’ of the West Equatorial
Africa conference ‘in the eastern Angolan interior’. The Springers and their
bishop in Cape Town certainly understood that the Lunda capital was by
now within the borders of the Congo Independent State, but it was in their
interest not to be totally clear in their geographical or colonial references
with American board members with little mastery of the vast distances
involved. The Springers left the United States as soon as they obtained
their go-ahead, perhaps so that the committee might not have second
thoughts, but this put them late in the dry season again when they reached
Broken Hill. They set up camp for the rains in an abandoned British South
Africa Police camp not far from the Plymouth Brethren mission at Kaleñe
Hill and a kilometre or so from the Congo border.
The result of these assorted events was the arrival of two experienced
missionaries on the Rhodesian-Congolese border in 1910, convinced of
their call, dedicated to working in a highly connectional church (most
definitely not a congregational or individualist system like the Plymouth
Brethren) having a long tradition of lay Christians serving when trained
clergy were not available. And, incidentally, financial resources were all
but non-existent and certainly not comparable to other MEC missions, as
the Springers had promised to operate five years with no financial support
from the Board of Foreign Missions. Their first expatriate recruits were
single individuals or young couples with promises of help from individual
congregations, conference youth groups (the case of Dr. Piper in Kapanga),
etc., all on the fringes of the Methodist connectional system. The MEC had
turned its back on Taylor’s self-financing mission experiment, but Springer
could not ask for support from the Board of Foreign Missions before 1917,3
although the board would recruit for the Congo mission. As Congolese say:
“Article 15: Débrouillez-vous!”4
The Springers and the Sipilingas
John Springer was appointed superintendent, first as a district of the West
Equatorial Africa Mission (now Angola Annual) Conference, and from
1916 as an autonomous Congo Mission Conference.5 Although his younger
3 J.T. Copplestone, Twentieth-century perspectives (New York, 1973), 112.
4 This is the mythical fifteenth clause of the Congolese labour contracts: ‘Make do with
what you have’.
5 The mission became a self-governing annual conference within the cooperative
framework of the General Conference in 1955, well before Congolese independence.
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colleagues would vote the Springers off the mission as unrealistic and
incompetent (John and Helen were reassigned by Bishop Johnson to
Southern Rhodesia for two years until their colleagues asked for their
return), Springer generally served as the head of the mission until his
retirement in 1944. He was elected in 1936 as the fourth Bishop for Africa
(by then no longer including Liberia, Algeria, or Tunisia), based for four
years in Old Mutare, then in Élisabethville after the merger of the MEC
and the MECS in 1939 made him responsible for the large former MECS
mission in Central Congo. After retirement he settled at Mulungwishi.
One of his great satisfactions was baptising the first mwant yav to join a
Christian church in 1960.
It is now commonplace to stress that missions operated on the ground
largely through indigenous evangelists and catechists. Given the Springers’
background and previous experience, one would expect them to be
more effective than the average founder of a new mission. However, their
financial realities meant that they were even more eager to develop
African leadership in the place of missionary colleagues they could not
realistically expect to receive in the structured world of Methodist
missions. ‘Indigenous’ is also a misleading term for many of their African
co-workers, a very cosmopolitan group.
The Springers were visited by Kayek Changand while camped at
Kalulwa, opening the training school that would move into Congo as soon
as the rains stopped. Enslaved as an adolescent in the Sandoa area, he had
been permitted to study at an ABC mission in the Ovimbundu highlands.
After abolition, he served as an agent bartering for wax, ivory, and rubber
in the interior for the account of a Portuguese merchant at Bié. Longing
for missionaries among the Lunda, after hearing of the Springers, he
sought them out to offer his services as soon as he had settled accounts
with his employer and brought his family. The Springers created a temporary base in Congo in 1911 across the Lukoshi River from the kazemb, a
local Lunda overlord who was the successor to Kayek’s father. That year’s
task was to formalise agreements with the Belgian colonial government.
Steps begun in 1907 and 1910 from Kansanshi across the border. The
Springers’ trip to the mwant yav’s capital came in 1912, holding services
and negotiating plots with the chief and colonial authorities. It was Kayek
and a German-American volunteer, Herman Heinkel, who had earlier
worked with the Springers at Old Mutare, who opened the Methodist mission in 1913. When the first official missionaries, Dr. Arthur and Maude
Piper, arrived in 1914, they could report to the Angolan annual conference
that there was a functioning local church with 75 full members and 250
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catechumens. This was the work of Kayek and other freed slaves returning
from Angola, for Kapanga became the first stopping point in Congo for
caravans to Katanga and south-eastern Kasai.
Another key to the development of African personnel in the Methodist
mission was the opening of a second front in the Copperbelt mining
camps. The Springers realised that the Plymouth Brethren, who had
arrived at the capital of Msiri’s empire in 1886, were little interested in
working with ‘detribalised’ Africans working for the Union Minière du
Haut-Katanga (UMHK). Springer already had experience organising the
first church in Broken Hill in 1907–8, for which he had been roundly
criticised by the bishop and mission board as outside his scope of work.
He had visited officials in Kambove in 1907 and again in 1910, although the
Belgian Congo was then in the process of transferring provincial headquarters to the new city of Élisabethville, now Lubumbashi. During his
1912 visit to the Lunda mwant yav, he offered the chief a choice of missionaries: doctor, pastor, or teacher. With Dr. Walter Fisher of the Plymouth
Brethren at Kaleñe Hill known at Kapanga, the mwant yav requested the
physician. The Springers could have served as teachers or pastors, but this
meant both a search for a physician and that they would settle elsewhere
in 1913, in the occurrence Kambove. In 1914, the year that Springer sent
the delayed first full missionaries to Kapanga, he responded to a petition
from a group of 24 Nyasalanders to organise a Methodist church in
Élisabethville, although no missionary was available for assignment to the
provincial capital before 1917. The flagship church in Katanga thus began
with an African pastor, Joseph Jutu. The missionaries who later lived in
Élisabethville worked in other fields (accounting, correspondence, government relations, etc.), assisted in constructing purpose-built buildings
to replace the rented mud-and-wattle store in 1917 and again from 1922 to
1932, organised evangelism in other parts of the city, and worked with the
English/French-language congregation of whites.6 Until 1917 Springer
himself visited Élisabethville from Kambove for Protestant weddings and
baptisms, and well into the 1920s the Methodists had an arrangement with
the travelling Greek Orthodox priest for use of the Methodist church
building for services during his visits, while Methodist missionaries provided urgent pastoral care to his flock during the priest’s absence.
6 J.J. Hoover, ‘To build an institutional church: La construction de la Wallace Memorial
Church (1922–1932)’, International colloquium ‘Lubumbashi, cent ans d’histoire: Littérature,
cultures urbaines, débats intellectuels’, Université de Lubumbashi, 9–11 September 2010;
in press, P. Halen, M. Amuri & D. Dibwe dia Mwembu (eds.).
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The Methodist mission largely avoided the identification with a particular ethnic group that ensnared many Protestant missions and Catholic
congregations through the geographical and linguistic division of mission
fields. While Kapanga and Kabongo, the eventual third pole in the mission’s development, were rural centres and the capitals of major African
chiefs who had reigned over extensive pre-colonial entities, at Kapanga
the large numbers of freed slaves who stopped over in Kayek’s village on
their return home made the Kapanga African community very cosmopolitan and heterogeneous during the 1912–20 period. Caravans of over a hundred would arrive; smaller groups would set off for points further east and
north after checking the news.
In the mining cities, English initially dominated as the working language among Westerners, Bemba dominated among Africans, and ‘kitchen
kaffir’ or Fanagalo between whites and blacks on the mines. The UMHK
was a creation of Tanganyika Concessions Ltd. of London, only passing
under Belgian domination after the First World War. Into the 1920s some
60% of African labour in Élisabethville was from North-Eastern Rhodesia
(Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi), where Protestant missions had been
established since the 1870s. English-speakers predominated among nonAfrican employees: Brits because of Tanganyika Concessions’ home base,
Americans because industrial copper technology had developed first in
the United States in the large mines of Arizona, Montana, and Utah.
Experienced mining technicians and lower-level managers were available
on the Witwatersrand. Most Belgians were Flemings with little love for the
French language, although Walloons were increasingly dominant as one
moved up the politico-administrative hierarchy. After the pioneer phase,
when any other expatriate seemed a godsend to scattered colonials, and
after the stressed conditions of the First World War, Belgian policy became
increasingly hostile to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ influence and to the English language
through the 1920s. It is significant that Methodist schools taught both
English and French, responding to the great demand for English in the
Copperbelt African community and to a vision of opening horizons for the
mission’s constituency. This was a time when most Catholic and Protestant
schools favoured ethnic vernaculars and often avoided teaching any
Western language to Congolese.7 Clearly, while Springer initially favoured
English as a far more useful language for a church (and church members)
with an international vision, more than because of his personal linguistic
7 For detailed information, see J. Fabian Language and colonial power (Cambridge,
1986) and B. Fetter, The creation of Elizabethville, 1919–1940 (Stanford, 1976).
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77
shortcomings, the church adopted French as the primary international
educational language and Swahili as a non-tribal African language, in following the lead of the larger community.8
The Springers themselves served in Kambove, Élisabethville, and Likasi/
Jadotville. Since other Protestant missions in Katanga were rural (Plymouth
Brethren along the Northern Rhodesian border to Bunkeya and beyond as
far as Lake Mweru; Pentecostals among the Luba of North Katanga and
a different British Pentecostal group among the Bembe of north-eastern
Katanga), Springer became the de facto spokesperson for Protestant
missions with the Belgian authorities. The Methodists also had the highest level of Protestant schools east or south of the Presbyterians in
Kasai, attracting ambitious students from a wider area beyond their own
missions.
Crawford Young introduced the term ‘colonial trilogy’ in speaking of
the three powers of the Catholic Church, State, and Big Business in the
Belgian Congo.9 In Katanga, the UMHK was clearly the top dog, and usually the Catholic church had more weight than the state. Springer’s
Catholic counterpart in the Copperbelt was Jean-Félix de Hemptinne, an
illegitimate son of Léopold II who shared much of his father’s physical
appearance and temperament.10 Like Springer, he arrived in Katanga in
1910 as head of a new mission carved out for the Benedictines determined
to block Protestantism, defeat Anglo-Saxon economic dominance, and
establish monasteries. Catholic schools (but not religious programmes)
were financed by the state, but Protestant schools received no subsidies
until the 1950s when socialist governments agreed, on condition that
8 ‘The missionary occupation and history of the Katanga Copperbelt’, report prepared
for J. Merle Davis visit from Geneva for the International Missionary Council, 16 March
1933. General Council on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church, Madison
NJ, (GCAH) Missionary Files (MF): John M. Springer and Helen Emily Springer.
9 C. Young, Politics in the Congo (Princeton, 1965).
10 The UMHK needed educated and skilled workers, but de Hemptinne was most interested in elite literary education for European children. The Salesian order was brought in
to operate schools, and later churches, for Africans, having a tradition of work with disadvantaged young people. Soon a new vicariate was carved out of Benedictine territory, up to
the edge of white Élisabethville. The Salesian leader, Mgr. Sak, had memorable conflicts
with de Hemptinne in the first years; Methodist archives do not speak negatively of the
Salesians, and I am told that Mgr. Sak likewise referred to Springer as le brave (Personal
communication by Rev. Verhulst during the centennial colloquium for the Archdiocese of
Lubumbashi, 19–22 April 2010). Neither the Methodists nor the Salesians shared de
Hemptinne’s total identification with the Belgian colonial agenda; both were committed to
the development of Christian African leadership as rapidly as possible and apparently
were aware of their common values despite denominational rivalry and former Catholic
doctrines of Protestant heresy.
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they follow the ‘national’ (i.e. Catholic) curriculum and send personnel
through Belgian teacher-training programs at the Institut Colonial in
Antwerp. Protestant school diplomas were thus not recognised for decades
by the state or major Belgian colonial companies, which hired Catholic
graduates, although smaller entrepreneurs often expressed preference
for Protestants in terms of pragmatic philosophy, work ethic, and knowledge of English. One of the preeminent church historians of Congo,
François Bontinck, estimated that it was only around 1940 that the
number of Catholics surpassed that of Protestants despite the blatant
discrimination.
It was not necessarily choosing the easy road to go to Protestant
churches or schools. It is small wonder that any Methodist, even any
Protestant, was known on the Copperbelt as a Sipilinga, for Springer was
the icon of Katanga Protestantism.11
Fig. 4.3 Second Methodist Church on Avenue Limite-Sud in Likasi, 1917, with the
parsonage in front
11 Personal communication at Makwanza Batumanisa thesis defence, Université de
Lubumbashi, 1985.
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79
Who were the Sipilingas?
Kayek Changand has already appeared in the text as an African associate
of Springer. His contact with the kazemb (successor to his ‘father’, whether
biological or sociological) on the Lukoshi River north of Springer’s 1910–11
rainy season residence at Kalulwa in British territory, was determining in
Springer settling there until permanent land concessions were obtained at
Kapanga and Kambove. When Kayek returned to Angola at the end of his
trading mission, he not only brought his own family to the new Kapanga
mission but was accompanied by scores of other freedmen desiring to
make the journey into the unknown in groups and with some institutional
protection at a staging point to check things out. Another contingent were
Ruund, clustered around the hospital at Kaleñe Hill in North-Western
Rhodesia. In effect, Kayek was chief of a cité extra-coutumier adjoining
the mission housing hundreds of repatriates, many not of Ruund origin.12
Dr. Arthur and Maude Piper arrived in Kapanga as the first official missionaries in late June 1914,13 followed by the Danish nurse Marie Jensen
in 1916 and Rev. Thomas and Anna Brinton, to care for schools in 1918.
Piper’s first report to the annual conference to meet in Angola in mid-1915,
undoubtedly written many months in advance for the sake of the mails,14
spoke of a functioning church with 60 members and 75 students regularly
in school.15 In 1915 Maude Piper wrote of caravans as large as 124 persons
arriving in Kayek’s settlement.16 Her husband talked of 120 students
enrolled less than two years after their arrival.17 Deserting porters had
forced Piper to leave much of his baggage en route with a Belgian administrator at Kinda,18 not receiving it for several years, and thus Piper devoted
much time initially to educational work and evangelism rather than to
medical practice. It is nevertheless clear that the repatriate community
is responsible for the kick-start of the Kapanga mission and for such
12 Villages named Kayek still exist adjacent to the Methodist properties in Musumb
(Kapanga) and at Mwajinga (rural Sandoa).
13 GCAH: MF: Piper, Arthur L. Piper (ALP) to Frank Mason North (FMN), 13 July 1914.
14 Springer’s report to the 1911 annual conference in Angola was actually written from
Kansanshi in mid-1910.
15 A. Katwebe M.M., ‘La Mission Méthodiste au Shaba: facteur d’émancipation religieuse et socioculturelle’, unpublished PhD thesis (Brussels, 1986), 109. The available copy
does not cite the source of the figure, apparently the minutes of the West Equatorial
Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for 1915.
16 GCAH: MF: Piper, Maude G. Piper (MGP) to FMN, 15 October 1915.
17 GCAH: MF: Piper, ALP to FMN, 1 April 1916.
18 GCAH: MF: Piper, ALP to FMN, 13 July 1914.
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impressive statistics for a new mission. Kayek would later co-found the
Mwajinga mission outside Sandoa with Thomas and Anna Brinton, and
Kayek again became head of a Christian village near the mission, introducing cattle husbandry to the area. Piper’s letters indicate that Kayek was
criticised by local church members for speaking more Mbundu than
Ruund, but by Congolese independence he had become the icon of
Methodist work in western Katanga, a twentieth century Ruund hero.19
Kaluwashi was another returnee from Angola, who came to check
before bringing his family. He was a kiLuba-speaker who had gone to
Angola with a caravan, not as a slave. He had an Ovimbundu wife and had
settled near an ABC mission. Delegated by the Congolese community
there to verify conditions in Katanga, he worked with Springer as a mason
at Kambove, then brought his family in 1914. He asked Springer to send a
missionary to his area, which was agreed if a providential donor appeared.
When a Chicago businessman pledged $1,000 a year for five years, plans
began in earnest. In May 1917, waiting for the mission board to send a
candidate, the Springers set out on a four-month trip to north Katanga
to locate Kaluwashi, by then working with Pentecostals. They found that
the population of Kaluwashi’s area had moved due to sleeping sickness,
and they sited the new mission instead near Chief Kabongo, one of the
two contenders for the Luba paramountcy when colonial occupation
froze the political/military stalemate. Wesley and Ethel Barlow Mueller,
the couple chosen to open the Kabongo mission and take charge of evangelisation, were delayed by anglicising their name to Miller because of
British and Belgian sensibilities in what would be the last year of the First
World War. Springer delegated Roger and Constance Guptill, serving with
the Springers at Kambove, to work with Kaluwashi and others to establish
the mission.
When the Millers arrived in 1918, they were both inexperienced and
unable to work with the African leadership who had pioneered successfully with the Guptills. Wesley Miller fired even Kaluwashi himself. Miller
was also unable to work with other missionaries sent to Kabongo, in part
to defuse tensions. First there were Rev. Coleman and Lucinda Hartzler,
who came with the mission’s central training school in 1919,20 and then
19 See Ngand Yetu (notre pays) (Élisabethville, 1963) a collective work in Uruund organised by Anna Lerbak at the end of her three decades of service in Congo.
20 Moving the central training school to such a centrifugal location was not simply
due to the problems with Wesley Miller at Kabongo. Profiting from Springer’s absence
in the United States, de Hemptinne had obtained from the Vice Governor-General an
order for the Methodists not to develop Mulungwishi, purchased from an Irish Catholic
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there were Dr. William and Priscilla Berry, who opened medical work.
Miller fell into a depression, emerging from his house only sporadically,
with his wife carrying on as best she could along with caring for a sickly
child. The Millers were not invited to return when their term ended in
1922, but the damage was done. Kaluwashi had moved from the area.
Moreover, church planting around Kabongo did not advance as well as the
educational and medical work, and certainly not in parallel with the
Ruund area in western Katanga. The educational programme began
moving to a more central location at Kanene in 1922, eventually back to
Mulungwishi. Medical work was handicapped by the death from malaria
of Dr. Berry, then the resignation of his replacement, Dr. Morton. By 1933
when the mission was forced to make the difficult choice of closing one
station for lack of funds and personnel, Kabongo had become an isolated
Methodist outpost in a Luba world largely occupied by the Pentecostal
Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM). The MEC voted to sell its property
in Kabongo to the CEM. Although strong Methodist leaders had been
developed during the fifteen years at Kabongo (David Ilunga, Joël Bulaya,
Albert Mundele, etc.), the conflicts with and failure to empower African
leadership during the Miller years bore considerable responsibility for the
limited success at Kabongo.
We know the names of other Angolan migrants. Ngamba was a porter in
Kayek’s caravan, elsewhere identified as a slave purchased by another
member of the caravan,21 Chyoka a Mbundu-speaker leaving his home
for Congo, Kalinswik with the Springers at Kambove.22 Other returnees
associated with the Methodist mission include Joseph Kapend Tshombe,
father of 1960s political leader Moïse Tshombe and, through his wife of
royal blood, father of four ant yav (plural of mwant yav) in the past half
century. Tshombe was sent back to Congo while still a slave and he got
into trade (tshombe being the tshiLuba term for manioc) after being given
to a Belgian administrator as a domestic. Paul Mawaw was Joseph
Kapend Tshombe’s brother, another former slave, who became a successful entrepreneur.
businessman in 1917, as their replacement for Kambove where food was scarce and expensive for students. The reason given was that it was only 20 kilometres from Nguba, where de
Hemptinne planned to develop a monastery. The younger, less experienced missionaries
left to deal with the government felt they had no choice but to withdraw from Mulungwishi,
given the mission’s policy of cooperation, and hence Hartzler and the school had to
be transferred somewhere. GCAH: MF: Congo Finance Committee, Minutes of Finance
Committee, 24 October 1919.
21 J.M. Springer, Pioneering in the Congo, (New York, 2nd edn., 1927), 218, 294–5.
22 Springer, Pioneering, 79.
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A second category of Methodist leaders came out of Springer’s caravan
experiences in 1907 and 1910, his lengthy Broken Hill sojourn during the
1907 rains, and shorter stays in Kansanshi on the Northern Rhodesian
Copperbelt. The Springers left Old Mutare in 1907 with Helen’s cook of a
year and a half. Initially calling himself ‘Fifteen’, Helen Springer called him
Mashamo, and he would eventually be called Benjamin F. Madziro or
Madzilo.23 He served as the Springers’ interpreter at Broken Hill and
Kansanshi, speaking to John in English or Helen in Shona. He carried no
load but baked bread at dawn or in the evening. Another recruit was a
13 year-old with injured feet named Musondo or ‘Kitchen’ who hung
around the Broken Hill camp and was recruited to carry water.24 His
‘brother’ Songoro (perhaps only from the same village) was discovered at
the Kambove mine on the Katanga Copperbelt; he joined and separated
from Springer several times, eventually settling in Élisabethville and working outside the church. Jacob Mawene was a barely literate Ndebele in his
30s, a ‘linker-in’ on the railroad construction to Broken Hill in 1907, having
attended mission school for six months a decade before.25 He quit the railway for a chance for further studies and volunteered to teach in a night
school when Springer organised the Broken Hill church. In 1907 Musondo,
Songoro, and Mawene would walk with the Springers from Broken Hill to
Luanda, along with another young man named James Lubona, who served
with the mission until retiring by the year 1944.
When the caravan arrived in Luanda, the Springers enrolled the four
in a Methodist school. In 1910 they cabled for them to meet in Cape Town
to serve in the new mission. Songoro was torn between the desire to
follow Springer or earn money on the Katanga Copperbelt, dropping
out of the 1910 caravan to work at Kambove before rejoining Springer at
Lukoshi. Mawene was sent to Kapanga with the Pipers. Helen Springer’s
was an excellent linguist who had published a book and articles on Shona,
and Mawene made the first translation of Mark in Ruund under her tutelage. He would be among those who died in the 1918 Spanish influenza
pandemic.
23 Springer, Pioneering, 9; J.M. Springer, The heart of Central Africa (New York,1927),
58–9, 74, 106; H.E. Springer, Snap shots from sunny Africa (New York, c. 1909), 78–9.
24 Springer, Pioneering, 13, 48–51; Springer, Heart, 11–13; GCAH: MF: Springer, P. Willis,
14 August 1913; GCAH: MF: Guptill, Roger S. Guptill (RSG) to FMN, 23 November 1918.
25 Springer, Pioneering, 15; Springer, Heart, 13–14, 65–6; E.C. Hartzler, Brief history of
missionary work in the Southern Congo during the first fifty years (Élisabethville, 1960);
GCAH: MF: Piper, ALP to FMN, 18 August 1915; GCAH: MF: Piper, MGP to FMN, 15 May 1915;
GCAH: MF: Springer, HES to H.P. Willis, 14 August 1913; GCAH: MF: Guptill, Roger S. Guptill
(RSG) to FMN, 23 November 1918.
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Not all Rhodesians came directly with the Springers. The most important of the recruits in the long term was Joab Mulela. A Shona who had
converted around Bulawayo, he came to Broken Hill with the railway
construction and met the Springers in 1907. He showed up to work with
the Springers in Kambove in April 1914 on their arrival from Lukoshi, the
railhead still nine miles from town. He both studied and taught other
young men at Kambove but was sent to Kabongo in 1917 with the Guptills
to start that mission, marrying a Kabongo woman. Later he became a graduate with his wife of the improved central school at Kanene in 1933, he was
among the first ordained Methodist clergy in Katanga and a respected
elder statesman in the church until his death in the 1970s, having served in
many posts.26
The founding of the ‘Limite-Sud (now Jerusalem) Church’ was due to
Nyasalanders.27 Springer had visited Élisabethville in 1911 to meet officials
and returned in April 1914 to baptise a Belgian doctor’s child. He had
taken along Simon, a Kambove student, with books from Congo Book
Concern to peddle in the labour camps. In Élisabethville he received a
petition from 24 Nyasaland Christians for a Methodist church, as officials
and employers feared their prayer meetings in the worker camps might
be union activity. When the congregation was formally chartered in
November, most of the full members had produced letters of transfer from
the Scots missions along Lake Malawi or around Blantyre. They counted
over a hundred countrymen with Presbyterian backgrounds in Lubumbashi at the time. Springer would not be able to assign a missionary to
Lubumbashi until 1917 when he sent his volunteer secretary, Ray Smyres.
The church was placed under Moses Kumwenda and Joseph Jutu, the
younger and more dynamic leader employed by the Élisabethville newspaper, L’Étoile du Katanga.28 Jutu’s wife Maggie is also cited as a strong
teacher, one of few references to women in the community (Another is to
Lusati, an Angolan slave married to two men in the Kambove mine camp,
who begged Springer in 1913 to be freed from slavery and from her double
marriage).29 The Jutus were also among the hundreds of victims of the
1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, when the new church building on
26 Springer, Pioneering, 9; Springer, Heart, 88; GCAH: MF: Ethel Barlow Miller to FMN,
24 January 1919; Edward Irving Everett to Thomas S. Donahue (TSD), date unavailable; ALP
to friends, 7 March 1944; Christine Marie Jensen to friends, 18 May 1944; Coleman Hartzler
to friends, 31 November 1944.
27 Springer, Pioneering, 261–3. See also Fetter, Creation, 38.
28 Springer, Pioneering, 9.
29 GCAH: MF: Springer, HES to Crowther, 25 August 1913.
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the north side of Avenue Limite-Sud was used as a hospital for both white
and black.30
Another cohort of recruits came from North-Eastern Zambia where the
London Missionary Society had been established since the 1870s and the
Plymouth Brethren closer to Katanga since the 1890s. The first African
ordained in Katanga as a Methodist deacon, Nelson Brace Campempe,
was among them, as were Kauseni (from Lake Bangweulu) and Malaya
(from Lake Tanganyika).31 Campempe was appointed head of a new station at Chief Katanga’s village in 1923 with the same authority as missionaries in other stations. However, during the financial difficulties that befell
the missions after 1926 and in the face of Belgian hostility to Africans from
British territory after 1920, Campempe returned home and thus was not
the first African fully ordained as an elder (presbyter) after the required
Methodist probationary membership of the conference after ordination
as a deacon. In 1928 when the railroad was completed to Port Francqui
(Ilebo) to connect with river boats to the capital, making it feasible
for Katanga Methodists to participate in the Congo Protestant Council,
Springer wished to send Campempe as delegate, since he spoke fluent
French and English. In the end, Springer attended himself. The CPC continued to talk of the lack of Congolese with sufficient English and French
to participate until the day, over two decades later, when the Katanga
Methodists forced the issue, obtaining reluctant approval to send a
Congolese alternate with Elwood Bartlett who promptly “fell ill” after
arrival in Léopoldville.
Others students and leaders were quite diverse. Two Lozi brothers
showed up to study at Kambove, Mubita and Yamba, the former having
had six months’ education with the French Reformed in Barotseland.32
Boniface Kabeya was a nurse trained at Lusambo by the American
Presbyterians.33 There were of course Katangese from all the major ethnic
groupings of the province, though that is outside the scope of the current
article.
While the sources used speak most of those in church employment, the
MEC goal was to create a self-supporting African church with the great
majority of members in secular employment. Through the missionaries’
writings we learn about Wilton Gray, originally a student from the Blantyre
30
31
32
33
GCAH: MF: Guptill, SG to FMN, 23 November 1918.
Springer, Pioneeering, 292–3.
Springer, Pioneering, 201, 292.
GCAH: MF: Piper, ALP to friends, 20 February 1939.
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mission, whom Springer found working for a European trader in Bukama
in 1917, having come to Katanga in 1911.34 Edward Ngomberah worked for a
shopkeeper in Kambove and taught others the ‘three Rs’.35 Zakeya was a
commercial farmer in the Sanga area, and Springer relocated a pastor of
the same ethnic background (Ngoni?) to his farm when de Hemptinne
had the UMHK exclude the Methodists from the Luishia mining camp.36
Joseph Kapend Tshombe and his brother Mawaw were successful businessmen. Moïse Tshombe honed his political skills as an early African voting member of the finance committee of the mission after the Second
World War and as the first conference lay leader. Other politically prominent Methodists in the 1960s included Patrice Lumumba, Jason Sendwe
and Salomon Tshizand.
While this chapter focuses on Africans, there are parallels to the black
Sipilingas among the European and American labour migrants to the
Copperbelt who connected with the Methodist Church in one way or
another. Although separate church facilities were never built, land was
purchased in Élisabethville for such a project, but the combination of antiAnglo-Saxon pressures after the First World War, diversion of funds for
urgent needs in Likasi (replacing Kambove as a centre), and construction
of a new ‘institutional’ church building on Avenue Limite-Sud for both
communities made the question moot.37 An English worship service continued into the 1970s. A flourishing English-medium congregation in
Jadotville (Likasi), made up mostly of members from British Anglican and
South African Dutch Reformed traditions, shared a building with an
African flock, with the morning service in African languages and English
in the afternoon. Springer attracted associates among whites as well as
among Africans. A British Methodist named Frank Gifford, laid off from
the Broken Hill mine during smelter construction, travelled with the
Springers on foot and bicycle all the way to Luanda in 1907.38 The American
engineer who built and managed the Élisabethville and Jadotville smelters
was a Methodist named Haas; his wife directed the English Sunday School
with Helen Springer, attracting children of diverse nationalities before the
government assigned education of white children, including religious
34 GCAH: MF: Springer, JMS to J.M. Taylor, 23 May 1917.
35 GCAH: MF: Springer, HES to Crowder, 25 August 1918.
36 GCAH: MF: Springer, JMS to TSD, 30 January 1932.
37 A worship service in English continued on Sunday afternoons into the 1970s before it
disappeared. English-language services began again in Lubumbashi in the 1980s under
ecumenical auspices.
38 Springer, Heart, 73.
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Fig. 4.4 Joseph Jutu leaving the church to sell books in the city
Fig. 4.5 Interior of the second Methodist Church in 1917, Note the presence of
women and children.
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sipilingas and the united methodist church
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education during the school day, to the Benedictines. Haas also contributed to the architectural design and did the engineering for Élisabethville’s
1200-seat Wallace Memorial Church, the Élisabethville congregation’s
third building. Mrs. Bester ran the Sunday School in Likasi.39 A number of
whites, including a Swiss farmer at Mulungwishi named Hausmann, a
Belgian Protestant named Vassamillet, and others worked full-time with
the mission for periods without having missionary status. A number of the
early missionaries had themselves been labour migrants to the United
States, including Herman Heinkel (German), Christine Marie Jensen, John
Bræstrup and Anna Lærbak (Danish), and Paul Hamelryck (a Belgian
teaching French in a North Carolina college where he met his CubanAmerican wife Ada).
The Power of the Book
Songoro was one of the four young Africans in the 1907 caravan, schooled
in a Methodist institution in Angola, and called to join the 1910 journey in
Cape Town. He represents the ambivalent Springer associate, leaving and
rejoining the group several times, torn by the material attractions of working in a mining camp to purchase material things, as opposed to working
with Springer who provided access to more education and perhaps new
experiences in the wider world. There were many who left school for
employment in the Copperbelt and never returned to full-time studies or
work with Springer, and Springer and his associates would have considered this normal. Songoro was notable only for flip-flopping. The mission
archives speak the most of those who made the decision to remain in
school through the end of what was available and/or those who worked
for the mission afterwards.
The book is one of the material benefits of coming to the Copperbelt,
including the power to read and use it. Learning to read was clearly a
sought-after skill in the early years, and the archives attest to the hunger of
working Africans to come to night school and Sunday School to learn to
read, as well as of the willingness to share their skills within or independently of Christian structures. The focus of Springer’s first church in
Broken Hill was as much the schooling that volunteers gave in leisure
hours as the religious activities. Springer’s first legal authorisation from
the government listed education and evangelisation as the two purposes
39 J.M. Springer, I love the trail (Élisabethville, 1952), 125–6.
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of the mission.40 Helen Springer wrote to supporters in Wessington
Springs, South Dakota (home of the Dr. Fox after whom Springer’s central
school was named) of students’ hunger for books in English and of a store
clerk asking for multiplication tables as he was teaching others at night.41
In building at Kambove in 1913, Springer set up a printing press by
September.42 He also opened the Livingstone Memorial Library to lend
books to UMHK miners and any others at Kambove, white and black. In
addition to religious literature, which was certainly present, there was a
wide range of books on science, geography, geology, current events, etc.
The library enjoyed a subscription to Africa, the journal of the International
African Institute, for decades. It eventually became the nucleus of the
library for the new theological college at Mulungwishi in 1951, now Katanga
Methodist University. In 1914 Springer started the Congo Book Concern
with two £5 gifts from German Jewish traders being sent to South Africa
for internment during the First World War, attesting both to Jewish book
culture and the wide community that Springer impacted. The decisive
contact leading to the creation of a Methodist church in Élisabethville was
through Simon, Springer’s student who came along in July 1914 to sell publications from Congo Book in the labour camps.
Springer recounts another conversation after moving to Élisabethville
in 1917:
Yesterday morning two young men stood at the door of my office, asking for
Bibles which they wished to buy. ‘What mission did you attend?’ I asked.
‘Livingstonia,’ came the reply (…) ‘What standard have you passed?’
‘Standard five.’ ‘Have you been teaching?’ ‘Yes, we have been helping
Mr. Moffatt for years among the Wisea [Bisa] people.’ [Moffat had spent the
rainy season of 1907 in Broken Hill with Springer before starting a new
mission for the London Missionary Society in North-Eastern Rhodesia]
‘Where are you working?’ ‘We have been helping to build that house on the
next lot. It is useless work.
Springer interpreted this as meaning uninteresting and nonconstructive,
as they sought work as evangelist teachers. Springer had been praying for
such people to show up at his door. The two Nyasalanders had two weeks
more of ‘useless work’, before their contracts expired and they could begin.
Springer helped them record an oral letter to Moffatt with his business
gramophone. They would first try out as night school teachers, going on
40 ‘Education and Christianising the population’, Bulletin officiel du Congo Belge, 8
(1914), 721–2.
41 GCAH: MF: Springer, HES to Mr/Mrs. Hills, 13 August 1913.
42 GCAH: MF: Springer, JMS to FMN, 20 September 1913.
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Fig. 4.6 Start of the construction of the Wallace Memorial Church.
Fig. 4.7 Placement of the cornerstone of the Wallace Memorial Church, July 1928.
the payroll by about Christmas, and would then bring their wives to
Élisabethville.43
43 GCAH: MF: Springer, JMS to friends, 5 December 1917.
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In a paper presented at the conference from which this book has originated, Jan-Bart Gewald quotes Dugald Campbell, a Plymouth Brethren
missionary opposed to labour migration, talking of a Christian convert
spending a month’s salary in Katanga to buy a tshiLuba New Testament.44
tshiLuba is not a Katanga language, but a language from those served by
American Presbyterians since the 1880s a thousand kilometres to the
northwest of Élisabethville or Kambove; it is not immediately clear how
useful this would be for a Bemba-speaker from the Luapula, perhaps akin
to a Brit picking up a Dutch Bible. Nonetheless, it was a New Testament,
and it was in an African language with many similarities to his own.
The ownership of a New Testament was in itself a marker of desired
status, as a modern young man, literate and Christian. It was proof that he
had enjoyed access to money, just like the safety razors, phonographs,
clothing, sewing machines, and other material goods being taken home:
‘new things’ that showed he was a ‘been-to’. Nonetheless, other issues
were important in these individuals’ identity and interests, for the two
Livingstonia graduates could buy far more goods working in construction
(‘useless work’) than with the missionary, and serving as teachers would
only delay the day when they could return to their families, show their
new chattel and city sophistication, and then return with their wives and
children to a stable, if sparsely remunerated position with the mission.
The power of the word was both material and immaterial.
Conclusion
This chapter has emphasised international migratory flow as it appears
in the life stories of early international Methodist adepts in Katanga, individuals commonly identified as Sipilingas because of John Springer’s longtime service as Methodist superintendent and bishop in Katanga. This is
not to say that there were no indigenous Congolese recruited during the
early days who had never been outside the country’s modern borders,
but the number of migrants is striking and provided a first jump-starting
generation of African leadership before local Congolese were trained.
One migratory flow was a backwash from the Luso-African slave trade,
with individuals returning from the west with their families once slavery
was abolished in Angola and the colonial regime established. Many
transited through the Kapanga community, although not necessarily
44 D. Campbell, 9 February 1907, ‘Johnston Falls’, Echoes of service: A record of labour in
the Lord’s name, 215.
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Ruund or from the Kapanga area. Since this flow was already an intentional return, there is little in the record to suggest near-term movement
back to Angola. Certainly there were people who returned to Angola, or
rather returned to the Angola of their fathers or grandfathers, in the 1990s
after the end of the Angolan Civil War.
A second migratory flow is the flux between Copperbelt mining camps
and their hinterland throughout Central Africa. This would include the
young men who joined the 1907 and 1910 Springer parties in Broken Hill
and Kansanshi (such as Benjamin Mudziro, Musondo, Jacob Mawene,
Ngamba, Andrew, indirectly Joab Mulela, etc.), as also those who became
Methodist leaders in the Copperbelt cities of Kambove and Lubumbashi
(such as Joseph and Maggie Jutu, Nelson Campempe, Moses Kumwenda,
James Lubona, etc.). Some of these eventually returned to their home
areas, particularly after Belgian policy became overtly hostile to British
Africans and Protestants in the 1920s. The Rhodesian government was
complicit with Belgian pressure on its subjects since the Northern
Rhodesian Copperbelt was developing and needed skilled workers.
Ironically, while one of the main forces behind this migratory movement was the greater access to education of young Africans in NorthEastern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Southern Rhodesia, it was the hunger
for more education that brought many to Springer. Many references speak
of comings and goings between Congo and their home areas: bringing
back wives and children, visiting parents, etc. The Methodist Church also
sent some of its best leadership candidates to Old Mutare for training
which was higher than was available in Congo, particularly before the
founding of the École de Théologie at Mulungwishi in 1951. While American
Methodists never maintained permanent mission work in Northern
Rhodesia after 1910–11, the Katanga church was a partner of the United
Christian Mission on the Copperbelt, later a founding body of the United
Church of Zambia (UCZ). The United Methodist Church (re)appeared in
Zambia in the 1980s through lay people moving back and forth across the
border who were dissatisfied with the functioning of the UCZ.
In passing, one notes that a conceivable migratory flow which does not
show in the Methodist documentation is that of returnees from the Swahili
slave trade to Zanzibar or Eastern African intermediate points such as
Ujiji, Tabora or Bagamoyo. There were certainly large numbers of freed
slaves on the Indian Ocean coast who did not assimilate into Muslim
Swahili society, and Kenya’s Coast Province displays conflicts between
coastal Muslims and Christians who identify with ethnic groups of the
interior, even if settled at Mombasa for generations.
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‘WALKING HOME MAJESTICALLY’: CONSUMPTION
AND THE ENACTMENT OF SOCIAL STATUS AMONG
LABOUR MIGRANTS FROM BAROTSELAND, 1935–1965
Michael Barrett
Those who were doing piece work, they would go in front. You would come
behind, very far from them, just with your walking stick, now enjoying
majestically! With a pair of shoes!1
Isha-Kashweka was born in the Lumbala N’guimbo area in eastern
Angola – like many elderly members of the Mbunda ethno-linguistic
group now living in Kalabo.2 He was born in the early 1930s and came to
Zambia with his parents when he was still a child. In the 1950s, IshaKashweka, together with scores of his contemporaries in Barotseland,
heeded the call of the recruitment agencies and left for chipalo,3 labour
migration, in the gold mines of Johannesburg some 1,800 kilometres away.
He went and came back four times before retiring in a small village just
outside Kalabo Town in 1966, the year before President Kenneth Kaunda
declared labour migration to the white minority states prohibited. Today
Isha-Kashweka is impoverished, supported by his children and the additional income he gets from supplying reed structures which the Catholic
mission uses for constructing pit latrines in the district’s loose Kalahari
sands. But he still has some fond memories of South Africa, and a suit,
which he proudly wears on special occasions. Although it was bought
years after he came back from Johannesburg, the suit may still be regarded
as a remaining material artefact of his youth, a reminder of the time when
he was a young, smart and very popular returning migrant, who had his
bright future as an adult set out before him.
1 Interview with Isha-Kashweka (‘father of Kashweka’ in honour of his first-born child),
a former labour migrant now living in Kalabo, about his return home after a first stint in the
gold mines of South Africa in the early 1950s, 24–5 September 2009, Kalabo.
2 On migration histories of Mbunda families in Kalabo, see M. Barrett, ‘The social significance of crossing state borders: Home, mobility and life paths in the Angolan-Zambian
borderland’, in: S. Jansen and S. Löfving (eds.), Struggles for home: Violence, hope and the
movement of people (Oxford, 2009), 85–107.
3 The word chipalo in Western Province does not have the negative connotations of
‘forced labour’ or ‘slavery’ associated with chibaro in the eastern part of Southern Africa,
see for example C. Van Onselen, Chibaro: African mine labour in Southern Rhodesia,
1900–1933 (London, 1976), 104.
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The history of labour migration in Central African societies has been
analysed from an array of perspectives: in terms of agriculture and economic effects, micro-politics, gender and status change – but rarely has
the role of materiality in relation to all these been placed at the centre of
attention.4 This is part of a more general lacuna in the social sciences
regarding the role of material practices in social life.5 To understand how
long-distance labour migration to industrial centres became such a strong,
durable and transformative institution in Southern and Central Africa,
I argue that it is necessary to consider how its material manifestations
(among other things, roads, vehicles, depots, consumer goods and food)
resulted in tangible effects in the lives of the population. This was by no
means a straightforward exercise in cause and effect, orchestrated by
the colonial establishment. Some of the effects followed the intentions
of powerful regional actors, like the South African Chamber of Mines
(willingness to provide cheap labour), while some effects ran contrary to
other actors’ intentions, like those of the Northern Rhodesian colonial
administration (unwillingness to adhere to notions of a stable ‘tribal’
social and economic model). Indeed, the case illustrates that ‘[s]ocial relations exist in and through our material worlds that often act in entirely
unexpected ways that cannot be traced back to some clear sense of will or
intention.’6
This chapter engages with the material aspects of labour migration and
examines how new consumer goods were part of the transformation of
local expectations of life, work, family relations and material standards
and how they were instrumental in the creation of new tastes and beliefs
in rural Central Africa. In the emerging small town of Kalabo and its
4 On the political and economic effects of labour migration in Barotseland, see
B. Reynolds, Magic, divination and witchcraft among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia
(London, 1963); R. Frankenberg, ‘Economic anthropology or political economy? (I): the
Barotse social formation – a Case Study’, J. Clammer (ed.), The new economic anthropology
(London, 1978), 31–60; L. van Horn, ‘The agricultural history of Barotseland, 1840–1964’,
R. Palmer and N. Parsons (eds.), The roots of rural poverty in Central and Southern Africa
(London, 1977), 144–69. Some insights are provided by E. Herbert, Twilight on the Zambezi:
Late Colonialism in Central Africa (Basingstoke, 2002). Wim van Binsbergen offers an analysis of the village micro-politics between different generations caused by labour migration.
‘Labour migration and the generation conflict: An essay on social change in Central
Western Zambia’, 34th Annual Meeting, Society for Applied Anthropology (Amsterdam,
1975).
5 J. Law, ‘Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics’ (Lancaster, 2007), http://www
.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2007ANTandMaterialSemiotics.pdf.
6 D. Miller, ‘Materiality: An introduction’, in D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, 2005),
1–50, especially 32.
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Fig. 5.1 Isha-Kashweka, a Mbunda labour migrant (Photograph by Michael Barrett).
surrounding rural homesteads, the wealth and ‘luxury goods’ which
migrants brought home from Southern Africa’s industrial centres affected
(and were indicative of changing) gender and generational relationships,
especially as these played out in marriage arrangements. The material
culture of the industrial world constituted a focal point in the social and
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spiritual negotiations between men and women, old and young during
these transformations. In particular, European clothes and accessories
were the goods most coveted and admired. They were also the vital props
through which migrants, partly by enacting ostentatious homecomings to
their villages, signalled a change in their personal status. Based on archival
sources as well as collected life histories from Kalabo District, this paper
shows the pivotal role of the material in the social struggles brought about
by labour migration in the period between 1935 and 1965.
Labour Migration in Barotseland
During the first half of the twentieth century, the political economy of
labour migration in colonial Southern Africa was shaped by two competitive relationships. On the one hand, the tensions between the labour
demands of local colonial authorities and those of the larger colony were
manifested in many localities throughout the territory that is Zambia
today.7 On the other hand, the open competition between the main areas
of labour demand, to begin with Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the
South African Rand, was often quite fierce.8 As far as Barotseland is
concerned, this competition intensified when mining in the Northern
Rhodesian Copperbelt began in the 1920s. The constant negotiations
between different levels of colonial administrations, labour recruitment
organisations, commercial farmers and mining companies, are among the
most obvious signs of the complex political economy of labour in colonial
Southern Africa. Although labour policies, partly due to these conflicting
interests, were often contradictory and temporary, the overall focus on
obtaining cheap labour had many sustained effects on local ways of using
land, and resources, as well as social relationships between young and old,
and between men and women.
Western Zambia, like other rural areas, became enmeshed in this
regional labour system at an early stage. The hunter George Westbeech
brought the first group of young Lozi labourers south to work in the
7 H.L. Moore. and M. Vaughan, Cutting down trees: Gender, nutrition, and agricultural
change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990 (Portsmouth, 2003), 59; K. Datta,
‘Farm labour, agrarian capital and the state in colonial Zambia: the African labour corps,
1942–52’, Journal of Southern African studies, 14:3 (1988), 371–92.
8 See for example: D. Yudelman and A. Jeeves, ‘New labour frontiers for old: Black
migrants to the South African gold mines, 1920–85’, Journal of Southern African studies, 13:1
(1986), 101–24, 108f.
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consumption among labour migrants from barotseland
97
Transvaal in 1888, but this seems to have been an isolated occurrence,
which did not inspire many followers.9
The conventional historiography of Barotseland emphasises a combination of ecological, economic, and political factors as explanations why,
a few decades later, young men throughout the region would leave
Barotseland to find wage work elsewhere in the colony.10 In 1902, during
the reign of the Litunga (Paramount) Lewanika, British interests, represented in the Barotseland Protectorate by the British South Africa
Company (BSAC), imposed the ‘hut tax’. To begin with, the inhabitants of
Barotseland paid the taxes through selling their agricultural produce, but
after the drought and bovine epidemic of 1915, the level of local income
generation was insufficient to meet these demands. In other words,
according to these scholars, the colonial labour regime established itself
during the first decades of the twentieth century through the demise of
the economic self-reliance of Barotseland, marked by the end of tribute
and by ecological and epidemiologic disasters, as well as through the
enforcement of taxes.11 This aligns with studies from the wider region
where colonial interests consolidated labour migration through various
measures ranging from force,12 the cooptation of local chiefs and the creation of recruitment monopolies,13 to price competition and sophisticated
recruitment infrastructure.14
Eugenia Herbert, in her book about Kalabo District in the late 1950s,
engages in tacit polemics with earlier scholarship on the region. She
concludes that the incorporation of Kalabo District inhabitants into the
colonial economy (by paying taxes, complying to European trade and
transport monopolies, engaging in migrant labour) was effected with
surprisingly little coercion or ‘even the threat of coercion’.15 Herbert points
to the prospect of adventure and income as the main impetus for becoming a migrant in Kalabo.16 Her view on the voluntary nature of international labour migration in the 1950s corresponds with my own findings
9 Herbert, Twilight, 68.
10 See Frankenberg, ‘Economic’, 49; Van Horn, ‘Agricultural’, 156f; L. Flint, ‘Statebuilding in Central Southern Africa: Citizenship and subjectivity in Barotseland and
Caprivi’, The international journal of African historical studies, 36:2 (2005), 393–428.
11 Van Horn, ‘Agricultural’, 156f.
12 Datta, ‘Farm Labour’.
13 T. Maloka, ‘Review and commentary: Mines and labour migrants in Southern Africa’,
Journal of historical sociology, 10:2 (1997), 213–24.
14 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New labour’, 110f.
15 Herbert, Twilight, 51.
16 Herbert, Twilight, 71.
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based on interviews in Kalabo District with former migrants, who had
been active from the 1940s to the 1960s. As I will demonstrate, going to
South Africa or Southern Rhodesia for long spells of wage labour had by
then been fully incorporated into the expected life career of rural men.
However, Herbert’s work and my oral histories do not necessarily
indicate in what manner this life career had become so deeply ingrained
in the region during the early colonial period. Some of the evidence for
Lukona/Kalabo17 in the first decades of the 1900s, seems to imply that the
participation of young men from the district in international labour
migration did require, at least initially, a lot of effort in terms of persuasion, negotiation and even mild coercion from the BSAC and later Colonial
Office representatives. References to labour migration and recruitment
in the colonial records may be placed in broader discourses on the
nature and purpose of the British presence in Central Africa. Apart from
themes like the inevitability and righteousness of British domination,
such discourses shaped perceptions of the social formations and peoples
in the area, including the ethnic simplifications and behavioural stereotypes used to make sense of the complex social and cultural heterogeneity
in Barotseland. These narratives created trustworthy subjects, heroes
and villains among the different language groups as well as among individual indunas and subjects. Such judgements were largely based on the
degree to which leaders and subjects complied with colonial attempts to
monitor and count, control, tax and rule populations through the locally
constructed (and fairly complex) administration, combining BSAC and
Barotse neo-traditional administrative principles. References to labour
recruitment in the official records are exclusively cloaked in the euphemism ‘work’ (as in ‘going to work’ or ‘going out to work’), implying that the
population was otherwise idle.18
The reluctant incorporation of the Nyengo people into this ‘work
regime’ is a case in point. The Nyengo are Kwangwa-speaking groups who
in the early colonial period were mostly living in the swampy but fertile
western parts of Kalabo District, on the border between what today is
Zambia and Angola. They were systematically described in the most
17 Lukona District was formed as an administrative unit in 1906. In 1920, the administrative offices were moved to Kalabo, due to its location along the Luanginga River, and
eventually Kalabo became the name of the district.
18 For example, NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, Kalabo District Notebook, for the years 1919, 1920,
1927, 1928. The speech written for the Prince of Wales’s visit to the Lozi in 1925 may perhaps
be viewed as a more articulate outline of the ethos of the British administration regarding
labour, T. Ranger, ‘Making Northern Rhodesia imperial: Variations on a royal theme,
1924–1938’, African Affairs, 79:316 (1980), 349–73.
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consumption among labour migrants from barotseland
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unflattering terms as both ‘uncooperative’ and ‘uncivilised’ by the British
administrators; in 1915 the Native Commissioner labelled them:
a blot on the Lukona District. Originally of a bastard-Barotse type, they
chose for their habitat the Nyengo N.D, chiefly, it seems, from its proximity
of the Nyengo swamps, where they have island retreats, where they
have shelters and grow food, and to which they clear in tiny little canoes,
directly they hear of the approach of the official, or scent of a Barotse Induna.
Broadly speaking, they have never paid tax, though censused for 5 or
6 years.19
In 1916, however, a contingent of young Nyengo men had gone to Southern
Rhodesia: ‘[M]ost of them have returned with clothes, money, etc. & it is
hoped that this will influence others to go to work as well.’20 Why the
previously unenthusiastic young Nyengo men decided to go for labour
migration is not discussed in the official records. But later entries might
indicate how this was achieved. Two years later, in April 1918 and again
in August, meetings were held with the Nyengo Induna (Namakaya),
many headmen and senior representatives of the Paramount Chief, after
which ‘the Manyengo’ ‘agreed to send more of their young men for work’.21
This at least constituted a conscious strategy of mild coercion.22 While
similar efforts were made to bring other minor ‘tribes’ like the elusive
‘Mawiko’ into line,23 the majority of Lozi villages were sending young men
for recruitment voluntarily already in 1915 (when the Kalabo District
Notebooks were started) and there are no records of concerted attempts
of persuading them. In sum, the evidence for exactly how the practice of
labour recruitment was established in Kalabo District during the first
decades of the twentieth century is not conclusive and more research
should be done on the interplay between village dynamics and the colonial administration to throw light on the issue.
In terms of institutional and infrastructural aspects, recruitment was at
first organised through the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau (RNLB), which
began its operations in the area in 1903, serving the farms and mines of
19 NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, Kalabo District Notebook, 1915.
20 NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, Kalabo District Notebook, 1918.
21 NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, Kalabo District Notebook, 1918.
22 That this ‘policy of persuasion’ was a deliberate approach adopted to instil trust was
amply expressed in the District Notebooks, in which for example N.C. Ingram opposes a
suggestion by the local administration to start arresting Nyengo tax defaulters, so as not to
scare them away, NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, 33, Kalabo District Notebook, entries for 1921 and
1922/23.
23 NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, 36, see for example the years 1920–1, 1923, 1924 in Kalabo District
Notebook. Mawiko or Wiko is a Lozi term loosely denoting the ‘peoples of the west’, including Mbunda, Luchazi, Chokwe and Luvale.
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Southern Rhodesia. During the 1920s and 1930s there were also several
other agencies operating in Barotseland, represented by various independent recruiters, among them R.W. Yule, Soane Cambell, Williams & co.,
Parsons, and the local trader Dempster.24 The recruitment was mainly for
Southern Rhodesia, Elisabethville in southern Congo, and for Mazabuka
farmers. When the Great Depression in the United States and Europe
began to make its impact on the Central African economy in the early
1930s, young men from Barotseland were already deeply dependent on
migrant wage labour for their income. Due to the discontinuation of RNLB
(which was dissolved in 1933), there was, however, an abrupt interruption
of recruitment between 1932 and 1935.25 This had grave social and economic consequences for the region and forced thousands of young men
into compensational menial labour or imprisonment for failing to pay
their taxes.26 Even local European businessmen, like the Susman Brothers,
scaled down their businesses considerably during this period.27
Soon after this economic crisis, when labour recruitment was resumed,
as much as half of the male work force in Barotseland was absent from the
protectorate at any given time. From a focus on agriculture, fishing, hunting and small-scale trade young men’s attention had turned to longdistance migration for wage labour in industrial mines and on commercial
farms. How was it possible that less than three decades of labour recruitment could transform the preferred male life career so profoundly?
In part, this had to do with regional economic opportunity and global
trade: the recuperating labour markets after the depression and the rapid
expansion in gold production.28 Moreover, it was connected to the emergence of even more efficient recruitment organisations offering higher
salaries, amenities, and faster transport.29 The ethno-linguistic composition of Barotseland and the solidification of previously flexible ‘Lozi’
legal principles probably affected the form of local mobility through the
24 NAZ KSH2/1 Vol. 2, 50–1.
25 A similar organisation was not formed again until 1946, when the Southern
Rhodesian government created the Native Labour Supply Commission (RNLSC), P. Scott,
‘Migrant labor in Southern Rhodesia’, Geographical review, 44:1 (1954), 29–48. However,
recruitment for Southern Rhodesia was re-established in 1936 through the Ulere system
(see below).
26 G. Caplan, The elites of Barotseland, 1878–1969: A political history of Zambia’s Western
Province (Berkeley, 1970), 145–6.
27 H. Macmillan, An African trading empire: the story of Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn,
1901–2005 (New York, 2005), 118.
28 D. Johnson, ‘Settler farmers and coerced African labour in Southern Rhodesia,
1936–46’, The journal of African history, 33:1 (1992), 111–28.
29 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New Labour’.
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consumption among labour migrants from barotseland
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institutions of land holding. The acquisition of land was more difficult for
the growing population of non-Lozi (Wiko) people.30 This partly explains
the over-representation as labour migrants of Wiko and recent migrants
from Angola who (in the face of imposed Lozi Indunas) could not establish a resource base in the area and were thus prone to pounce at the
opportunity of an income from labour migration.31
But the wider implications for local subjectivity need to be addressed.
What was at the outset a deliberate strategy of the tiny local colonial
administration to manipulate indigenous political and social systems in
order to recruit labourers for the expanding regional economy, became
incorporated into young men’s (and their families’) life- and livelihood
decisions.32 Chipalo had become a masculine model of life which still
affects the way young men envision their future in places like Kalabo. This
was no small feat, considering the great social and micro-political effects
in the rural universe created by the emergence of the labour migrant – a
young but relatively wealthy man coming back after a long absence, dressing like a European, with new ideas and religious practices, acting like a
litukuka, an elder (in Mbunda), conveying an audacious independence
in relation to seniors and spouses. I do not wish to imply that the village
universe in Central Africa prior to European colonialism in any way
30 As my own fieldwork in Kalabo District shows, a recurrent problem in the province
has been the attempts by ‘true Lozi’, on the grounds of autochthony, to seize or withhold
land from Wiko villagers – the latter are in such contexts labelled ‘foreigners’, M. Barrett,
‘Paths to adulthood: Freedom, belonging and temporalities in Mbunda biographies
from Western Zambia’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Uppsala University, 2004); M. Gluckman,
‘The technical vocabulary of Barotse jurisprudence’, American anthropologist, 61:5 (1959),
743–59.
31 Herbert, Twilight, 69. After 1919, there was a sharp increase in the number of Wiko
inhabitants in the western districts of Barotseland, probably due to the harshness of
Portuguese colonial rule, M. Gluckman, Economy of the central Barotse plain (Livingstone,
1968), 15; C. Perrings, ‘Good lawyers but poor workers’: Recruited Angolan labour in the
copper mines of Katanga, 1917–1921’, The journal of African history, 18:2 (1977), 237–59, 243.
This is supported by claims of forced labour in Portuguese territory in oral histories from
Mbunda families in Kalabo, see Barrett, Paths, 272.
32 Although the prevalence of women migrating to urban areas during this time has
been largely a muted issue (Moore and Vaughan, Cutting, 155), the drastic control measures
set up by the colonial authorities in collaboration with rural chiefs to prevent women from
leaving the rural areas indicates that women did go in large numbers. This is true especially
from the 1920s onwards, when the development of copper mining in Northern Rhodesia
induced many women to migrate with their husbands or alone, J. Parpart, ‘“Where is your
mother?”: Gender, urban marriage and colonial discourse on the Zambian Copperbelt,
1924–1945’, Journal of African historical studies, 27:2 (1994), 241–71. From the evidence of
female life histories in my material, however, there were few Kalabo women migrating to
urban areas before independence in 1964; or, rather, few that came back to Kalabo to tell
the tale. This is obviously an area which requires further research.
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constituted a static social equilibrium.33 What I raise here are the radically
new parameters introduced by labour migration in terms of wealth creation, status transformation, and the gendered division of labour within
households.
Recruitment and the Great Journey
The increase of migrants from Barotseland to South Africa and Southern
Rhodesia34 once the global recession wore off, is connected to several
background factors: the decrease in recruitment from the southern part
of Northern Rhodesia due to a surge in labour demand on the line of rail,35
the increase in gold prices in the 1930s, and the subsequent massive
investment in infrastructure and administrative presence in Barotseland.36
All three factors substantially increased the number of recruits from
Barotseland. It is important to emphasise that while labour migration
after the Great Depression intensified and recruitment became increasingly formalised in the hands of a few regional organisations, interviews
with former migrants in Kalabo show a surprising variation in recruitment
practices, travel arrangements, destinations and occupations. Some used
the official forms of recruitment, others were privately recruited or found
their own way; many flew in aeroplanes for a leg of the journey, while a
substantial number walked long stretches on foot; some worked in farming, others in the mine sector; a few worked as medical staff or clerks,
while most were labourers. In many cases, a person had, throughout his
career, been both a farm hand in Southern Rhodesia and a mine worker in
Johannesburg.
33 On the contrary, evidence from historical scholarship on Barotseland (M. Bull, Bulozi
under the Luyana kings: Political evolution and state formation in pre-colonial Zambia
(London, 1973); G. Prins, The hidden hippopotamus: Reappraisal in African history: The early
colonial experience in western Zambia (Cambridge, 1980); G. Caplan, The elites), as well
as on the smaller and more loosely organised Wiko groups under consideration here
(C. White, ‘A preliminary survey of Luvale rural economy’, The Rhodes-Livingstone papers,
29 (1959); Barrett, Paths), points to a deeply entrenched flexibility and changeability
regarding livelihood, kinship reckoning, village organisation, political succession, gender,
age and productive relations.
34 In 1938, 43 per cent of the male taxpayers in the three Zambezi Plain districts in
Western Province (Mongu, Kalabo, and Senanga) were absent on labour stints, Gluckman,
Economy, 113. Twenty years later, in 1959, 40 per cent of the taxable males of Kalabo District
had been away working. Many villages displayed figures as high as 79 per cent, Herbert,
Twilight, 71.
35 Scott, Migrant labor, 31.
36 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New Labour’.
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Ulere
In 1936, Southern Rhodesia started operating their Free Migrant Labour
Transport Service, locally called Ulere which means ‘free’ in Nyanja.37 At
first, the service did not attract so many migrants, but after the Second
World War it became the dominant means of travel to the farms, mines
and factories of Southern Rhodesia.38 The success of recruitment for the
southern colony had been made possible through a 1936 tripartite agreement (the Salisbury Agreement) between Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland,
and Southern Rhodesia.39 Responding to the increasing labour demands
at home and rising concerns from the Colonial Office about the disruptive
effects of labour migration on local communities, the local administrations in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia wanted the agreement to curb
and control long-distance labour migration. From the perspective of
Southern Rhodesian interests, it was an attempt to counter competition
(due to higher wages and better working conditions) from the expanding
mining sector in South Africa.40 In fact, Ulere was frequently used as a
means of proceeding to and entering the Rand in South Africa and ending
this ‘abuse’ of the service was a continuous preoccupation of the Rhodesian
administration.41 Apart from offering free transport to Southern Rhodesia,
Ulere set up a number of resting stations staffed by Africans on the
southward routes providing food and shelter for migrants as well as their
families. From Kalabo, the route went either by boat to Nampini, close to
Victoria Falls, or over land by foot or with lorries via Mongu, Mulobezi
and Livingstone. Once at the depots, migrants were free to choose their
work place. Large employers of migrants from Barotseland were the
tobacco farms around Karoi and the colliers like those operating in
Hwange (Wankie).42
37 Often pronounced Ulele in Kalabo reflecting the interchangeability of ‘r’ and ‘l’ in
many Bantu languages.
38 In 1951, the service transported three-fifths of the 104,000 foreign workers coming to
Southern Rhodesia.
38 Scott, Migrant labor, 36.
39 Johnson, ‘Settler’, 113.
40 Johnson, ‘Settler’, 113.
41 Scott, Migrant labor, 36; G. Pirie, ‘Railways and labour migration to the Rand mines:
Constraints and significance’, Journal of Southern African studies, 19:4 (1993), 713–30.
42 S. Rubert, A most promising weed: A history of tobacco farming and labor in colonial
Zimbabwe, 1890–1945 (Athens, 1998); I. Phimister, ‘Coal, crisis, and class struggle: Wankie
colliery, 1918–22’. The journal of African history, 33:1 (1992), 65–86.
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Mr. Maliti was born in 1928 in the Kalenga area of Kalabo District.43
He completed basic schooling in the provincial capital Mongu, but had
lived in Kalabo since 1951. In 2009 he was making his living as a brick layer
in Kalabo town and was no longer in a polygynous marriage since the
death of his first wife. Altogether, his wives had given birth to 15 children.
In 1947, Mr. Maliti went to Southern Rhodesia together with many others
from Barotseland who on their own accord travelled to seek work. Through
Ulere they received free transport, using lorries from Kalabo to Victoria
Falls before getting on a train to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia – a journey that lasted one week. He stayed in Bulawayo for two years, working as
an operator on a textile machine.
Mr. C was born in 1916 in Moxico Province, Angola and came to Zambia
with his family when he was twenty years old.44 It was during the war, in
1942, that he first travelled to ‘Zimbabwe’: ‘I went to Zimbabwe, to Salisbury,
for work – some [of those who went with me] left for good. It was just
many people that went for employment, so I decided to go too. Ulele were
taking us there.’ In Southern Rhodesia he was working in agriculture, first
in one (unknown) place where he was milking cows, after which he went
to Salisbury where he was in charge of distributing maize and potatoes for
a white farmer, Mr. Lundy, who also had four mines: ‘Mr. Lundy refused to
go to war against the Germans so his mines were closed down. He didn’t
mind much since he owned ten companies!’
As indicated above, however, a substantial amount of migrants made
their way independently to their work destinations; this was known as
going muselfu (‘myself’) and was part of the experience of most of my
informants who had been migrants.45 Some were even recruited directly
by farmers, as was the case with the two close friends Harry and Isaac from
the rural Lyumba area on the road leading to the Angolan border, 25 km
west of Kalabo town.
After finishing standard six in 1963, Harry and Isaac decided to
leave Lyumba in search of employment.46 Born around 1940 and 1938
43 Interview with Mr. Maliti, Kalabo District, 25 September 2009.
44 Interview with Mr. C, Kalabo District, 26 September 2009.
45 Interviews with migrants were carried out between 1998 and 2009 and reflect the
experiences of the cohorts who were labour migrants between early 1940s to 1966.
On muselfu, see also NAZ, I/KDE 10/1, 452, District Notebooks Mongu, 1950s.
46 The life histories of Harry and Isaac (pseudonyms) are based on several informal
conversations over the years, as well as on semi-structured interviews in May 2000 (Harry)
and July 2003 (Isaac). They are two prominent elders in Lyumba. Isaac is a headman for the
registered village in which they both live and a father of sixteen children, while Harry runs
a community clinic. Harry has two wives and has fathered 20 children.
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respectively, they were both unmarried and in their early twenties when
they left. Their aim was to get to Lusaka. Already in Kalabo town, they
came in contact with a white man, ‘a certain Boer, by the name of
Mr. Louis Naile’, who took them to Mongu and told them, ‘I’m going to
give you a good job!’ They agreed and left with him for Southern Rhodesia:
‘He took us to his farm there (…) a tobacco farm (…) in the bush, Kaluvati
Tobacco, at Karoi Boma in Southern Rhodesia.’
Wenela
Despite the measures set up by the Southern Rhodesian government
to divert migration from the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the labour
organisation WENELA (or WNLA – Witwatersrand Native Labour Association) began anew in 1936 to recruit men for the mines in Northern
Rhodesia.47 The large scale introduction of recruitment for the Rand by
WENELA, the official recruiters for the South African Chamber of Mines,
was preceded by long preparations and fierce negotiations with the rival
colony.48 In the end, the financial muscle of the South African Chamber of
Mines prevailed over Southern Rhodesian attempts to monopolise the
‘tropical labour reserves’. Not only could the South Africans offer better
working conditions and higher salaries, the organisation of recruitment
itself was far more advanced than what Ulere could muster. A sophisticated system of depots and offices all over Southern Africa allowed the
deferring and remitting of payment. Furthermore, when the South
Africans guaranteed that they would not employ northern workers who
came independently to South Africa, it did much to convince Northern
Rhodesian, Bechuanaland and Nyasaland governments to allow WENELA
a foothold in their territories.49
A major depot was developed at Kazungula on the border with Northern
Rhodesia to tap the labour districts of Barotseland. Eventually northern
Bechuanaland became a central corridor for WNLA operations extending
into adjacent parts of Northern Rhodesia, Angola and South-West Africa (…)
47 Recruitment for the Rand in Northern Rhodesian territory had been prohibited
during 1913–32, Scott, Migrant labor, 31. The government of the Union of South Africa
banned all recruitment from territories north of 22 degrees south latitude due to the high
prevalence of pneumonia among migrants and the resulting massive mortality rate,
S. Katzenellenbogen, South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, railways, and trade in
the making of a relationship (Manchester, 1982).
48 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New labour’, 109–11; Reynolds, Magic, 4–5.
49 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New Labour’, 111.
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The Association’s ubiquitous depots, its fleets of passenger lorries and network of airports gave the agency a presence in the region which overshadowed that of governments. New villages grew up along its routes; its motor
lorries provided the only transport and mail service in many areas; to the
recruits, its aircraft probably made it seem exotic, glamorous, rich and
powerful.50
It was not until 1972, eight years after independence, that today’s Western
Province of Zambia received a tarred road to the capital city Lusaka and
hence achieved a symbolic break with the infrastructural bias towards the
south – to Southern Rhodesia and South Africa – which WENELA (and to
some extent Ulere) established. Such a southern orientation continues to
haunt the region today and makes connections with central, northern and
eastern Zambia difficult and expensive.
In Kalabo, or sometimes in Mongu, Isha-Kashweka and the other
migrants would embark on lorries that took them to Kazungula or Katima
Mulilo, after this South-west African town had developed into a transport
hub and regional office for WENELA.51 It was from Katima Mulilo that the
labour migrants would be put on an aircraft for the journey to Francistown
in Bechuanaland, from where trains departed all the way to Johannesburg.
The scale and novelty of the transport system put in place by WENELA
was a source of curiosity in the Barotse villages and provided the migrants
with a connection to the modern and powerful world of the Europeans.52
The headman of one village in Lyumba, for example, took Fulai as his
adult name, derived from the English word ‘fly’.53 From the end of the
1940s until independence, Fulai went to Johannesburg with WENELA
twelve times (each stint lasting at least eleven months), where he eventually became an experienced ‘machine boy’.54
50 Yudelman and Jeeves, ‘New Labour’, 110–1.
51 W. Zeller, ‘Danger and opportunity in Katima Mulilo: A Namibian border boomtown
at transnational crossroads’, Journal of Southern African studies, 35:1 (2009), 133–54. Judging
by my informants, who all travelled via Katima Mulilo, it seems that after the Second
World War Katima Mulilo had replaced Kazungula, farther to the east on the Zambezi, as
the main recruitment depot serving Barotseland.
52 Initially, the WENELA quota was 3,500 men per year. In 1959, the agency was recruiting 5,000 people per year for the whole of Barotseland (Herbert, Twilight, 68), a number
which had increased to almost 6,000 annually before independence in 1964 (Caplan, The
elites, 206). The majority of these workers were ‘Wiko’ (e.g. Mbunda and Luvale) or Nyengo
or Imilunga, but rarely ‘true Lozi’ (Herbert, Twilight, 69).
53 Interview with Fulai, Lyumba, Kalabo District, May 2000.
54 By some informants called chipanela, ‘spanner boy’ (panela derived from the English
word ‘spanner’), a term that today is used for young apprentices or assistants to mechanics,
drivers or coxswains. In the mines, the chipanela would hold and direct the drill for the drill
operator who made holes for the explosives.
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Walking Home Majestically: Status as Enactment of Material
Social Process
Having introduced a range of experiences that labour migration offered to
young men in Kalabo, let me now turn to how materiality was an ingrained
part of these experiences. New material objects (in this case commodities
from an expanding industrial world) may accommodate and express
deeply seated values and personhood found in a particular social context.55 But the use of commodities may also work to transform the local
setting, inspiring new experiences, tastes, ideas; triggering new ways of
being, comporting oneself and relating to others.
My Kalabo informants told of the popularity and utility of blankets,
cooking utensils, bicycles, and sewing machines brought home from the
south. Moreover, the urban environment in Salisbury and Johannesburg
offered a multitude of new food and drink experiences. Isha-Kashweka,
for example, narrates how the drinking of tea was a central concern in the
daily work life in Johannesburg: Tea ‘was almost like a job! Before doing
anything, we had to drink tea and eat bread!’ As a symbol of European
power, the act and paraphernalia of drinking tea figured widely in the
popular imagination of the African population, from the rowdy dancing at
Salisbury tea parties,56 to the diagnostic tools of regional healing cults like
Nzila which originated and became fairly popular in Barotseland and
beyond during the 1960s.57 Although migrants from Barotseland encountered and acquired the taste for maize in South Africa, since maize porridge was the staple provided to the mine workers, this did not lead to an
immediate change of diet at home. The shift to the now ubiquitous nshima
made from maize meal did not occur until later in Western Zambia, where
millet and cassava still predominated.
Yet, clothes stand out as the most desired commodities that the labour
migrants brought home from Johannesburg and Salisbury. Garments and
55 This may be compared to the ‘capturing of diamonds and dollars’ by Congolese
youths in the 1990s. De Boeck shows how contemporary social and economic practices of
artisan diamond mining and smuggling are perceived as analogous to historical hunting
and perform similar transformative functions in the lives of young men. Central to his
argument is the continuity of the symbolic forms that the social and cultural imagination
takes in the border areas even when it is articulating new practices and objects of desire.
F. De Boeck, ‘Domesticating diamonds and dollars: Identity, expenditure and sharing in
South-Western Zaire’, Development and change, 29 (1998), 777–810.
56 T. Yoshikuni, ‘Strike action and self-help associations: Zimbabwean worker protest
and culture after World War I’, Journal of Southern African studies, 15:3 (1989), 440–68.
57 P. Silverman, ‘Local elites and the Nzila cult among the Lozi of Zambia’, Ethos, 5:4
(1977), 379–87.
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chitenge fabric had been available for a long time in European shops
in places like Kalabo, but such items were fairly expensive and young people lacked the resources to purchase them. Isha-Kashweka relates how
before, when living in Angola, they used to wear matata (bark) blankets
and skins from water bucks and wildebeest and how prices for industrial
goods in Kalabo were prohibitively expensive. In the southern metropolises, where goods were plentiful and cheap, buying clothes became a
central concern.
–
–
–
–
With the money you received in Johannesburg, what would you buy?
Clothes!
Only clothes?
[emphatically] Clothes, only clothes! The first salary you have to buy a big
suitcase [pongisi ya kama]. The other month, you go and buy some clothes
and put them in. The next month, whenever you get paid you buy clothes,
blankets, what and what, plates. Then you buy and buy until the suitcase
is full!58
– Where did you buy those things?
– In South Africa. It’s a country! There are so many shops!59 The owners of
the shops in Johannesburg were Indians [Masaami]. They were good people, the Indians.
In Bulawayo, Mr. Maliti had similar priorities as Isha-Kashweka in
Johannesburg.
We used the money for shopping, buying clothes. First, we used to buy a
suitcase and then every month end when we were paid we would go shopping, putting in our suitcase, knowing that when the contract comes to an
end ‘I’m going to bring it home, as I go back.’
– What did you buy more specifically?
– We bought things of our choice: trousers, a pair of shoes, a shirt, anything that I wanted to go for I would buy and put in the suitcase.
During the second trip, he chose different colours to bring back home:
– Last time I bought black trousers, this time I bought white, red or blue
trousers!
– Was it mostly clothes?
– Nothing else! I also came with money that I used to buy a bicycle here in
Kalabo! The bicycle I just used for my personal transport. I bought clothes
58 Bithalo bene, bithalo! (‘clothes,only clothes!’) Ulanda ulanda kubanga bene pongisi
mbe! (‘You buy and buy until the suitcase is full!’).
59 Lifuti! – ‘country’, meaning ‘it is really a big area, there is everything there’. Bintolo
mubili biabingi. Kalikiliki! ‘Many shops are there, so many’ (Kalikiliki – ‘when something is
highly concentrated’).
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consumption among labour migrants from barotseland 109
for my wife, but also kitchen utensils, pots and plates. She was very happy,
touching the ground!
Indeed, as Karen Tranberg Hansen notes more generally ‘preoccupations
with the dressed body are of long standing in Zambia.’60 When discussing
the focus on dressing and clothes, widely reported to be displayed by the
migrants in Kalabo, a central tenet was thenga – referring to ‘entertainment’, ‘pleasure’, ‘luxury’ as well as clothes and other imported commodities (it also means ‘porridge’ as in thenga ya mashangu, ‘millet porridge’).
Moreover, it connotes being smart and handsome, traits that are attractive
to the opposite gender. But this preoccupation with thenga had much
wider implications than a desire to look good. As Hansen argues, the
attraction of clothes ‘derives from the ability of the dressed body to mediate both individual and collective identities and desires.’61
When Mr. Maliti talked about how he was received at home after two
years in Bulawayo (his first trip), he emphasised his changed status in the
community.
People were very happy when we came back. Some would kill chickens and
brew beer, set up a feast, people would come to celebrate! I was now a new
man, I had come up with wealth, so life had changed! [I was] given more
respect when coming back, [people would] even [be] touching the ground.
Those that stayed [at home] would be questioned: ‘So many are going to find
wealth, why are you not going?’ The respect was less.
Dress and clothing were the props through which migrants could display
this changed status. Failing to do so was considered odd or even a sign of
mental disturbance.
If a person goes out to work and does not come back with luxury goods
[thenga] to show, then the people will not know that he has been out for
work! No one came back with the same clothes as when they left. Such a
person would be seen as strange.
What these quotes from Mr. Maliti illustrate, is the social transformation
of the individual migrant from youth to adult, which was communicated
by showing off clothes brought back from ‘the land of the Europeans’
(kumukuwa). However, it is in the intersection between personal and generational trajectories that historical change may be gauged. The transformative potential of objects/commodities thus becomes especially visible
60 K. Hansen, ‘Fashioning Zambian Moments’, Journal of material culture, 8:3 (2003),
302.
61 Hansen, ‘Fashioning’, 303.
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when we consider the attainment of adult social status (a process which
entails new ways of being, behaving and relating to others in social contexts) as a generational achievement; a status that you acquire together
with age mates using the resources available to you in the current historical moment. Moreover, it is a status that is expressed by contrasting your
own generation and its material attributes to your parental generation and
its attributes, in this case by wearing fashionable urban outfits. Such generational identification partly explains why manner and dress of the
returning migrants were perceived as extravagant and audacious in the
eyes of the older generations.62
Another rapidly changing social field for the cohorts that went south to
work was marriage and household formation; a field which has a direct
bearing on attaining social adulthood in this region. Migrancy had a great
impact on the practice and institution of marriage. First, not only did
bride wealth become increasingly monetised in contrast to the previously
common practice of bride service (reflecting the influx of money from the
migrants and their limited time to perform extended duties for their
parents-in-law), the cost of bride wealth was also raised substantially.63
Second, many informants held that the responsibility to provide the cash
part of the bride wealth was transferred from the bride groom’s parents to
the groom himself.64 Third, migrants were simply valued higher as spouses
than non-migrants, as they looked smart, had access to money, clothes
and other goods and, as illustrated by Mr. Maliti’s statement above, were
perceived as ‘active’ in contrast to those who stayed at home.65
Isha-Kashweka states: ‘When I came back I was very smartly dressed,
and many women would come after me!’ Indeed, he got married soon after
returning from Johannesburg for the first time: ‘When I came back from
Johannesburg, that’s when I looked for a wife. I paid one head of cattle for
the bride wealth.’
62 On the individual and collective aspects of how Ndembu (in the neighbouring
Northwestern Province) generations expressed their uniqueness, see J. Pritchett, The
Lunda-Ndembu: Style, change, and social transformation in South Central Africa (Madison,
2001).
63 C. White, ‘Tradition and change in Luvale marriage’, The Rhodes-Livingstone papers,
34 (1962); M. Gluckman, ‘Kinship and marriage among the Lozi of Northern Rhodesia and
the Zulu of Natal’, in A. Radcliffe-Brown and C. Forde (eds.), African systems of kinship and
marriage (London, 1950), 166–206.
64 Barrett, Paths, 221–2.
65 It is still the case in Kalabo that a person who ‘is just seated in the village’ (kutumama
ngocho hembo) is a most pitiful character. This refers to someone who does not try to make
a living by using his or her initiative, but passively gets by in the village.
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However, getting married is but one parameter of adulthood in the
region, today as in the past. As I have argued elsewhere, convincing your
family and neighbours that you are an adult entails striking a delicate balance between autonomy and voluntary interdependence – a balance that
can only be acquired through experience and concerted social action.66
Socially appreciated adults were often said to be unselfish, just and hardworking. In Mbunda social idioms, such a person would have mangana,
‘sense’ or ‘wisdom’. For returning labour migrants, to demonstrate mangana was almost synonymous with sharing wealth by distributing goods
to spouses and family members. As Mr. Maliti said:
– I was buying [things] also for people at home: for my father, my mother,
my sisters, nephews, sons and daughters and put them in the suitcase.
Even some coats for the parents.
– How did you know what to buy?
– Mangana! Because I had sense! My wife, I have to dress her! My mother, I
have to dress her! My father, I have to dress him! My children, I have to
dress them! That’s a personal thing you have to do.
He added that apart from gifts, he also brought back a substantial amount
of money, which was carefully shared among his close relatives. Still,
Mr. Maliti was able to save some funds in order to buy his first head of
cattle. Isha-Kashweka answered the question of what and to whom he
brought back goods in a similar way:
First of all, your uncle, father, mother, sisters and brothers, your elders, you
buy for them, so when you come, you just bring them these things. Even
blankets, you also give them blankets. There were no orders pressed before,
but it was a matter of thinking for yourself ‘these are my elders and juniors,
where can they get such things? Nowhere!’
As I have shown, acquiring commodities and social adulthood was central
to the social experience of labour migration in Central Africa. This was
visible in a spectacular way in the homecoming events that migrants
staged in rural areas. These were events in which the individual achievement and collective/generational identity were fused and celebrated
simultaneously. Probably due to popular songs, paintings67 and the evening stories told by migrants for their children and grandchildren, the
66 Barrett, Paths, 172–87.
67 E.g. the painting ‘Makumucha coming home from Johannesburg’ from 1994 by the
legendary artist Stephen Kappata (1936–2006), reproduced in H. Macmillan, ‘The life and
art of Stephen Kappata’, African arts, 30:1 (1997), 20–31; 93–4 (especially 25).
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figure of the returning migrant is rather well-known among contemporary
Zambians. The suit, the cane, the whistle and carriers were often important paraphernalia of such narratives.
Coming back from Bulawayo Mr Maliti paid for his own travel, since
Ulere only offered transport on the way down to Southern Rhodesia.
We went by trucks, off-loading in Mongu and embarking on boats for Kalabo.
From Kalabo to home, at the harbour, people were hired for piece work to
carry the goods (…)
– I had one big suitcase, [also] pots, plates, a lot of things!
– Also a walking stick?
– [He laughs] I didn’t bother to buy a walking stick. But I did have a metal
whistle, this was a must. We used it for feasts and dancing. When coming
back home, I was blowing the whistle to announce our arrival. My relatives all came out, even dancing. It was a feast now!
Returning from Johannesburg, Isha-Kashweka took advantage of the more
generous arrangements provided by WENELA, which included return
transport and half of the salary in cash deferred to the depot in Katima
Mulilo.
– I had one suitcase, but very full! Also some buckets, cups, plates and threelegged pots (…)
– When coming to Katima, we were given the same [type of] transport as
before. But when you arrive here in Kalabo, that transport is no longer
available. So there will be other people coming and carrying these things
now. That big suitcase, it would be given to someone who’ll be carrying it
as piece work, you pay him. And also that other bucket, with a lot of
kitchen units. So for you, is just to carry a walking stick! [big laugh!]. We
bought those sticks, specially made.
– Was that also something that made you look smart [thenga]?
– Thenga, thenga, thenga! Those that were doing piece work, they would go
in front. You would come behind, very far from them, just with your walking stick, now enjoying majestically! With a pair of shoes!
– All those that came back had the same walking stick?
– All of them! Not one, but all of them!
– Did they have a suit and tie?
– Did they have on a suit and tie, oh yes!68
– Did you give everything away, or did something remain for yourself?
– Those that had a wife, they would also shop for her there, and when
reaching home you would give to the relatives. But you would also think
of leaving something for yourself. Some used to buy animals.
– What did you use the money for?
– Eating!
68 Ma suit yachili, ma tie yachili!
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There is a wide and solid body of scholarship on the rise and fall of twentieth century labour migration in Central and Southern Africa. Very little
of this work has dealt with the social history of labour migration from the
point of view of personal life trajectories and how these interplayed with
generational and material dynamics. Migrants’ identification with a generation reaching adulthood, and the integral role in this process of new
industrial consumer products, was pivotal in transforming life worlds of
villages and families in rural areas like Kalabo. Together with the influence
of missionaries and the colonial administration in ‘radically rewriting the
rules of polity and sociality’ such transformations arguably set the scene
for the political subjectivities leading to Zambian nationalism and independence.69 Without overlooking the role which international labour
migration played in incorporating Barotseland as a deprived and marginalised backwater into the colonial (and, in the longer perspective, postcolonial) economy, oral histories may help us to better understand the
logic of this incorporation from the perspective of local society. While the
legacy of labour migration in rural Zambia is unclear in the current
moment – especially in view of neoliberal economic policy, high youth
unemployment and a striking lack of formal jobs – it certainly played an
important role in informing notions of the ideal male career model in the
three decades following independence.70 It remains to be seen how the
commodities circulated in contemporary Zambia are intertwined with
local, regional and international mobility as well as with the micro-politics
of gender, generation and social status.
69 J. Gould, Localizing modernity: Action, interests & association in rural Zambia
(Helsinki, 1997), 4.
70 J. Pottier, Migrants no more: Settlement and survival in Mambwe villages, Zambia
(Manchester, 1988); Barrett, Paths, chapter 8.
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RAILWAYS, RAILWAY CULTURE, AND ‘INDUSTRIAL
WORK DISCIPLINE’ IN THE RHODESIAS
Kenneth P. Vickery
‘The products of industrial technology’. The ultimate, quintessential product of industrial technology was the railway, the locomotive, the train. The
railway symbolised like nothing else the industrial revolution itself, the
advent of the industrial age. In Nicholas Faith’s summation:
The modern world began with the coming of the railways. They turned the
known universe upside down. They made a greater and more immediate
impact than any other mechanical or industrial innovation before or since
(…) [In speed] the railways represented the first quantum leap. All subsequent inventions—the motor-car, the aeroplane—are merely continuing a
revolution which began in 1830 with the steam locomotive.1
What began in Europe spread almost everywhere, of course. With memorable phrasing Ronald Robinson reminds us that ‘industrialized Europe
cast its imperial influence over much of a still agrarian world in the half
century before 1914 by building railways in other people’s countries.’2 Lord
Salisbury himself, speaking in this case of Uganda, provided a contemporary imperial echo: ‘The completion of the railway (…) means the subjugation and therefore the civilisation of the country.’3
In Africa railways emblemised the material side of colonisation –
colonisation precisely by Europe’s maturing industrial powers—and
dwarfed any other forms of material investment. Railways linked Africa’s
interiors with its coastlines and harbours far more efficiently than any previous transport mode. They thus facilitated—and again, symbolised—the
transformation to export-oriented economies, the legacy of which arguably remains the continent’s greatest economic reality. Years ago I wrote,
1 N. Faith, The world the railways made (New York, 1990), 1.
2 R.E. Robinson, ‘Introduction: Railway imperialism’, C.B. Davis, K.E. Wilburn and
R.E. Robinson (eds.), Railway imperialism (New York, 1991), 1.
3 Cited in G.H. Pirie, Aspects of the political-economy of railways in Southern Africa,
Environmental studies Occasional paper No. 24, Johannesburg: Dept. of Geography and
Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1982. n.p. Originally cited in
E.S. Grogan and A.H. Sharp, From the Cape to Cairo: The first traverse of Africa from South to
North (London, 1900), 318.
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Fig. 6.1 Canadian-built Mountain at Bulawayo in 1949 (Source: A.H. Croxton,
Railways of Rhodesia, David & Charles Publisher, 1973, p. 269)
concerning southern Zambia, that ‘construction of injanji (the rail line)
was the most prophetic event in recent Tonga economic history, a harbinger and symbol of changes which reshaped Tonga life in fundamental and
lasting ways.’4 I would stand by that statement, and extend it to many
other African regions.
And yet, what do we know or understand of the ways Africans responded
to, interpreted, or felt about these huge machines and these vast iron
networks? About the ways in which Africans ‘consumed’ railways, as passengers, as customers in the sending/receiving of goods? What range
of things have been said, sung, or written about railways? And finally,
what of the experience of those most intimately connected with the new
technology—the railway workers?
Railways and Culture in the Western World
The comparative literature, orature, folklore, music, art, film, etc., from
other parts of the world is vast, and suggests many prompts or leads which
might be pursued in African cases.5
4 K.P. Vickery, Black and white in Southern Zambia: The plateau Tonga economy and
British imperialism, 1890–1939 (New York, 1986), 46.
5 For numerous references in the following brief survey of Western cultural ‘takes’ on
railways I am indebted to members of The Dwights, an intellectual circle operating out of
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As railways appeared and became a fact of life in the nineteenth century, they elicited a variety of reactions in the regions of their birth. On the
one hand there was ‘the popular nineteenth-century topos of the roaring,
shrieking locomotive violating nature—what Leo Marx has taught us to
call ‘the machine in the garden.’’6 (The reference is to Marx’s path breaking
1965 book of that name, subtitled Technology and the pastoral ideal in
America). Charles Dickens, in Dombey and Son (1846–8), has a character
observe an approaching train: ‘a trembling of the ground and quick vibration in his ears; a distant shriek; a dull light advancing, quickly changed to
two red eyes, and a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an irresistible bearing on of a great roaring and dilating mass.’ Nothing less than ‘the remorseless monster, Death’; and later, ‘the triumphant monster, Death.’ Indeed,
the character meets his end by accidentally falling into a train’s path.7
A new way of dying: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina commits suicide by throwing
herself onto the tracks.
On the other hand, many celebrated the sheer wonder of the new
machines, products of man but illustrating man’s channelling of an almost
divine creativity. Consider Wordsworth’s 1833 sonnet ‘Steamboats, viaducts, and railways’:
Motors and Means, on land and sea at war
With old poetic feeling, not for this,
Shall ye, by Poets even, be judged amiss!
Nor shall your presence, howsoe’er it mar
The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar
To the Mind’s gaining that prophetic sense
Of future change, that point of vision, whence
May be discovered what in soul ye are.
In spite of all that beauty may disown
In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace
Her lawful offspring in Man’s art; and Time,
Pleased with your triumphs o’er his brother Space,
Accepts from your bold hands the proffered crown
Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime.
Yale University, including David Castronuovo, Jay Johnson, Tom Lennon, Ann Linden,
Ellen Martin, David Post, Edward Rothstein, Jane Scott, and Doug Shaker. I thank them all.
6 G.P. Landow, ‘Railways as image and plot device in Dombey and Son’, The Victorian
Web (website) accessed 1 August 2010.
7 Landow, ‘Railways as image’.
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The last word, ‘sublime’, in fact became the label for a whole literary/
philosophical school of such celebration, usually termed ‘Industrial
Sublime’ or ‘Technological Sublime’. In his 1996 book ‘American Technological Sublime’ David Nye (a student of Leo Marx) devotes an entire early
chapter to railways—the ‘Dynamic Sublime’. (Wordsworth, his sonnet’s
enthusiasm notwithstanding, opposed extending the machine to his
beloved garden of the Lake District in the 1840s—he was part of what
Faith considers one of the earliest examples of NIMBY, ‘not in my back
yard’).8
In the decades, indeed centuries, since the railways’ Victorian beginnings, it is perhaps in popular song that we find their widest invocation,
and the widest variety of symbolic usage. Trains can take us to good places,
it seems. They are the vehicle leading to salvation in the Impressions’
‘People Get Ready’ and to Freedom in the Rascals’ ‘People Got to Be Free’.
(Is it not striking that in the United States the antebellum escape routes
from southern slavery—the network of safe houses, hiding places, sympathetic escorts, etc.—were collectively known as the ‘Underground
Railroad’, even though it was of course not really a railroad at all?) Yusuf
Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, gave us the Peace Train, while the
O’Jays implored us to board the Love Train. It’s not all peace, love, and freedom, though. Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming is positively ominous, suggesting the approaching retribution (probably divine—it’s from his
Christian period) for our unrighteousness, stupidity and lack of spine. Van
Morrison’s Fast Train warns of the destructive consequences of fast living,
a theme carried to further levels in Guns ‘n Roses’ Night Train and Soul
Asylum’s Runaway Train.
Trains bring your sweetheart to you (the Monkees’ Last Train to
Clarksville) or take her away (Doc Watson’s The Train That Carried My Girl
From Town or Taj Mahal’s She Caught the Katy [the Kansas-Topeka Railroad]
and Left Me a Mule to Ride). Trains take you to the big city, or, when you’re
beaten down by it, back to a simpler place in time (Gladys Knight & the
Pips, Midnight Train to Georgia). Some railroad songs celebrate fictional
heroes; equally some real ones, like John Henry and Casey Jones, have
been elevated to mythical status by the popular songs named after them.
John Henry concerns an African-American steeldriver (an important job in
rail line construction) who defeats a steam-powered machine in a contest,
but dies from exhaustion doing it; it laments the coming of the next
8 Faith, World the railways made, 53–6.
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technology. Steve Goodman’s City of New Orleans, does the same in a way,
though this time what is being replaced is the railroad itself: ‘this train’s
got the disappearing railroad blues.’ Chronologically the two songs bookend the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of American railways—roughly, the 1860s
to the 1960s. The Ballad of Casey Jones was based on a real engine driver
who pushed his locomotive too hard, crashed and died, but saved others’
lives with warnings. The Grateful Dead wrote a new version with him ‘high
on cocaine’—fast living again. Apparently the band was known to play
both versions in concert.
The most fascinating work on the social and cultural impact of the railway in the western world may be Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s The Railway
Journey. Profusely illustrated, it offers at every turn provocative observations on how the railways differed from what went before, and how they
changed people’s perceptions. For instance, the railways combined the
route (the rail line) and the means (the train), under one firm’s control,
forming a single ‘machine ensemble’; a rather different relation from, say,
a road-owner (including the state) charging a toll to an independent
coach. Or: the way in which railways, aspiring to be Newton’s ‘perfect
road’—hard, smooth, level, and straight – altered the natural topography
of rise and fall, hill and vale, contour and curve, through cuts, embankments, tunnels, etc. The passenger thus did not ‘feel’ the landscape nearly
so immediately as on foot, horse, coach, or even, later, the automobile. The
landscape was experienced through a lens, as it were, the window, if you
will. The book stimulates even when it strikes me as off-target, or plain
wrong. Schivelbusch asserts that the reduction in travel time is so revolutionary in its ‘annihilation of space’ that ‘that in-between space, or travel
space, which it was possible to ‘savor’ while using the slow, work-intensive
eotechnical form of transport, disappears on the railroads. The railroad
knows only points of departure and destination.’9 He compares the trip to
sending oneself as a parcel. I cannot agree, and I think generations of rail
travellers would support me. Five hours instead of three days to get from
A to B is indeed a radical reduction, but is still a palpable period of time,
plenty of time to be more than a parcel. Stuff happens on railway journeys.
To return to popular culture for a moment, in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a
Train two men—indeed strangers—plot the murder of one’s wife and
the other’s father! In Some Like It Hot Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis
9 W. Schivelbusch, The railway journey: Trains and travel in the 19th century (New York,
1979), 44.
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Fig. 6.2 The royal train heading for Victoria Falls, 1947(Source: A.H. Croxton,
Railways of Rhodesia, David & Charles Publisher, 1973, p. 220)
pursue (in drag, no less) Marilyn Monroe (no less), and hilarious set-in-arailway-car highjinks ensue.
Railways and Culture in Africa
My point in tossing out these random examples and observations is simply to highlight the question of what might be out there in the experience
of Africa, and Africans, with railways. I have only limited indicators at this
point, but offer some of them to you now.
There is certainly one great novel out of Africa (there may well be more)
which features the railway at its very centre. That would be the late
Senegalese filmmaker and author Sembene Ousmane’s ‘God’s Bits of
Wood’. It is a fictionalised account of one of the turning moments in modern West African history, the strike on the Dakar-Niger railway in 1947–8.
Published in the nationalist era’s annus mirabilus, 1960, it is a novel of
awakening, of the consciousness of popular power. Among other things, it
is notable for the strength of its female characters. But it also registers the
arrival of the industrial age with an artist’s eloquence:
[The strike] was a time for suffering but for many was also a time for thought.
When the smoke from the trains no longer drifted over the savanna they
realised that an age had ended—an age their elders had told them about,
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when all of Africa was just a garden for food. Now the machine ruled over
their lands, and when they forced every machine within a thousand miles to
halt they became conscious of their strength, but conscious also of their
dependence. They began to understand that the machine was making of
them a whole new breed of men. It did not belong to them; it was they who
belonged to it.10
‘The machine ruled over their lands (…) their dependence (…) a whole
new breed of men (…) who belonged to it.’ It seems overstated, but perhaps it captures the Nkrumah generation’s hopes/dreams/expectations of
a great, catapulted leap to modernity.
In Southern Africa there arose, of course, a huge ‘labour empire’, based
initially around the diamond and gold mines, in which rural-to-urbanand-back migrant labour arguably became the fact of life in the last century or more. While (from 1867) the Kimberley diamond fields took off
in the absence of any significant railways—but stimulated the latter’s
construction—a generation later, ‘the start of gold mining in southern
Africa coincided with the dawn of the railway age in the subcontinent.’11
The two grew up together. It is hard to make the link more explicit than
Cecil Rhodes himself did; he once explained that he was proposing a further northerly extension of the rails ‘with the object of increasing, and
thus of cheapening, the labour supply’ to the Witwatersrand and other
southerly employment sites.12 ‘More than any other mode of transport’
notes Gordon Pirie, ‘the railways in southern Africa contributed massively
to shuttling migrants between countryside and the Rand.’13 By the second
and third decades of the twentieth century, migrant gold workers were
making something on the order of half-million to a million railway journeys each year. Since rail lines were typically constructed through
European-held farm lands—to serve the white farmers’ needs and give
them access to markets—the full migrant journey usually involved some
other kind of travel to the railhead, by foot or bicycle, and later by motor
vehicle and even airplane. Although many ‘voluntaries’ (unrecruited
workers) bought their own tickets, a great many migrants boarded special
fourth-rate bombelas (or bombellas) reserved for them—in reality, converted livestock trucks. At first, these were attached to mixed passenger/
freight trains; later, there appeared ‘native labour trains’, or ‘recognised
10 S. Ousmane, God’s Bits of Wood (Portsmouth, NH, 1970), 32.
11 G. Pirie, ‘Railways and labour migration to the Rand mines: Constraints and significance’, Journal of Southern African studies, 19: 4 (1993), 714.
12 Rhodes House, Oxford, Rhodes Papers: Rhodes to Chamberlain, 28 April 1898.
13 Pirie, ‘Railways’, 728.
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native trains’, carrying only recruited migrants. A South African Railways
official described a bombela in 1910 as:
a converted cattle truck, measuring about 30 feet by 7 feet, in which I have
seen huddled as many as 40 to 45 natives. They [the trucks] are fitted with
a narrow seat round the inside some 12 inches wide, and a bench down
the centre of about double that width. The result is that not only are the
trucks dreadfully overcrowded, but the Natives have practically no rest
whatsoever,–being compelled, during the long journey, to sit and sleep bolt
upright.14
The horrific conditions improved somewhat from the 1920s. Pirie suggests
that the rails perpetuated the unusually high oscillation (back and forth)
characteristic of the South African mines by making it ‘practical and
affordable’ far more than foot or animal-propelled travel.15 One can see
why it was cheap.
And Pirie insists, correctly, that the railway journey be considered a significant part of the migrant experience, not just a mechanical formality:
‘Migrant miners were often treated as animals, or even worse, as pieces of
cargo, but they were not unconscious.’16 What did they do, say, think on
these journeys, what happened to them? As late as 1958, the rail trip to and
from Nyasaland to the Rand took six days. Pirie wonders whether the
appointment of gang leaders on the bombelas initiated social stratification, and whether the shared space and anticipation promoted solidarity,
or bred disenchantment. He ends with a flight of prose connecting the
journey to other notorious labour institutions, the middle passage and the
compound, and to underground mining itself:
Boarding the enclosed cattle trucks signified a momentous plunge into an
inorganic, noisy, dangerous world. The surface “middle passage” by train was
a track to underground where existence and motion were similarly tunneled. The rolling compounds were a premonition and reminder of tremors,
darkness, claustrophobia, regimentation and Spartan barracks. They foretold and echoed deep captivity, and a troglodytic existence submerged in
artificial light, dripping water and smoke. The railway conveyed both men
and meaning.17
14 R. Ellsworth, ‘‘The simplicity of the native mind’: Black passengers on the South
African railways in the early twentieth century,’ T. Lodge (ed.), Resistance and ideology in
settler societies (Johannesburg, 1986), 77.
15 Pirie, ‘Railways’, 728.
16 Pirie, ‘Railways’, 729.
17 Pirie, ‘Railways’, 729–30.
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A stunning piece of Southern African popular art which seems to answer
some of Pirie’s speculation comes from the renowned musician—
trumpeter, flugelhornist, singer—Hugh Masekela. Masekela had a No. 1 hit
in the United States in the 1960s (Grazin’ in the Grass), lived in exile for
many years, and for a time was married to the late, equally renowned
Miriam Makeba. The title of his 1994 album is Stimela—the word in a
number of southern Bantu languages for ‘train’ or ‘coal train’; the root is
borrowed, of course, from the English ‘steam’. The title song is mostly
instrumental, but begins with Masekela’s growling, deathly, spoken
introduction:
There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi
there is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe,
There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique,
From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Swaziland,
From all the hinterland of Southern and Central Africa.
This train carries young and old, African men
Who are conscripted to come and work on contract
In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg
And its surrounding metropolis, sixteen hours or more a day
For almost no pay.
Deep, deep, deep down in the belly of the earth
When they are digging and drilling that shiny mighty evasive stone,
Or when they dish that mish mesh mush food
into their iron plates with the iron shank
Or when they sit in their stinking, funky, filthy,
Flea-ridden barracks and hostels.
They think about the loved ones they may never see again because they
might have already been forcibly removed
From where they last left them
Or wantonly murdered in the dead of night
By roving, marauding gangs of no particular origin,
We are told. They think about their lands, their herds
That were taken away from them
With a gun, bomb, teargas and the cannon.
And when they hear that Choo-Choo train
They always curse, curse the coal train,
The coal train that brought them to Johannesburg.
Many African railway passengers, of course, were not ‘batch-registered’
recruited migrants loaded in groups. They were individuals, families, small
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groups of friends, etc., trying to get somewhere—to and from work, yes,
but to any number of other destinations—on their own. To the early railway authorities in South Africa, they presented quite a headache; there
were constant discussions of ‘irregularities’ involving African travel. These
included endless and numerous incidents of Africans travelling with
invalid tickets or none at all, taking the wrong trains and missing the right
ones, or ‘overrunning’ the stated destination covered by their tickets.
Exasperated rail officials, like the SAR General Manager in 1933, chalked
this up to ‘simplicity of the native mind.’ Needless to say, this fit comfortably with prevailing white notions of African irrationality or stupidity, particularly when confronted with the products and practices of the industrial
world. Ronald Ellsworth has offered a convincing reappraisal, suggesting
that in a great many instances the Africans committing these ‘dumb
mistakes’—legally, petty fraud—were quite aware of what they were doing.
They knew that the limited railway staff had a difficult time monitoring
crowded trains, and took advantage of this—and of the fact that the mines
and industries had pressured the railways to offer ‘special native fares’ in
order to increase the flow of ‘voluntaries’. In theory these had to be used
on the ‘native labour trains’: given the conditions we have seen aboard the
bombellas it is hardly surprising that people constantly attempted to use
the tickets to board third-class cars (which allowed non-whites) on regular
trains, and evidently often got away with it. Not only comfort but speed
was involved; in fact, Africans invoked the hated Pass Laws to justify their
behaviour, claiming that under those laws they must reach home by a certain date. As one observer conceded, ‘time, under the circumstances, is
everything to a native.’18 So much for a time-less African culture.
As Pirie postulates that railways made a high level of rural-urban oscillation feasible, so Ellsworth argues that railways facilitated urban segregation in South Africa’s large cities. The townships were surely not rural, but
spatially far enough removed to make the rails critical to inter-urban
movement. And in fact he gives us a rare glimpse into African use of rails
for transport of goods, rather than people, in such a metropolis. The example involves none other than the fabled Zulu washermen (Amawasha)
immortalised by Charles van Onselen some time ago.19 Forced from
Johannesburg’s city centre in 1906 and relocated to Klipspruit, 13 miles
18 Ellsworth, ‘The simplicity’, 77.
19 C. Van Onselen, ‘Amawasha: The Zulu washermen’s guild of the Witwatersrand,
1890–1914,’ Studies in the social and economic history of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, vol. 2,
New Ninevah (Johannesburg, 1982).
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southwest, the washermen obviously faced quite a challenge serving
their former customers. The railways offered a concessionary rate of 6d
per 200 lb. bundle for a single washerman. Quickly there emerged a pattern of several different men’s bundles being combined, and the weight
somehow misrepresented—the record ‘200 lb. Bundle’ came in at 513 lbs.
Such was the demand for the washermen’s services, however, that the railways largely turned a blind eye. In sum, Ellsworth argues that both regionally and locally, Africans’ proclivity toward so-called petty fraud was a
rational response to new, and decidedly oppressive, realities—realities
the railways themselves symbolised. In any case, the problem was not
‘backwardness’; quite the reverse, according to one station master: ‘the
Natives beat by far the White people in endeavouring to do the Department
down, at least the Natives of Klipspruit who are an advanced set.’20
Fig. 6.3 First train to arrive at Victoria Falls, 24 April 1904. Group includes Harold
Pauling and his daughter Blanche (Source: A.H. Croxton, Railways of Rhodesia,
David & Charles Publisher, 1973, p. 133)
20 Ellsworth, ‘The simplicity’, 79.
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Central African Railways
Let us move the discussion back to Central Africa, to Zambia and
Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesias. Consider the late Yvonne Vera’s masterly novel Butterfly Burning. Although the railway is not so central as in
Sembene’s book, the story is set in the late 1940s in Bulawayo, the headquarters and absolute heart of the Rhodesia Railways system. It is about
characters of an earlier generation, trying to find their way in the big city.
In chapter eight Vera gives us a vivid and memorable account of getting to
the city by train, and of the life of the station, the entry and exit point. The
chapter opens:
Nothing has more music in it than trains.
The ease of movement, sweeping over the ground through the din and
smoke and loud engines, the steam hissing into the sky and the fires
blazing.
So they get on to a train and find themselves in the city. It is not possible to
move freely through the closely guarded train and into the curtained
coaches, through its entire wailing sound, the whistle blazing and tearing
the air like paper. The stay in their Fourth Class coaches where there are
golden brown benches fixed to the floor of the train, and where single mothers creep under the benches clutching their three-week-old infants whom
they fold fondly on raised knees and bowed chests so they can suck some
tenderness from their bodies. Whenever the train comes to an abrupt stop
only the iron pedestals of the benches, and human feet, catch and hold them
down. There is no light.21
It is a mixed train, carrying people, coal, oranges, cotton, sunflower seeds;
‘the smell of tobacco rolled into massive bales, and cattle ready for abattoirs. The smoke slides down the windows like a solid rain.’22
Earlier, back in the countryside, there had been the decision to make
the journey. At the siding, Salisbury is one way, Bulawayo the other:
The decision is not easy. It is best to watch the train for several days while it
sweeps in both directions, first of course to find courage to get on it, watch it
swing to and fro, then simply leap on it without checking which way it is now
heading. Seeing it standing still with the doors and window open is enough
to excite courage, and if it is morning, to turn the head back to see the dazzling tail of smoke blacken the sky is a miracle which makes you ponder, not
what kind of sorrow is ahead, but what kind of sorrow has already died.23
21 Y. Vera, Butterfly burning (Harare, 1998), 43.
22 Vera, Butterfly burning, 43.
23 Vera, Butterfly burning, 44.
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If for Pirie the train was a ‘rolling compound’, Vera expands the comparison: ‘The city is like the train. It too is churning smoke in every direction,
and when looked at closely, it too is moving.’24 Her city is tough, but somehow irresistible. Like Masekela’s migrants, ‘they curse and blame the
trains,’ but ‘then cling even more to the city.’25 Even without prospects,
‘getting back on the train in order to go back to an earlier safety feels like
failure, like letting go.’ Yet they sense that they will return home, someday,
for ‘they are here to gather a story about the city.’26 They yearn for something concrete to take back home—the proof.
As Ellsworth’s passengers illegally rode the trains, Vera’s city poor illegally occupy the station waiting room. Periodically the railway guards
flush them out, ‘but [they] return one by one. They go to the edges of the
city but come back. There is nowhere else but the waiting-room.’27 If this
rings a familiar bell, does it not sound like the urban sweeps of the old
white regimes, or Mugabe’s ‘Operation Murambatsvina’? And again, darkness. At night there is no light in the waiting room except when trains
pass, or in the wee hours, ‘dangling like pendulums, hand-held lamps from
the men inspecting the tracks, moving slowly, up and down, dancing like
fireflies.’28 Finally, Vera provides an echo of Dickens’ monster:
Then the ground trembles like an earthquake as the train approaches. The
hand placed flat on the floor of the waiting-room feels the ground pound like
a heartbeat. The train finally is coming. And those who have not found a
place along the benches soon learn to sleep through that frenzied beat. The
nights are dark and stale with breathing and the congestion of unwashed
and hungry bodies. Even here, a child is born.29
In Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, there are some tantalising hints of the
insinuation of railways into popular culture. The anthropologist Elizabeth
Colson recalls seeing in Chona Village of Southern Province, around 1949
or 1950, a performance by a famous local woman dancer, ‘Binacat’, of a
dance called njanji or citima. Njanji comes from the English ‘engine’, and
citima, like Masekela’s stimela, is an adaptation of the English ‘steam’ or
‘steam engine’—both are Tonga terms referring to trains or railways. As
recently as 2010 Colson encountered a woman in Chona who also ‘remembered it [the train dance] vividly and what a wonderful dancer the woman
24
25
26
27
28
29
Vera, Butterfly burning, 45.
Vera, Butterfly burning, 44.
Vera, Butterfly burning, 45.
Vera, Butterfly burning, 47.
Vera, Butterfly burning, 46.
Vera, Butterfly burning, 46.
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kenneth p. vickery
was.’30 The dance was an example of what in Tonga culture is known as a
masabe dance. Masabe are alien spirits: ‘an invading power or force that
makes its victim ill until mollified by the performance of a dance drama in
which the victim acts out the wishes of the invading spirit and comes to
terms with it and is thereby cured.’31 Examples of masabe include ‘a railway train, airplane, soldiers, ballroom dance, angels, Japanese, cannibals,
or a species of animal.’32 Both Colson and Bonnie Keller note that masabe
constitute a new spirit category, which arrived in the earlier twentieth
century; in Keller’s words they ‘generally represented Tonga reaction to
prominent aspects of colonial rule.’33 And, we might add, a reaction to
industrial technology, in the form of railways (and later airplanes), which
of course were associated with colonialism. Colson also states that the
Tonga word masabe is clearly a cognate with the Shona mashave, a similar
spirit category, suggesting that possession by such alien things as railways
had a wider currency in the region.
A more mundane danger from railways is reflected in a schoolchildren’s
song related by Friday Mufuzi of the Livingstone Museum.34 Here is the
song, which he learned in the Lozi language of western Zambia and
Livingstone as a child, just after independence in 1964, together with
Mufuzi’s translation and commentary:
Balikani, Balikani, lukene sikolo (Friends Friends, let’s go to school)
Leading voice
Kamuso lukataba (Tomorrow we shall be happy) Refrain
Mwana (The child) Leading voice
Yasakeni sikolo (Who does not go to school) Refrain
Mwana (The child) Leading voice
Uka nyandela mwabukuwa (Will suffer in an urban area) Refrain
Mwana (The child) Leading voice
Nyanji ikamupuma (The rail line will cut him) Refrain
Mwana (The Child) Leading voice
Ikamupuma Lizoho (It will cut his hand) Refrain
Wengu,wengu,wengu weeeee (Cut, cut, cut, Cutieeee) [This refers to the
sound produced during the cutting process]. This part is sung by all while
30 Elizabeth Colson, Personal communications, 30 November 2010 and 7 March 2011.
I thank her.
31 E. Colson, Tonga religious life in the twentieth century (Lusaka, 2006), 57.
32 Colson, Tonga religious life, 58.
33 B. Keller, ‘Contemporary Tonga urban diviners’, C.S. Lancaster and K.P. Vickery (eds.),
The Tonga-speaking peoples of Zambia and Zimbabwe: Essays in honor of Elizabeth Colson
(Lanham, Maryland, 2007), 159.
34 Friday Mufuzi personal communication, 14 April 2011. I thank him.
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Fig. 6.4 First passenger train from Umtali on opening of Mashonaland railway to
Salisbury in May 1899 (Source: A.H. Croxton, Railways of Rhodesia, David &
Charles Publisher, 1973, p. 83)
each one moved his/her right hand to and fro on the left hand in reference
to a sharp blade cutting the hand. End of song
It is interesting to observe, perhaps, that in the song one aspect of the
‘new’ reality—modern schools—is invoked as a defence against another—
railways, and maybe urban life in general.
Railways and Industrial Work Discipline in Southern Africa
The industrial revolution was not just about machines, of course. It was
about changes in the organisation and the experience of work. In many
parts of the world the railways constituted the first sites of these new work
cultures. As Walter Licht says of the United States, railwaymen were ‘the
first American workers in large-scale, corporately owned, bureaucratically
managed work organizations.’35 In scale, complexity, and geographical
range, the railways’ only real ancestors were large armies.36
35 W. Licht, Working for the railroad: The organization of work in the nineteenth century
(Princeton, 1983), xiv.
36 Licht, Working for the railroad, 4.
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kenneth p. vickery
If in South Africa the Kimberley mines were the first large-scale, industrial age enterprise, and thus as de Kiewiet told us long ago ‘the cradle and
testing ground of [future] social and economic policy,’37 in the Rhodesias
that honour fell to the railways. By 1930 the Rhodesia Railways employed
around 4,500 white workers and over 18,000 blacks. Nothing else came
close until the Copperbelt development from the 1930s onward. Even then,
Rhodesia Railways remained the region’s largest single employer; although
the numbers above decreased for a time during the Great Depression, by
the 1940s and 1950s they were even higher.
The issue of work discipline per se, of course, hardly originates with the
industrial revolution. It is as old as humanity itself. How do you get
others—or indeed, yourself—to carry out the work necessary to complete
the task? This applies to parents, to farmers, to slave drivers, to
shopkeepers—none of them parts of large bureaucratic organisations. In
theory work discipline involves both the carrot and the stick—rewards
and punishments. In practice it has often tilted radically toward one or the
other. One difference which comes with the industrial age is the sheer
number of workers involved. Another is the higher degree of synchronisation required, often imposed by the new machines themselves—the
startup of the conveyor belt, the lowering of the car down the mine shaft
by the winding engine, the departure of the train.
Hence the attention often given to changing concepts of time: timediscipline, time-sense, even time-thrift. One of the more influential articles of the past half-century is E.P. Thompson’s ‘Time, work-discipline, and
industrial capitalism’, published in 1967. In it he contrasts the ‘natural’ and
‘irregular’ rhythms of pre-industrial, largely rural life with those of the
industrial age. In the first there is task- as opposed to time-orientation.
The pattern was ‘one of alternate bouts of intense labour and idleness’
especially to the degree that ‘men were in control of their own working
lives’38 (independent peasants, for instance, or professors facing paper
deadlines). This gives way to a clock-based regularity, in which closely calculated intervals of time determine the value of the labour: the hourly,
weekly, or monthly wage. At first imposed, this time-sense, as well as concepts like ‘devotion to duty’ gradually can become internalised, abetted by
the puritanical messages of church and school.39
37 C.W. de Kiewiet, A history of South Africa: Social and economic (Oxford, 1941), 90.
38 E.P. Thompson, ‘Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present,
38 (1967), 73.
39 A side plea: a history of clocks and watches in Africa would be most worthwhile.
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Railways in fact were largely responsible for the standardisation of
time and time zones in the modern world. Before, even towns short
distances from each other were minutes apart in their ‘official’ times. The
railways literally gave us Greenwich Mean Time.40 The predecessor of the
Association of American Railroads was called ‘The American Time
Convention.’41 Some have suggested that trains had quite a wide cultural
impact concerning time. Consider Thoreau’s musings, mid-nineteenth
century:
They come and go with such regularity and precision, and their whistles can
be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one wellregulated institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved
somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk
and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office?42
(As an American who occasionally rides the trains, I can tell you that such
precision is long gone). The railway timetable becomes the central directing text, the raison d’être, for the whole enterprise, and signifies the arrival
of time-discipline.
To what extent do we find an industrial age work culture, including
its disciplinary and time-based elements, on the Rhodesia Railways?
Perhaps we could start with timetables themselves. Especially early on,
partly—but only partly—due to shortages of needed material (including
rolling stock) and skilled manpower, reality fell considerably short of the
ideal. ‘To run a time-table’, recalled one railwayman, ‘would have been
an achievement analogous to breaking a Cape to Croydon air record.’43 In
fact, the white train crews were known to carry off ‘extended train stops’
in small towns to enjoy parties and dances. One driver regularly let his
train simmer in the sun on the Shurugwi line while enjoying a game of
billiards at the local hotel.44 Such episodes echo Thompson’s recounting
of the persistence of older, leisurely habits—taking ‘Saint Monday’ off to
carouse, for instance—which exasperated managers in industrialising
England. In other ways too the system was more relaxed: according to
40 Schivelbusch, The railway journey, 49–50.
41 Licht, Working for the railroad, 263.
42 Cited in Licht, Working for the railroad, 79. Originally cited in S. Holbrook, The story
of American railroads (New York, 1947).
43 J. Lunn, Capital and labour on the Rhodesian railway system, 1888–1947 (London, 1997), 82.
44 E.D. Hamer, Sidelines: A collection of incidents, accidents and anecdotes relating to the
railways of Zimbabwe in days gone by (Bulawayo, 1985), 3.
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kenneth p. vickery
the late H.L. Savory of Monze, white farmers were permitted to flag down
and stop trains for 20 minutes in order to on-load the farmer’s produce.45
Thompson claims that as industrial culture matures, ‘as the new timediscipline is imposed, so the workers begin to fight, not against time, but
about it.’46 This rings true on the Rhodesia Railways. The white railwaymen, many with experience from Britain, constantly wrangled with management over time issues, through their unions, the Rhodesia Railways
Workers Union and the Amalgamated Engineering Union. 182 hours maximum per month; each-day-to-stand-by-itself-for-purposes-of-overtime—
the issues took up days in contract negotiation and conciliation, and many
painfully boring pages in the transcripts. The African railwaymen, many of
whom came directly from rural backgrounds, fit even better Thompson’s
notion of a shift between generations. It is not accidental that the greatest
African railway strike in the region’s colonial history, that of 1945, began
with a dispute over overtime in the goods sheds. The men involved would
have been the second or third generation of Africans exposed to the rails.
To borrow Thompson’s phrasing, ‘they had accepted the categories of their
employers and learned to fight back within them. They had learned their
lesson, that time is money, only too well.’47 As the African workers organised their own unions, culminating in the Railway African Workers Union
in the 1950s, they too consistently fought battles over time.
Was there a ‘railway culture’ among Rhodesian railwaymen which
attracted them and offered incentives, the ‘carrots’ in establishing work
discipline? There is abundant evidence that this was true for a great many
white rail workers. As Licht found in the American case, ‘discipline was
self-engendered. Railroading offered a life of adventure, personal fulfillment, and camaraderie and the intrinsic rewards of such labor cannot be
minimized.’48
In his stimulating analysis of this Rhodesian white railwayman’s culture, Lunn follows the pioneering study of Frank McKenna on Britain’s rail
labour, by starting with the organisation of work itself. What may appear
to be a contradiction lay at its heart. The nature of the enterprise, and not
least the enormous dangers involved, required absolute discipline, a chain
of command, the following of orders. It is not a coincidence that so many
railway managers—in Rhodesia and elsewhere—were former military
45
46
47
48
Interview with H.L. Savory, 20 February 1974.
Thompson, ‘Time, work-discipline’, 85.
Thompson, ‘Time, work-discipline’, 86.
Licht, Working for the railroad, 125.
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commanders. Yet iron discipline is not necessarily the same as close supervision. Railwaymen—white ones, that is—were granted spaces, ‘bailiwicks’, McKenna calls them, where they largely worked on their own, or
directing Africans while not being directed themselves. The extreme
example, perhaps, was the isolated ganger, maintaining his ‘length’ of rail
line from his simple cottage, invariably described as ‘lonely’. The key to
resolving the contradiction was the internalisation of discipline. As Lunn
puts it:
The railways recognised, often perforce, the desire of individuals and groups
to establish a little elbow room at work. They also recognised that the concession of ‘space’ and a degree of autonomy could be harnessed so as to substitute up to a point for their lack of control over many spheres of work. In
one sense, the railways could channel a white worker’s pride in his job into a
feeling of obligation.49
In McKenna’s view, a crucial source of the loyalty to railway work, and
even (although strained) to railway companies, was ‘the unprecedented
way in which the owners handed over the tools of production to the workers, thus establishing a proprietary interest in the care and maintenance of
the equipment.’50 In the Rhodesias this was seen in the shop artisan’s careful handling and storage of his implements. Perhaps no employees showed
it more than the enginemen, that is, the drivers and firemen. For in the
early days, in the Rhodesias as elsewhere, the locomotives were assigned
to a single crew, which worked only that locomotive. Lunn notes the offduty hours these men spent cleaning and polishing the engines; all in the
effort, in the words of one driver, ‘to create a jeweler’s shop on wheels for
natives and cattle to feast their vacant gaze on.’51 Hamer describes men
affixing propellers and stars, painting and burnishing the locomotives,
and giving them affectionate nicknames, ‘Popeye’, ‘Batman’, ‘Old Buck’,
‘Jumbo’. Some ‘were fanatical about the appearance of ‘their’ engines.’52
The experience of the most famous Rhodesian railwayman of them all,
Roy Welensky, reflected this ‘proprietary interest’, and he worked long
enough to see it eroded by changing management practice. At the age of
80, he could remember the numbers (painted on the sides of the cabine)
49 J. Lunn, ‘Capital and labour on the Rhodesian railway system, 1890–1939’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Oxford University, 1986), 203.
50 F. McKenna, The railway workers, 1840–1970 (London, 1980), 41.
51 Lunn, Capital and Labour, 83–4.
52 Hamer, Sidelines, 18.
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kenneth p. vickery
of the engines he had fired over 60 years previous.53 As soon as he became
a mainline fireman, he was:
allocated to a driver and we had an engine. And there generally used to be a
hell of a row if we didn’t work her and her alone (…) What they call pooling
today was unknown in those days. Every driver was allocated an engine.
‘When he slept, the engine slept’ kind of business (…) And it made a tremendous difference in the quality of the engines.
The ‘pooling’ he referred to, introduced late in his career, was a quite different arrangement, whereby locomotives were kept in nearly continuous
operation, and crews would change constantly:
many men hated it. I disliked pooling intensely because you never knew
what you were getting and taking out. And there were always people who
would skimp the job and you had to be damned careful (…) In the handling
of a pooled engine, you’d have to be very much more on the ball than you
would an engine that you handled regularly.54
Up to the time of his death, Welensky kept in his home the ‘feeder’ (oil can
with a long, narrow spout) he began using on ‘his’ engines in 1928 or so. It
was bronzed for him by his son.
In McKenna’s scheme, railway work provided an arena for men to meet
their ‘need for acceptance and the desire to belong and to be seen to
belong to a differential group.’55 On the Rhodesia Railways, there developed a pride in being a community apart, of being inside the organisation
and enterprise on which everything, it seemed, depended. As Lunn notes,
‘both management and white labour referred to non-railway employment as ‘outside’ employment.’56 Related to this, and allied with notions of
empire and race, was a consciousness that railways and railwaymen were
carrying on the ‘pioneer’ spirit, ‘opening up’ and ‘developing’ Africa. Those
who let down the pioneer side, through want of strength, manliness, or
character, were not worthy of it.
Welensky once articulated this ethos, later in his career, in a bitter letter
to W.D. Dawson, Chief Superintendent of the Transportation Department
at Broken Hill. The two had clashed over disciplinary action taken against
another engineman, whom Welensky defended. ‘You, of course’, he wrote
to Dawson, ‘have resented the fact that I have considerable influence with
53
54
55
56
Interview with Welensky, 26 February 1987.
Interview with Welensky, 16 September 1988.
McKenna, The railway workers, 41.
Lunn, Capital and Labour, 84.
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the men and that you never became a Rhodesia Railwayman.’57 When
asked what he meant by the last phrase, Welensky replied: ‘Well, he didn’t.
He never got the spirit of the Rhodesia Railways (…) He always remained
a foreigner’58—not because Dawson was a South African (many railwaymen were), but because he lacked the ‘spirit’ that should prevail ‘inside’.
Did any of this esprit de corps carry over to Africans working on the
Rhodesia Railways? There is little evidence that it did. The main reason, a
good one, is obvious: the job colour bar. In the railways workshops, apprentices became artisans, fitters, turners, etc. Firemen became drivers. The
reasonable expectation of promotion was one of the chief incentives
in the internalisation of discipline. All of these jobs were closed to Africans.
The railway job colour bar was not a legal one, in statute or contract, but
the railway management never seriously considered breaching it until the
late 1950s. (Welensky, in fact, as Federal Prime Minister, was critically
involved in the negotiations.) Although they learned many skills on the
job, the vast majority of black railwaymen were never paid above unskilled
levels, which of course were a tiny fraction of what their white colleagues
got. In this situation, with no prospect of taking on greater responsibility,
it is hardly surprising that most black railwaymen felt less emotional commitment to their work, or that turnover levels were high: right into the
early 1950s, over half the workforce turned over each year. It may be, as
Grillo has argued based on his study of Uganda, that ‘all railwaymen (…)
share a common interest and experience derived from the industrial
milieu in which they operate.’ For instance, he notes, there emerged a
common language utilising rail terminology—a drunk walks like he has
‘an off-gauge load.’59 It would be instructive to find parallel examples from
the colonial Rhodesias. There are occasional hints of heroic devotion to
duty, so common in the lore of other systems. Hamer ends his little collection of anecdotes with the story of an African railwayman, having been
bitten by a snake, instructing his wife and child to ‘man’ the pumphouse
works while he desperately bicycled for treatment; they did, and damaging flooding is prevented.60 A bit of a roundabout example, for sure, but
perhaps there is more out there.
57 Rhodes House, Oxford, Welensky Papers: Old filing system – Coffin 23, file 1, Box 244.
Emphasis added.
58 Interview with Welensky, 22 August 1988.
59 R.D. Grillo, African railwaymen: Solidarity and opposition in an East African labour
force (Cambridge, 1973), ch. 2.
60 Hamer, Sidelines.
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kenneth p. vickery
Fig. 6.5 Beira Railway Falcon 4-4-0 no. 24 with six-wheel tender after repaint
(many white enginemen on the railways took great care in looking after ‘their’
engines) (Source: A.H. Croxton, Railways of Rhodesia, David & Charles Publisher,
1973, p. 66)
We are inclined to think of large, bureaucratic organisations as impersonal, faceless, cold. And to some extent that is certainly true: most workers in such outfits will never meet the ultimate boss, unlike the way people
knew the parent, the small business owner, the farmer, the slave-owner.
And yet when it comes to the downside of discipline, punishment, we
again face a contradiction. On the United States railways, the greatest single issue—even more than time and wages—spurring worker organisation was the perceived, and quite personal, arbitrariness and abuse at the
hands of local supervisors and foremen. In 1895 a witness before the
United States Strike Commission stated ‘that they were almost in a helpless condition to stand against the oppression of the petty officials, and
the petty officials took advantage of that feeling and deviled the men, just
as their particular temperament at the moment led them to do.’61
61 Licht, Working for the railroad, 255.
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To some extent this applies to white railwaymen in the Rhodesias. It is
not an exaggeration to say that Welensky’s first political base was centred
on his skill in defending men charged with rules violations as their socalled ‘prisoner’s friend.’ But imagine the situation for black rail workers.
No ‘bailiwick’ for them. Almost all worked directly under a white foreman;
indeed, virtually any white railwaymen could assume he had the right to
give orders to an African; not infrequently such orders might include personal errands having little or no connection with the job or the railway
enterprise at all. This ‘right’ should really be seen as part of the white worker’s bailiwick. To be blunt: when a generous dose of colonial settler racism
is injected into the scene, the result was doubly onerous for the African
employees. As black rail workers and their unions began to flex muscle
from the 1940s onwards, the record became rife with their complaints
about arbitrary and abusive actions on the part of white workers, ‘just as
their particular temperament at the moment led them to do.’ This partly
accounted for the high rate of African turnover, through dismissals or resignations on the spur of the moment. And this included not only verbal
abuse but, often and quite specifically, physical assault—what one African
union official delicately called ‘human touch incidents.’62
Some examples. In 1945 ‘carriage cleaner boys’ wrote to the Railways
General Manager to complain of their supervisor: ‘We want to know
because you put the rules, why we are hits (sic) (…) [he] treat us very bad
last week (…) came with his stick and hitting us.’63 In 1952 300 African
railwaymen gathered at a local railway African Affairs Department office
to protest about a Mr. Harris in the works yard and a Mrs. Jones (one of the
few females of any race employed on the lines) in the station. One after
another spoke up, with some noting they were ‘continually referred to as
baboons’ by Harris, while Jones made a point of walking past them holding her nose.64 Later in the decade some ‘bedding boys’ wrote the General
Manager that ‘we are not treated by the right way or hand by our supervisor, monkeys, and dogs are more better to him than ourselves (…) His
words are of scolding and swearing us as well as our wives, children and
parents.’65
62 National Archives of Zambia (NAZ) HM 56, A.H. Mwanza (General Secretary of
Railways African Workers Union) to Chief Officer of African Affairs Department, 2 March
1960.
63 NAZ HM 56, Carriage cleaner boys to GM, 20 June 1945.
64 NAZ HM 56, Memorandum by R.C.N. Eiglaar, Area Controller, 28 February 1952.
65 NAZ HM 56, Bedding boys to GM, n.d. but 1957 or 1958.
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As early as 1949 the head of the system’s African Affairs Department
(AAD) had warned the General Manager about the number of assaults by
Europeans ‘who are too ready with their fists’ and that such ‘manhandling
of an African by a European arouses a deep resentment, not only in the
person so assaulted, but among all other Africans who get to hear of it.’66
He urged the General Manager to issue a circular, stressing the railway
administration’s condemnation of these outbursts and its insistence
that disciplinary procedures laid down in the African Staff Code be followed. The Code itself was seen by the African unions as a relic of earlier
‘Masters and Servants’ legislation, though certainly preferable to the spontaneous meting out of punishment by individual whites. And indeed the
General Manager would issue several such circulars over the next decade
or more.
But apparently with little effect. In 1958, the RAWU general secretary,
Knight Maripe, sent a remarkable jeremiad to the AAD head. In it he conceded that the administration, as evidenced by its circulars, may not
approve of the ‘abusive language’ or ‘numerous incidents of assault which
thrive so successfully in the Railway Industry: And the victim being the
African.’ However, official disapproval just amounted to words; given the
structure of the situation, such behaviour could be expected:
How on earth can you give all powers that there are in the world and still
expect him to keep his head! How on earth can you give protection to an
individual against his potential competitor and still expect him to maintain
harmonious relationship with his opponent!
The white railway worker, said Maripe, was in a sense both employee
and employer, with powers over Africans like both policeman and
magistrate—the bailiwick again: ‘in practice the African employee is at
the mercy of the lowest European employee in the Railway Industry who,
by virtue of his colour, represents employing departments.’ This was
‘bound to breed illfeeling, and in this case, explosive racial tension. By this
set-up the workers have been divided up into hostile and rigidly seperate
[sic] castes.’ Unless things changed and soon, there was ‘no hope of amity
between the two. What is more the gulf widens every day that dawns.’
Maripe included a not-so-veiled threat: all this for the African ‘is burning
into his soul the conviction that he has no future in the Railway industry
66 NAZ HM 56, E.M.B. West (Chief Officer, African Affairs Department) to GM, 25
August 1949.
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except what he can wrest from the unwilling white man by force, direct or
indirect.’67
The general manager himself, W.S. Pegrum, replied. He was not amused.
He took ‘a very serious view’ of these ‘immoderate and irresponsible’ statements, which he found ‘gravely provocative.’68 In a follow-up, Maripe
refused to back down: ‘What you have regarded as immoderate and irresponsible are the astringent truths about the actual position (…) truths
which are hard for you to take because they ask to strip off illusions which
are for the few privileged their comfort.’69 The often caustic Pegrum scribbled in hand on Maripe’s letter that further reply was a ‘waste of time and
paper. His mind is warped, that is if he has one at all.’70
But despite his dismissive tone, Pegrum and the railways knew they had
a problem. And like virtually everything else in the late 1950s and early
1960s, it was a problem intertwined with the larger political arena—
specifically, with the crescendo of African nationalism (and resistance to
it) in the region. Consider a 1960 report from very senior railway officials
who held special meetings in Broken Hill after a series of incidents, including physical confrontations, in the locomotive shed—Welensky’s old
haunt. They were again trying to reign in white railwaymen, who invariably cited ‘provocation’ and ‘insolence’ from their ever-more-assertive
African staff. The gravity of the situation was intensified, the officials
repeatedly stated, by ‘the prevailing political climate,’ ‘the political atmosphere,’ ‘political viewpoints.’71 In his response to the report the AAD chief
noted that ‘due to current political trends’ race relations in the system had
‘deteriorated to a serious degree.’ The abuse must cease ‘before it explodes
into what could easily be very serious and large-scale disturbances.’72 In
another memorandum he told the General Manager that it was ‘quite
apparent’ that the General Manager’s circulars ‘are being ignored and
European staff are taking matters in their own hands.’73
Indeed, in the dying days of the Central African Federation the gloves
were being taken off in many quarters, including the Rhodesia Railways,
which as a pan-Rhodesian operation (and Welensky’s former employer)
67 NAZ HM 56, Maripe to Chief Officer of African Affairs Department, 14 August 1958.
68 NAZ HM 56, Pegrum to Maripe, 6 September 1958.
69 NAZ HM 56, Maripe to Pegrum, 15 October 1958.
70 NAZ HM 56, Maripe to Pegrum, 15 October 1958.
71 NAZ HM 56, Joint Report on a Special Trip to Broken Hill to Deal with a Fracas in the
Loco Sheds between European and African Employees, 29 February 1960.
72 NAZ HM 56, Chief Officer, AAD to GM, 5 March 1960.
73 NAZ HM 56, Chief Officer, AAD to GM, 7 March 1960.
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kenneth p. vickery
was in many ways a Federation symbol. In the wake of the Broken Hill
disturbances the head of the African union reportedly counselled members ‘to retaliate physically if struck or abused’ and ‘when necessary, to
conduct a series of token strikes.’74 As tensions everywhere peaked, incidents straining ‘industrial discipline’ hardly diminished on the railways.
By 1964, with Federation dissolved, Zambian independence imminent,
and the Rhodesia Railways about to be broken up, RAWU called a five day
strike in Livingstone specifically to demand the removal of a white engine
driver with a particularly nasty reputation.75 High officials in the new
African-led government promised that soon such folk would be replaced
with trained Africans. Industrial discipline would, in theory at least, enter
a new era.
The Rhodesia Railways represented a new kind of enterprise, employing many thousands of Africans in the twentieth century, a scale never
seen before. Earlier, Africans had often faced harsh reprisals for any perceived error on smaller, more intimate operations like farms and small
mines. But if I may end with one more popular song: for many African
railwaymen, it was a case of ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’76
Older, cruder patterns of enforcing work discipline persisted.
74 NAZ HM 56, Joint Report on a Special Trip to Broken Hill to Deal with a Fracas in the
Loco Sheds between European and African Employees, 29 February 1960.
75 NAZ HM 56.
76 The song is The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ (1971).
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PART III
ADVERTISING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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ADVERTISING, CONSUMING MANUFACTURED GOODS AND
CONTRACTING COLONIAL HEGEMONY ON THE ZAMBIAN
COPPERBELT, 1945–1964*
Walima T. Kalusa
Introduction
After the Second World War, European traders and foreign-based firms
increasingly advertised manufactured goods in the print media controlled by the colonial state, European missionaries and mining companies
in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Of singular importance among the
media in which such advertisements appeared was Nshila, a radio magazine published fortnightly by the state for ‘progressive’ Africans on the
Zambian Copperbelt and in other urban centres.1 Most of the advertisements in the magazine not merely projected imported goods ranging from
wrist-watches, European-style clothing and soap, to bicycles, cars, gramophones and several other symbols of modernity. They also depicted ‘progressive’ nuclear African families consuming these commodities in a
Western fashion.
One of advertisements projecting such images that featured in Nshila
with unrivalled regularity in the 1950s and early 1960s was a photograph of
bottled Castle lager. The photograph portrays a smartly dressed, and most
likely Western-educated, African husband together with his attractive wife
and son on a picnic on the bank of an unnamed but picturesque river.
Even though most black families could ill-afford to buy cars at that time,
the family sits behind their brand new car. Its boot is open, revealing a
wide assortment of bottled drinks and foodstuffs. Other drinks and food
are on a camp-table, where the family is eating.2 As the wife munches a
banana and her son what looks like a piece of cake, the husband sips
* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference CART IV: ‘The history of consumption and social change in Central Africa, 1840–1960’, Chisamba, Zambia,
27–29 August 2010. I am most grateful to the conference participants who made valuable
comments on the paper.
1 The forerunner of Nshila was a radio magazine called African Listener, whose publication seems to have commenced in the late 1940s. I have failed to trace copies of the latter
magazine.
2 Nshila, 117 (1962), 7; Nshila, 129 (1963), 7.
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Castle beer. Prominently in front of the family in the picture is a bottle of
the lager and the following caption: ‘When you’ve found the perfect place
for your picnic and the food is spread out- that’s the time for Castle beer.
It’s the finest, most satisfying beer of all. (…) Cold Castle [is] the perfect
beer for every time of the year.’3
Nshila carried several other reincarnations of this advertisement. In
early 1958, it featured yet another ‘progressive’, urban-based African family
out in the countryside. The family has just stopped their big car for refreshments. Sitting in front of the vehicle is a man appropriately dressed for the
occasion in a checked shirt with his spouse in a blouse and jacket. Both are
drinking Castle beer. Adoringly looking at the parents are their two beautiful daughters – one of whom holds a basket full of imported drinks and
fruits.4 A similar depiction in Nshila is, lastly, a line drawing of another
nuclear family in which the husband, sharply clad in a lounge suit, plays
music on his Gallotone gramophone while sitting on a table with his
son. Behind father and son are the man’s wife and daughter similarly in
immaculately adorning dresses and happily dancing to the gramophone’s
music. To the right of the drawing is a large photograph of a new gramophone, whose caption cajoles African consumers to purchase and use this
‘wonderful’ instrument at ‘fashionable gatherings’ with friends, thus publicly declaring their elite status.5
The constant portrayal of nuclear African families consuming Western
manufactured goods on picnics, wearing modern-style clothing or owning
cars, gramophones and other markers of modernity in these and other
advertisements is emblematic of the fact that the adverts’ architects aimed
at more than securing a marketing space for Western commodities in
imperial Africa. By routinely projecting these icons of modernity in the
advertisements – and, by extension, excluding goods of local origin from
them – advertisers hoped to convince Africans of the superiority of manufactured goods over local commodities. In the same vein, they demonstrated their ardent belief that in order to forge viable markets for Western
commodities in extra-European settings, it was essential to inculcate in at
least a few local people Euro-Christian bourgeois family values, tastes and
leisure activities, such as picnicking and dancing to music played on gramophones. In this discourse of consumption, the colonised who acquired
these Western lifestyles would obediently follow a linear progression
3 Nshila, 118 (1962), 7; Nshila 129 (1963), 7. Emphasis in the original.
4 Nshila, 118 (1962), 7.
5 Nshila 11 (1958), 34.
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from jettisoning their ‘inferior’ material culture to embracing the allegedly
‘superior’ consumption culture of their colonial masters.6 Indeed, as
Timothy Burke convincingly argues for colonial Zimbabwe and South
Africa, the transfer of European values to the imperial periphery came to
be regarded by the authors of colonial advertisements as no less indispensable to creating markets for manufactured commodities in Africa
than to sustaining the profitability of Western entrepreneurship in the
continent.7
Scholars of the consumption of manufactured products in imperialised
communities, widely ranging in time and space, have aptly demonstrated
that colonisers saw the transfer of metropolitan values and habits of consumption to imperialised societies as unproblematic.8 For, to these agents
of empire, modern goods together with the values underlying material
consumption in the metropole were inherently superior to those they
encountered outside Europe. They, therefore, assumed that the consumption of Western objects in colonial settings would naturally be followed by
the subordination of local values, tastes, and habits to those associated
with the consumption of goods in metropolitan contexts.9
In this discourse, successful marketing of manufactured objects in
extra-European societies was inextricable from the transfer of Western
lifestyles, habits and values to those societies. Such values and habits
could easily be exported to African colonies if the consumption of
goods there was relocated from the communal space to the domain of
the nuclear family, as was the case in the West since the nineteenth
century. It is not surprising, then, that most advertisements in Nshila
routinely cast the nuclear family as the most appropriate site of consumption. From this perspective, the magazine’s advertisements were indisputably part and parcel of the wider Western ‘civilising mission’ that
sought to refashion imperialised societies as well as their cultural practices in a European image. Through their advertisements, contemporary
advertisers, entrepreneurs and authorities aimed as much at recreating
the material culture of their colonial subjects as they sought to inscribe
6 My insight here derives from A. Mager, ‘The first decade of ‘European beer’ in apartheid South Africa: The state, the brewers and the drinking public, 1962–72’, Journal of
African history, 40 (1999), 367–88.
7 T. Burke, Lifebuoy men, Lux women: Commodification, consumption, and cleanliness in
modern Zimbabwe (London, 1996).
8 Burke, Lifebuoy men.
9 The view is informed by N. Thomas, Entangled objects: Exchange, material culture, and
colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge MA and London, 1991), Chapter 3. See also Burke,
Lifebuoy men.
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upon them Western values, without their subjects posing a threat to colonial power, as we shall see.
Historians today are certainly not oblivious to the imperialising agenda
implicit in colonial advertisements. In this vein, they are aware of the
efforts of European advertisers in Africa to undermine the indigenous
material culture, so as to convert the local people to the gospel of Western
consumption. But historians have generally been slow to explore how the
subjects of empire responded to the hegemonic discourse associated with
advertisements of manufactured goods in colonial settings. For their preoccupation has chiefly been to demonstrate how imperial rulers and
entrepreneurs invented and mobilised marketing techniques to produce
desire or need for imported commodities and to secure markets on the
imperial frontier.10 Similarly, other scholars have concentrated on illuminating the deleterious impact which imports of Western origin have had
on weak Third World economies in recent decades.11 In either case, this
academic scholarship throws insufficient light on the imaginative ways in
which people on the periphery of the Western empire in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries appropriated advertised goods to come to terms
with colonialism itself and, indeed, to subvert its power.12
There is little evidence that colonial subjects in Africa and beyond came
to see European commodity culture with its values as superior to their
own, even when they warmly embraced and avidly consumed modern
10 A good example here is Burke, Lifebuoy men.
11 For a polished critique of this scholarship, see K.T. Hansen, Salaula: The world of secondhand clothing in Zambia (Chicago and London, 2000).
12 For the ever burgeoning research industry on how Africans subverted hegemonic
intensions, embedded in colonial institutions including Christianity, education and medicine etc, see D. Maxwell, Christians and chiefs in Zimbabwe: A social history of the Hwesa
people, c.1870s-1990s (London, 1999); D. Peterson, Creative writing: Translation, book-keeping,
and the work of imagination in colonial Kenya (Portsmouth NH, 2004); P.M. Larson,
‘‘Capacities and modes of thinking: Intellectual engagement and subaltern hegemony in
the early history of Malagasy Christianity’, American historical review, 102:4 (1997), 969–
1002; W.T. Kalusa, ‘Language, medical auxiliaries, and the re-interpretation of missionary
medicine in colonial Mwinilunga, Zambia, 1922–51’, Journal of Eastern African studies, 1:1
(2007), 57–81; R.N. Hunt, A colonial lexicon of birth ritual, medicalization and mobility in the
Congo (Durham and London, 1999); S.P. Landau, The realm of the word: Language, gender
and Christianity in a Southern African kingdom (Portsmouth NH, 1995); A. Stoler and
F. Cooper, ‘Between metropole and colony: Rethinking a research agenda’, F. Cooper and
A.L. Stoler (eds.), Tensions of empire: Colonial culture in a bourgeois world (Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London, 1997); J. Rich, ‘Troubles at the office: Clerks, state authority and social
conflict in Gabon, 1920–1945’, Canadian journal of African studies, 1:1 (2004), 58–87; L.
Schuler, ‘Bridewealth, guns and other status symbols: Immigration and consumption in
colonial Doula’, Journal of African cultural studies, 16:2 (2003), 213–34; J. Gould, Localizing
modernity: Action, interests & association in rural Zambia (Helsinki, 1997), 199.
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advertising and consumption on the copperbelt
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goods. There is even less convincing evidence that their consumption of
imported goods resonated with the expectations of colonial rulers, advertisers or missionaries. To the contrary, observations by scholars of the consumption culture which evolved in urban localities across Southern Africa
after the Second World War indicate that the local consumption of
imported goods often occurred in ways that Westerners neither fathomed
nor controlled. For example, A.L. Epstein, a leading social anthropologist
who frequented African beer-halls at Roan Antelope mine on the Zambian
Copperbelt in the early 1950s to observe leisure activities and consumption habits among Africans, wrote that:
One’s first impressions on a visit to the Beer-Hall are apt to be confused amid
the constant clamour and jostling on all around. But, with repeated visits, a
pattern begins to emerge. Young men dressed in gaily-coloured open-necked
shirts and wearing cowboy hats, squat on the ground or move around strumming a guitar and singing the latest Copperbelt ‘hit-numbers’ (…) seek[ing]
the attention of Bakapenta (…) the ‘young ladies of the town’. Elsewhere a
group of Tribal Elders are sitting together, and complain of a member of
their tribe who has just bought a present of beer for an Urban Court Member
of another tribe. In another group, some of the town’s leading personalities,
all smartly dressed in lounge suits, are in a quiet conversation in English
with a well-known visitor from Kitwe or Lusaka. They gossip about personalities and discuss the political news, and they make arrangements for later
meetings in their private homes.13
It is obvious from these observations that African consumption of manufactured goods on the Copperbelt scarcely conformed to the Western lifestyles or habits inscribed in colonial advertisements. To young men in the
mining area, American cowboy hats, guitars and colourful shirts gave
them a leverage to attract the attention of ladies, and, most likely, to proclaim their own virility and masculinity.14 To traditional elders, presents
of industrially-brewed beer became a means to (re)construct cross-ethnic
relationships, even if not all elders approved of this. And Western-educated
African elites turned their proficiency in English and lounge suits into
markers of urban sophistication and social distance from the urban
rabble, and, as we shall see, into weapons with which to contest colonial
oppression and power. Thus, even though most advertisements in Nshila
routinely depicted ‘progressive’ Africans consuming manufactured
13 A.L. Epstein, Politics in an urban African community (Manchester, 1958), 9–10.
14 W.T. Kalusa, ‘Elders, young men, and David Livingstone’s ‘civilizing mission’: Revisiting the disintegration of the Kololo kingdom, 1853–1864’, International journal of African
historical studies, 42:1 (2009), 55–80.
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products in conformity with modern values and habits, the advertisements failed to erode their consumers’ capacity to read entirely new
meanings into the foreign commodities, to put them to new uses or,
indeed, to gain power from them.15
Moreover, although most advertisements in Nshila, as in other print
media, routinely projected married African women imbibing manufactured alcoholic beverages with their spouses and wearing modern
clothes, their presence in colonial drinking spaces and their sartorial habits often offended the sensibilities of their more socially-mobile African
husbands. Worried that their wives’ drinking habits and miniskirts, for
example, might compromise the male elites’ claim to social respectability
and leadership, Western-educated men on the copper mines, like their
counterparts across the sub-region, waged a furious campaign before and
after the Second World War to banish married women from drinking in
male-dominated spaces, to control their sexuality and their unsavoury
sartorial preferences.16 In this manner, the Western-educated elite wittingly or unwittingly mocked their colonial masters’ cultural agenda aimed
at inculcating in Africans the Western family ideology and habits linked to
metropolitan consumption of objects.
What all this amounts to, then, is that although the colonised quickly
took to consuming advertised commodities, there was a glaring disjuncture between how they consumed those commodities and the values that
their colonial masters and advertisers encoded in advertisements.17 This
paper, through its analysis of advertisements in Nshila, seeks to explicate
this disjuncture. Driven by the awareness that manufactured objects are
15 My insight here derives from Hunt, Colonial lexicon of birth, 189. See also her ‘Letterwriting, nursing men and bicycles in the Belgian Congo: Notes towards the social identity
of a colonial category’, R.W. Harms etc. (eds.), Paths toward the past: African historical
essays in honor of Jan Vansina (Atlanta GA, 1994), 187–210 and ‘Domesticity and colonialism
in Belgian Africa: Usumburu foyer social, 1946–1960’, Signs, 15:3 (1990), 447–74; Kalusa,
‘Elders, young men and David Livingstone’s ‘civilising mission’’.
16 The literature on issues raised here is vast. See, for example, M.O. West, ‘Liquor and
libido: ‘Joint drinking’ and the politics of sexual control in colonial Zimbabwe, 1920s-1950s’,
Journal of social history, 30:3 (1997), 645–67; P.M. Martin, ‘Contesting clothes in colonial
Brazzaville’, Journal of African history, 35 (1994), 401–26. For the post-colonial period, see
A. Wipper, ‘African women, fashion, and scapegoating’, Canadian journal of African history,
6:2 (1972), 329–49 and T. Burgess, ‘Cinema, bell bottoms and miniskirts: Struggles over
youth and citizenship in revolutionary Zanzibar’, International journal of African historical
studies, 35:2/3 (2002), 287–313.
17 See also D. Kallmann, ‘Projected moralities, engaged anxieties: Northern Rhodesia’s
reading publics, 1953–1964’, International journal of African historical studies, 32:1 (1999),
71–117.
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advertising and consumption on the copperbelt
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Fig. 7.1 Advertisement for Castle lager in Nshila (Source: National Archives of
Zambia, Lusaka)
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walima t. kalusa
‘socially constructed’ and possess their own biographies,18 and taking its
clue from the recent academic discourse that places a high premium on
the limits of imperial power,19 the paper attends to the imaginative ways
in which Africans on the colonial Zambian Copperbelt reversed the unilateral cultural and political agenda that their white rulers and advertisers
harnessed to the advertisements of manufactured commodities after the
Second World War. Whereas European advertisers mobilised advertisements to control how and where Africans consumed imported products,
the paper maintains that migrant workers on the Copperbelt creatively
transformed those very commodities into a means to (re)configure panethnic and gender relations, to forge urban identities, to mark social difference and, ultimately, to contest imperial power. Thus, far from being a
sharp weapon of cultural or political subjugation, as advertisers intended,
Western goods became an instrument through which imperial subjects
negotiated history, often in ways that colonial authorities and advertisers
neither expected nor controlled.
Advertising as a Marketing Strategy
The preponderance of advertising as a strategy for marketing commodities in post-1945 Zambia can perhaps best be comprehended against a
brief backdrop of the forces that thwarted the development of the manufacturing industry in the territory. First, from the early days of the colony
to the 1920s, British authorities in the territory enacted such debilitating
policies as taxation and labour migration, through which they sought to
transform the territory into a reservoir of cheap African labour for whiteowned capitalist ventures in more developed parts of Southern Africa,
rather than as a self-sufficient economic entity.20 Secondly, until well after
the Second World War, the authorities discouraged white immigration
into the colony. Thus, the white population in the colony remained meagre. Even as late as the 1950s when the colonial authorities started to
actively encourage white settlement in the territory, there were only about
18 See Hansen, Salaula, 13; and her ‘Transnational biographies and local meanings: Used
clothing practices in Lusaka’, Journal of Southern African studies, 21:1 (1995), 131–45; also
‘Second-hand clothing encounters in Zambia: Global and local histories’, Africa, 69:3
(1999), 343–65; Thomas, Entangled objects; Burke, Lifebuoy men.
19 See Footnote 12.
20 See L. Gann, A history of Northern Rhodesia: Early days to 1953 (New York, 1969).
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65,000 whites in the whole country.21 By discouraging white settlement in
the colony, the authorities denied the territory European expertise, capital and markets, which were indispensable to the development of manufacturing industries elsewhere on the continent after the Second World
War.22 On the other hand, the African population was equally just too
small. Standing at only two and a half million in the mid-1950s, it was also
too impoverished to create an elastic market for manufactured commodities.23 Compounding this situation were several other forces. These
included the lack of a communication infrastructure, the weakness of
local merchant/industrial capital in relation to that in neighbouring
Zimbabwe and South Africa, and, finally, the eagerness with which
authorities in colonial Zambia granted favourable trade/customs concessions to firms based in the latter two countries, often at the expense of
local manufacturers.24 Combined, these forces severely hampered the
development of a thriving manufacturing sector in the colony.
The emergence of the mining industry on Northern Rhodesia’s
Copperbelt after the 1920s did little to stimulate the secondary industry,
even though the mines created room for the marketing of some locallyproduced capital goods.25 The reliance on the mining industry by successive colonial regimes for revenue – a situation that persists to this day
in Zambia, with dire economic implications- created little impetus for
the expansion of other sectors of the economy. Thus, from as early as
the 1920s onwards, the copper industry continued to be the most dominant element in the economy, as is indicated by the following figures.
Between 1945 and 1953, copper exports alone accounted for an average
of 86.5% of the colony’s total exports, with other mineral exports adding
another 8.8%. Moreover, in the decade between 1954 and 1964, the mining
industry alone contributed an average of 46.5% to the gross domestic
product.26
The colony’s dependence on copper exports for revenue, coupled with
its debilitating policies, severely stifled the growth of the local manufacturing sector. As a sequel, the territory almost entirely depended on
21 Hansen, Salaula, 47.
22 See Burke, Lifebuoy men, Chapter 4.
23 Hansen, Salaula, 46–7.
24 Hansen, Salaula, 47.
25 R.E. Baldwin, Economic development and export: A study of Northern Rhodesia, 1920–
1960 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966).
26 These figures derive from Baldwin, Economic development, 35.
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imported manufactured goods to meet most of its requirements throughout the colonial period.27 This situation, scarcely reversed even after the
colony witnessed a considerable expansion of its secondary industry after
the Second World War, profoundly shaped the manner in which manufactured goods were locally marketed. Unlike in South Africa or colonial
Zimbabwe where intense competition for the African market between
manufacturers spurred far-reaching innovations in marketing research
and techniques in the aftermath of the war, the weak secondary sector in
colonial Zambia produced far fewer marketing innovations in the same
period. Indeed, most of the European entrepreneurs and firms operating
there restricted their marketing strategy to advertising commodities in
African-oriented newspapers and magazines, private or public. These
advertisements were mostly in the form of strip cartoons, line drawings
and photographs.28 Supplementing them were mail-order catalogues featuring goods ranging from wrist-watches, suits, shoes and shoe polish to
bags and toys. Among the foreign-based firms that sent catalogues to their
customers in the colony – sometimes offering them free post and packaging for purchases over £3 – were the United Watch Diamond Company in
South Africa, the Lennards Stores, J. Pick and Sons Ltd., and Oxendale, all
of which were based in the United Kingdom.29 Audio advertisements of
mostly toiletries and patent medicines, aired by the governmentcontrolled Federal Broadcasting Services in the late 1950s and the early
1960s, completed the list of advertisements of manufactured products destined for the African market.30
Karen Tranberg Hansen has observed that advertisements of manufactured products in Zambia before independence lacked an ‘imaginative
appeal’.31 True as her observation may be, it, nonetheless, obfuscates the
hegemonic discourse – couched in a modernising rhetoric – that informed
the advertisements of goods in most parts of Southern Africa after the
Second World War, a topic that Timothy Burke has so eloquently analysed.
As Burke insists, the architects of this discourse portrayed the existing
27 See Northern Rhodesia, Report of the commission of inquiry into the cost of living
(Lusaka, 1950), 96.
28 See also Hansen, Salaula, 47.
29 Nshila 116 (1962), 17–8. Oxendale had been doing business with African customers on
the Copperbelt from as early as the 1930s, if not earlier. See J.M. Davis, Modern industry and
the African: An enquiry into the effect of the copper mines of Central Africa upon native society
and the work of Christian Missions (New York, 1933); Hansen, Salaula, 49.
30 Interview with Andrew Ndlovu, former migrant worker, Ndola, 15 June 2010.
31 Hansen, Salaula, 47.
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African culture of consumption, with its related lifestyles, as both mysterious and backward. The architects, Burke continues, thus saw the local culture of consumption as a major barrier which they had to overcome in
order to secure markets for Western goods in Africa. Unsurprisingly, they
incessantly called for the reconstruction, if not complete annihilation,
of African material culture. To European advertisers in South Africa and
Zimbabwe, whose discourse profoundly informed the marketing of goods
in modern Zambia and Malawi after the war, advertising as a marketing
technique was, therefore, a double-edge sword. Wielding it, they hoped to
not just penetrate the African society, but also to transform its consumption culture. In deploying advertisements, their authors sought to inscribe
Western needs, habits, values and material identity upon Africans, thus
turning them into pliant connoisseurs of Western goods.32
This hegemonic/modernist discourse inspired the advertisements that
featured in Nshila and, of course, in other print media in Southern Africa
as a whole in the aftermath of the Second World War.33 The frequent
appearance in the magazine of advertisements of nuclear African families consuming imported commodities suggests that the principal concern of the advertisements was, at the risk of repetition, to relocate local
consumption of commodities from the communal domain, widespread in
African societies, to the nuclear family. This view is not only supported by
the advertisements of Castle lager with which this paper began. Many
other advertisements in Nshila routinely portrayed immediate families
consuming a wide range of manufactured commodities, not the least of
which included sewing machines, skin-lightening creams, watches, bicycles and bottled beer. Without belabouring the point, these advertisements pointed to the nuclear family as the most ideal arena for commodity
consumption.
Apart from deploying advertisements to redirect African consumption
towards the confines of the immediate family, advertisers further used
them to script on colonised societies Western ideologies, values and habits
that seemingly underlined the consumption of commodities among
Europeans, both in Africa and in the metropolitan world. It is to this end
that most advertisements in Nshila made unmistakable connections
between consuming manufactured goods and such bourgeois leisure
32 Burke, Lifebuoy men, Chapter 5.
33 The majority of the European firms operating in Zambia and Malawi before and after
1945 were subsidiaries of either South African or Zimbabwean-owned companies and their
chief executives were certainly influenced by the marketing rhetoric in those territories.
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habits as picnicking or camping in the countryside. Indeed, many advertisements in the magazine and newspapers modelled ‘progressive’
Africans as people whose enjoyment of imported goods was inexorably
linked to other Western leisure pursuits: fishing, riding bicycles, playing
golf or attending ‘fashionable gatherings’.34 ‘After a hot game of golf’, pontificated an advertisement in Nshila in 1963, ‘that’s the time for Cold
Castle.’35 Another pictured a well-known South African football player,
Stephen Kalamazoo Mokone, appropriately wearing his sports outfit and
contentedly smoking a huge Life cigarette. ‘This famous man’, declared
the advertisement’s caption, ‘goes for big things in life [:] Big king size satisfaction. Follow Kalamazoo’s example. Enjoy Life.’36 The ultimate goal of
all these advertisements is obvious: Africans who attended the gatherings
of the elite, played golf or emulated Mokone’s sportsmanship and other
bourgeois pastimes would turn into avid consumers of advertised commodities. In this way, they would signal their emulation of the colonial
rulers’ habits and tastes that underscored European social status, privilege
and power.
The crusade to colonise the indigenous culture of consumption through
advertisements meshed neatly with the developmentalist discourse of the
colonial sate and of the policy of labour stabilisation vigorously pursued
by mining companies in the post-war period.37 State officials came to see
advertisements as indispensable to transforming at least a small fraction
of the African workforce in the mining industry into industrial, semiurbanised men. This transformation could be accelerated by promoting
European material culture among black miners. This, in turn, would lead
to the rise of a contented, pliant and productive African middle class more
attuned to Western lifestyles and work habits than the previous generation of African labourers. More significantly, authorities envisaged that
34 See Nshila, 116 (1962), 43; Nshila, 120 (1962), 7; Nshila, 132 (1963), 18.
35 Nshila, 130 (1963), 18. On Mokone’s prowess as a football player in South Africa, see
P. Alegi, Laduma! Soccer, politics and society in South Africa (Scottsville, 2004), 87–8.
36 Nshila, 131 (1963), 34.
37 Much ink has been spilled over this topic. See, for example, J. Ferguson, Expectations
of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London, 1999); F. Cooper, Decolonisation and African society: The
labour question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996); J.L. Parpart, ‘‘Where is
your mother?’: Gender, urban marriage, and colonial discourse on the Zambian
Copperbelt’, International journal of African historical studies, 27:2 (1994), 241–71. See
also L.A. Lindsay, ‘Domesticity and difference: Male breadwinners, working women and
colonial citizenship in the 1945 Nigerian General Strike’, American historical review, 104:3
(1999), 783–812.
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such contented workers would pose no threat to colonial power.38 On the
other hand, mining companies’ endorsement of the consumption of
European goods among black workers was consistent with their policy of
labour stabilisation after the war. As many labour historians have eloquently argued, this policy was prompted by the ever escalating demand
for skilled African manpower in the rapidly expanding copper industry.39
For these reasons, it is easy to grasp why both mine management and
colonial administrators enthusiastically encouraged the publication of
advertisements of manufactured commodities in African-oriented newspapers and magazines, including Nshila.40
If European authorities regarded the consumption of goods as essential
to securing colonial power and stabilising labour, missionaries, including
R.J.B. Moore of the London Missionary Society, who evangelised on the
Copperbelt in the 1930s and 1940s attempted to use advertisements to
insulate and wean Africans away from the corrosive effects of their exposure to urbanisation, capitalist materialism and industrialism.41 To Moore
and many other missionaries, unbridled consumption of Western commodities among Africans would only deepen their moral decadence, consequently leading them to worship at the altar of Western materialism,
rather than that of the Christian God.42
Missionaries, R.J.B. Moore included, hoped to forestall the rise of materialism among Africans not only through propagating the faith. Aware of
the transformative power of advertisements, they also sought to sanitise
the emerging African urban material culture through publishing advertisements in mission-owned journals, newspapers and books. Predictably,
they routinely infused such advertisements with Christian imageries and
meanings.43 Moore, for one, saw the great demand for mission print media
with their advertisements among Africans in mine compounds as a huge
38 This point is eloquently discussed by Cooper, Decolonisation, 2.
39 See for example, G. Chauncey, ‘The locus of reproduction: Women’s labour in the
Zambian Copperbelt, 1927–1953’, Journal of Southern African studies, 7:1 (1981), 135–64;
Parpart, ‘‘Where is your mother?’’
40 For examples of magazines run by mining companies for African readers, see
Footnote 56.
41 R.J.B. Moore, These African copper miners, revised with appendices by A. Sanderlands
(London, 1948).
42 Moore, These African copper miners; Mine Industrial Archives (formerly Zambia
Consolidated Copper Mines Archives, Ndola, Zambia) (ZCCM), 10.7.10B, Cooperative work
in the African Copper Belt by R.J.B. Moore of the London Missionary Society, 14 November
1937. See also E.W. Doell, Hospital in the Bush (London, 1957); E. Burr, Kalene memories:
Annals of the old hill (London, 1956).
43 For a more detailed discussion on this topic, see Hansen, Salaula.
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walima t. kalusa
opportunity to induct migrants into Christian modes of behaviour, to
teach them how to consume modern goods in a Christian manner, and,
most importantly, to reclaim their souls for Christ.44 Dr. Dorothea
Lehmann, another missionary on the Copperbelt in the 1950s, echoed
similar views. She played an important role in opening libraries, in popularising reading and in running classes for African women in the mining
area. Lehmann encouraged women attending her classes to learn how
read and write, knit, sow and cook, all in keeping with the Christian crusade to domesticate African female labour. She also reportedly stimulated
group discussions on the Christian messages and virtues embedded in
mission publications, including advertisements.45 To Lehmann, as to
Moore, such advertisements were clearly an instrument through which
evangelists hoped to reconstruct African domesticity and material consumption according to their own values and beliefs.
It is apparent from these observations that advertising modern products in the print media in late colonial Zambia came to be harnessed to
the cart of varying colonial projects and visions. While European advertisers mobilised adverts to transform black societies into avid consumers
of exotic commodities, mining companies, missionaries and administrative officials turned them into a means to stabilise labour, to Christianise local consumption of goods, and to entrench imperial power,
respectively. These projects were all inexorably tied to the wider Western
mission civilisatrice on the imperial periphery. This grand mission was
designed to recreate colonised societies in the image of Western modernity, simultaneously turning them into a ‘consumer frontier’ for imported
products, and into safe havens for the exercise of imperial power and
authority.46
Consuming Commodities and Contracting Colonial Hegemony
European advertisers in the colony under probe left behind no studies on
how effective advertising was as a marketing strategy. It is impossible,
44 Hansen, Salaula.
45 Interview with Mary Chomba, Kitwe, 22 August 2009; National Archives of Zambia
(NAZ), W1/2/21, Dr [Dorothea] Lehmann, Report on Women’s and Girls’ Work at Mufulira,
1951. See also J.V. Taylor and D. Lehmann, Christians of the Copperbelt: The growth of the
church in Northern Rhodesia (London, 1961). See also Parpart, “‘Where is your mother?’”
46 I borrow the term ‘consumer frontier’ from E.A. Perkins, ‘The consumer frontier:
Household consumption in early Kentucky,’ Journal of American history, 78:2 (1991),
486–510.
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therefore, to accurately assess the impact which their advertisements
exerted upon the consumer culture that Africans forged on the Copperbelt
after 1945. Yet even when they consumed modern clothes, watches, gramophones and cars in ways that seemed to parallel those of Europeans, as
some contemporary observers were wont to imagine,47 the meanings
which Africans read into, and the uses to which they put Western goods,
widely diverged from those inscribed in colonial advertisements. Even
from as early as the nineteenth century onwards, successive European
traders and visitors to the continent were often surprised that their local
business interlocutors unfailingly distributed Western manufactures to
their kinsfolk, often as quickly as they purchased them.48 This practice
continued well into and outlasted colonial rule. Between the 1930s and
1950s, European anthropologists studying the rising urban African consumer habits in wage employment centres in the colony routinely reported
that migrant workers purchased and used manufactured goods to meet
social and traditional obligations to their rurally-based kinsfolk. In 1951, a
worker on the Copperbelt told anthropologist J. Clyde Mitchell that it was
shameful to go back ‘home’ (village of origin) without goods to share with
relatives, who expected him to return with wealth.49 More recently, a former migrant miner to the Copperbelt in the 1940s and 1950s, reminisced
that: ‘It was unthinkable [for workers] to return home from the mines
[kumikoti] without European cooking utensils, clothes, suits, sewing
machines, hats, bicycles and money to give to their relatives and chiefs.’50
Another added rhetorically: ‘How could a worker go home without goods
[earned on the mines] for his kinsmen? Only fools did that [and] all those
who went back to their villages empty-handed lost their folks’ respect’,
risking to become social misfits.51 Indeed, migrants reluctant to return
47 See J. Clyde Mitchell and A.L. Epstein, ‘Occupational prestige and social status
among urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia’, Africa, 14:1 (1959), 31; J. Clyde Mitchell, ‘The
Kalela Dance’, Rhodes-Livingstone papers, 27 (1956). For a nuanced rejection of the view
that Mitchell and Epstein regarded African consumption of modern clothing and other
commodities as a mere imitation of European consumption, see Hansen, Salaula, 50–1.
48 See Kalusa, ‘Elders, young men and David Livingstone’s ‘civilizing mission’’;
McKittrick, Generation.
49 See J. Clyde Mitchell, ‘A note on the urbanisation of Africans on the Copperbelt,”
Rhodes-Livingstone journal, 12 (1951), 24.
50 Interview with Lazarous Manda, former migrant miner, Kitwe 22 June 2010.
51 Interview with Bornwell Chitulika, former migrant miner, Kitwe, 22 June 2010.
Emphasis mine. According to the informant, a song sung in Zambia’s Northern Province in
the 1950s and 1960s roundly denounced labour migrants to the Copperbelt who refused to
share their ‘wealth’ acquired on the mines with their rural relations, rhetorically asking
them whether they would be buried by the ‘white man’s goods’ or their kinsmen when they
died.
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‘home’ to share their wealth were roundly denounced in popular songs as
‘restless wanderers’, whose love for ‘the sweets of Ndola-town’ (urban life
with its material things) had made them lose so much of their senses that
they had turned their back on their own culture.52
It is evident therefore that modern commodities on the Copperbelt
increasingly shaped the rhythm of migrants’ quotidian life and gave birth
to new (contested) tastes and desires. But the consumption of Western
goods occurred in peculiarly African ways, ways that European advertisers, manufacturers and colonial authorities seldom fully comprehended.
Signalling their blatant refusal to restrict the consumption of goods to the
nuclear family, migrant workers transformed them into a means to lubricate their social relationships with rurally-based kinsmen and women. If
Western money shaped social ranking in colonial West Africa, as Jane
Guyer has ably argued,53 manufactured goods earned on the Copperbelt
enabled their owners to fulfil socially and culturally-recognised obligations toward relations and traditional rulers alike.54
Demonstrating their prodigious capacity to confer novel uses upon foreign goods, African elites and ordinary workers alike further deployed
these items to proclaim social worthiness and to consolidate social prestige and reputations. Hortense Powdermaker, and American anthropologist who carried out research on the mines in the 1950s, observed that
virtually all African miners eagerly purchased watches, clothes, radios and
furniture as a means ‘to show off’. Those reluctant to do so, the anthropologist added, were ridiculed as irresponsible fools, drunkards or witches by
their neighbours.55 In contrast, mineworkers with a penchant for elegant
imported goods, especially clothes, easily attracted their neighbours’ envy.
They further commanded the respect of village folks upon their return
52 This is well illustrated in songs sung by Alick Nkhata in the 1950s. See P. Fraenkel,
Wayaleshi (London, 1959), 71. Ndola was/is the provincial administrative centre of the
Copperbelt.
53 J. Guyer, Marginal gains: Monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, 2004).
See also Schler, ‘Bridewealth’ and A.G. Adebayo, ‘The currency devaluation and rank:
The Yoruba and Akan experiences’, African studies review, 50:2 (2007), 87–109.
54 This is notwithstanding that endless conflicts sometimes erupted across colonial
Africa between migrant workers, elders and other relatives over who should control the
wealth acquired from wage employment. See S. Berry, Fathers work for their sons:
Accumulation, mobility, and class formation in a Yoruba extended community (Los Angeles,
1985); E. Mandala, Work and control in a peasant economy: A history of the lower Tchiri Valley
in Malawi, 1859–1960 (Madison, 1990); P. Harries, Work, culture and identity: Migrant labourers in Mozambique and South Africa (Portsmouth NH, 1994); M. McKittrick, To dwell secure:
Generation, Christianity, and colonialism in Ovamboland (Portsmouth NH, 2002).
55 H. Powdermaker, Copper town, changing Africa: The human situation on the Rhodesian
Copperbelt (New York and Evanston, 1962), 94–5.
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‘home’, as the following exchange over an imported overcoat between two
African miners recorded by Powdermaker attests:
First Miner: Mr Banda has ordered an overcoat from Oxindales (…) at seven
pounds, fifteen shillings. It is very wonderful, indeed.
Second Miner: Ah!
First Miner: Yes, there are three kinds of overcoats in the Oxindales catalogue, but they are not good. The one this man ordered is wonderful. In
June (…) he will be wearing it to the beer hall, since he is a strong drinker,
and people will all be looking [admiring] him. The coat is brown in color and
has very long hair. If he wears it in town, policemen can be asking him from
where he got it. (…) The other day when he put it on, three Europeans asked
him where he got it. Ah, it is wonderful.
Second Miner: You will order one, I guess.
First Miner: Yes, I must make sure that I get one. I shall order it before I go
home next month. People at home [miner’s village of origin] will just fall off
the chair [with admiration and respect] when they see that coat.56
It is evident, then, that African migrants transformed manufactured goods
into a means to garner social respect. Equally, they appropriated them to
craft entirely new relationships or, indeed, to discard unwanted ones.57 In
a move that lends veracity to the polemic that the consumption of goods
brings together people from different socio-cultural spectrums into intimate networks of exchange and trust,58 workers on the copper mines
deployed imported products to forge relationships that transcended race
and ethnicity and that, ultimately, came to define their urban social identity. By the 1950s and 1960s, some of them purchased goods on credit from
both Indian and European-owned shops, in spite of rampant racism.59
Others had by that time opened their own shops or engaged in other
income-generating activities in which they employed people from different ethnicities. In the 1940s, Moore wrote of a Bemba-speaking tailor on
the Copperbelt who employed a Luvale hawker to sell his clothes in the
area’s mining towns. When his employee became fatally sick, the tailor
took care of him and met his funeral expenses.60
The consumption of manufactured commodities occurred across racial
and ethnic boundaries in countless other ways. Traditional elders in
mine compounds, it will be recalled, shared manufactured beer with others from different ethnic groups, reinforcing the nascent multi-ethnic
56
57
58
59
60
Powdermaker, Copper Town, 94–5.
c.f. Kalusa, ‘Elders, young men and David Livingstone’s “civilising mission”’.
See Perkins, ‘Consumer frontier’, 494.
Interview with Laban Pelekamoyo, former migrant worker, Luanshya, 16 April 2010.
Moore, African copper miners.
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relationships. Migrants on the Copperbelt and beyond, moreover, increasingly used Western money in transactions essential to contracting and
sealing cross-ethnic marriages, even though some of them opposed such
marriages.61 Collectively, the practices that emerged around the acquisition and consumption of commodities inevitably brought people into
relationships of trust. Like sharing the wealth procured on the copper
mines with rural relatives, these practices further defied colonial projects
intended to narrow the space within which the subjects of empire could
consume Western objects.
Although African workers undoubtedly employed manufactures to create relationships of trust, it is noteworthy, too, that their consumption of
these products did not always go uncontested. A.L. Epstein’s fascinating
ethnographic analyses of African court cases in the mining region between
1950 and 1956 indicate that endless marital and gender conflicts flared up
around the consumption of commodities of European origin.62 According
to the anthropologist, African men, especially the emerging elites, incessantly complained about their wives and girlfriends who bleached their
skin with creams, painted their lips or smoked cigarettes. They equally
inveigled against women who imbibed beer in male-dominated drinking
domains, particularly in beer-halls infamous for their moral laxity. Between the 1950s and 1960s their complaints, reportedly sparked by women’s incessant demand for money and for imports, found expression in a
long stream of letters published in newspapers and magazines, including
Nshila itself. Besides insisting that women’s consumption of Western
goods did not conform to the ‘customs of home’, they caricatured them as
cultural misfits who had become ‘entirely differently creatures’. They also
denounced women’s appetite for foreign goods as a grave danger, which,
morally and culturally, was ‘destroying the country’.63 But literate wives
were not slow to shoot back at these incriminating charges. By the 1950s
they, too, were publishing letters in the press, castigating Western-educated
men as hypocrites who enticed younger girls into illicit sexual liaisons
with their money and lounge suits, while expecting ‘their wives to stay at
home to look after children.’64
61 For details on this topic, see G. Geisler, ‘Moving with tradition: The politics of
marriage amongst the Toka of Zambia’, Canadian journal of African studies, 26:3 (1992),
437–561; Schler, ‘Bridewealth’.
62 A.L. Epstein, Urbanisation and kinship: The domestic domain on the Copperbelt of
Zambia, 1950–1956 (London etc., 1981).
63 Epstein, Urbanisation and kinship, 351.
64 See African miner, 1953–4; Nchanga miner, 1951–62; Nchanga weekly, 1961–6. Interview
with Mildred Mwale, wife of a former migrant, Ndola 15 June 2010; Interview with Mauren
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Confirming Nicolas Thomas’s perceptive remark that the consumption
of imports is largely conditioned by prevailing socio-economic and
political circumstances and not by the goods’ inherent characteristics,65
or by extension, how they are marketed, migrant men and women’s
accusations and counter-accusations over manufactured commodities
were fuelled by anxieties engendered by existing social conditions on
the mines. ‘Single’ men, allegedly renowned for their moral lapses, lived
in proximity to women in overcrowded compounds. This generated a
climate of suspicion and anxiety especially among the African elites, the
majority of whom were married. Such suspicions and anxieties were
all the more real, for the ‘single’ workers on the mines far outnumbered
women and patronised the same drinking spaces as the wives of the
elite.66
Worried that their spouses’ fidelity was at stake in the Copperbelt’s
overcrowded beer-halls, educated men, like their counterparts in colonial
Zimbabwe, campaigned relentlessly to prevent married women from
drinking beer in beerhalls, from wearing miniskirts and from using skinlightening toiletries.67 In this manner, they hoped to hold their wives morally accountable, shield them from ‘single’ workers’ temptations and thus
discipline their wives’ sexuality. In return, the elites could safeguard their
own social respectability, secure their reputations and lay claim to urban
leadership.68
But by questioning how their spouses consumed their earnings and
suits and by consuming beer in beerhalls, wives hoped to rein in their
unfaithful husbands and assert their own social freedom. Both sexes on
the Copperbelt, therefore, transformed the consumption of manufactured
goods into a discursive terrain of cultural creation, negotiation and contestation. On that terrain, they acrimoniously renegotiated gender and
marital relations, urban identity, as well as the position of women in a
rapidly changing society.69 And they did so in ways that rarely resonated
Phiri, retired typist, 15 April 2010; Interview with Margret Mulenga, wife of former migrant,
Ndola, 16 April 2010; see also Parpart, ‘‘Where is your Mother?’’.
65 Thomas, Entangled objects.
66 Parpart, ‘“Where is your mother?”’; See also M.O. West, The rise of an African middle
class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2002); and his ‘Liquor
and libido’. In reality, most of the ‘single’ men were married but had left their spouses in
their villages of origin.
67 Parpart, ‘“Where is your mother”’; West, The rise of an African middle class.
68 Parpart, ‘“Where is your mother”’; West, The rise of an African middle class.
69 This analysis is informed by Martin, ‘Contesting clothes’; Parpart, ‘“Where is Your
Mother?”’; West, African middle class.
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with colonial or metropolitan lifestyles. In this manner, they unwittingly
confounded the colonial rulers’ unilateral and undemocratic ambition
to influence how black urban dwellers ordered their material and
social life.
Apart from consuming European goods in ways that defied the
hegemonic project and vision implicit in advertisements, Africans in
the colony more pointedly harnessed some Western commodities to contest colonial political power and racism. In the 1950s, Kenneth Kaunda,
who played a pivotal role in the nationalist struggle leading to the
country’s independence in 1964, used his imported guitar to popularise
the nationalist cause in Zambia’s Northern Province in the late 1940s.
As a composer, he, in his role as the Organising Secretary of the African
National Congress (ANC), travelled the length and breadth of the
province strumming his guitar to the accompaniment of his politicallycharged songs composed to stir anti-colonial consciousness in villages. As
Kaunda’s autobiography shows, his music and guitar attracted numerous
attendees at the political meetings which the future president of Zambia
addressed. In his own words, he effectively exploited this situation to discredit colonial rule as well as to win mass following for the nationalist
crusade.70 Later, in the late 1950s, when Kaunda and other more radical
elements broke away from the moderate ANC to form the United National
Independence Party (UNIP), he would again turn his Western guitar and
music against rivals in the ANC, with telling consequences for their political careers.71
Kenneth Kaunda did not stop short of playing the guitar to fight foreign rule and fellow political competitors. He, like other nationalists, further transformed the consumption of manufactured commodities itself
into a hot arena of anti-colonial agitation. In the 1950s and 1960s, aware
that Europeans would never treat them as equals, even if the elite was
encouraged to consume modern goods, the nationalists orchestrated
back-breaking strikes, go-slows and boycotts against European shops,
bakeries, butcheries and post offices, which forced Africans to buy commodities through small holes at the back of the buildings. Arguing that
black consumers gave white entrepreneurs ‘a major proportion of their
70 K. Kaunda, Zambia shall be free: An autobiography (New York, 1963).
71 For the most recent and nuanced analysis of the ANC/UNIP split in 1958, see
G. Macola, Liberalism in Central Africa: A biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (New York,
NY, 2010).
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businesses’, the nationalists persistently demanded to be treated with
courtesy, just like white customers.72
There were other but less obvious ways in which leading African freedom fighters used imported goods to undercut imperial hegemony. At the
height of the struggle for political freedom in the 1950s and 1960s, they
attended constitutional talks with British officials unfailingly clad in
immaculate business suits complete with neckties and well-polished
shoes.73 With such attire, the nationalists made themselves sartorially
indistinguishable from sceptical British conferees, hopeful to convince
them that Africans were now more than ready to take over the political
reins of their country. They hence demanded respect and recognition
from British rulers, engaged them on equal terms and, in 1964, wrested
power from their indifferent oppressors. Suits and other material goods,
which European authorities had earlier brandished before admiring colonial subjects to create a politically malleable black middle class, came to
haunt them.
It is clear, then, that although ‘progressive’ Africans may have envied
European material culture with its underlying social status, privileges and
power, their consumption of modern goods on the Copperbelt scarcely
replicated the Western tastes and habits reflected in Nshila’s advertisements. The migrants’ new culture of consumption stemmed from their
own intensive and daily interactions with each other in the mining towns
and was in no small measure influenced by prevailing socio-political conditions in the territory.74 To forge this material culture, Africans drew raw
materials from their own pre-existing material culture and practice, read
new meanings into and put the symbols of modernity advertised in colonial newspapers and magazines to novel uses. Their culture of consumption can, therefore, be said to have been constructed according to their
own cultural agenda, rather than that dictated by colonial masters.
72 See NAZ WP 1/1/ 30, Minutes of an extraordinary meeting of the Luanshya African
urban advisory council held in the office of the District Commissioner at 5.30 pm on 3
February 1954. In the same file, see Minutes of the Luanshya Urban advisory council held
in the office of District Commissioner on 26 January 1954 at 5.30 pm; Kaunda, Zambia shall
be free.
73 Interview with Reuben Mulenga, former freedom fighter, Lusaka, 18 June 2010;
Interview with Daniel Banda, former freedom fighter, Lusaka, 19 June 2010.
74 This point is inspired by Gould, Localizing modernity; J. Alexander and J. McGregor,
‘Modernity and ethnicity in a frontier society: Understanding difference in Northwestern
Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African studies, 23:2 (1997), 187–201. See also Harries, Work,
culture, and identity; B. Bravman, Making ethnic ways: Communities and their transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800–1950 (Portsmouth NH and Oxford, 1998).
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Indisputably tempered by its ‘ambivalent engagement’ with imperial
power, this agenda was central to familiarising, localising and domesticating modernity itself.75 And, in Zambia, it was no less indispensable to the
lowering of the Union Jack in 1964.
Conclusion
Many scholars have rightly argued that white authorities across imperial
Africa sought to make colonial spaces into impressions of their own
modernity, culture, authority and power.76 To this end, colonial rulers
mobilised a wide range of institutions and programmes to secure their
power and to regulate African life in urban localities. On the colonial
Zambian Copperbelt, one such hegemonic programme after the Second
World War was advertising Western manufactured commodities for the
small, but increasingly significant black middle class. In their eagerness to
secure markets for manufactured goods, European advertisers turned to
advertisements as a strategy to create bourgeois tastes and habits among
African ‘progressives’. These advertisers enjoyed the active support of
colonial authorities, mining companies and missionaries who, respectively, saw African consumption of Western products as a key to maintaining colonial political control, fostering labour stabilisation and converting
black workers to Christianity.
But the urban African society that emerged in the Coppebelt’s mining
towns was not an empty slate onto which Europeans could write their cultural and political scripts unchallenged. This paper has tried to show that
the material culture which Africans constructed around the consumption
of manufactured goods issued from their own daily interactions, drew its
raw materials from local traditions and was tempered by the worker’s
engagement with colonial power and modernity. While Africans undoubtedly embraced imported goods, they, nonetheless, rarely used them in
75 See Gould, Localizing modernity; see also A.D. Kemp and R.T. Vinson, ‘‘Poking holes
in the sky’: Professor James Thaele, American Negroes, and modernity in 1920s segregationist South Africa’, African studies review, 43:1 (2000), 141–60.
76 See G.A. Myers, ‘Colonial and post-colonial modernities in two African cities’,
Canadian journal of African studies, 37:2/3 (2003), 328–9; S. Marks, ‘The microphysics of
power: Mental nursing in South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century’, S. Mahone
and M. Vaughan (eds.), Psychiatry and empire (New York, 2007), 67–98; M. Vaughan, Curing
their ills: Colonial power and African illness (Stanford, 1991); L. Schler, ‘Looking through the
Glass of beer: Alcohol in the cultural spaces of colonial Douala, 1910–1945’, International
journal of African historical studies, 35:2/3 (2002), 315–34.
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advertising and consumption on the copperbelt
165
ways enshrined in colonial advertisements. To the contrary, they read their
own meanings into Western goods, deploying them to reinforce kinship
ties and chiefly power, to create novel relationships that transcended
ethnicity, to forge urban identity, and, in the final analysis, to undermine
colonial power. In local hands, therefore, imported goods became a means
by which Africans (re)negotiated their history in ways which European
rulers, mining companies, advertisers and missionaries neither fully
understood, nor effectively controlled.
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FABRICATING DREAMS: SEWING MACHINES, TAILORS, AND
URBAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ZAMBIA*
Karen Tranberg Hansen
Introduction
During the first half of the twentieth century guns, bicycles, and sewing
machines were the imported industrial products that African men had to
have if they were to achieve economic success in the changing context of
everyday life in colonial Northern Rhodesia. This observation was made in
Luapula Province in 1995 by the grandfather of my research assistant,
Damiano Chonganya. Damiano’s grandfather had served in the Congolese
army on the Belgian side during the First World War, and had married a
woman who was also from Luapula. On their return to Mansa, he established himself as a building contractor. The extensive labour migration
across the Central African region in the early decades of the twentieth
century is well documented,1 but the technology and ideas that were carried along and spread in the process have received far less attention. I suggest that the sewing machine is one example of a technology that has not
received its due.
The purpose of this paper is to take the technology provided by sewing
machines seriously and to acknowledge tailors as important actors, not
only in early urban development but also in the contemporary period. The
focus is on imported sewing machines and the tailors who used them, for
* My research on the clothing economy has been supported by the Social Science
Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and faculty
grants from Northwestern University. In addition to interviewing tailors in many different
locations, I have also used their services for my own wardrobe, using the skills and services
of many tailors, women and men, in township markets, city markets, downtown corridors,
and private homes. In 2002, I briefly observed a training course in tailoring, organised by
the Kanyama Youth Training Program, a NGO offering vocational services for young people
with limited economic means. Recently, I began research on tailors’ involvement in the
development of up-scale and designer fashion, first in 2007, and again in 2009.
1 Among them, J. Fabian, History from below: The “Vocabulary of Elisabethville” by
Andre Yav. Text, translations, and interpretive essays (Philadelphia, 1990); B. Fetter, The
creation of Elisabethville, 1910–1940 (Stanford, 1976); and J. Higginson, A working class in
the making: Belgian colonial labor policy and the African mineworker, 1907–1951 (Madison,
1989).
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a long time mostly men but today also increasingly women. Because sewing machines translate needs and wants into desirable garments, they go
to the heart of widespread dreams of leading new and better lives in urban
Zambia, and therefore they play a part in shaping social change agendas.
Drawing on observations from field research which I conducted in Luapula
Province in 1995, and archival work pertaining to the region,2 I also include
research which I carried out on the clothing sector in Lusaka in the 1990s,
when I examined the persistence of the tailor’s craft in the face of competition from imported secondhand clothing from the West and, increasingly, cheap apparel imports from China. The paper ends with brief
observations from recent research into the emerging design and fashion
scene.
Across Zambia in village settings, towns, and cities, past and present,
sewing machines, rented or owned, have been a key technology in a
vibrant and constantly changing consumer market that produces garments for everyday use as well as for special occasions. In effect, the sewing machine is central to a cultural economy of consumption that works
because of the enormous social value that local consumers attach to the
dressed body and to dressing well. That is, dress is both a means and an
end. This paper highlights three processes, firstly, the importance of
imported sewing machines as a technological means; secondly, the role
of tailors as entrepreneurs in urban development; and thirdly, the salience
of consumer needs and desires in shaping these processes. Showcasing
tailors whose production I monitored during the 1990s, the paper examines the resources that are part of the success and survival of tailors in a
highly competitive clothing and apparel market: technology; skills, including competence in producing ‘the latest’; location; and niche markets. I
also discuss the demand side, for without fabricating dreams, the sewing
machine would not be successful at all.
Imported Sewing Machines
A variety of sewing machines were patented in the United States and
Europe in the last half of the nineteenth century, with Isaac Singer producing the first commercial machine in the 1850s.3 The machines quickly
2 M.C. Musambachime (ed.), The oral history of Mansa, Zambia (Lusaka, 1996).
3 Efforts to design sewing machines took place both in Europe and the United States.
There were earlier patents, yet the most significant ones were registered during the period
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
169
became popular, resulting in far-reaching changes both in industrial
mass production and home sewing in North America and Western Europe.
Sales increased rapidly. Although the sewing machine industry was
rooted in the United States, it quickly became international.4 I.M. Singer
& Co., according to Ruth Brandon, ‘was possibly the first of what has since
become one of the most familiar phenomena in Western economies: the
American-based multinational corporation’. She notes that Singer’s sewing machine sales in Europe were greater than those in the United States
already in 1861. In 1867 the company established its own factory in Glasgow,
and another in 1882 in Clydebank.5 In the late 1800s, Singer dominated the
British sewing machine market.6 The history of sewing machine imports
into different parts of Africa has yet to be written and Singer was by no
means the only company involved.7 Briefly, Singer sewing machine
exports, shipped from Scotland, were handled by general agents. The primary importers were trade consortiums.8 For instance, in the late nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century, Bourne and Co.
Ltd. served as Singer’s South African subsidiary.9
To be sure, some sewing machines made the long overland journey
from South African ports to destinations in Northern Rhodesia. But
referred to here. R. Brandon, A capitalist romance: Singer and the sewing machine (New
York, 1977), 52–66.
4 N. Oddy, ‘A beautiful ornament in the parlor or boudoir: The domestication of the
sewing machine’, in: B. Burman (ed.), The culture of sewing: Gender, consumption and home
dressmaking (Oxford, 1999), 285.
5 Brandon, Capitalist romance, 135.
6 A. Godley, ‘Singer in Britain: The diffusion of sewing machine technology and its
impact on the clothing history in the United Kingdom, 1860–1905’, Textile history, 27 (1996),
62.
7 Among the exporting companies based in Europe were Pfaff (Germany), Bernina
(Switzerland), and Husqvarna (Sweden). In a study by a sewing machine technician, somewhat presumptuously entitled, An international history of the sewing machine, there is not
a single reference to exports to Africa, or Asia, for that matter. In the section about Singer,
the author notes that the company organised and opened factories all over the world, for
example, in Russia in 1902, Quebec in 1904, Monza in Italy in 1934, Bournieres in France in
1934, and in Brazil the 1960s. F.P. Godfrey, An international history of the sewing machine
(London 1982), 263. The Japanese sewing machine industry got under way after the end of
the Second World War. Godfrey, An international history, 280–1.
8 S. Maiwada and E. Renne, ‘New technologies of embroidered robe production and
changing gender roles in Zaria, Nigeria, 1950–2005’, Textile history, 38 (2007), 31.
9 According to the Singer Manufacturing Company records, State historical society
of Wisconsin, Archives division. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?
c=wiarchives;cc=wiarchives;view=text;rgn=main;didno=uw-whs-us0000ai. In 1997, I briefly explored Singer exports to Africa in the Business Archives Center (BAC) at the University
of Glasgow. The BAC holds very limited records on Singer, merely an unpublished history
and some business records.
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imports were affected by customs rulings that made Katanga a strategic
entry point for sewing machines to Northern Rhodesia. For customs purposes Northern Rhodesia was divided into two zones: the Congo Basin and
the Zambezi Basin.10 The north-eastern part of the territory fell under the
Congo Basin treaties, which maintained low tariffs and did not discriminate against any country’s imports. This is in contrast to the Zambezi
Basin, which was subject to reciprocal customs agreements with Southern
Rhodesia, the Union of South Africa, and the protectorates, which gave
‘empire preference’ to several classes of goods. A duty was paid on goods
passing from the Zambezi Basin into the Congo Basin, where there was no
duty on imports.11 Some early sewing machines imported into Northern
Rhodesia might have arrived overland from Elisabethville in Katanga, the
cultural and economic hub of the region, until well after the opening of
the Copperbelt mines in the late 1920s.12
Scholarship on sewing machines in the industrialising West tends to
focus on one of two topics. One topic is the role of industrial sewing
machine technology in the growth of mass-produced garments and the
development of factory production often organised as sweat shops. The
second topic is the role of the sewing machine in home sewing, with focus
on women’s control of the new technology and the domestic use of its
products.13 But these topics are not particularly helpful to scholarly inquiry
in colonial settings, such as early twentieth century Northern Rhodesia.
There, industrial development was incipient at best. What is more, most
wage labour was performed by men. During most of the colonial period,
the tailor’s work was construed as a man’s job in cultural terms that
reflected the gender division in the migrant labour system of the wider
region.14 Although today many women work as tailors, widespread gender
norms and assumptions in Zambian society at large continue to privilege
10 These customs arrangements, established under the terms of the Berlin Treaty of
1885 and the Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye of 1919, stipulated complete freedom to
‘the trade of all nations’. The Congo Basin embraced the entire Belgian Congo, Kenya,
Uganda, Tanzania, and Nyasaland. The southern line cut through Angola, Northern
Rhodesia, and Portuguese East Africa; the northern line cut through the French Congo and
French Equatorial Africa, a small part of Sudan and Abyssinia, and Italian Somaliland. The
Congo Basis Treaty was abrogated in 1956 or 1957. K.T. Hansen, Salaula: The world of secondhand clothing and Zambia (Chicago, 2000), 262, notes 5 and 6.
11 A.M. Kanduza, The political economy of underdevelopment in Northern Rhodesia, 1918–
1960. A case study of customs tariffs and railway freight policies (Lanham MD), 60.
12 Fetter, Creation.
13 Burman, Culture; Godley, Singer.
14 K.T. Hansen, Distant companions: Servants and employers in Zambia, 1900–1985
(Ithaca NY, 1989).
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
171
men over women. As a result, specific types of tailoring continue to be
associated with men.
Urban Development: Tailors as Entrepreneurs
Damiano’s father, born around the time of the First World War, learned to
tailor from an older ‘brother’ in the Congo. He returned to Luapula, went
to mission school, and later found work at the Mandala Stores in Mansa,15
advancing from tailor to office orderly. In his 80s when I met him in 1995,
he clarified what kinds of fabrics were popular in the stores in the 1940s
and 1950s, with lively insight and input from his wife. As the Boma, the
administrative headquarters of the province, Mansa also served as a staging point for labour recruitment to the Katanga mines, Tanzanian gold
fields, and sisal plantations. Stores and tailors found eager customers in
the returned migrant workers for whom clothing was a high priority consumer item, both for their own use and as a desirable commodity to be
taken to the rural areas. As a commercial hub with a unique location near
Katanga and the lakes, Mansa’s growth also helped influence the development of early African entrepreneurship in the trade of fish, secondhand
clothing imported from Congo, transport, and store keeping. In growing
towns like Mansa, African urban residents spent a good proportion of
their cash earnings on clothing, as Godfrey Wilson reported from Broken
Hill (Kabwe) in the late 1930s, when mine workers used more than half of
their cash wages on clothes.16 Although the sources of clothing are not
specified, their purchases are likely to have included secondhand clothes
as well as tailored garments.
Mansa and tailors converge in a most striking way in the accounts by
several elderly residents of the province who were interviewed in an oral
history project in 1974 by students from the University of Zambia.17 The
people interviewed, mostly men, recalled the African employment scene
15 Mandala Stores were established by the African Lakes Corporation, a trading company based in Malawi that also had stores in Northern and Luapula Provinces in Northern
Rhodesia. The Mandala Store in Mansa was established in 1909. Musambachime, Oral
History, 26.
16 G. Wilson, ‘An essay on the economics of detribalization’, Vol. 2, Rhodes-Livingstone
papers, 6 (1942), 80.
17 This oral history project was conducted by the Department of History at the
University of Zambia (UNZA) by the second-year students Raban Chanda and Daniel
Yambayamba in Mansa District in Luapula Province in 1994. I am grateful to Mwelwa
Musambachime for enabling me to read his edited and annotated manuscript version of
the taped interviews, deposited in the UNZA library special collection. Hansen, Salaula,
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during the first quarter of the twentieth century as Mansa slowly grew;
in building construction and lowly jobs related to the administration such
as messengers and office orderlies. In addition, according to R. Chungu
Kanswe, ‘In Mansa a common job was that of house-boy (…) [and] some
people were employed as tailors in the stores’.18
As a young man, Sebio Mulenga came to Mansa from Mporokoso to join
a ‘brother’. ‘We hoped to get some employment at the boma and learn various trades or skills (…) It was common for young men to go on long journeys in search of jobs and wealth’.19 Working initially as a kitchen-boy, he
learned tailoring from a well-known tailor from Nyasaland who took him
on as an apprentice. Between 1918 and the early 1920s, young Mulenga
travelled widely in search of jobs, working brief stints in Ndola, Kabwe,
and finally returning to Mansa. But tailoring jobs did not last long, because
he did not own a machine: ‘I worked as a tailor in Ndola but did not stay
long on the first job because my white employer did not provide me with
a sewing machine (…) There was nobody I knew who could lend me a sewing machine’.20 Then he heard that Mandala Stores in Kabwe were looking
for a tailor. He was interviewed, but did not get the job because he did not
own a sewing machine.21 When a white man lent him a machine, he got
the job in Kabwe, only to leave it almost immediately to take up employment with Thom’s Stores in Ndola, who required a qualified tailor. Thom’s
Stores soon sent him to Mansa, along with two men to carry the sewing
machine and his personal belongings. They walked. In 1923, when he was
23 years old, he was employed at Boot’s Store in Mansa: ‘There were few
tailors then’, Sebio Mulenga recalled. He was paid by the number of shorts
he sewed on a daily or on a monthly basis. When working fast, he recalled,
he earned ‘too much for a black man during the colonial days’.22
J.B. Mwansabombwe also worked ‘for Mandala,’ beginning in 1934:
‘Because I was too young, I was assigned the duty of fixing buttons on garments. When I became a little older, I became a tailor. From tailoring, I was
placed behind the counter to help sell items in the store. Later I was promoted (…) I supervised the twenty-two tailors that Mandala employed in
the store. I was given yards of cloth, which I cut into pieces and distributed
cites the unpublished version of the manuscript whereas this paper references the published version, Musambachime, Oral History.
18 Musambachime, Oral history, 52.
19 Musambachime, Oral history, 23.
20 Musambachime, Oral history, 21.
21 Musambachime, Oral history, 22.
22 Musambachime, Oral history, 23.
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
173
among the tailors’.23 The fabrics for sale in Mandala Stores included ‘a
certain kind of black cloth called nkabula. There was a type of khaki
material (…) known locally as kasapato and a white cloth called toyo.
There was also another white cloth named tumimbi, which was sewn into
bedspreads’.24
As these recollections demonstrate, growing towns like Mansa were
critical settings for jobs, trades, skills acquisition, and consumption. Aside
from construction, office orderly jobs, and domestic service, which
employed a great number of migrants in towns away from the mines,25 the
tailor’s craft was an important activity that enabled men to find urban
employment almost anywhere. To be sure, the tailor played an important,
and underappreciated, role in such settings by responding to clothing
demands and desires. Tailors made a wide range of western-styled garments. In the early years, as Sebio Mulenga recalled, tailors made men’s
everyday standard wear such as khaki shorts, shirts, and uniforms, and
women’s plain dresses. But for strolling around the town, men did not
want to wear shorts, but ‘a new pair of trousers of distinguished appearance’.26 And women wanted stylish dresses in fashion rather than plain
frocks with yokes and puffed sleeves. As a result of new dress sensibilities,
the tailors’ repertoire expanded to include garments that required more
skills and individuation in the design of suits and more elaborately styled
dresses. Translating clothing needs and desires into desirable garments,
tailors contributed importantly to the process of making Africans knowledgeable and discriminating consumers of clothes.
Labour migration and urban living turned Africans in Northern
Rhodesia into active consumers. In the growing cities and towns, they
acquired not only knowledge about consumption practices but also
insights into how and where to pursue them. Racially segregated consumption spaces and shopping venues in the second class trading areas
had markets and stores where African urban residents could purchase
clothing and apparel. Because of the limited scale of the colony’s domestic
garment manufacture, African consumers turned to other sources to
obtain clothing. Mail-order firms in the United Kingdom and South Africa
were a popular source for new and stylish clothing.27 By the mid-twentieth
23
24
25
26
27
Musambachime, Oral history, 27.
Musambachime, Oral history, 28.
Hansen, Distant companions.
Wilson, ‘Essay’, 18.
Hansen, Salaula, 49.
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century, African urban residents were able to purchase clothing from
several sources: imported factory-made, imported secondhand from
Congo, locally produced by small-scale tailors, and to a very limited extent,
manufactured in local factories. Indeed tailors experienced brisk business, judging from the steep rise in the imports of sewing machines.28
These developments took place against the backdrop of a rapidly changing scene in the post-Second World War years. The economy expanded.
More family housing was built in towns, and women who migrated to
towns alone were no longer sent back to the villages. When women came
to towns in larger numbers during and after the Second World War, they
went for the new fashions with abandon.29 A report on the commercial
prospects of the colony in the early 1950s, when African purchasing power
had improved somewhat, noted that a man’s ‘first expenditure is on clothing for himself and his womenfolk and the latter usually see to it that they
are not overlooked (…) [The African] woman (…) attaches considerable
importance to matters of design, style and fashion in her dress goods and
she generally knows just what she wants in the way of cloth[ing] when she
goes shopping’.30
Recognising that African women were in towns to stay, the colonial government began to work harder on two fronts: establishing basic and secondary schooling for girls, whose education lagged far behind that of
boys; and organising domestic science training programmes, especially in
towns, for adult women, in order to make them into better wives and
mothers.31 The sewing machine enters here, as a technology to enable
women’s home sewing. The colonial welfare department, which was established in the 1950s, introduced domestic science classes in urban townships, as the mining companies had already done on the Copperbelt. With
the ‘winds of change’ now blowing across this part of Africa, a variety of
training centres were established to hone the domestic skills of women
28 Sewing machine imports rose from 935 in 1940, declined to only 217 in 1943, and
increased to 3,458 in 1952, when it was estimated that at least 80 percent of the machines
were sold to Africans. Customs Department, Annual report 1949 (Lusaka, 1950), 90; Board of
trade, The African native market in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London,
1954), 14 and 34.
29 J.L. Parpart, ‘“Where is your mother?” Gender, urban marriage, and colonial discourse
on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1924–1945’, International journal of African historical studies,
27 (1994), 250–4.
30 Overseas economic surveys, Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1950
(London, 1950), 28.
31 K.T. Hansen (ed.), African encounters with domesticity (New Brunswick, 1992).
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
175
Fig. 8.1 Modern African life, Lozi, 1959 (Source: Livingstone Museum, 289 Photograph by M. Yeta)
who were, or might become, wives of ‘advanced’ Africans and the new
men in power.
A result of these new developments is captured beautifully in a framed
photograph I saw in 1995 on the wall of a small restaurant in Kashikishi,
the lakeside town in Luapula Province that served as an entrepot for various sorts of trade between Zambia and Congo.32 In a striking composition
the studio photograph, probably taken in the late 1960s or early 1970s,
depicts the owner of the restaurant. Wearing a tailored chitenge (colourful
printed fabric) dress, she is seated in an upholstered chair adorned with
antimacassars. And there on a table in front of her stands a portable handoperated sewing machine, a conspicuous visual presence, ready to take
pride of place as a domestic appliance, contributing to a new living room
aesthetics. I do not recall the brand name of the machine. With this photographic image, we have come full circle, bringing the sewing machine
32 K.T. Hansen, Luapula field notes, 28 May 1995.
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home, domesticating it.33 In effect, the sewing machine was no longer an
important means only for men to establish themselves in society, but it
had also become a technology that women used to move on in society.
Tailors and Salaula
When Zambia became independent in 1964, questions about clothing
were important economically and culturally, since independence meant,
among many other things, producing what had previously been imported.
The mining industry was nationalised in the late 1960s. In 1972, the first
multi-party elected government gave way to a one-party state that centralised the economy and restricted imports of all kinds of commodities from
food to clothing and fabrics. Along with this, there was first a rise, and
then a decline of production in the newly established textile and garment
manufacturing industry. Over the course of those years new dress styles
emerged, inspired by concerns about what to consider as national dress.
The safari suit became de rigueur for men in public. And the development
of the chitenge suit for women took off: a skirt or wrapper and a top of
colourfully printed fabric which Zambia’s two new textile mills initially
delivered. Printed textiles were popular but in short supply. The limited
availability of ready-made garments and good quality fabrics challenged
the creative skills of tailors during the economy’s downward slide from the
early 1970s and onwards, when smuggled fabrics and garments became
coveted commodities.
The country’s outlook changed once again in 1991, when a multi-party
elected government took the reins of the economy. The opening up of the
economy that had begun in the late 1980s and early 1990s made clothing
and apparel from many sources, as well as a wide range of fabrics, available to local consumers. When import restrictions were relaxed, secondhand clothing from the United States and Europe became a popular trade
and consumption item, locally referred to with the Bemba term salaula,
meaning to select from a pile. After a period of rapid growth during the
first half of the 1990s, the import and local trade in salaula appears to have
become an established part of the clothing economy, rarely causing any
public debate in the 2000s. In fact, with the growth of imported new
33 Even though it focuses on industrially developed countries, I was inspired by the title
of Oddy’s chapter, ‘Beautiful ornament’.
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
177
Fig. 8.2 Tailors and salaula vendor in Mansa, 1995 (Photograph by Karen Tranberg
Hansen)
garments and apparel from China in recent years, secondhand clothing’s
share of total clothing imports has declined.
What is the place of small-scale tailors in all of this? While I have continued to monitor the location and contribution of tailors in the urban
dress scene, I explored this question specifically in the 1990s as a part of
my study of the secondhand clothing trade. In 1995 I interviewed tailors in
Mtendere township, a low income residential area in Lusaka that I know
well because of my previous research there,34 in Soweto and Kamwala
markets also in Lusaka as well as in Mansa and Kawambwa in Luapula
Province.35 I wanted to learn about the gender division of labour in tailoring, the training background of tailors, the scale/scope of their work, their
resources, and their market approach. All these tailors were located in the
34 K.T. Hansen, Keeping house in Lusaka (New York, 1997).
35 In 1995, in connection with my research on secondhand clothing, I interviewed a
total of 76 tailors: 11 in Mtendere, 18 in Kamwala, 20 in Soweto, 20 in Mansa, and 7 in
Kawambwa. This is far from my only interaction with tailors among whom very many have
serviced my Zambian wardrobe over the years. More recently, I began research on the
development of up-scale and designer fashion in Lusaka.
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public space in or near markets and in front of stores in Lusaka’s former
second-class trading area. They were not employed by the stores but
worked on an individual basis, paying a fee to the storeowner for overnight
storage of sewing machines and supplies. Many of these ‘corridor’ tailors,
as people operating sewing machines in front of shops and in arcades are
called in Zambia, have since been relocated because of a combination of
shifts in urban policy on street vending, the demolition of open air markets, and the upgrading of market space. Although my observations are
not representative in any statistical sense, they capture the spatial dynamics and the gender division of labour in small-scale tailoring.
Today in Zambia, tailoring is taught in many courses, both in government technical and vocational schools and in a multitude of NGO supported vocational training programmes in a manner that has not changed
much since the late colonial period. But in spite of the wide availability of
training venues, the majority of the tailors I interviewed had learned the
craft informally from a friend or relative rather than in a formal course or
apprenticeship. Start-up capital was often a problem, and it usually took a
while for an aspiring tailor to acquire a sewing machine. Tailors who had
been to school had varied work backgrounds with some stints of factory
employment in between jobs. Much like Sebio Mulenga, the skilled tailors’
Fig. 8.3 Male and female tailoring students at vocational training centre, Lusaka,
2001 (Photograph by Karen Tranberg Hansen)
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
179
craft enabled them to move around. This was also evident in their personal backgrounds with several tailors coming from Malawi, and a few
from Congo, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
Generalising, there were two types of tailor operations: single person
shops, and workshops shared by several tailors. Tailors who work alone
take orders from personal clients who bring along the fabric. They are the
all-purpose tailors in townships and urban markets who make a variety of
garments and also do some mending and alteration of salaula. Some tailors share premises, working on an individual basis whereas others work
in ‘companies’, meaning informal arrangements between several tailors,
who hire workers for piece-work and rent additional machines for larger
jobs, involving specific orders placed by middlemen. Such tailors do not
consider mending and alterations to be worth their while. All these tailors
owned sewing machines and rented additional machines for larger jobs.
Most of the machines were electric foot powered Singers and Chineseimports, like the Butterfly brand. Still, hand-powered and treadle machines
find widespread use in areas with no, or irregular, supply of electricity.
Location and Niche Production
When I began exploring Zambia’s clothing scene in the early 1990s, some
observers feared that imported secondhand clothing might adversely
affect the domestic textile and garment industry and even ‘kill’ the smallscale tailoring craft. In fact, this has not happened.36 Rather, many tailors
changed their physical location, for example moving from townships to
city markets, and they reoriented their production. One tailor I knew from
Mtendere Township had set himself up at Kamwala market after closing
shop in the township market. When I spoke to him in 1995, he told me:
‘I sat down for two hours to think of how to beat salaula.’ His solution, like
that of many other tailors who kept on working, was specialty production,
in his case church uniforms, a regular part of many women’s wardrobes in
Zambia.
Many of the corridor tailors whom I revisited in 1995 had followed a
similar strategy, targeting niche production of garments and sizes rarely
available in salaula. Such garments included women’s slips, girls’ frilly
dresses, and an ever-changing range of ‘office wear’, meaning two-piece
36 K.T. Hansen, ‘Helping or hindering: Controversies around the international secondhand clothing trade’, Anthropology today, 20 (2004), 3–9.
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suits with varying details and trim. But perhaps above all, as one tailor in
Mansa noted: ‘there is no chitenge in salaula.’ Indeed, the production of
chitenge wear has grown in recent years. Chitenge outfits have moved from
serving largely as attire for special occasions to work dress for teachers and
as free/casual wear on Fridays for office workers and bank clerks. Some of
these tailors produced job lots, for example, of men’s trousers for established boutiques as well as for upcountry clients for resale in the villages,
while others made chitenge dresses to order for suitcase traders who sold
them in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Consumers there referred to such
outfits as ‘Zambia’.
If the small-scale tailoring sector in corridors and markets is dominated
by men, there is another setting in which many women are involved with
the tailor’s craft. This is home-based production, often by hired tailors,
both women and men, organised as a sideline activity by women who
work away from home but also by some who pursue it full time. In Zambia,
such women call themselves tailors, not dressmakers or seamstresses.
Some of them do not sew at all but supervise and contract orders. Their
operations may take place within the home, in extensions built onto
homes or in servants’ quarters in homes in the medium- to high-income
residential areas. I have seen such operations in the middle of the living
room of two-bedroom flats of bank employees, for example, as well as in
the flats of university lecturers whose wives did not hold wage jobs. Some
of these women entrepreneurs go to office buildings soliciting orders,
some produce school uniforms, while still others supply regular clients
with garments for everyday wear and specifically chitenge styled outfits for
special occasions.
Design and Fashion
When women of means in Zambia today say, ‘I have a tailor’, this may
mean several things. One, they may be clients of a particular male tailor,
perhaps from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who supervises a workshop of male and female workers. Two, they may be clients of a particular
female tailor, perhaps from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria or
Ghana, who runs a workshop with several workers of both sexes. Three,
they may be clients of a woman entrepreneur who calls herself a designer,
has her own clothing label, and either supervises a workshop of male and
female tailors or subcontracts her designs to tailors whom she knows well.
And four, in fact the woman who says that she has a tailor is likely to draw
on some of all of these sources at different times, depending on her needs.
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Take Sylvia Masebo, Member of Parliament and former minister, who is in
her 40s. A flamboyant dresser, depending on the occasion, she wears a mix
of western-styled and chitenge wear, often with hats or elaborately folded
head-ties. In a 2005 interview, Ms. Masebo indicated that she used two
local designers and a Nigerian tailor.37
The design scene is the most recent twist in the ever-changing development of the organisation of the tailor’s craft in Zambia. In the mid-1990s,
downtown Lusaka had several successful production units with boutiquestyle outlets, operated by well-educated women, often married to wealthy
men. Such women were able to travel abroad, where some had taken
design and fashion courses. They concentrated on producing ‘high quality
fashion garments for high-income clients who prefer imported clothing
from London, Paris, and New York’ to what they perceived as ‘cheap’ local
wear.38 When I began to study the emerging fashion and design scene
in 2007, these preferences were clearly changing, as the Sylvia Masebo
account illustrates. Seasonally changing and creatively styled chitenge
wear now takes centre stage alongside other dress inspirations in fashionable women’s wardrobes. Chitenge styles are displayed proudly by women
who have the body to wear them. And young women who used to argue
that chitenge outfits made them look ‘old’39 are beginning to be attracted
to the creatively styled chitenge fashions, made by a cohort of new designers who are deliberately modernising the chitenge for young people to
wear. Chitenge, said Angela Mulenga in 2009 when I interviewed this
twenty-one year old designer with a study background in business administration, ‘will stand the test of time’. Angela’s production of the Queen’s
Wear design takes place in a tiny workshop in one of downtown Lusaka’s
old shopping venues, the Central Arcade, with four industrial machines
and one embroidery machine. Queen’s Wear was started by her mother for
whom the oldest of the four male tailors began working several years ago.
The Development of a Formal Fashion Scene
Between 1997 and 2009, more than five up-scale shopping malls opened in
Lusaka and still more are under construction. New consumption spaces,
37 ‘Trendsetters’, The Post, 2 December 2005.
38 M. Kasengele, ‘Differentiation among small-scale enterprises: the Zambian clothing
industry in Lusaka’, A. Spring and B.E. McDade (eds.), African entrepreneurship: Theory and
reality (Gainesville, 1998), 96–7.
39 Hansen, Salaula, 204.
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karen tranberg hansen
clothing stores, and boutiques appeal to urban residents with money to
spend. Against this backdrop, two processes have helped fuel the growth
of a more formal fashion design scene. For one, the production potential
of these new designers has been greatly facilitated by the improved availability in recent years of imported sewing machines, dress fabric, and sewing notions.40 Secondly and above all, their exposure to a global world of
fashion and styles has expanded, and along with it has the scope for local
dress entrepreneurship. There is now a formal fashion circuit, complete
with organisers, promoters, models, photographers, and a fashion magazine that was published from 2004 to 2010, Beauty Zambia. There are
dress entrepreneurs who view themselves as designers and label their
clothing lines, among them, Ubuntu Designs, Seyeni, Aglam Couture, Fay
Design, and Dodo Wear Designs. The first organised Zambia Fashion
Week unfolded in Lusaka in October 2005, and has taken place subsequently every year. Over these same years, other fashion shows and competitions have appeared. And some of the designers have joined in a group
they call Ministry of Fashion to promote their lines.
Most of the recent self-proclaimed designers are women, although they
include a few men. Among them are people of diverse national and cultural backgrounds, that is, not all of them are black Zambians. What they
all share is a keen sense of style acquired from diverse experiences and
exposures that do not always include much formal training. Most of these
designers do not sew themselves but hire tailors, mostly men, to carry out
the basic tasks. A few put out their work for completion by tailors. Many
operate from their own or their parents’ homes or rented premises.
They use several sewing machines, mostly their own but at times also
rented, including in addition to chain-stitch sewing machines, lock-stitch
40 As an illustration, statistics from the Department of Customs and Excise show
imports of household sewing machines of 2600 in 1999 and 2674 in 2000. Imports of industrial sewing machines declined from 2171 in 1999 to 1311 in 2000. The machines for household use were imported by schools, churches, NGOs, embassies as well as by stores for
resale, for example, Radian Stores, Game, and Zambia Sewing Company. The industrial
sewing machines were imported by government agencies, for example, the Department of
Education, and industrial manufacturers like Zambia Bata Shoes and Polythene Products.
Customs duties were paid on most of the household machines whereas the industrial
machines appear to have been imported without duty. VAT was paid on all machines. The
machines were imported from many different places, including Denmark and Canada, but
most of them show South Africa (ZA) as the place of origin. Origin does not mean place of
manufacture; Chinese machines, of which there were very few on this list, are likely to have
entered Zambia via South Africa. The document does not provide brand names.
Department of Customs and Excise, ‘Statistics on the importation of sewing machines for
household and industrial use’, Unpublished list (Lusaka, 2001).
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183
Fig. 8.4 A designer and her male tailors in her workshop, Lusaka, 2008 (Photograph by Karen Tranberg Hansen)
machines, and machines for embroidery and knitting. Some had several
industrial sewing machines as well as old-fashioned treadle and handoperated machines.
Who are the chief clients? My Choice, an upscale boutique in Lusaka’s
Manda Hill shopping centre, sells some garments produced by the new
designers. This new crop of style entrepreneurs design clothes, for example, for beauty pageant and Face of Africa contestants. In 2009, a group of
them designed part of the wardrobe for the Zambian participant in the
Miss Universe contest in Brazil. Designs produced for such events have
ripple effects in the form of referrals. Women of means call on these
designers to get special dresses made particularly for kitchen parties
(bridal showers) and weddings. Many designers have a special clientèle
that includes women in high-level jobs and public positions who are well
known throughout Zambian society and some of whom, like Ms. Masebo,
are regarded as trendsetters when it comes to fashion. But more than
anything else, it is the production of bridal wear and dresses for bridesmaids that ensures a flow of income for many of the new designers.
And some would not be able to keep operating if they did not have
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husbands in well-paid positions that supported them. To keep their
creative design going, some of them pursue additional income generating
avenues, for example producing uniforms for restaurants and sports
teams, and designing graphics for special occasion stationary and invitation cards.
Conclusion: Fabricating Dreams
Going to the tailor to place an order for a garment has been a long-standing dress option in Zambia, especially during the colonial period due to
import restrictions, and in the not-so-distant past due to the limited dress
choice in the government-owned department stores during the era of the
one-party state. Most tailors in the past were men, as many still are today,
yet more women have joined their ranks in recent years, and some of them
are contributing to the development of a flourishing entrepreneurial
design scene. The basic underpinnings supporting the persistence and
diversification of the tailor’s craft and the emergence of a fashion design
scene is a consuming public that since early colonial days has been intent
on cutting a nice figure in dress. The great value placed on clothing that is
evident in the Luapula interviews with which I began this paper persists
powerfully today, the chief difference between then and now being the
abundance of dress options and style influences from across the world
that are available to local consumers.
The single most important vehicle in all of this was, and is, the sewing
machine. Because of the value people in Zambia place on clothing, sewing
machines create a livelihood for a highly differentiated category of tailors
whose production serves diverse markets. Yet much like R.J. Pokrant
observed in his study of the organisation of tailors in the old city of Kano
back in the mid-1970s, there seems to be a ceiling on the size of tailors’
workshops: ‘A successful workshop owner’, Pokrant noted then, ‘tends to
move out of production into dealing in cloth, or into an entirely different
occupation, rather than further expanding and rationalizing his tailoring
business’.41 I have observed a very similar process in Zambia. In a more
general sense and drawing on the experience of the industrialising West,
some observers have viewed the textile and garment sector of the economy
41 R.J. Pokrant, ‘The tailors of Kano City’, E.N. Goody (ed.), From craft to industry: The
ethnography of proto-industrial cloth production (Cambridge, 1982), 132.
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sewing machines, tailors, and urban entrepreneurship
185
in developing countries as a potential engine of economic growth.42 This
growth scenario may have held true in some countries in the past but it
does not play well in today’s global manufacturing system where countries like Zambia have to ‘run faster to stay in place’.43 But while resource
access, including training and technology, workshop organisation, and the
structure of markets may keep tailoring at a small-scale level of entrepreneurship, the vibrant cultural economy of clothing consumption leaves no
doubt that tailors and their sewing machines will continue to fabricate
dreams across all levels of society in Zambia.
42 Y-I. Park and K. Anderson, ‘The rise and demise of textiles and clothing in economic
development: the case of Japan’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 39 (1991),
53–548.
43 G. Gereffi, ‘Capitalism, development, and global commodity chains’, in L. Sklair (ed.),
Capitalism and Development (London, 1994), 226.
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PART IV
TRADERS
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INDIAN TRADERS AS AGENTS OF WESTERN TECHNOLOGICAL
CONSUMPTION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN MUKUNI: MEMORIES OF
THE SHARMA BROTHERS’ TRADING STORE, 1950S TO 1964
Friday Mufuzi
Introduction
Studies of the activities of Indian traders in colonial Zambia have focused
on their changing economic pattern and how they went from being simple
merchants to the owners of large-scale businesses such as stores, supermarkets and textile-manufacturing factories.1 In Eastern Zambia, Indians
did not always settle along the main transport routes but also in the hinterland in areas such as Merwe, Petauke, Kazimule, Chadiza, Sinde, Misale
Kalicherero and Jumbe.2 Unlike those in Chipata, the Livingstone Indian
settlement was more successful in the urban centres along the communication network.3 In my earlier work on the Indian trading community in
Livingstone, I demonstrated that, although Indians were less successful in
settling in rural areas around Livingstone, they were involved in substantial trading activities in those areas mainly through itinerant trading practices and the use of proxies, such as trusted Africans who worked for
them. Through such practices, Indians supplied the local people in the
rural areas around Livingstone, such as Katombora and Makunka, with
western consumer goods like soap, calico (cloth), blankets, paraffin, candles, matches, cups, plates, basins and three-legged pots.4
Although the Indian traders’ involvement in the distribution of foreign
consumer goods among Zambians dates back to the classical period,5 and
became more pronounced in the colonial era, no studies have yet been
1 F. Dotson and L. Dotson, The Indian minority of Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi (New
Haven/London, 1968); B.J. Phiri, A history of Indians in Eastern Province of Zambia (Lusaka,
2000); C. Mukunga, ‘The development of the Asian trading class in Chipata, Zambia, 1900–
1964’, unpublished MA Dissertation (University of Zambia, 1992).
2 P. Nag, ‘Asian settlement in Zambia’, African Quarterly, 8:4 (1979), 65.
3 Nag, ‘Asian settlement’, 67.
4 See F. Mufuzi, ‘A history of the Asian trading community in Livingstone, 1905–1964’,
unpublished MA Dissertation (University of Zambia, 2002), in particular Ch. 2.
5 This has been shown by the discovery of glass beads and fine cloth from India and
other items such as copper, iron, gold and ivory at Ingombe Ilede, an Iron Age site near
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done to establish their impact on the local people in the context of technological consumption and social change. This paper attempts to address
this by examining the impact the Indian traders had on the rural populations of Zambia by distributing western consumer goods. It focuses on the
Sharma Trading Store that was established in the 1950s by two Indian
brothers, Vithaldas Motiram Sharma and Sharnkerlal Motiram Sharma, in
Mukuni village in the Mukuni chieftaincy on the outskirts of Livingstone
Town, Kazungula District (then under Kalomo District). It argues that
Indian traders were a major agent of social and cultural change in Mukuni.
The western consumer goods they brought to this area changed people’s
tastes, which resulted in the dying out of traditional handicrafts and native
utensils in favour of mass-produced western goods. Although European
traders, such as the Susman Brothers,6 played a role in introducing western consumer goods to rural areas, this was mainly in the early period of
settlement when they were involved in African trade.
This paper also argues that, by changing the consumption tastes of the
local people who began to prefer western goods to indigenous products,
Indians were a ‘push factor’ in the migration process as people moved
from Mukuni to Livingstone and even to Zimbabwe and the South African
mines in search of employment to finance their new taste for western
goods. While it is true, as postulated by traditional historiography on
labour migration, that Africans were forced to migrate to earn money to
meet the tax demands of the colonial authorities,7 Indian traders contributed to this movement after the 1940s by selling western goods to Africans
and significantly changing their consumption patterns, which were
financed by wage labour elsewhere.
It is also argued here that the consumption and ownership of western
consumer goods became a status symbol among Africans and that those
who accumulated and consumed such goods were held in high esteem by
the local community. This resulted in a social and economic differentiation among the local people and weakened political traditional leadership
as the ‘rich’ or ‘new and travelled elites’ felt that it would lower their status
if they prostrated themselves before their traditional leadership.
Lake Kariba and south of the confluence of the Kafue and Zambezi rivers in the 1950s. See
A. Roberts, ‘Pre-colonial trade in Zambia’, Journal of African social research, Institute for
Social Research, University of Zambia, 10 (1970), 722.
6 H. Macmillan and F. Shapiro, Zion in Africa: The Jews of Zambia (London/New York,
1999).
7 M. Yudelman, Africans on the land (London/Massachusetts, 1964), Ch. 6; C. van
Onselen, Chibaro: African mine labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1933 (London, 1976).
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the sharma brothers’ trading store, 1950s to 1964
191
Using archival and oral sources and both published and unpublished
materials, the paper begins by considering the development of European
trade in Livingstone because the Indian trading businesses there and in
the surrounding rural areas were a corollary of European traders and the
Indian traders obtained their merchandise from established European
wholesale traders. It then briefly discusses the development, nature, activities and impact of the Indian merchants in Livingstone, where traders
such as the Sharma brothers set up stores on the outskirts of the town as
offshoots of others in Livingstone itself.
Development of European Trade in Livingstone
Following the establishment of effective British colonial rule in Northern
Rhodesia (Zambia), a considerable white settler presence developed. Livingstone, which had grown up into a town at the Old Drift8 around 1898,
had a population of white settlers of different nationalities and more
Europeans arrived when the town moved to its current site in 1905. Most
of the pioneer settlers were itinerant traders who had started businesses
ranging from general dealers in native or African trade,9 to bakeries,
butcheries, hotels, chemists, building contractors and other more sophisticated businesses.
Although trade in Livingstone was carried out by whites of different
nationalities, Jews from Russia – particularly Lithuania – were the main
traders in African goods. At least two-thirds of the general dealers’ licences
issued in the town were held by members of the Jewish community, which
totalled 28 in 1909.10 More European businesses opened in Livingstone
when it became the capital of Northern Rhodesia following the amalgamation of North Eastern and North Western Rhodesia in 1911 to form a
8 The Old Drift was also known as Sekuti Drift, Mopane Drift or Old Livingstone. See
D. Watt, ‘A thesis of Livingstone Town’, n.c., n.d. (MS in the Livingstone Museum).
9 In this study, native or African trade refers to retail and wholesale business catering
specifically to Africans. European trade refers to retail and wholesale businesses catering to
Europeans.
10 Macmillan and Shapiro, Zion in Africa, 42. The predominance of Jews in trading activities in the pioneering days of settlement in Livingstone is confirmed by Charlotte
Mansfield in her travel book, Via Rhodesia (London, n.d. but it is believed to have been
written in 1910), 146. She described the situation as it was in about 1908 following her
visit to Livingstone: ‘I have no grudge against the Jew (…) but I should like to see a
few Englishmen make money. At present, the Jew (…) seem[s] to be collecting all the
plums.’
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unified country, namely Northern Rhodesia. By 1927, a glut in African trade
had developed that prompted stiff competition for customers.11
Background to Indian Economic Activities
Pioneer Indian settlers came in the wake of British colonisation of the
area during the early twentieth century. Like their European counterparts,
these Indian settlers were predominantly traders and had entered the
country at two main points: Fort Jameson, now called Chipata12 in eastern
Zambia, and Livingstone13 in southern Zambia.
In 1911, the population of Indians in Livingstone numbered six in total
and remained the same in 1921, rising to 20 in 1931 and 186 in 1946.14
Although the Indian population was small15 in Livingstone, it was active in
terms of trade, particularly African trade. Consequently, while there were
only a few Indian hawkers in town in 1913, nearly all trade in African goods
was being done by Indian traders on Queens Way (now Kuta Way) by 1937.
Many European trading companies collapsed between 1928 and 1933 as
a result of the Great Depression. By 1932 the situation had become so
severe in Livingstone that nearly all the Africans there were unemployed16
11 National Archives of Zambia (NAZ), RC/299, Issue of Recruiting Licences to
Livingstone Storekeepers: 1926–1927, Petition of Livingstone Holders of General Dealer’s
Licence to the Chief Secretary, 29 September 1927.
12 Pioneer Asian settlers went to Chipata, North Eastern Rhodesia in 1905 at the behest
of Codrington, the Administrator of North Eastern Rhodesia. Codrington adopted
Johnson’s Nyasaland policy of using Asian traders as intermediaries between the European
trading firm, the African Lakes Corporation (Mandala) and the African consumers. Johnson
held that white settlers should concentrate on farming rather than trading which ought to
be the domain of Asian traders. See H.H. Johnson, British Central Africa (London, 1897),
152, 178; A.J. Hanna, The beginning of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, 1889–1895
(Oxford, 1969), 226–7 ; L.H. Gann, A history of Northern Rhodesia: Early days to 1953 (London,
1964), 146.
13 Mufuzi, ‘History of the Asian trading community’, 24.
14 NAZ, A3/1/1-2, Northern Rhodesia Census, 1911, 2; Northern Rhodesia Reports of the
Director of Census, 1931, University of Zambia (UNZA) Library Special Collections, Gov.
ZAM/02/1931/2, 1931 Census Report, 28; and Gov.ZAM/02/1949/17, 1946 Census Report,
64–5.
15 The population of Indians remained small because of the 1915 Northern Rhodesia
Proclamation 15 of 1915 that required would-be immigrants to be able to read and write a
European language to the satisfaction of an immigration officer. See NAZ, SEC 3/51, Asiatic
immigration: 1931–48, Indians into Northern Rhodesia, Correspondence, Chief Immigration
Officer, Livingstone to the Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 15 April 1945. Since most Indians in the
early decades of the twentieth century were illiterate because of poor education facilities
in India, and due to the First World War, no Indians migrated until after 1921, as can be seen
from the censuses of 1911, 1921 and 1931.
16 NAZ, KDB 6/4/3/2, Livingstone Tours: 1930–1934, Tour Report Number 3 of 1932, 1.
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the sharma brothers’ trading store, 1950s to 1964
193
and the Livingstone Mail reported great distress amongst the unemployed
in Maramba, the town’s African location.17 The reduced economic activities following the Depression resulted in most European traders going
bankrupt.
Livingstone suffered two additional blows during the 1930s. The first
was the transfer of the headquarters of Rhodesia Railways from Livingstone
to Broken Hill (now Kabwe) in 1932. And then the capital of Northern
Rhodesia was moved from Livingstone to Lusaka in 1935. As a result, the
area’s white population, on which European traders depended and which
had reached 1,600 in 1931, dropped to 1,300 in 1946. The African population,
which stood at about 10,000 in 1931, increased to 13,000 by 194618 and they
were the Indian traders’ main customers. Indian trade thus thrived and
by the mid-1930s, all the second-class (African) trading business was in the
hands of Indians. The only prosperous European-owned store had a
labour-recruitment business and19 this did well because most would-be
labourers bought items here in anticipation of preferential treatment
regarding recruitment.
Between 1935 and 1964, Indian businesses grew tremendously. By the
1930s, pioneer Indian traders, who had predominantly started out as fruit
and vegetable hawkers, hairdressers and cobblers, had become store owners by forming partnerships. Although most of these traders had made a
substantial amount of money, operating individually was not easy so they
pooled their financial resources. Members of each partnership contributed an agreed amount of money which was used to procure merchandise
and rent or buy shops from failing European traders.20 By 1938, there were
15 licensed Indian traders operating in Livingstone.21
Partnerships often came to an end after each partner had accumulated
enough money to operate individually. This resulted in a proliferation of
Indian businesses as all the partners would then set up their own new
business. The Indian trading community in Livingstone grew as established traders ventured into branches in the main trading areas along the
17 Livingstone Mail, 6 December 1933.
18 Macmillan and Shapiro, Zion in Africa, 50.
19 NAZ, SEC 3/51, Asiatic Immigration: Summary of Livingstone District Commissioner’s
Report attached to Confidential Minute from Provincial Commissioner to Chief Secretary,
12 June 1937.
20 Interview with Oza, Lusaka, 22 January 2000. Different advertisements for trading
licences placed in the Livingstone Mail by Asian traders in this period confirm Oza’s
testimony.
21 K. Ese, A historical guide to Livingstone Town (Harare, 1996), 23.
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railway line and the Great North Road in Zimba, Kalomo, Choma and
Mazabuka. In the late 1940s, R.V. Nayee opened a general shop in Kalomo
called ‘Elvina’ and later branched out into the rural areas of Kalomo such
as Luyala, Mukwela, Chilumbwe, Chilesha, Mapatizya and Kabanga where
he opened various other shops. Kalomo became the trading domain of
R.V. Nayee and by the late 1950s, he had about 21 shops in the area.22
Harischandra Oza opened a shop in the 1950s at Kasilya in Namwala23
while C.R. Trading, owned by C.M. Patel and R.K. Patel, opened a subsidiary of their Livingstone branch at Senkobo in the late 1950s.24
The general sequence was that after an established trader in Livingstone
had set up a chain of stores in the main trading area, he would begin
‘importing’ relatives and friends to serve as assistants in the newly opened
branches. The established traders had external business contacts and sufficient capital so it was easy for them to access goods for their shops. The
new immigrants came through the permit system, with the established
trader obtaining a permit from the government which he sent to either a
friend or relative he wanted to invite to work for him. The permit was used
by the migrant to prove to the authorities that he had secured employment and would not be an economic burden on the government.25
The need for Indian shop assistants, coupled with the end of the Second
World War in 1945, led to Indian immigration to Northern Rhodesia
in general, and Livingstone in particular, increasing tremendously (See
Table 9.1).
In the period between 1940 and 1964, Indian trading activities diversified and businesses became more sophisticated. Like the white traders
before them, most successful Asian traders moved into large-scale farming
and wholesale and manufacturing ranging from tailoring, biscuit and candle factories, hardware to construction work. The Europeans of mainly
Jewish origin had been replaced by Asians in the African retail trade by the
1930s and in the more dynamic sectors of the economy, such as wholesale
trading and specialised businesses, by the late 1950s.26 The takeover
of European-oriented department stores, hardware businesses and companies selling office equipment in Livingstone by the late 1950s is an
example of what the Dotsons called ‘ethnic succession’, namely the
22
23
24
25
26
Interview with J.R. Nayee, Livingstone, 7 July 1999.
Interview with Oza.
Interview with R.K. Patel, Trader, Livingstone, 13 July 1999.
Interview with Oza.
For details, see Mufuzi, ‘History of the Asian trading community’, 53–62.
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the sharma brothers’ trading store, 1950s to 1964
195
Table 9.1. Comparative growth of the Asian population in Northern
Rhodesia and Livingstone between 1911 and 1961
Year
Asians in Northern
Rhodesia
1911
1921
1931
1946
1951
1956
1961
39
56
176
1,117
2,524
2,450
7,790
Asians in Livingstone
6
6
20
186
364
548
644
(Source: Northern Rhodesia Reports of the Director of Census; 1911, 1931, 1946, 1951 and 1961.
For 1911, see NAZ Ad/1/1-2, Information Regarding British Indians desired by the Census
Commission for India, 2. For 1921 and 1931, see Census Report 1931, 28; for 1946, see Census
Report 1946, 64–5; for 1951, see Census Report 1951, 42; and for 1956 and 1961, see Census
Report 1961, 42–3)
tendency for ethnic groups to replace each other in specialised commercial activities.27
Establishment of the Sharma Brothers’ Store
The Sharma brothers,28 Vithaldas Motiram Sharma (the older brother)
and Shankerlal Motiram Sharma came from Gujarat State in India to
27 F. Dotson and L. Dotson, ‘The economic role of non-indigenous ethnic minorities in
colonial Africa’, P. Duignan and L.H. Gann, Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1969, Volume IV, The
economics of colonialism, (Cambridge, 1975), 592.
28 In addition to the Sharma brothers mentioned here, there was another set of Sharma
brothers – Keshavlal Joitram Sharma, Babulal Joitram Sharma and Sombhai Joitram
Sharma – who operated a business of the same name in Livingstone (Sharma Brothers).
Both sets of brothers came to the country from Gujarat State via R.V. Nayee in the late 1940s
but were not related to each other. The latter set was more successful in terms of business.
Following the dissolution of their partnership, each partner expanded and diversified his
business operations. For instance, K.J. Sharma, who later moved to Lusaka, had a variety of
businesses ranging from a bedding and furniture factory to jewellery. Interviews with
J.R. Nayee, retired businessman and oldest child of R.V. Nayee, Livingstone, 11 June 2010;
N.M. Nayee, retired businessman, Livingstone, 7 February 2011; Vijay B. Sharma, businessman, Kershalal J. Sharma’s son, Livingstone, 9 February 2011.
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Livingstone in Northern Rhodesia under the auspices of Riverbhai
V. Nayee in the late 1940s.29 The two brothers stayed with Nayee who they
worked for as shopkeepers for about seven years and in the late 1950s they
opened their own shop in Mukuni called the Sharma Brothers’ Store.30
After a few years, the partnership between the two was dissolved and the
younger brother, Shankerlal, moved to Livingstone and later back to India.
The older brother, Vithaldas, remained in Mukuni where he continued
running the shop until the 1980s.31
H.V. Merani and H.L. van der Laan in their study of Indian traders in
Sierra Leone observed that most shopkeepers were devoted to their
employees. This was ascribed to the way they were hired, which was done
on the basis of kinship, and resulted in the moral obligation of protecting
the interests of their employees. There was, however, a legal contract
between the employer and the employee, even if they were close relatives,
which covered the salary, the period of service and the obligations of the
employer regarding the provision of accommodation, medical attention
and a passage home at the end of the contract. Each employee expected a
longhi pothi or bonus at the end of his period of service. This acted as an
incentive because employees often planned to open their own businesses
using the money they received.32 This also applied to the Livingstone situation where Chhotobhai Mahthurbhai Patel, for example, received a
longhi pothi amounting to £4000 in 1950 after working for his sponsor/
employer for three years. He then established his own business.33 It was
29 Riverbhai V. Nayee came to Livingstone in 1926 and became the town’s first nonwhite mayor when the country gained independence in 1964. Interview with Joytindra
R. Nayee, Livingstone, 11 June 2010. For details on how Nayee became mayor, see N.T.
Robbins, ‘A study of African participation in urban politics in Livingstone, Zambia, 1905–
1966’, unpublished PhD thesis, (Howard University, 1977), 335–44.
30 I could not establish the exact date when the Sharma Brothers opened their shop in
Mukuni. None of the people interviewed (Indian or African) knew precisely when the shop
started. This was probably due to telescopic problems, as most of those who had any contact with the shop during the period under study are now over 70. A good number of those
interviewed had memory problems.
31 Interview with J.R. Nayee.
32 H.V. Merani and H.L. van der Laan, ‘The Indian traders in Sierra Leone’, African
Affairs, 78:311 (1979), 247.
33 However some Indian sponsors were cruel to their employees. C.M. Patel noted in an
interview that when he came to Livingstone in 1947 some of the sponsors were taking
advantage of the desperate situation of the people they had hired as they could not go
home due to the expense. Some sponsors did not give their employees proper food and
they were made to work like slaves and received only a meagre longhi pothi at the end of
their contact. With no means of recourse, they had no alternative regarding employment
as civil-service jobs were closed to them. Interview with Chhotobhai Mahthurbhai Patel,
Livingstone, 8 June 2010.
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Fig. 9.1 The old Sharma Brothers’ Store in Mukuni. When this photograph was
taken, it was being renovated by a NGO into a computer centre for the Mukuni
community (Source: The Livingstone Museum Archives, Photograph by Fidelity
Phiri, June 2010)
this kind of bonus that the Sharma brothers received at the end of their
contract with Nayee and that enabled them set up a trading store (see Fig.
9.2) in Mukuni village34 about 20 kilometres east of Livingstone in the seat
of governance of Chief Mukuni of the Leya35 people.36 This shop played an
important role in bringing western-produced goods to the people of
Mukuni and the surrounding villages and memories of it still linger, particularly among those who knew it in its heyday.
Nature and Activities of the Store
The Sharma Brothers’ Store was a general shop and sold a variety of merchandise including sewing needles and cotton thread, men’s, women’s
34 Interview with Nayee, 11 June 2010.
35 The Leya are a small section of the Tonga group of tribes in Zambia. In pre-colonial
times, they occupied the area where the town of Livingstone now stands, numbering 4000
in 1946. There are still a number of Leya villages on the eastern side of Livingstone Town,
the biggest being Mukuni. See M. McCullogh, A social survey of the African population of
Livingstone (Manchester, 1956), 1.
36 NAZ, KDB6/4/3/4, Livingstone Tours, 1937–1940: The District Officer’s Tour Report
No. 4 of 1940 of Livingstone District dated 29 November 1940, 1.
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friday mufuzi
and children’s clothes, footwear, cheap cotton blankets, calico cloth,
bowls, cups, plates, three-legged pots, buns, scones, bread, sugar, salt,
yeast, mealie meal, soft drinks (Fanta and Coca Cola), lagers (Castle and
Lion) as well as whisky, candles, hurricane lamps, paraffin, matches, cooking oil and spices (piripiri, the hot Indian chilli pepper). Others were radios,
record players, gramophone records, musical instruments (accordions,
whistles), (vegetable) seeds, watering cans, basal and top dressing fertilisers, bicycles, ploughs (see Fig. 9.3) and chains and spare parts for ploughs.37
The store was quite popular among the Mukuni village community and
the surrounding areas. People from villages situated far away such as
Dindi, Kafekwa and Kambizi travelled long distances to purchase their
requirements there. Generally, people could get goods on credit, particularly essential ones such as salt, paraffin and candles. However, owing to
the fact that such goods did not cost much, they had to be paid for within
a short period of time. In case of items that were costly such as bicycles,
ploughs and radios, and therefore beyond the reach of most villagers, hire
purchase arrangements were available.38 In this way, many people in
Mukuni accessed or became consumers of western goods, brought to their
door step by the Sharma Brothers’ Store. Some even accumulated goods of
high value such as ploughs and bicycles. Although I could not determine
the profitability of the store due to my inability to access its financial
records, it is reasonable to speculate that the store ran profitably because
the proprietors opened another one in Kaanda village, now called Mubila
within the Mukuni Chiefdom.39
The store was popular among the local population because of the
Sharma brothers’ practice of giving a small gift or token of appreciation
(mbasela) to customers who bought from them regularly or who bought
either an expensive item or a lot of small items at one time. The mbasela
was an item of small value, such as a headdress, handkerchief, a small
packet of salt, a sewing needle, cotton thread, sweets or goods that were
rarely purchased by customers. Although the mbasela was of insignificant
value, the practice promoted good relations between the store’s owners
and the villagers and encouraged villagers to buy from the store in the
37 Interviews with Nayee; Nelson Keelo (male, 87 years old), Mukuni Village, 20 June
2010; Stanley Siamapa Siachilubwi (male, 71 years old). He is currently a judge at Mukuni
Local Court, Mukuni Village, 20 June 2010; Bornface Simasiku (male, 60 years old), Mukuni
Village, 30 June 2010; Mbaita Siamwiza (female, 82 years old), Livingstone, 1 July 2010.
38 Interview with Siachilubwi.
39 Interview with Siachilubwi.
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199
Fig. 9.2 Nayee Brothers outside their shop on the outskirts of Livingstone town in
the 1950s. Note the plough they are sitting on which was typical of the type the
Sharma Brothers’ Store sold in Mukuni and surrounding villages (Source: The
Shambhoo Nayee family photo album)
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friday mufuzi
hope of getting a mbasela.40 This practice was also common among
Indians who traded in the second-class trading area on Queens Way in
Livingstone following the proliferation of Indian enterprises there in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. The practice resulted in stiff competition for
customers amongst Indian traders41 and was also observed by Chiwomba
Mkunga in his study of Asian traders in Chipata.42
The Sharma Brothers’ practice of offering a mbasela and of selling goods
on credit or hire purchase undercut emerging African entrepreneurs’
shops in Mukuni. There were only two African-owned shops in the area:
the Katapazi and the Sithole shops. The older was Katapazi and its original
owners were Susman and Wolfsohn who sold it to Katapazi in the 1950s.
The other shop was built and owned by Sithole, who came from Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and he continued trading in the area until the
late 1960s when he left Mukuni for Kalomo where he had another shop.43
The two African entrepreneurs resented the Sharma brothers for taking
so much of their potential business. These feelings were compounded by
the fact that the Sharma brothers sourced their merchandise from wellestablished Indian wholesalers in Livingstone who sometimes sold it to
them on credit. The two African traders also depended on Indian wholesalers (who by the 1950s had replaced the Europeans in Livingstone) for
their supplies but did not enjoy such privileges.44
The people of Mukuni were involved in economic activities such as
market gardening (spinach, cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, beetroot, carrots). They peddled their produce in the white residential areas in
Livingstone and sometimes even supplied greengrocers frequented by
white people in Livingstone and Victoria Falls Town in Zimbabwe. They
also cultivated maize, sorghum, nyauti, millet, groundnuts, pumpkins and
beans on a small scale, raised cattle, goats and chickens, and made curios,
baskets and mats. Despite the items of economic value that the locals produced, the Sharma Brothers’ Store rarely purchased supplies from them.45
The two African traders’ dislike of the Sharma brothers was also shared by
some Mukuni residents who were engaged in local economic activities.
40 Interview with Nelson Keelo.
41 Mufuzi, ‘A history of the Asian trading community’, 50.
42 Mkunga, ‘The Asian trading class in Chipata’, 96.
43 Interview with Siachilubwi.
44 Interview with Siachilubwi.
45 Interview with Siamwiza. Also see NAZ, KDB 6/4/3/4, Livingstone Tours: 1937–1940 –
The District Officer (DO) Tour Report No. 1, 1940 dated 4 March 1940 regarding Chief
Mukuni’s area, Annex II.
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They accused the brothers of stifling entrepreneurship through their
indifference to purchasing local produce such as cereal crops (sorghum,
millet, maize), vegetables, fruit, fowl, goats and other produce that was in
abundance.46
It is not therefore surprising that as far back as the 1940s, Indian traders
in East Africa47 were resented by Africans who saw them as an obstacle to
their emerging enterprises. Numerous accusations championed by the
leaders of the Livingstone African Welfare Association, founded in 1930,
such as Nelson Nalumango, Chief Musokotwane and Headman Makumba,
were made against them. The Indian traders were accused of not helping
the country as they allegedly did not provide employment for the local
people and never bought native products like cattle, chickens, baskets,
curios and mats. They were also accused of not using scales when selling
items whose price went by weight, thereby giving imprecise quantities
of whatever they were selling. Additionally, they were accused of not
reinvesting the money they made in the local community but instead
sending it to India. Furthermore, they were thought to overcharge their
customers and change their prices continually, and often at short notice.
Africans therefore called for a ban on Indians trading in the Native
Reserves and restricted entry into Zambia for Indians, arguing that if
allowed to do so, they would take all the land and leave nothing for native
Africans.48
However, this was also seen by some as unfair criticism. Zambian scholars, such as Ngalaba Y. Seleti, Chiwomba Mkunga and Bizeck J. Phiri, have
noted that the failure of African business in the colonial period was due to
their lack of a wide social network, which is vital in the business world,49
46 Interview with Siachilubwi. In fact a Native Commissioners’ Report suggests that by
1930, Mukuni was economically strong. Reporting on the chiefdom as a whole, the report
noted that most villages owned one or more ploughs, two villages had wagons, two had
harrows and one had a colonial mill. Those who could not afford wagons made sledges
from forked trees; and one man had a rough cart that ran on large wooden rings. It also
reported on livestock figures. These were: bulls (77), cows (1804), oxen (1191), goats (1249),
pigs (12), donkeys (22), dogs (284), wagons (2), ploughs (123), harrows (2) and mills (1). See
NAZ, KDB6/4/3/2, Native Commissioner’s Tour Report No. 3 of 1932.
47 Y. Ghai, ‘Prospects for Asians in East Africa’, Contemporary African monographs:
Racial and communal tensions in East Africa, 3 (1966), 13.
48 NAZ, SEC 3/328, 1930–48, Stores in Native Reserves, Volume One, Southern Province
Annual Provincial Council Meeting Namwala, 14 and 15 June, 1945. See also NAZ, SEC 2/228,
Southern Province Regional Council Minutes of Meetings, 1944–48, Volume One, Southern
Province Annual Council Meeting, Livingstone, 11 and 12 January, 1946.
49 Y.N. Seleti, ‘Entrepreneurship in colonial Zambia’, C.N. Samuel (ed.), Guardians in
their time: Experiences of Zambia under colonial rule, 1890–1964 (London, 1992), 173–4;
Mkunga, ‘The Asian trading class in Chipata’, 117; Phiri, A history of Indians, 67–8.
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friday mufuzi
and that Jewish and Indian traders flourished thanks to such networks.
Phiri observed that unlike Jewish and Indian traders:
Africans were too individualistic to pool resources together to effectively
compete with Indians. Africans lacked the ability to employ persons who
understood business but preferred to employ relatives who often knew little
about trading [and] most traders could not break away from traditional family ties and obligations that tended to exert pressure on traders’ resources.’50
The above observation was particularly true for the two African traders in
Mukuni. In addition to individualism, a lack of business acumen and the
burden of family obligations, they did not, unlike the Sharma brothers,
have a wide social network and could not compete favourably with them.
They were unable to offer incentives or credit facilities to their customers
as the Sharma brothers did or sell on hire purchase without putting their
businesses in jeopardy.
The Impact of the Sharma Brothers’ Store
The opening of the Sharma Brothers’ Store in Mukuni contributed to
changes in social patterns among the people of the area as they began to
assume western lifestyles and consumption patterns. The store was an
agent of social change in that it made western factory-produced goods like
clothes, blankets, plates and pots, and foodstuffs such as sugar, salt, mealie
meal, cooking oil and many other items available to the indigenous people. Wives put pressure on men to engage in wage labour in urban centres
such as Livingstone, Victoria Falls Town, Wankie (Hwange), Bulawayo
and the mining towns of South Africa like Johannesburg and Kimberly, to
earn money so that they could purchase the goods on sale in the Indianowned shops.51
One change the local people experienced was in their style of dressing.
In the 1930s and 1940s, it was not uncommon to find men and women
dressed in clothes made of tree bark or animal skins that generally only
covered their loins (see Fig. 9.4). This was to change with the arrival of the
Sharma Brothers’ Store as the shop stocked the colourful cloth called
malesu (in the Leya language, a dialect of Tonga with influence from Lozi,
the main language in western Zambia).52 However, it should be stressed
50 Phiri, A history of Indians, 67–8.
51 Interview with Siamwiza.
52 W.V. Brelsford, The tribes of Northern Rhodesia (Lusaka, 1956), 61.
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that malesu did not originally come into the area with the Indian brothers
but was sold in Mukuni before the brothers arrived in the region.53 By
1936, a European trader, J. Jacobs, was already operating a well-equipped
store in the area54 and people could get the material from European traders and later on from Indian traders in Livingstone. Nonetheless, the
Sharma Brothers’ Store contributed to popularising malesu and other
western-produced consumer goods.55
Women used lengths of the cloth wrapped around their bodies from
the waist downwards. Malesu was akin to today’s chitenge which could be
said to be the national dress of Zambian women. They used the same
material for making munsiinsi, a gathered skirt similar to the Lozi musisi
and chibaanda or chibaki, a kind of a blouse that matched the munsiinsi.
According to Siamwiza, it was fashionable from the late 1940s to the 1960s
for a Leya woman to wear a chibaanda and munsinsi (see Fig. 9.5). This put
pressure on married men to earn enough money to buy such a garment for
their wives as women who did not have such clothes were teased and local
musicians would even compose songs ridiculing them.56
The consumption of western goods was seen as a status symbol. Thus, as
providers of such goods, the Sharma Brothers’ Store contributed to social
differentiation within Mukuni society in the sense that people who accumulated and consumed these goods enjoyed a higher status than those
who did not. Siamwiza noted that this caused problems for the traditional
leadership, such as headmen and the chief, as ordinary subjects whose
status had improved on the basis of accumulation and the consumption
of western products were often insolent to them and it was not unknown
for people to refuse to participate in communal work projects such as constructing shelters for traditional ceremonies like the annual Lwiindi57
53 Interview with Siamwiza.
54 NAZ, KDB6/4/3/3, Livingstone District Tour Report, 1936.
55 Interview with Siamwiza.
56 Interview with Siamwiza.
57 The Lwiindi ceremony was an event when people gathered to ensure adequate rainfall from their ancestral spirits and a successful harvest and good health. In pre-colonial
times, the ceremony played an important role in the lives of the Leya people because,
whilst hunter gathering was also an important part of their lives, they depended more on
agriculture in an area where rainfall was inadequate and cattle rearing was difficult due to
tsetse fly infestation and poor pastures. However, with the arrival of colonialism, the ceremony became less important due to the adoption of more western lifestyles and social
formations and people could afford not to participate in activities they no longer depended
on. The ceremony has now been reduced to a form of entertainment for tourists and other
spectators. See F.M. Mizinga, ‘Activities characterising the Lwiindi ceremony of the Leya of
Mukuni chieftaincy of Kalomo District’, The Livingstone museum newsletter, 3:1 (1995),
24–8.
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friday mufuzi
Fig. 9.3 Woman wearing old Leya dress. Note the animal skin fastened around
the waist (Source: Kafungulwa Mubitana, ‘The Traditional History and
Ethnography’, D.W. Philipson (ed.), Mosi-oa-Tunya: A handbook to the Victoria
Falls region, London, 1975, p.70)
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205
Fig. 9.4 Woman wearing munsiinsi and chibaanda, a Lozi form of dress modelled
on the style introduced by the Paris Missionary Society missionaries who operated in Sefula in western Zambia. The new style dress was a remarkable change
from the previous one shown in 9.4 (Source: Kafungulwa Mubitana, ‘The
Traditional History and Ethnography’, D.W. Philipson (ed.), Mosi-oa-Tunya: A
handbook to the Victoria Falls region, London, 1975, p.70)
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206
friday mufuzi
ceremony. Such people began to consider themselves too important to
perform such manual tasks.58
Zambian historians, such as Maud Muntemba, George Mwalukanga
and Axon Kanduza,59 used the underdevelopment theory, as propounded
by Africanist scholars such as Walter Rodney,60 to explain the lack of
development in Africa and rejected the tendency to recognise peasants as
beneficiaries under colonial conditions. In contrast, Chipungu’s study followed liberal scholarship that considered peasants as people who were
‘progressive’ in the colonial period and saw the state as not a villain of the
peasant but rather as a modernising institution.61 Thus, in his study on the
impact of technology and the role of the state on the process of peasant
differentiation in the Southern Province, he concluded that ‘the economic
and political interests of the state vis-à-vis the peasantry and the ability of
the peasants to adopt new productive technology during specific historical periods’ led to ‘the rise of peasant differentiation’ or the formation of
different strata of peasants, i.e. the rich, middle-income and poor peasants
in Mazabuka.62
Chipungu’s observation about the creation of social differentiation was
also evident in Mukuni. However, while the goods sold by the Sharma
Brothers’ Store to people in Mukuni Village and the surrounding areas
undoubtedly contributed to social differentiation, the phenomenon was
not as pronounced as in the case of the peasantry in Mazabuka where
maize production and post-colonial programmes such as resettlement
schemes and credit facilities enriched some peasants but were beyond the
reach of others.63 This was because the trading activities of the Sharma
brothers were not as intense as the peasant maize-growing activities in
Southern Province, and Mazabuka in particular, which were massively
58 Interview with Siamwiza.
59 See M.S. Muntemba, ‘Rural underdevelopment in Zambia: Kabwe Rural District,
1850–1970’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of California, 1977) and ‘Thwarted development: A case study of economic change in the Kabwe rural district of Zambia, 1902–1970’,
R. Palmer and N. Parsons (eds.), The roots of rural poverty in Central Africa (London, 1977);
G. Mwalukanga, ‘Dispossession of peasant resources: The case of Lusaka District of Zambia,
1905–1953’, Zambian land and labour studies, 4 (1981), 1 and ‘Constraints on development of
cotton production in Northern Rhodesia, 1900–1945: The case of the Luangwa’, unpublished MA Thesis, (University of Zambia, 1984) and A. Kanduza, ‘The tobacco industry in
Northern Rhodesia, 1912–1938’, International journal of African history, 16:2 (1983) 201–29.
60 W. Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa (London, 1988).
61 S.N. Chipungu, The state, technology and peasant differentiation in Zambia: A case of
the Southern Province, 1930–1986, (Lusaka: Historical Association of Zambia), 5.
62 Chipungu, The state, technology and peasant differentiation, 34–55.
63 Chipungu, The state, technology and peasant differentiation, 34–55.
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207
supported by government policy and the maize could also be sold as a
cash crop.64 In Mukuni, the money realised from economic activities that
were a response to trading activities of the Sharma Brothers’ Store could
not be reinvested in the intensive growing of maize or rearing of cattle
because the area was rocky and hilly and rainfall was inadequate. For this
reason, the local people resorted to market gardening and curio making
for tourists. These activities were not as heavily supported as maize production was, nor were they lucrative enough to support a rich peasantry as
the maize growing in Mazabuka did.
The Sharma Brothers’ Store contributed to easing the hardships that
people encountered in their everyday lives, particularly the women on
whom the burden of making mealie meal flour for their staple food of
nshima fell. In the past, women in Mukuni and the surrounding villages
used either stones to grind their cereals or they pounded them using a
pestle and mortar to produce mealie meal. An informant, Siamwiza, noted
that, as a girl and later a woman, she had experienced the lifestyle of that
period and the gruelling and time- consuming chore of making mealie
meal. Her description of the process is similar to that given by Elias C.
Mandala among the African people in Malawi’s Lower Tchiri Valley before
colonial rule and in the following decades.65
The process had two stages: first the grain (maize, sorghum or nyaute)
was put in a mortar, a log of wood about 80–100 centimetres long and
30 centimetres in diameter that had been hollowed out at one end. One or
several women, each with a heavy wooden pestle, then crushed (kutwa or
kochokola) the grain simultaneously66 (see Fig. 9.6). This was then shaken
over a bamboo tray (luceelo) and, with a skilful movement, the bran was
separated and the crushed grain remained behind. In the second stage,
the crushed grain was made into flour either by pounding the soaked
grain in a mortar or grinding it on a grinding mill made of hard rock about
130–136 centimetres2 and 50 centimetres thick with another piece of
hard rock about the size of half a brick, one side of which had a convex
surface that fitted into a concave hollow in the larger rock. The woman
made the flour by moving the small stone backwards and forwards in
the hollow part of the larger stone placed on a slope to allow the ground
64 Chipungu, The state, technology and peasant differentiation, 3.
65 E.C. Mandala, Work and control in a peasant economy: A history of the Lower Tchiri
Valley in Malawi, 1855–1960 (Wisconsin, 1990), 62–3.
66 Interview with Siamwiza. A similar observation was made by Elias C. Mandala on the
indigenous people of Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi. See Mandala, Work and Control, 62.
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friday mufuzi
Fig. 9.5 Women pounding grain in Malawi, 1914. This was the main way of making mealie meal in Mukuni before the advent of factory-produced meal flour
(Source: E.C. Mandala, Work and control in a peasant economy: A history of the
Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859–1960, p.62)
meal to fall onto a skin or mat67 (See illustration 9.7) With the Sharma
Brothers’ Store in their area and provided they had money, people could
now simply buy factory-produced mealie meal, which the Leya called
mugaiwa.68
People in Mukuni and the surrounding villages used cooking oil from
the nuts of Mooma (Adansonia digitata) or Mungongo trees (Schinozophyton
rautanenii). The process for producing oil was energy-intensive. First, the
nuts had to be shelled and crushed into a paste using a mortar and pestle.
67 Interview with Siamwiza. Mandala noted the same among the Tshiri Valley people in
Work and Control, 63.
68 Mugaiwa was a western technologically-ground mealie meal. It was roughly ground
and relatively cheap but not as fine as today’s roller meal or the finely ground breakfast
mealie meal. Interview with Siamwiza.
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Fig. 9.6 Woman at work on a stone grinding mill, early 1860s. Mealie meal was
also made in a similar way in Mukuni before the advent of colonial rule (Source:
E.C. Mandala, Work and control in a peasant economy: A history of the Lower Tchiri
Valley in Malawi, 1859–1960, p.63)
Then, the paste had to be boiled and simmered for a long time before
the oil could be used, a process that required a lot of firewood and thus
contributed to the problem of deforestation. Although the mooma oil
had a good taste and was quite nutritious, regular consumption left people
with an unpleasant smell and they would often be ridiculed in their
communities. With the western factory-produced oil that was brought
to the Mukuni community by the Sharma Store, such problems were
alleviated.69
Many respondents confirmed that the Sharma Brothers’ Store contributed to increased beer brewing and drinking but stressed that beer brewing was popular in Mukuni even before the store opened. The sugar and
69 Interview with Siamwiza.
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friday mufuzi
yeast it sold became essential ingredients in brewing as they hastened the
fermentation process. The result was a reduction in the number of days
it took to make beer from the normal seven days to two or three. Flour
made from sorghum, millet or nyaute grains that had germinated and
been dried had previously been the main ingredient used in the slow
fermentation process. The arrival of yeast and sugar thus revolutionised
the beer-brewing process and, in addition to a reduced production time,
beer became more easily available to consumers.
Beer brewing was mainly done by women. According to Siamwiza, a lot
of women resorted to it to raise the money they needed to purchase the
western consumer goods available in the store. Some, particularly those
considered experts in producing good beer, were able to generate a lot of
money and began to feel superior to their husbands, thereby threatening
the men’s position as head of the household or family. In some cases, married women abandoned their husbands as they felt that they did not need
a man to provide for them, but most women continued to live with their
husbands and used the money they earned from beer sales to augment
their husbands’ incomes and cover additional family expenses, particularly school fees and school uniforms for their children. Siamwiza noted
that most of the people in Mukuni who received a western education
between the late 1950s and the 1970s were able to do so as a result of the
money their mothers earned from their brewing activities.70 One consequence of the Sharma Brothers’ Store was, therefore, that it contributed to
reduced female dependency on men and to more children being educated
in the area, although this cannot be substantiated statistically.
Another major effect of the Sharma Brothers’ Store was its contribution
to a weakening of the area’s inheritance system. In the traditional Leya
inheritance system, the pattern of distribution of family chattels following
a couple’s separation due to divorce or death was known long in advance.
Most items were communally owned by household members but some,
particularly high-value items such as cattle, guns, sledges, drums, axes and
hoes, were owned by the husband. Other items were owned by the wife,
generally those that were acquired through her own efforts or as gifts from
her husband or relatives. These included clothes and blankets made of
animal skins or tree bark, winnowing and carrier baskets, sleeping and sitting mats, pestles and mortars, wooden pots, plates, cooking sticks,
wooden cutlery and fowls. Gifts might include items of high value such as
70 Interview with Siamwiza.
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211
goats or cattle, but communal possessions could not be disposed of arbitrarily or indiscriminately. A husband could give away his personal possessions to anyone or to a member of his extended family and a wife was at
liberty to do the same.71
Following the death of a husband, communal family items went to his
wife and children while his personal chattels went to his children and a
few to his relatives. The items given to relatives were meant to cement
their relationship. If any of the children of the deceased encountered a
problem, s/he could lean on them, particularly on the shoulders of a person who had inherited the family name (swaana or sikulyazina), normally
the deceased’s brother or nephew. In some cases, the sikulyazina also
inherited the deceased person’s wife and took care of her and her children.
The system thus ensured the widow and her children some element of
social security and the property owned by the deceased’s wife never
changed hands, even if she decided to go to the village she hailed from.
Similarly when a wife died, the family chattels remained in the family
while her personal possessions were shared among her children and a few
went to her relatives.72
Before the arrival of western-produced consumer goods, the people in
Mukuni only owned a few goods, mostly items made of animal skin or
bark. Valuable possessions tended to be cattle and goats. The arrival of
the Sharma Brothers’ Store therefore led to an increase in the number of
(valuable) possessions the local people had, including ploughs, radios,
metal beds, bicycles, carts, jerry lamps and cotton and woollen blankets.
According to Siachilubwi, these possessions weakened the Leya inheritance system because some relatives, such as brothers and uncles of a
deceased husband claimed items they coveted, thus dispossessing the
widow and her children. Sometimes they even grabbed personal items
belonging to the widow and although it is difficult to substantiate these
claims, Siachilubwi felt that from the time when western consumer goods
became common in Mukuni, in part as a consequence of the actions of
Sharma Brothers’ Stores, a number of cases related to property grabbing
were heard at Mukuni’s traditional court.73
The goods people in Mukuni and the nearby villages owned as a result
of the arrival of the Sharma Brothers’ Store contributed to a weakening of
the inheritance system. In the past, the heirs to the property of deceased
71 Interview with Siachilubwi.
72 Interview with Siachilubwi.
73 Interview with Siachilubwi.
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friday mufuzi
husbands were known, and the needs of the widow and any children were
taken care of by the deceased’s relatives. With more people accumulating
possessions from the Sharma Brothers’ Store, interest lay more in inheriting the deceased people’s property than in taking care of their widows and
children. This even led to reports of property grabbing, a practice that was
hardly known before. It would be interesting to research whether or not
the scourge of property grabbing, which is endemic in contemporary
Zambian society, has its origins in the arrival of western-produced consumer goods in the country.
In addition to being a place to procure consumer goods, the Sharma
Brothers’ Store was also a place to congregate, particularly in the evenings
when adults and children would come to the store to meet their friends.
Generally, discussions centred on meeting the opposite sex and on love
affairs, while children used the place as a play area. People also met, however, to settle pending disputes and sometimes fights erupted because
of the failure of belligerent individuals to settle their disagreements amicably. These sometimes even went to litigation, particularly when neighbours were involved.74
The goods the Sharma brothers sold prompted an unprecedented
craving for western consumer goods. Men who failed to meet family obligations as demanded by their wives met serious challenges and women
who were married to men who were unable to provide western consumer
foodstuffs, clothes and utensils as a result of a lack of financial resources
often left their husbands for men with the means to do so. In Leya tradition, no woman was allowed to drink beer publicly, except for elderly
women. Women who disregarded this norm were often ostracised because
a woman was considered to be the bedrock of the moral fibre of the family
and what she did carried more weight than what a man did. Infidelity and
prostitution among women were therefore not common. However, the
desire to own the western goods on sale in the Sharma Brothers’ Store
did result in increased social problems and drunkenness, and infidelity
and prostitution among women became more common. Women became
attracted to men who had accumulated wealth in the form of western
technology and consumer items and some even migrated to Livingstone
Town, where they could drink beer without anyone questioning them and
enjoy a more western lifestyle.75
74 Interview with Siachilubwi.
75 Interview with Siamwiza.
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the sharma brothers’ trading store, 1950s to 1964
213
Fearing being abandoned or divorced by their wives because of their
inability to provide them with western consumer goods, some of the men
in the Mukuni area left for urban areas such as Livingstone Town, Victoria
Falls Town, the Hwange coal mines or Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, or even for
South Africa where they worked as migrant labourers in the diamond and
gold mines in Kimberly and Johannesburg respectively.76 By encouraging
an appetite for western goods and with the failure of some husbands to
meet their wives’ newly acquired desire for these goods, the Sharma
Brothers’ Store contributed to social ills such as drunkenness and prostitution among women in Mukuni, which was later ‘exported’ to areas of highpopulation density such as Livingstone.
Changes in taste and consumption patterns, whereby western goods
were preferred to traditional goods, resulted in the dying out of traditional
handicrafts and native utensils. This was highlighted by Siamwiza, who in
an interview stressed the negative aspects of the Sharma Brothers’ Store’s
contribution to life in Mukuni. It had led to the local people abandoning
traditional handicrafts. Traditional manufacturing methods were considered too time-consuming and laborious and the resulting products were
deemed inferior to western ones. Traditional Leya-produced goods such as
wooden plates, cups and stools or chairs with a wooden frame and animal
hide base and back were abandoned for metal and enamel plates and cups
and modern chairs. Traditional clothes made of bark and animal skins
were also replaced by western clothes that were now easily available.77
Other items that became less popular included traditional mats, baskets, winnowing and storage dishes and musical instruments, such as kantiimbwa, kankokela and mpeta. Over time, the skills required to make these
were lost and the curios and other wood and animal-horn carvings in
Mukuni, which in the past were finely made, lost their traditional touch as
the carvers became influenced by the demands of tourists visiting Victoria
Falls. Unlike in the past, curios were made in large numbers to meet the
demands of the tourists from whom the local people got the money they
needed to buy western consumer goods in the Sharma Brothers’ Store and
other similar stores in Livingstone. This state of affairs compromised the
standards of traditional workmanship and resulted in products that did
not portray the culture of people in the area.78
76 Interview with Siamwiza.
77 Interview with Siamwiza.
78 Interview with Siamwiza.
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friday mufuzi
Conclusion
The Sharma Brother’s Store in Mukuni introduced the products of industrial technology to Mukuni village and the surrounding areas, and thus
contributed to the transformation of consumption patterns and the area’s
social structures and associated concepts of wealth. The store eased the
lives of people with its trading activities and put essential consumer goods
within the easy reach of many who previously had had to walk long distances to Livingstone for supplies. Over time, the store contributed to a
change in consumption tastes and in the way of life of the people in these
areas: they moved from having traditional to western or modern lifestyles.
More importantly, the Sharma Brothers’ Store helped establish capitalism
in Mukuni and the surrounding areas as the trade in western-produced
consumer goods developed and encouraged cash-earning economic activities among the local people who wanted to access the cash they needed
to purchase goods such as soap, salt, paraffin and clothes. In some cases,
men were forced to engage in migrant labour to generate enough income
to facilitate the purchase of such necessities.
The Sharma Brothers’ Store, just like Indian traders in the rest of rural
Zambia, was therefore an agent of social change because the factoryproduced items it sold brought about change in the culture of the local
African people as they came to depend on them. The store also transformed the social structures of the community it serviced as its goods
ultimately assumed a status symbol and those who accumulated and consumed them enjoyed a higher status in the community than those who did
not. The store thus contributed to a degree of social stratification in the
community that, at times, threatened the authority of the local political
leadership of the village headmen and the chiefs. It also led to a gradual
but definitive disappearance of traditional handicrafts and native objects
in preference for mass-produced western goods as well as the proliferation
of social ills such as drunkenness, prostitution and marital problems. The
Sharma Brothers’ Store therefore underpins the role played in rural
Zambia by Indian traders in establishing capitalism and in introducing
material consumption patterns, the end of locally manufactured goods
and associated technologies, and social differentiation and ills anchored
in economic power.
For use by the Author only | © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV
THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE FORT
JAMESON (CHIPATA) INDIANS ON THE DEVELOPMENT
OF CHIPATA DISTRICT, 1899–1973
Bizeck J. Phiri
Introduction and Historical Background
In 1891 the British South Africa Company’s (BSAC) Charter was extended
to the territories north of the Zambezi. Friday Mufuzi has suggested
that the expedition included an Indian.1 Furthermore, according to Mike
Hagemann, ‘in the same year, an Indian police force was raised from
Sepoys Sikhs and Mohammedan cavalrymen’.2 Later, in 1893, this force was
replaced by new drafts of Sikhs, Zanzibaris, Mozambique and Nyasaland
Africans. When Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia were separated, the
mixed forces were withdrawn. Clearly, therefore, Indians were introduced
in Zambia at the dawn of colonisation.
Between 1890 and 1911 Northern Rhodesia was administered by the
BSAC as two separate entities, North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia.
North-Western Rhodesia was administered from Livingstone, while NorthEastern Rhodesia was administered from Fort Jameson (present day
Chipata). Although both administrations were financed by the BSAC, they
developed separate immigration policies, which later affected the nature
and character of Indian immigration to Northern Rhodesia. North-Eastern
Rhodesia’s immigration policy was to resemble that of Nyasaland (Malawi),
because in the 1890s Cecil Rhodes had signed an agreement with Harry
Johnston to oversee both Nyasaland and North-Eastern Rhodesia on
behalf or the BSAC.3 The Indian immigration policy in North-Eastern
Rhodesia reflected Johnston’s colonial ideal in which he placed a high
premium on the role of Indians. For Johnston, the territory was to be ‘ruled
1 F. Mufuzi, ‘A history of Indians in Livingstone, 1890–1964’, unpublished MA thesis,
(University of Zambia, 2001).
2 Mike Hagemann, ‘Northern Rhodesia Police’, http://www.mazoe.com/nrp.html
3 J. Haig, ‘Crossing colonial boundaries: The “Indian question” and early Indian immigration to Northern Rhodesia’, C. Baker and Z. Norridge (eds.), Crossing places: New research
in African studies (Newcastle, 2007), 5.
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bizeck j. phiri
by Whites, developed by the Indians, and worked by the Blacks.’4 The two
men worked closely in trying to create a role for Indians as middlemen in
the fledgling economy of North-Eastern Rhodesia.’5
The region, which is today called the Eastern Province of Zambia,
was initially part of what was known as North-Eastern Rhodesia. Prior
to that, the area was called East Luangwa District and included parts of
what is currently the Northern Province of Zambia. The region as a colonial administrative and economic enterprise traces its origins to the visit
by a German trader named Carl Wiese to Paramount Chief Mpezeni of the
Ngoni people between 1889 and 1891. The Company was already present
in North-Western Rhodesia. The NCEC was formed in England with a
nominal capital of £1,000,000 and Wiese became an employee of the NCEC
in the late 1890s.6 Although Colonel Warton was sent out as a Company
representative, the NCEC did not have formal control of the territory, and
was not in a position to administer the territory, nor conduct any business
without Mpezeni’s consent. Nonetheless, the NCEC established an administrative station at Chinunda (Old Fort Jameson) and Mr. Morringham
was appointed by the Company to be in charge of the post. Because the
administrative post was outside Ngoni territory, his administration was
ineffective. Later, with the permission of Mpezeni, the administrative post
was moved to Fort Young. This development notwithstanding, the NCEC
still felt insecure. Believing that the Ngoni would attack the station, residents of Fort Young applied for an armed force from the Nyasaland
Protectorate.7 The Protectorate administration at Zomba dispatched
troops to Fort Young. Macmillan and Shapiro suggest that Wiese in fact
precipitated the attack by the British troops from Nyasaland on Mpezeni’s
Ngoni in 1898.
Worse still, the arrival of troops at Fort Young created further tension
between the two communities, especially because the troops were considered a threat to peace and security of the African people. The war effectively suppressed the Ngoni and paved the way for the actual occupation
of the territory by the NCEC administration. The new station was placed
under a Collector of Taxes. He was charged with the responsibility of
enforcing NCEC control of the region. In August 1898 Robert Codrington
4 Cited in R. Rotberg, The rise of nationalism in Central Africa: The making of Malawi and
Zambia 1873–1964, (Harvard MA, 1965), 13.
5 Haig, ‘Crossing colonial boundaries’, 5.
6 H. Macmillan and F. Shapiro, Zion in Africa: The Jews of Zambia (London and New
York, 1999), 5.
7 Macmillan and Shapiro, Zion in Africa, 5.
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fort jameson (chipata) indian traders, 1899–1973
217
visited the territory and chose a new site for Fort Jameson, which became
the headquarters of the district. In September of the same year, Fort
Jameson became the new chief station of the East Luangwa District.
However, it was not until December 1899 that the Administrator took up
residence at Fort Jameson, which was established in 1899 as an important
administrative town for the British South Africa Company. In that year
Robert Codrington, who was then the Deputy Administrator of NorthEastern Rhodesia, transferred his headquarters from Blantyre in Nyasaland.
The town was founded near Mpezeni’s palace following the latter’s defeat
the previous year by BSAC forces. Almost immediately Fort Jameson
became a small but successful centre for trade and other socio-economic
services concomitant with an emerging town.
Within ten years of its establishment, Fort Jameson had attracted a
considerable number of Asian traders (mostly from India). This study
examines the introduction of Asian/Indian merchant capital in Eastern
Province and the impact it had on the economies and consumption patterns of the local peoples.
The study also examines, among other things, the political establishment of Fort Jameson (Chipata) and the impact which the colonial
town had on the economic development of the town itself and the surrounding areas. The study further examines the response of the local
African population to the establishment of a settlement that was very
different from the village type of settlement that Africans were used to in
the pre-colonial times or on the eve of colonisation.
The establishment of the North-Eastern Rhodesia administration in
1898 led to a transformation of both the political and economic development of the region. The NCEC was not only engaged in exploratory
work, but was also engaged in trading, facilitating European trade activities in the area. Meanwhile, the African Lakes Company (ALC) had an
administrative station and had established several stores in the region.
Undoubtedly, these commercial ventures by European traders, and later
by Indian traders in Fort Jameson, had a considerable impact on the social
and economic development of the surrounding areas of the Fort Jameson
District, which at independence became known as Chipata.
While the country was colonised by the British and much has been
written about the colonial administration and how it changed the life of
the indigenous people, the Indian community once introduced in Eastern
Province complemented the changes that were already taking place.
In fact, it was the Indians who were to venture deep into the remote parts
of the region to conduct trade which introduced European commodities
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bizeck j. phiri
to Africans. In colonial Zambia, the presence of the Indian population was
attributed to the migration movement of the Indians. Consequently, the
history of Indians in Zambia is essentially the history of Indian8 merchant
capital. Because Indians in Zambia are predominantly engaged in commerce, this study is largely an examination of Indian merchant capital in
both colonial and post-colonial Zambia and the extent to which they
influenced consumption patterns of Africans.
In her study of Indians in Tanzania, Martha Spencer Honey identified
two eras of Indian merchant capital: before colonisation when precapitalist (communal, feudal and slave) modes of production were dominant; and after the advent of imperialism when capitalism penetrated and
dominated the exchange-oriented economies.9 In the case of Zambia,
Indian merchant capital belongs to the second era and not the first. There
were no Indians in Zambia before the introduction of colonial rule. Indian
merchants in colonial Zambia made huge profits in their dealings with
African producers. Indians came to colonial Zambia well acquainted with
the basic principle of commodity exchange, that is ‘you buy cheap and sell
dear’. More important is that in the colonial set up merchant capital
became an agent of capital in industrialised Europe, America, Japan and
even India. Merchant capital was therefore used to distribute European
manufactured commodities and also to extract the colony’s agricultural
products for the benefit of the colonial power. It is in this later process
that Indians had the largest impact in shaping African responses to the
colonialist mode of production for the market.
This process of subordinating African producers to Indian merchant
capital to meet the needs of the colonial state generated both economic
and political conflict. In colonial Zambia the state successfully dictated
the process of economic transformation, unlike in East Africa where
Indians were already present and firmly in place when Europeans arrived.
In colonial Zambia Indian merchant capital depended on the state for
survival. In turn the colonial state was able to manipulate the playing
field to its advantage by changing rules regarding where merchant capital
would be invested.
8 The terms ‘Asians’ and ‘Indians’ are used interchangeably in Zambian discourse and
refer to people originally from the Indian subcontinent. The term Asian became popular
after the independence of India in 1947 in order to include people from what is today
Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as India itself. However, in this study I have generally used
the term Indian as the study is essentially a study of Indians in Zambia.
9 M.S. Honey, ‘An economic history of Indians in Tanzania and Zanzibar c1840–1940’,
unpublished PhD thesis, (University of Dar es Salaam, 1982), 1.
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fort jameson (chipata) indian traders, 1899–1973
219
Throughout the colonial period, merchant capital did not significantly
transform itself into productive capital. While generally merchants do not
invest their capital in production, colonialism itself impeded industrial
development. This was because the colonial state ensured that metropolitan capital was central and prevented Indian capital from venturing into
the industries. This position changed very little after independence. Indian
merchant capital was therefore restricted to commodity distribution and
to this effect contributed extensively to transforming African rural life.
Indian merchant capital could not be transformed into productive
capital because four years after independence President Kenneth Kaunda
announced the Mulungushi economic reforms, which had serious implications for Indian merchant capital. The nationalisation programme
that followed was not conducive to Indian merchant capital. A period
of stress and low economic activity by Indian merchant capital followed
the Mulungushi declaration. It was only after 1991 that one could see
a renewed interest and vigour by Indian merchants in economic activities.
Nonetheless, most are still sate light business interests of Indian based
firms. As such, they are essentially still engaged in the distribution category of the business.
Introduction of Indian Merchant Capital
In both cases, the ‘excess baggage’ were the Indian merchant capitalists.
Indians had been in South Africa since the early nineteenth century as
indentured labourers and traders. They were also present in Nyasaland
(Malawi). Thus in 1904 Indian merchant capital attempted to start
business in the Fort Jameson (Chipata) region, but was heavily resisted
by Europeans in the area. Europeans in Northern Rhodesia greeted the
introduction of Indian merchants with mixed reactions. The Company
Administration wished to introduce Indian traders for a variety of reasons.
Indian merchants were seen as a good way of introducing the money
economy in the African society. The Administration needed revenue to
conduct its administrative responsibility. Taxes from Indian business
and licence fees seemed a good opportunity for the administration. The
Company therefore ignored the protest from Europeans over Indian
immigration into the territory. It decided to sanction the introduction of a
limited number of Indian merchants into the country.
Although Indian traders were already actively involved in merchant
business in neighbouring Malawi, and were conducting their business
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bizeck j. phiri
alongside European traders, European traders in colonial Zambia were
threatened by the introduction of Indian merchants. They argued that
the introduction of Indian traders would drive European traders out of
business, which would generally be harmful to Africans as well. The
Company administration was not convinced that Indian merchants
would drive Europeans out of business. Harry Johnston had already
decided to use Indian merchants as intermediaries between European
trading firms and African consumers.10 Codrington, therefore, replicated
the Nyasaland Indian immigration policy where Europeans were encouraged to go into farming, and leave the trading to Indians. He pointed out
that trading should be left to the European trading firm and Indian
traders. This policy evoked a sharp reaction from both European traders
and European farmers.
The Glasgow based African Lakes Company, one of the leading
European trading firms in Nyasaland and colonial Zambia, on 3 June 1905
threatened to petition the BSAC Board of Directors in London if the
protest against Indian immigration to the Acting Administrator at Fort
Jameson did not yield positive results.11 African Lakes Company believes
that the introduction of Indian Traders would drive many Europeans out
of the country, and that it will negatively affect the welfare of the natives.12
They further pointed out that the Farmers Association at Fort Jameson
met and passed a resolution deploring the action of the Administration to
invite Indian traders into the territory. Europeans argued that the Charter
held by the NCEC gave them the sole trading rights in the territory.
The introduction of Indian merchants was viewed as a violation of that
right. They wondered why Indians traders were not simply prohibited
from entering the territory.
As a result, European traders tended to discourage, instead of encourage Africans to take up trading. European traders were also said to have
been reluctant to engage in trade of merchandise that was specifically for
the African consumers. The Acting Administrator at Fort Jameson wrote
to the Honorary Secretary of the Farmers Association on 6 June 1905 to the
effect that if European traders collapsed it was because of their failure to
cultivate African trade, and not because of the introduction of Indian
10 C.M.T. M’kunga, ‘The development of the Indian trading class in Chipata, Zambia
1900–1988’, unpublished MA dissertation, (University of Zambia, 1992), 20–1.
11 NAZ A/1/4/4/7, Issuing, Introducing and Granting Trading Rights to Indian Traders, 31
July – 2 December 1905.
12 NAZ A/1/4/4/7, African Lakes Company to BSAC, 7 June 1905.
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fort jameson (chipata) indian traders, 1899–1973
221
traders.13 Therefore, as far as the Company Administration was concerned,
Europeans had to adjust to the changes. At this stage it looked as though
the Company Administration was going to sacrifice European traders.
The Farmers Association at Fort Jameson did not give up the fight. They
continued to question the wisdom of the Administration to invite Indian
traders into the territory without first establishing the position of trading
in the country. The fears expressed by European farmers and traders
reflected the reality of the potential competition posed by Indian traders
once introduced in the territory. Although European traders had for a
while concentrated on meeting the needs of European consumers, they
now realised that Indians would not only target African consumers but
the European consumer as well. The prospect of losing business to Indian
traders was real and not welcome at all.
However, after the exchange of memoranda and discussions, the BSAC
Board informed the ALC on 31 July 1905 that it did not feel that the introduction of Indian traders would cripple or drive away European traders
from the country.14 The BSAC Board further noted that in Nyasaland,
contrary to European fears in Northern Rhodesia, European and Indians
traders were doing wholesale business together. The two communities
were working side by side. Indian traders were said to cater almost exclusively to the African consumer while the European traders were catering
to the European consumer. Indeed it was encouraged and for a while it
seemed that European traders would survive the introduction of Indian
traders.
The Board was keen to introduce Indian traders because since the
colonisation of the territory European traders had not showed much
interest in the natural products of the country. Indian traders, on the
other hand, had shown a keen interest to venture into this area of trade.
In Nyasaland Indian traders had already demonstrated a willingness to
exchange European manufactured goods for African products like hides,
beeswax, grain, oilseeds and other agricultural products. European traders
found this type of business troublesome and therefore avoided it altogether. It was on account of this that the BSAC Board of Directors felt
encouraged that the introduction of a limited number of Indian traders
in the territory would be to the advantage of the African producers and
the country as a whole. The BSAC Administration wished to raise the
13 NAZ A1/4/4/7, L.P Beaufort, Acting Administrator to J.A. Ford, Honorary Secretary
Fort Jameson Farmers Association, 6 June 1905.
14 NAZ A/1/4/4/7, Assistant Secretary to Robert Codrington, 31 July 1905.
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bizeck j. phiri
appetites of Africans for European manufactured goods so that they could
be awakened to the demand for money. This would eventually make
Africans want to look for wage employment to earn cash with which to
buy European manufactured goods. Indian merchants were considered
perfect partners in the proletarianisation of the African people as well as
introducing Africans to new consumption patterns.
Therefore, by the end of 1905 Indian traders had been formally introduced in colonial Zambia despite European objection. The BSAC Board
of Directors in London hoped that the ALC, which had put up the hardest
struggle against the introduction of Indian merchants would adapt to
the presence of Indian merchants. Clearly, therefore, European traders
and the European firm had lost the battle against the introduction of
Indian merchants. European traders and the European firm resorted to
other methods of dealing with Indian competition. These methods in
the long run reflected the colonial social and racial differentiation of the
social formation. By January 1906 Indian traders had begun to arrive in the
country.
Indian Settlement in (Fort Jameson) Chipata
Soon after the BSAC Board made the decision to allow a limited number of
Indian traders to come to Chipata, a few moved from Blantyre and Zomba
in Malawi. They established trading shops in the town and the surrounding areas. Both Europeans and Africans felt the impact of the newly arrived
seasoned merchants, whose base was in many respects still in Malawi.
The first shops were off-shoots of their Nyasaland businesses. Arguably,
therefore, the pioneer Indian merchants in the Eastern Province were not
the poor type. They were already established merchants in Nyasaland
seeking to expand their business. By 1912 several Indian traders had established themselves in the Chipata area and were operating a number of
stores. In that year the ALC was running eleven shops throughout the
province. Meanwhile, an Indian trader named Oman Adam was operating
five stores. Another Indian trader, Mohamed Osman was running three
stores. There was no doubt that the Indian traders were favourably competing with the European traders. At the same time the Indian traders
remained patriotic to the Company administration.
Meanwhile, the number of Indian traders was steadily growing. In 1916
another Indian trader named Assan Khamisa opened three stores and was
involved in trading African goods. Because of the war, there were no other
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fort jameson (chipata) indian traders, 1899–1973
223
Indian traders who set up shops in Eastern Province during the period.
Thus, up to 1919, when the war ended, Oman Adam, Mohamed Osman and
Assan Khamisa were the only big names in the Indian community in
Chipata in African trade. When the war ended there was an increase in the
number of Indian traders who came to the Eastern Province. They were
encouraged by the post-war boom in spite of the measures which the
Company was putting in place to restrict Indian immigration.
Meanwhile in 1915 the Company Administration had begun to restrict
Indian immigration because the few who had established businesses
were beginning to invite their relatives and friends over as shop assistants.
The Northern Rhodesia Proclamation 15 of 1915 Section 7 (4 and 5) was
used to check the rising numbers of Indian immigrants.15 This legislation
was passed following extensive lobbying by European traders who consistently argued that Indian immigration, if allowed to rise, would be detrimental to both Africans and Europeans in the territory. It can be said that
the 1915 Proclamation was in a way a victory for European traders, who in
1905 had failed to block the immigration of Indian traders.
A substantial number of Indian merchants first came to colonial
Zambia as shop assistants. When the business expanded the owner would
apply to the Colonial Administration to import a shop assistant from
India. Africans would never be taken on as shop assistants. This practice
made Africans uncomfortable because it contributed to the growth of the
Indian population in the country. Furthermore, since Indian merchants
controlled the wholesale trade, Africans could not easily compete with
the newly opened Indian shops, which received all the support from the
established Indian wholesalers.16
This view was in apparent reference to the reduced licence fees for
African traders in the Native Reserves whose objective was to encourage
Africans to take up trading at the village level. From the above observation
by the Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs, emergent African traders
were seriously threatened by both European and Indian traders. However,
it was the number of Indian merchants and their Indian employees which
was of major concern to the Africans.
From the table below it is clear that African concerns were justified,
particularly in those areas where the number of Indian merchants and
shop assistants was considerably high. Even colonial officials conceded
15 NAZ RC 21 Asiatic Admission into Northern Rhodesia and Immigration Regulations,
1924–1927.
16 NAZ SEC 3/5 Asiatic Immigration: Indians, Pop/A/20/1.
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bizeck j. phiri
224
Table 10.1. Distribution of male Asiatic population as at December 1938
District
Store Owners Store Assistants Farmers Other Trades
Livingstone
Kalomo
Choma
Mazabuka
Lusaka
Broken Hill
Ndola
Luanshya
Fort Jameson
Mpika
Mumbwa
Namwala
Serenje
Abercorn
TOTAL
15
1
4
5
26
10
19
9
17
1
3
2
112
41
1
8
27
34
31
26
25
53
2
1
1
1
251
2
1
3
9
6
9
7
4
3
38
(Source: NAZ SEC 3/53 New Immigration Ordinance Volume I, 1939–1946)
that with the advent of Indian merchant capital in the rural areas the
prospect of Africans engaging in trade on their own was remote. This was
certainly the case in Fort Jameson. Yet, it were the economic activities of
the Indian community that contributed to the socio-economic transformation of the district.
Indo-African Relations
The problem of Indian immigration into colonial Zambia was not confined to Europeans alone. Africans as the indigenous people were equally
affected and were concerned about the introduction of the Indian merchant capitalists to the country. From the above discussion it is evident
that the official view was generally positive towards Indian immigration,
and was generally sensitive to views of the Colonial Office and the
Government of India. To what extent did this affect African opinion on
Indian immigration? Did African opinion count in the decisions made
regarding the immigration of Indians into colonial Zambia? The position
of the colonial state on these issues was guided by its belief that Indian
merchant capital was a necessary catalyst for stimulating African appetite
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fort jameson (chipata) indian traders, 1899–1973
225
for European manufactured goods. The colonial state was further convinced that this development would simultaneously bring the African
community into the money economy. Indian merchant capital was also
considered a catalyst for African peasant production for the market, and it
was believed that it would assist in re-orienting African peasant production towards a money-driven economy. This was the basis on which the
colonial state continued to support a limited number of Indian immigrants into the country. Thus, based on these assumptions, African protests against Indian immigration into the territory were ignored.
The colonial government’s position was strengthened by the fact that a
considerable number of Africans also began to participate in trading
activities at the village level. Since they were only starting they needed
government protection against the more experienced Indian merchants.
The colonial state was well aware of the position and the vulnerability of
the emerging African traders in the face of Indian competition. Consequently, the colonial state put measures in place that restricted Indian
merchants to areas outside the Native Reserves. Only Africans were licensed to trade in the reserves. Indian and European traders were not permitted to trade in the reserves unless under special permission from the
Traditional Authorities. The colonial state used this argument to permit
Indian or European merchants to trade in Native Reserves.
As early as 1929 the Provincial Commissioners’ conference had agreed
that Indian merchants should be allowed to trade in Native Reserves as
long as the Native Authorities permitted them in their areas.17 The colonial state decided that certain areas, which were in Native Reserves but
were traversed by main roads, should be zoned for Indian traders. Thus in
the Eastern Province these trading areas were founded at Jumbe, Kalichelo,
Msoro, Mgubudu, Katete, Petauke and Sinda. It is not clear how much protection this gave to African traders. Evidence seems to suggest that a considerable number of African traders in the villages were actually employed
by Indian merchants in the designated trading zones. They extended their
areas of operation by merely sub-contracting their business to an appointed African who obtained goods on credit and sold them on behalf of the
Indian merchant for a salary. The Indian merchant appropriated the surplus value and the African remained at the same level and never developed to own the business.
17 NAZ SEC 1/1576, General Dealers, Indians in Barotseland, 1937–39: Minutes of
22 October 1937.
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This was in sharp contrast to the way in which Indian merchants treated
fellow Indians whom they brought as shop assistants and assisted to
emerge as owners of their own businesses through a well worked out
credit system. Several Indians testified that they came in as shop assistants, but after several years of working they were able to save enough
capital to start their own trading business. The argument seems plausible
considering the large number of failed African business enterprises during
both the colonial and post-colonial periods.
However, it should be pointed out that African traders were equally disadvantaged when compared to European traders. For example, in 1934 the
Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs pointed out that: ‘A very large number of the stores which will be opened under the new reduced charge will
be covertly nothing else but sub-stores of European traders.’ This view was
in apparent reference to the reduced licence fees for African traders in the
Native Reserves whose objective was to encourage Africans to take up
trading at the village level. From the above observation by the Assistant
Secretary for Native Affairs, emergent African traders were seriously
threatened by both European and Indian traders. However, it was the
number of Indian merchants and their Indian employees, which were of
major concern to the Africans.
Indian Merchants and Land Acquisition, 1924 to 1953
Although Indians were predominantly merchants, a few acquired land
quite early. It was common practice among the Indian merchants to cultivate vegetables and fruits for their own consumption and sale to Europeans.
In fact, several pioneer merchants used part of their land allocated for a
shop to cultivate vegetables for sale to the surrounding white community.
A number made their initial capital for the shops and trading business
from the small profits realised from the sale of vegetables. There is therefore evidence that some Indian merchant capital formation was initially
tied to land.
Almost all Indians arrived as store assistants. Soon some emerged as
successful shop owners and landowners. The Indian merchant was known
to oblige the European and cheat the African and to make a lot of money
in the process. The case of Ibrahim S. Jasat was really exceptional and
clearly demonstrated how Indians transformed themselves from mere
shop assistants to prosperous shop owners in a big way. In 1938 Jasat was
a store assistant. This profile made Jasat an important merchant leader
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among Indians in the Fort Jameson area.18 Colonial officials noted that by
the late 1940s Indian merchants had become the biggest potential land
buyers in Eastern Province. More land was moving into Indian than
European hands.
Jasat was not the only Indian merchant who took up land and diversified into agriculture in the Eastern Province. The acting Provincial
Commissioner informed the Chief Secretary at the end of 1946 that four
Indian traders had taken up land for the first time totalling 10,000 acres.
Most of the land was being bought from the North Charterland Exploration Company.19 It was observed that there was a big demand for land
by wealthy Indian traders. The Indian traders made very generous offers
to European landowners and there were signs that some land owned by
coloureds changed hands. One Indian bought a 1770-acre farm from a
coloured.
The following year (1947) the NCEC sold four more farms of 5075 acres
to Indian buyers. However, despite these purchases there is little evidence
that the Indian buyers put this land to full commercial agricultural use
during the 1940s. Only one Indian was registered as a tobacco grower in
the Eastern Province during the period.
In Chipata the Town Management Board dealt with a number of land
disputes involving Indian merchants. In 1948 the board heard a case
between Mohamed Hamir and Almed Osman. The case concerned who
should use the piece of land that was opposite Osman’s Store. The Indian
merchants decided to take the matter before the board for arbitration. The
board decided that the piece of land should be sub-divided between the
two merchants.20 This indicates the significance of land among Indian
merchants and also underscores the role of vegetable farming in the process of capital formation among the Indian merchants in colonial Zambia.
An Indian named Mohammed Ismail owned a 200 acre farm near
Kasowi’s village since 1911. It was in this area that Indian merchants clashed
with African interests. Indian merchants bought maize and other agricultural produce at cheaper prices and sold at higher prices. This made Indian
merchants realise handsome profits, which contributed to the process of
Indian merchant capital accumulation and growth. Africans resented the
18 NAZ SEC 2/191, Provincial Newsletter, Eastern Province 1938–1948, 31 December 1947.
19 NAZ SEC 2/191, Provincial Newsletter, Eastern Province 1938–1948, Acting Provincial
Commissioner to Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 20 January 1947.
20 NAZ EP 4/1/4, Minutes of the Town Management Board, Fort Jameson, 1940–1959, 13
January 1948.
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practice because they did not benefit from it. For example, Indian merchants purchased maize in the Lundazi District and exported about 2,000
kilogramme bags to the line of rail where the maize was sold at a profit.
This business was very attractive to Indian merchants because transportation costs were relatively cheap. Indian merchants took advantage of
Thatcher and Hobson lorries that were returning empty from the Eastern
Province to Lusaka after transporting soldiers to Eastern Province and
Nyasaland.21 Yet, while the Indian merchants were cashing in on the maize
produced by African peasants, Africans were experiencing food shortages
and hunger. Once again Indian merchants demonstrated their skill of
appropriating surplus value as distributors of commodities at the expense
of the producers. Africans developed a deep resentment against Indian
merchants who bought agricultural produce at low prices and made huge
profits by selling at higher prices.22
Evidently, Africans as producers of primary commodities did not have a
strong bargaining voice in their dealings with the more experienced
Indian merchants, who were already accustomed to the principle of ‘buy
cheap, and sell dear’. It should be pointed out, however, that Indian merchants were issued with grain trading permits by the colonial government.
More important perhaps, it should be noted that in several instances
African peasants took grain to Indian merchants ‘in such odd quantities
that it [was] not always possible to pay cash for it.’23 Colonial officials
observed that African women and children often took small quantities
of grain to Indian merchants in exchange for salt, matches, candles and
other odd wants. Furthermore, in remote villages far from Indian shops
African women often preferred to barter their agricultural produce with
cloth to save themselves the trouble of walking long distances to the nearest Indian shop.
That the Indian merchants exploited African peasants merely demonstrated the Marxist view of the capitalist mode of production, whereby the
distributors who appropriate surplus value exploit the producers. Indian
merchants did not add any value to the agricultural produce. They merely
increased the selling price to realise a profit. African peasants rarely transformed themselves into distributors and continued to depend on Indian
merchants for the distribution of their agricultural produce. This process
21 NAZ SEC 2/191, Acting Provincial Commissioner to Chief Secretary, 18 October 1946.
22 NAZ SEC 2/225, Eastern Province African Provincial Council Minutes of the Meeting
of 27–28 April 1948.
23 NAZ ZA 1/9/87/2, Secretary of Native Affairs to Chief Secretary, 21 June 1933.
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enhanced the growth of Indian merchant capital. The profits realised were
ploughed back into the trading business.
Indian merchants did not have problems with buying grain from African
peasants because they usually found a cash buyer for the grain later in the
year. In fact, some Indian merchants paid cash for the grain in the hope of
selling it at a profit later. Because of the shortage of cash in the villages in
the 1930s and 1940s, Indian merchants easily and willingly bartered their
European manufactured goods for African agricultural produce. Thus,
when Traditional Authorities complained that Indian merchants were
exploiting the people, they did not take into account the circumstances
which gave rise to the practice. The problem was that the practice contributed to the marginalisation of African peasants while it enhanced Indian
merchant capital formation and growth.
The practice was illegal. In 1939 the colonial state put the Credit Sales to
Native Ordinance Cap 54 in place. It prohibited the advance of goods or
cash by merchants to Africans against future deliveries of grain crops, livestock or other produce.24 Under the same ordinance it was illegal for
Indian merchants, or indeed any merchant, to engage in barter trade.
However, in practice the ordinance did not stop Indian or European merchants from engaging in barter trade. The practice continued because
both sides got some, though unequal, benefits from the practice.
Under the circumstances, all the Traditional Authorities could do was
complain to the colonial authorities about the negative effect of the
practice on the economy of their societies. Chief Ledi Mkanda of the
Chewa people complained in 1948 that during the months of JanuaryMarch his people experienced much hunger because of the indiscriminate buying of food by European and Indian merchants. A related problem
raised by Chief Ledi Mkanda was about price control, which the government put in place. He argued that by controlling the price of maize, the
government was facilitating the exploitation of African growers by Indian
merchants.
The government on its part was not concerned with the returns of
African peasants. The colonial state did not wish to create conditions
which would lead to social unrest in the urban areas. Keeping the prices of
the main foodstuffs as low as possible was one of the main objectives for
instituting price control on maize. Thus Indian merchants and other suppliers of food were expected to supply maize to urban areas at prices
24 NAZ SEC 2/293, Credit Sales to Native Ordinance, 1939–1949.
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which were as low as possible. This is why in 1946 the colonial government
openly admitted that the price of maize had to be controlled ‘because
many people have no maize.’25
The Colonial Administration also pointed out that prices were fixed in
such a way that the interests of both producers and distributors were protected. This was achieved by ensuring that the Price Controller fined those
who sold goods far in excess of the fixed prices. The government even
brought out recent figures of Indian merchants who had been fined for
offences relating to price control regulations at Fort Jameson in March
1946. To prove its case the government told members of the African
Provincial Council (APC) that fifteen Indian merchants had been fined in
March alone for offences connected to violating price control regulations.
Furthermore, the government argued that price controls were not just
imposed on African grown agricultural produce, but on all other commodities sold by Indian merchants.
The colonial administration was set to convince members of the APC
that Indian merchants were not making profits above what was expected
of them. However, the fact that several Indian merchants were convicted
in the courts for cases related to price control violations suggests that
African complaints were justified. This does not mean that the colonial
state was protecting African interests. Traditional authorities complained
to the colonial government that Indian merchants, who did not seem to
stick to price labels, were exploiting their people. They also complained
because Indian merchants demanded that when an African bought a
clothing material, this material had to be tailored in the same shop. This
resulted in the African paying more.26 The Provincial Commissioner,
R. Bush, informed the APC that in 1947 an Indian merchant was fined £30
for refusing to sell cloth to an African unless the cloth was tailored at his
shop. Otherwise, it would be the word of the African against that of the
Indian merchant. A common practice, which contributed to Indian merchant growth, was the payment of African labour in kind. It was found that
African workers never formally complained about the practice, apart from
just talking about the poor conditions in general.
25 NAZ SEC 2/225, Minutes of the African Provincial Council, 27–28 April 1946.
26 NAZ SEC 2/225, Eastern Province, APC Minutes of the Meetings, 1943–48: Price
Control, 27–28 April 1948.
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The Post-Colonial Period
Zambia attained political independence on 24 October 1964, and like most
former colonies, Zambia took over the reins of government while the economic sector was still entirely in the hands of non-citizens, especially
Europeans and Indian merchants. This situation was a direct result of the
colonial policy, which denied economic opportunities to Africans. The
nationalist leaders were expected to change this situation and give indigenous people a greater role in the economic development of the country.
There was not even a resident expatriate business or a foreign controlled
business or business for that matter with a Zambian manager in Cairo
Road.27
Undoubtedly, therefore, the Zambian resentment of foreign and alien
minority interests in the economy found expression in the president’s
quest to re-align the economic environment in favour of Zambian citizens. During the first four years of independence, the Zambian government called upon the Indian community to take up Zambian citizenship
and identify themselves with the nation. While the speech expressed the
concern of the nationalist government over the continued dominance of
aliens, both Indians and Europeans, in the economy, it also served to
highlight that the continued dominance of these aliens was a constant
reminder of colonial domination. The economic reforms that followed
were therefore an attempt to empower indigenous people economically,
in order to complete the process of independence. Thus, the economic
reforms had a political agenda as well.
Surprisingly, President Kaunda chose to use the same method which
the colonial state had unsuccessfully used to prop up African entrepreneurship in the rural areas:
Looking back at the methods of the colonial regime of the past I notice that
most of the Zambian businesses have developed in townships where competition from expatriate business was not allowed. For reasons which are
more human, I intend to use their method and confine the areas of retail
trade by resident expatriate businesses to the centre of big towns only.28
The political agenda of the economic reforms, as far as retail trade is concerned, was seen in the implementation of the reforms. United National
27 K.D. Kaunda, Zambia’s economic revolution (Lusaka, 1988), 30.
28 Kaunda, Zambia’s economic revolution, 26.
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Independence Party (UNIP) cadres expected some form of reward for
their role in the independence struggle. It is plausible to suggest that the
1968–9 economic reforms were part of the solution to the problem. The
reforms reflect the policy of Africanisation or indigenisation of the wholesale and retail trade in rural areas. Indigenisation of wholesale and retail
trade was tried by the state during the colonial period. The [Indian] stores
at present serve the community in a way that African traders cannot, and
until such a time as the Native Authorities feel that the position has been
reversed, I do not anticipate any closure of the store sites. Once good
African traders begin to emerge, however, then I have no doubt that the
Native Authorities will progressively close down the [Indian] stores.29
As observed earlier, these attempts to prop up African traders were
thwarted by Indian merchants who undermined the policy of the colonial
state. Consequently, by independence there were not many ‘good African
traders’ to replace the Indian merchants in rural areas. The colonial
District Commissioner was expecting an economic solution to the Indian
merchant dominance in the rural areas. Yet, as we have pointed out
already, African traders remained largely under-capitalised and were usually at the mercy of the Indian merchant who provided goods as a wholesaler. In the end, most African traders became fronts for the Indian
merchants.
Attempts were made to help Africans soon after independence, but
without success. In the Eastern Province, for example, where Indian merchant dominance was greatest, the provincial administration decided to
facilitate African entry into the wholesale and retail business through
the Eastern Province Co-operative Marketing Association (EPCMA).30
Africans were encouraged to buy shares in the Co-operative to establish a
wholesale shop ‘in order to counteract foreign profiteering’.31 The project
was a deliberate government attempt to initiate an economic approach to
dealing with the Indian dominance in the wholesale and retail business in
rural areas. The economic approach failed to replace Indian merchants by
African traders in the rural areas.
29 NAZ EP 1/1/37, Land Leases: Trading General, District Commissioner at Fort Jameson
to Commissioner of Lands, Lusaka, 16 November 1957.
30 For details of the history of the EPCMA see B.J. Phiri, The impact of the Eastern
Co-operative Union Limited (ECU) on the agricultural development of Eastern Province of
Zambia, 1957–1984: A Case Study, Research report Submitted to the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC), April 1986.
31 Tsopano, 19 February 1966.
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The implementation of the economic reforms followed a well-planned
programme and procedure. In 1967 the UNIP government put structures
in place which were later used to implement the reforms. The Provincial
Development Committees (PDC) and the District Development Committees (DDC) were initially put in place to spearhead development projects in the provinces and districts. The DDCs and the PDCs started by
identifying wholesale and retail shops that were owned by non-Zambian
Indians and other expatriates, to be earmarked for immediate take over. In
the Eastern Province alone, a total of 176 shops were identified for immediate take over by Zambian citizens.32
Before 31 December 1968 all outgoing non-Zambia Retail Trade Licence
Holders were requested to negotiate with Zambians who were expected to
take over the stores before 1 January 1969. On obtaining a letter from the
DDC that the particular Zambian qualified, the applicant was directed
to go to the Zambia Consumer and Buying Corporation (ZCBC) Shop
Manager who was requested to take stock in the retail shop to be taken
over; and payment for the shop was to be done in instalments.33
How did Non-Zambian Indian Merchants Respond?
Non-Zambian Indian response to the take over was calm and took several
forms. Some chose to transfer their shops to their relatives and friends of
Indian origin, instead of selling the shops to indigenous Zambians.34
Others demanded cash payments because they wanted to leave the country and return to India. For example, S.I. Pander offered to sell his shop to
Mrs. N. Mbewe, the Woman Regional Secretary at Katete for K1,600 cash.
Although the mechanism that was put in place to facilitate a smooth take
over of non-Zambian owned shops was straightforward, the sales could
not be concluded in time in several cases. The Zambia Consumer and
Buying Corporation (ZCBC), a state owned enterprise, took stock of the
shops to be taken over. Yet, in a number of cases transfers could not be
accomplished because of several factors. A considerable number of
Zambians who successfully negotiated to take over non-Zambian Indian
shops were party cadres and did not have operating capital. Consequently,
32 NAZ EP 4/20/86, Economic Reforms 1969–1970: DEV 120/19 Economic Reforms Take
Over of 176 Shops, 18 October 1968.
33 NAZ EP 4/20/86, Economic reforms, 1968–1970.
34 NAZ EP 4/20/86, DEV 20: G.Kapenda, Chipata to District Secretary, Katete, 11 August
1970.
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by May 1969 in the Katete District alone, only nine shops were taken over
by Zambians. Twenty-eight shops remained closed. During the same
period only one Zambian succeeded in opening a wholesale shop in the
district.35 Some shops remained closed because certain non-Zambian
Indians wanted their children who were born in Zambia to reach adult age
and then take over the family business. In retrospect, this response is
understandable considering the fact that some of these Indians struggled
very hard to accumulate the initial capital when they first came to colonial
Zambia as shop assistants.
Within a few years of the take over of non-Zambian Indian shops, what
were previously viable or even booming service centres began to decline.
Buildings left behind by departing non-Zambian Indian merchants slowly
fell into a state of disrepair and eventually collapsed. The once vibrant
economic centres became ghost service centres with virtually no economic activity worthy talking about. The Indian merchants, both Zambian
and non-Zambian, regrouped in towns like Lusaka, Livingstone, Chipata,
and on the Copperbelt where they did booming business. People from the
rural areas started following the Indian merchants into the towns. Thus
throughout the 1970s and the 1980s the dilapidated buildings remained a
constant reminder of the failure of the take over of non-Zambian Indian
shops in rural parts of Zambia. There were exceptional cases where
Zambians did quite well following the acquisition of shops. There were
also cases of Zambians who appeared successful only because they
became fronts of the previous non-Zambian owners of the business. Such
shops remained open as long as the non-Zambian Indian received his
dues and was satisfied with the returns. This was mostly the case when a
previous owner of a retail shop was also a wholesaler. The wholesaler continued to supply goods to his previous shop, now ‘under new ownership
and management’ at wholesale prices and received the profits in return.
At an appointed time during the month the wholesaler, who was really the
owner of the retail shop, took stock of the goods in the retail shop and his
profits. He paid the Zambian manager, who was more or less like his previous Indian shop assistant, his salary. The Indian bourgeoisie continued to
accumulate profit and surplus value as before, while the Zambian worked
in the shop.
35 NAZ EP 4/20/86, DEV 20: Economic Reforms, 1969–1970, S.P. Nyirenda, District
Secretary at Katete to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Foreign
Trade, 15 May 1969.
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The problem of failure by Africans to take over wholesale businesses
owned by non-Zambian Indian merchants was widespread in the country.
By April 1970 the Petauke DDC observed that African traders were facing
serious difficulties in obtaining licences for wholesale trade in the district.
Many Africans simply did not have adequate resources to run such business. Insufficient working capital contributed to Messrs. Mphande and
Lolani to fail to take over in a joint venture the wholesale trade in Petauke.
The two African traders teamed up to pull their resources together, but did
not succeed because they could not meet the target for the price of the
wholesale shop. Consequently, the Petauke DDC resolved that the two
non-Zambian Indians should be allowed to continue operating the wholesale trade, otherwise the Zambians who took over the retail trade shops in
the district would have problems obtaining goods for their retail shops.
The Chadiza and Petauke cases demonstrate the failure by indigenous
Zambians to take over businesses that required a lot of resources. The
cases also demonstrate the failure by the government to appreciate the
nature of wholesale trade and how it was intertwined with the retail trade.
The government did not seem to have drawn any lessons from the colonial
state, which faced similar problems in its related programme from which
President Kaunda got the idea. In the end, several non-Zambian Indian
wholesale and retail shop owners continued to obtain licences through
Zambians to run their businesses.36
The above notwithstanding, relations between Zambia and India
remained friendly. India played an important role in the decolonisation of
Africa, Zambia included. The post-colonial leaders, including President
Kenneth David Kaunda, were sensitive to this. Arguably, therefore,
Zambian leaders took great care to ensure that domestic politics and economic policies did not lead to antagonistic foreign relations with friendly
countries like India. It was in this respect that unlike in Idi Amin’s Uganda,
the economic reforms as far as wholesale and retail business was concerned, were targeted at non-Zambians and not Zambians of Indian
origin.
The paper has demonstrated the extent to which Indian merchant capital from the colonial days to independence in the Eastern Province has
contributed to changing commodity production and consumption among
Africans. While Indians in the Eastern Province have remained dominant
36 NAZ EP 4/5/12, Chipata District Development Committee, 1967–1972, Meeting of 13
March 1972; see also NAZ EP 4/5/16, Chipata District Development Committee Meeting of
2 June 1970.
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in the retail and wholesale business, they have nonetheless had a long lasting impact on Africans. Up coming indigenous Zambian traders in the
province continue to face stiff competition from Indian traders as they did
in the early colonial period.
Chipata, the provincial capital of the Eastern Province, is undoubtedly
an Indian town in a rural Zambian province. The impact of the Indian
community is in evidence everywhere. They are not just owners of shops
and retail outlets in the province, but they are also employers of many
indigenous people. There is no doubt that the introduction of Indian merchant capital in Eastern Province introduced new forms of consumption
patterns as well as demand for European manufactured goods.
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BUSINESS, CONSUMPTION AND POLITICS:
ROBINSON NABULYATO’S BANAMWAZE STORE, 1949–19691
Marja Hinfelaar
Introduction
This study of Banamwaze Store, a shop that was owned and managed by
prominent political leader Robinson Nabulyato, challenges the stereotyped characterisation of the ineffective African businessman. Literature
on businesses in Zambia has been largely restricted to Indian, Greek and
Jewish businessmen.2 The notable exception is a sociological study of
African businessmen by Beveridge and Oberschall based on extensive
fieldwork in rural and urban Zambia between 1970 and 1972.3 The limited
amount of literature could be due to the fact is that the overall impact of
African business has been limited as compared to the aforementioned
communities. Before independence, the development of indigenous businesses was limited by colonial legislation, which disallowed Africans to
engage in trade except in designated areas. In the rural areas, Africans
were limited to trade and business in native reserves, which were always
located outside the administrative centres. By 1948, a year before Nabulyato
opened his business, Africans held a total of 4,000 trading and 1,000 hawking licences, but as a result of the small size of their companies, the African
trade accounted for about 5% of all trade.4 With the removal of the above
hindrances after independence, African businesses initially expanded
rapidly, also as a result of the economic reform policies which aimed at
1 This article is dedicated to the memory of Godfrey Nabulyato. Godfrey was instrumental in donating his father’s private collection to the National Archives of Zambia and in
publishing his father’s memoirs.
2 H. Macmillan, An African Trading Empire: The Story of Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn,
1901–2005 (New York, 2005); A. Sardanis, Africa: Another side of the coin. Northern Rhodesia’s
final years and Zambia’s Nationhood (London, 2003); B.J. Phiri, A History of Indians in the
Eastern Province of Zambia (Lusaka, 2000).
3 A.A. Beveridge, A.R. Oberschall, African Businessmen and Development (Princeton, N.J,
1979). Their study has a limited historical depth, focusing primarily on the development of
post-colonial African businesses.
4 A.A. Beveridge, ‘Economic Independence, Indigenization, and the African businessman: some effects of Zambia’s economic reforms,’ African Studies Review, 17 (1974), 477–90,
478.
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marja hinfelaar
favouring African businesses. In the 1970s, the decline of the Zambian
economy halted the growth of indigenous businesses.
Nabulyato’s case study counteracts this narration of underachievement of African businesses. As Seleti rightly noted: the historical study of
African business provides an opportunity to study ‘African initiative and
rationality’, thus challenging underdevelopment theorists who present
Africans solely as passive objects.5 This case study was largely made possible because of the existence of Nabulyato’s private archival collection.
Arguably, an important reason why studies of African businesses are
underrepresented is the general lack of a paper trail, caused by a lack of
documentation by the owners and an underrepresentation in colonial
and post-colonial archival collections.6 While we are still awaiting the
complete set of accounts of the Banamwaze enterprise, the collection as
it stands provides a unique insight into the challenges of running local
enterprise, including the pricing, marketing of products, community
responses and the general evolution of Nabulyato’s (business) mind and
his reaction to economic policies at the national level.
A study of this kind therefore is able to detail the historical trajectory of
a local business. Nabulyato was one of the handful of businessman who
had, in Seleti’s words, the ‘ability and perception necessary to combine
latent resources and opportunities,’ successfully combining various business activities.7 The small shop, in combination with the transport business and (cattle) trade, enabled Nabulyato to become part of Africa’s
commercial elite. A study conducted on African businesses in Southern
Rhodesia concluded that the African commercial elite remained ‘too
small, economically too insignificant and socially too fragmented and
diverse to ever develop a consistent influence on local or even national
politics’; this holds partially true for Zambia as well. Nabulyato’s experience as an entrepreneur shaped his principles as a political player at the
national level, but ultimately he was unable to influence economic policies. Indeed, as the second part of the paper will show, his personal experience of economic decline in post-colonial Zambia exposes Nabulyato’s
5 Y.N. Seleti, ‘Entrepreneurship in colonial Zambia’, in: S.N. Chipungu (ed.) Guardians in
their Time: Experiences of Africans under Colonial Rule 1890–1964 (London, Basingstoke,
1992), 147–79, 147. It is a pity therefore that Seleti, in his conclusion, focuses on failure
rather than successes.
6 The National Archives of Zambia acquired numerous private collections after a concerted effort in 2003, see M. Hinfelaar, G. Macola, A Guide to Non-Governmental Archives in
Zambia (Lusaka, 2004). These included the Nabulyato papers.
7 Seleti, ‘Entrepreneurship in Colonial Zambia’, 169.
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Fig. 11.1 Kenneth Kaunda (Source: National Archives of Zambia)
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intense frustration with the inherent contradiction of UNIP’s policies as
regards to the ‘Zambianisation’ of the economy and political elite’s duplicity regarding their ideological opposition to wealth creation and consumption. However, looking from a local perspective, the impact of the
so-called ‘new social bourgeoisie’ cannot be ignored. As has been observed
by Beveridge, the presence of businessmen led to a new form of stratification and usually led to friction with the traditional authorities.8
Nabulyato’s Public Career
I start with a brief background of Nabulyato’s public career at the national
level, for it provides an important context of Nabulyato’s motivation to
become an entrepreneur. Moreover, it will serve to show how the business
and political careers cross-fertilised each other. This section leans heavily
on Nabulyato’s memoirs, which were written in the late 1980s.9
Nabulyato was born on 28 October 1916 in Banamwaze village, in
Namwala district of the Southern Province. He was the first born of his
mother Nanja (daughter of Senior Headman Shakopa) and his father
Shintongo Nabulyato (son of Senior Headman Mwanakwale, shortened to
Mwaakwe):
After I was born, my father was recruited into the British Military Forces,
first, as a carrier, and, later, as a soldier. I therefore spent my early childhood
with my matrilineal uncle Shikalimbwe Shakopa, my mother’s elder brother.
In those days, the main concern of young Ila boys was to look after cattle.
I was no exception to it. My uncle was an enterprising man. He was the first
in his area to use a plough pulled by 4 oxen. He was able to do this thanks to
the help of two of his Lozi friends, Mubita and Katumwe, who had settled in
Shakopa’s village after travelling to South Africa and learning the art of taming oxen while working on European farms near Johannesburg.10
Exposure to the world beyond cattle was a result of his stay with the second guardian, Chief Shaloba (Chabang’amba), the husband of his mother’s eldest sister. In this period, Nabulyato received education at a nearby
Methodist school, Nanzhila mission, where he was marked as a talent; he
proceeded in 1935 to Kafue Training Institute where he was taught various
trades like carpentry, blacksmithing, building, bookkeeping and typing.
The institute also offered courses in Teacher Training, Evangelist Training
8 Beveridge and Oberschall, African Businessmen and Development, 4.
9 Robinson Nabulyato, African Realities: A Memoir (Lusaka, 2008), edited by G. Macola.
10 Nabulyato, African Realities, 1.
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and courses in Crop Management and Animal Husbandry. Nabulyato
subsequently became a teacher at Nanzhila mission from 1942 and 1944,
before attending the Jeanes Teachers Training School at Chalimbana, with
a view to obtaining the Higher Teacher’s Certificate.
Nabulyato cites Rev. L.W.S Price, a ‘coloured’ Methodist Minister at
Nanzhila Mission, as an influence to his political awakening, amongst others, exposing him to the works of Marcus Garvey, commenting that ‘this is
where doubts about British rule in the then Northern Rhodesia grasped
me.’ In addition, he was influenced by the works of George Padmore and
Dr. Aggrey’s writings and one of his teachers at Kafue Training Institute,
J. Roberts. He radicalised quickly and started running into problems with
the Methodist Missionaries, describing them as: ‘[T]he disguised agents of
Imperialism.’11
Nabulyato’s consequent involvement in the nationalist movement led
him to serve as the first General Secretary of the Northern Rhodesia
African Congress from 1948 to 1953, when Kenneth Kaunda replaced him.
In 1949, as a direct result of frictions with the missionaries resulting from
his political activities, Nabulyato left his teaching post at Kafue Training
Institute and returned to his home village Banamwaze. The anti-Federation activities took him on tours throughout Northern Rhodesia and to the
United Kingdom in 1952. Nabulyato left the political party in 1953, but was
immediately nominated to the Ila Native Authority Council and the
Southern Province’s African Provincial Council. In 1954, Nabulyato became
one of the four African Members of the Legislative Council of Northern
Rhodesia. In 1959, he took part as an independent candidate in the elections to the Legislative Council (LegCo), but lost to Harry Mwaanga
Nkumbula, ANC’s National President.
Although he joined the United National Independence Party (UNIP)
between 1959 and 1960, a rather unusual choice for a Southerner who
more commonly backed the African National Congress (ANC), Nabulyato
left the Zambian national political scene for close to a decade. After
independence, government engaged Nabulyato in various assignments,
amongst them a trade mission to Italy to lay the foundation of the establishment of a Fiat manufacturing company in Livingstone.
Nabulyato’s career changed considerably when in the beginning of 1969,
President Kaunda appointed him as Speaker of the Zambian National
Assembly. He held this position uninterruptedly until the latter part of
11 According to G. Macola, this quotation can be traced to George Padmore’s, How
Britain Rules Africa (London, 1936), Nabulyato, African Realities, 17.
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1988, when he felt he could no longer support the ruling party. Political
observers and commentators have suggested that during the Second
Republic Speaker Nabulyato shaped the Zambian Parliament into a ‘true
people’s parliament’. He not only allowed serious criticism of government
policy by backbenchers, but also protected the Members’ right to speak
freely in the House. He earned the name or title of ‘Mr Discipline’ because
of his strict demand for discipline among Members of Parliament.12 After
the introduction of multi-party democracy, he was reinstated as Chair of
the National Assembly in 1991, and served for seven more years. Remarkably,
Nabulyato cited the Banamwaze business as his main source of income, a
position that, following the so-called Leadership Code during the UNIP
era, deprived him of a full salary as Speaker. He passed away in 2004 at the
age of 87 years.
Fig. 11.2 Robinson Nabulyato’s grave and his store in the background
Venturing into Business
From 1949 Nabulyato initiated his business undertaking, which came to
consist of storekeeping, trading, transport, cattle and small agricultural
12 Nabulyato, African Realities; B.J. Phiri, A History of Indians, xi.
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production in Namwala District. The start of this business domain was signified by the opening of the Banamwaze store in his home village within
the Ila-Tonga reserve.
Since the early colonial days, Namwala District had been exposed to
foreign shopkeepers and traders. It saw a fair turnover of European and
Indian traders, like Cavadias, Ellis, Wulfsohn, Long, Butts, Manning &
Hughes, etc. who over time had established themselves in various locations throughout the district. By 1961, Indians had taken over all the
European shops and the District Commissioner noted that by this time
the area seemed ‘overtraded.’13 In addition to the expansion of the Indians,
Fig. 11.3 Map showing Banamwaze’s location in Namwala District (Source:
National Archives of Zambia)
13 National Archives of Zambia (NAZ], Namwala District Notebook, Vol. III, 343. On the
topic of Indian shops, the District Notebook further noted that ‘it is notable for continual
sharp practice combined with bad manners towards the African public and the situation
has several times obtained whereby a sharp warning had had to be issued to avoid an
entirely justified boycott.’
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African-owned businesses were on the increase from the 1940s onwards,
with local colonial officers considering Joseph Baptiste as the only ‘African
trader in a big way’ and describing Mr. Nabulyato as the one ‘who runs a
small but well stocked store at Banamwaze.’ Nabulyato remembers the
start of his business as follows:
Having brought my association with Kafue [Training Institute] to an end,
I returned to Banamwaze, where I used my savings to open a small village
shop, the Banamwaze Store. I invested £25 in the store. The licence fee cost
me 2 shillings and 6 pence. My young brother Oswell Shaabwa and I settled
down to work.14
Given Nabulyato’s eventful career as a teacher and a political leader, his
decision to return to his home area to start a rather modest business venture seems an unusual choice. Indeed, at hindsight, going home did not
deter his political career, but it was still atypical for nationalist’s leaders to
leave the urban centres and it begs the question what inspired him. The
return to his home area is not entirely surprising in light of Nabulyato’s
upbringing in Ila society. As has been pointed out, Ila society by nature
was very entrepreneurial and competitive.15 The income derived from the
cattle economy made them less dependent on opportunities offered by
the missionaries, commercial farms and urban employment.16 Namwala
District’s labour migrant statistics clearly support this penchant.17
However competent in the cattle trade, few ventured in other enterprises and Nabulyato’s business venture was therefore out of the ordinary.
We can speculate that this course of action was influenced by various factors. Exposure to shop keeping during his childhood may have been one,
in view of the fact that Nabulyato worked as a ‘store-boy’ for a Greek shop
owner:
I knew the whole family of Cavadia & Nephews very closely way back in the
1930s when they I ran businesses in Namwala and Pemba. Their Greek
pioneer leaders in business then were Seidman Cavadia and Peter Cavadia
who came to Namwala between 1918 and 1929 (…) I even worked for Cavadia
as a boy at Namwala.18
14 Nabulyato, African Realities, 19.
15 R.J. Fielder quoted in G. Macola, Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of
Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (New York, 2010), 11.
16 Macola, Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa, 11.
17 NAZ, Namwala District Notebook Vol. III.
18 NAZ, HM79/PP/1/F6 General Personal Correspondence, R.M. Nabulyato to Mary
Cavadia, 9 May 1985.
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Nabulyato’s ventures have also been attributed to an unusual degree of
exposure he received while receiving education and his political career
which took him outside his home area.19 In his memoirs Nabulyato attributes his entrepreneurial capabilities to his uncle and the vocational
training he received at the Kafue Training Institute as an important factor
to the enhancement of his skills in cattle keeping and agriculture:
I also began to buy and breed cattle so as to use oxen for ploughing. This was
the art I had learnt from my late uncle Shikalimbwe Shakopa and refined
through the Kafue courses in Crop and Animal Husbandry.20
Besides the pull factor, we also have to briefly consider the push factors
influencing Nabulyato’s return to Banamwaze. In his memoirs he recalls
the racist attitudes of some of his white colleagues at Kafue Training
Institute as an important reason for his departure and the tension
that arose from his leadership function in the nationalist movement.
Nabulyato’s independency as an entrepreneur allowed him to continue
his public career without any interference.
From an economic perspective, Nabulyato’s homecoming in the late
1940s fits neatly with the rise of African businesses as a result of Northern
Rhodesia’s post-war economic expansion. The specific impact of the
economic development on production and consumption in Southern
Province is well known and needs little introduction. As Vickery describes,
the rail line had facilitated the establishment of (European) shops and
stores from the 1910s onwards. Labour migration outside the province had
always been limited as stores, white commercial farms, the railway and
administration created local wage labour opportunities that seemed to
have been the preferred option. From the 1920s onwards, Tonga’s were
already selling cattle and maize to the same Katanga-based markets.21
Southern Province’s economy, in short, offered unprecedented opportunities and it is within this context that we also have to consider the opening
of Robinson Nabulyato’s shop in 1949.
19 Interview Mr. C. Moonga, March 2011: ‘Nabulyato got interested in doing other things,
besides rearing cattle. He was exposed to new ideas, because he was travelling a lot.
Especially when he became a councillor around 1954.’
20 Nabulyato, African Realities, 19.
21 K. Vickery, ‘The Emergence of a Plateau Tonga Peasantry: Economic Change, 1890–
1940’, in: C. Lancaster and K.P. Vickery (eds.), The Tonga speaking Peoples of Zambia and
Zimbabwe: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Colson (Lanham MD, 2007), 83–106, 92.
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Banamwaze Store and Local Consumption
Namwala district, as elsewhere, had undergone a dramatic change in
terms of material culture in the early colonial period. Imported materials
overtook locally manufactured products. These products ranged from fishing nets, grain sacks and clothing, which used to be manufactured from
tree bark; pots, which used to be made of clay but were replaced by enamel
ware; beautifully decorated wooden combs, now made out of plastic;
building materials, no longer confined to local materials, but supplemented by metal roof sheets and cement.22 Consequently, local trade
increasingly relied on transport and links to local and international trading networks to obtain consumption goods.
The Banamwaze store, the heart of Nabulyato’s business venture, was
run as a typical family business. Working with his wife, his brother, his
children (five boys and a girl) and cousins, Nabulyato also employed casual
employees. The shop was not as big or well stocked as the Asian shops in
the area.23 The store itself was a simple undertaking, selling basic products
that were in local demand like cooking oil, salt, sugar, candles, paraffin,
sweets, etc. Godfrey, one of Nabulyato’s sons, recalls labour migrants as
customers, who were generally recognisable by their style of dress
and goods. They contributed to the expansion of local economy, simply
because they had more money to spend. However, in Godfrey’s memory,
their presence did not significantly change the range of products in the
shop: migrants would buy more goods, but not of a different variety.
Migrants would usually carry their own goods from town and only occasionally order luxury goods through the shop.24
Nabulyato was linked to the Greek trading network; the majority of
the supplies came from the Greek-owned Good Hope shop in Choma.
Hindered by a lack of transport, he initially made use of the Greek transport network. In the early 1950s, a few years after the establishment of the
business, Nabulyato acquired a vehicle, which was supplemented by a
motorised boat in 1956, a remarkable feat, considering the capital requirements for such investments.25 The range of Banamwaze business undertakings and consumer items had expanded and now included trade in
22 As seen in the ethnography picture collection of Livingstone Museum.
23 Interview Mr. C. Moonga.
24 Interview Godfrey Nabulyato, August 2010.
25 We have to take into account that during this period Nabulyato’s income was supplemented by his income derived from his position in the Federal Parliament.
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animal skins, transportation of materials and the sale of blankets and
pillows.
Nabulyato’s customers included colonial government officials who
clearly enjoyed cooperation with the ‘progressive’ Robinson Nabulyato.
The various government departments readily rented his boat to travel the
district. In addition, they would exchange ideas about the development
potential for the area, as can be seen in the following exchange with
District Commissioner Chittenden:
The next time you are in Namwala I would like you to come and have a talk
with me about your rice growing ideas. I wish to get some idea of the type of
your lands os [sic] that I can order the best seed for you (…) 26
This business relationship between government authorities and the ‘progressive’ man appeared to have briefly continued in the post-colonial
era. In a letter to the Officer of the District Agricultural Officer, Nabulyato comments that ‘It is unfortunate that I cannot any longer be available to help with projects as planned by Government. I also appreciate
the difficulties you have to meet with from the people who resent
development.’27
Nabulyato’s customers also included traditional authorities, who
appeared to have been more troublesome. His correspondence with the
local chiefs deal mainly with justification of the costs of his services, as
Nabulyato often found himself under pressure to provide a free service to
the locally respected leaders.28 Clearly, they were important customers to
him, but Nabulyato was, in Gann’s description, part of the ‘new men’ who
often found themselves in disrespect and disobedience of the chiefs.29
Indeed, Nabulyato often found himself caught between traditional and
colonial authorities in matters as obtaining gun licences, or general legal
issues:
Since I came to this District in Sept 1949 (…) Chiefs with educated Africans
constitute the District Council which makes rules of the District. The same
chiefs, now with their Native Court Assessors, constitute the Appeal Court.
26 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, D.C. K.M. Chittenden to R. Nabulyato, 24 March 1953.
27 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, R.M. Nabulyato to C.M. Ceelo, Office of the District Agricultural
Officer (Namwala) 22 December 1969.
28 NAZ, HM79/PP/1 E.g. In reply from a letter from Chief Muwezwa asking for a loan of
50 pounds (Nyambo village, Muwezwa Court, 22/1/1962), to be refunded on his return from
‘the line of rail’: ‘I wish to visit Lusaka in order to look for a Landrover costing between 600
and 700 pounds (…)’.
29 L.H. Gann, A History of Northern Rhodesia, Early Days to 1953 (London, 1964), 379.
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This creates a confusion [sic] in them having two powers in one which are
distinct- Governing and Judicial Powers (…) The Chiefs when in Judicial
Power are prone to accepting bribes.30
Nabulyato’s disdain for traditional authorities did not dissipate in postcolonial Zambia, but continued to be a sore subject matter:
Namwala is once more going into retreat, for the tribal leaders, who nationally and enthusiastically needed to lead the blind, are in desolation (…) the
sharp spearing leaders have been assigned to other developments entities in
the Republic.31
Another group who consumed Nabulyato’s goods can be identified as
commercial fishermen, who rented his boats to enable them to cast wide
nets on the river.32
Expansion in the 1960s
Going through economic expansion as a result of increased maize and
cattle sales, Namwala District saw a small housing boom in the early
1960s.33 This in turn promoted Nabulyato’s business and enabled him to
expand the business by making further investments in transport and to
open mobile shop. In Nabulyato’s words:
I bought two motorboats to transport people and goods on the Kafue River
between Banamwaze and Namwala. Due to the presence of numerous hippos in the river, people found this to be a safer means of transport than
canoes. Early in 1961, I purchased a 4-½ ton iron boat with a custom-made
canopy and inboard diesel engine. This enabled me to expand my transport
business on the Kafue River. After securing hawker licences for Namwala,
Mazabuka, Mumbwa and Lusaka districts, my boats began to ply the Kafue
with merchandise to be sold to local fishermen.34
The range of products expanded as Nabulyato got involved in the transport and trade of building materials, including the supply of local timber.
30 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, R.M. Nabulyato to District Commissioner Namwala, Banamwaze
Store, Namwala, 22 April 1950.
31 NAZ, HM79/PP/1C.M. Ceelo, Office of the District Agricultural Officer, Namwala 16
December 1969 to R.M. Nabulyato.
32 Interview Dr. Gilbert Mudenda, April 2011. This is based on the memory of the late
Sacika Sitwala, a lawyer, who grew up in Banamwaze with his uncle, a teacher and
fisherman.
33 NAZ, Namwala District Notebook, Vol. III.
34 Nabulyato, African Realities, 59.
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Some of these materials Nabulyato sourced from Lusaka, transporting the
goods by river from Kafue town to Banamwaze with his newly acquired
boat. A return trip could take up to three weeks and was only undertaken
during the rainy season when floods prohibited transport by road.
Nabulyato’s income from the Banamwaze business was only a supplement
to other business activities. To explain for his astounding wealth in the late
1960s, informants inform me that we have to consider his involvement in
others trades, especially cattle. The size of his herd was, by local standards
‘respectable’ and as a result, according to Ila standards, Nabulyato was
considered successful and earned due respect.
Political independence in 1964 substantially increased business opportunities for African businessmen. Nabulyato was able to obtain a store in
Namwala boma, previously owned by Indian traders. Due to its location,
namely in the administrative centre of Namwala District, Nabulyato was
able to expand the range of products to products like hoes and hardware.
Nabulyato’s shop also turned into a small financial centre for teachers’
salaries, due to the absence of a bank in Namwala. The size of the shop was
considerably bigger than the Banamwaze village store, but according to
one eye witnesses, Nabulyato was unable to manage it at the same level as
the previous Asians owners. This informant cited the lack of experience
in this trade, but we could equally attribute this to a general decline of
business.
Nabulyato’s expansion into Namwala town, was a direct consequence
of the Mulungushi reforms (1968), which had put a limit on expatriate
trading and the Matero Speech (1969), which dictated that wholesaling
in smaller rural towns was to be Zambianised. Before independence,
Nabulyato cooperated with the Indian shopkeepers, depending on them
for the supply of goods which were restricted to Africans, including
guns and bullets for hunting. He had always regarded them as fierce
competitors.35
In conclusion, from rather modest beginnings in 1949, Nabulyato’s business had expanded remarkably. Based on the tax return in the late 1960s,
Nabulyato’s entrepreneurship amounted to the following:
K36, 336.00
Trading store at Banamwaze and 1 at Lubanda
1.5 tonne motorboat
35 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, R.M. Nabu to Mr. Sambono [illegible], Namwala, 28 June 1962.
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1 mobile shop on the Kafue River travelling between Namwala and Kafue
Railway Bridge
2 small motorboats
1 lorry truck
1 tracker with a trailer
This was besides his personal property, which consisted of:
2 Residential houses, 1 at Banamwaze, 1 at Namwala
1 Land Rover
One car
Cattle and sundry chattels, etc36
The Imprint of Nabulyato’s Banamwaze Store
Nabulyato’s business venture was as formal and as disciplined as the man
himself. From its inception, the Banamwaze business was duly licensed
and tax registered. In 1952, Nabulyato opened a current account with
Barclays in Choma in addition to a personal savings account. Nabulyato’s
bookkeeping skills and business acumen were already legendary by then.
As Mr. Moonga explained: Nabulyato’s particular skills lay in the fact that
he was able to critically self-evaluate his business, ensuring it was making
actual gains. Withstanding the pressure of community for discounts and
free services, however, was not always easy, as we can witness in the following example of the pricing of school uniforms in which he tries to
defend his position:
If I sell all uniforms per year, I make a total surplus (i.e. money above pricecost to me) of £24-7-11. Putting this against cost of bringing uniforms here
which is 30 per year, I find I lose a sum of 5-12-1d. Now if I add expenses of
store buildings, shelving, storage as well as labour charges which work out at
5/- per year (or 5d per month), my total loss is comes to 5-17-1d per year.
When people talk of uniform is dear and I know I am helping and gaining
nothing from selling uniforms, I feel hurt and I find the only course open to
me is either to drop selling uniforms or to bring cheaper type of uniforms
which won’t last long but will bring me more personal business than service to
the people for which I shall be sorry for I like to help than to make more
money for myself. (…) [his emphasis]37
36 NAZ, HM/PP/SP1/3/3.
37 NAZ, HM79/PP/1 R.M. Nabulyato to G. Mwakambi [illegible], Namwala 11-1-1962.
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In the same vein, Nabulyato experienced societal pressures on modes of
transactions. While the business was strictly based on cash transactions,
as testified by his son Godfrey, at the same time we can read in Nabulyato’s
papers that he was occasionally subjected to the local barter system,
as can be witnessed by the exchange with Chief Muwezwa. Nabulyato
response to the chief’s offer of paying moombe mufungushi for the [boat]
trip is: ‘that its value is too little to cover the costs of the trip unless he is
willing to pay with a she-ngombe…you know we Baila value or attach more
honour to the she-ngombe than oxen.’38
Yet, Nabulyato’s motivation to open a business was, in his recollection,
predisposed by a ‘civilising mission’ to his community. Mission-trained
Nabulyato, regarded his homecoming as part of a wider undertaking,
namely as a quest to uplift his own people. In his own words:
Since I could also rotate crops, villagers learnt from what I was doing and
began to copy my farming methods. When I settled in Banamwaze at the end
of 1949, people could still be found starving in the midst of plenty. Today,
people in Banamwaze only starve when there is a drought or when floods
and locusts damage their crops. I am happy to have given some exemplary
service to the area. When I relocated in Banamwaze, my ambition was to
face the realities of life with the local people (…)
Nabulyato’s quest to enhance education at the local school has to be
regarded in the same light:
I made another contribution to Bamwaze in 1951, when I organised people to
make and burn bricks for a school, teachers’ houses and three dormitories
for children from distant villages (…) Upon being informed of the initiative,
the Northern Rhodesian government supplied the school with door and
window frames, doors, cement and corrugated iron sheets. This effort
resulted in Banamwaze being provided for the first time with a decent
school.39
Of course, building a political base in his home constituency may well
have been another part of the motivation for the above community
investments.
The pursuit for status and eminence, always in competition with others, shines through Nabulyato’s writings as he continuously compares the
outcome of his labours to his competitors:
38 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, R.M. Nabulyato to Chief Muwezwa, Banamwaze 3 March 1962.
39 Nabulyato, African Realities, 19.
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The North Bank of Kafue River in Namwala District, where I serve as a businessman, is a difficult area. Several European and African traders including
co-operatives have failed and still fail to operate there successfully (…)40
Despite this apparent interest in the welfare and education of the Namwala
community, at a personal level Nabulyato appeared aloof from village life,
as he desisted from socialising with the community. He is remembered as
a remote figure, driving his Landrover through the area without giving
anyone a lift.41 His detachment caused him to be called Bowa (after the
word Boer). Rev. I. Mumpansha remembers people being intimated by
him, a characteristic, he argues, that helped him later in life when he
entered parliament; he was a natural leader and everything he said was
taken seriously.42 Nabulyato was not only a very solemn person; he was
very frugal as well.43 As a result of his sternness, customers did not necessarily always enjoy going to the Banamwaze shop. An example which typifies his attitude was that he refused to show the products, because as soon
as he took it off the shelf, he considered the product sold. Audrey remembers vividly stories of her grandmother and mother who used to frequent
the store, especially how Nabulyato used to chase them when they did not
buy, because they were seen to be wasting his time.44 Indeed, while in the
shop, Nabulyato spent most of his time reading, in between serving the
customers. He read various types of books, but mostly non-fiction, with a
specific interested in constitutional matters. His dress code, it is remembered, always suited the occasion.45
To some extent we can attribute Nabulyato’s bitterness with the community as a consequence of his failure to garner local political support.
Whereas Nabulyato clearly achieved the highest respect in the Ila community in terms of uweza (literally ‘successful hunt’, but also denoting
wealth accumulation), he was unable to capture the Ila ethos like
Nkumbula did.46 Moreover, Nabulyato’s political choices, standing in the
first instance as an independent for Federal Parliament and in the second
40 NAZ, HM79/PP/1/F1, Letter R. M Nabulyato to Kenneth Kaunda 12 November 1973
(marked confidential and personal).
41 Interview, Dr. Gilbert Mudenda, April 2011.
42 Interview Rev. I. Mumpansha, May 2011.
43 Interview Rev. I. Mumpansha, Mumpansha remembers when Nabulyato lived at
Kafue Training Institute, he would receive 7 buns for the week. He would eat one every day
and consume the last one on day 7 when it was so hard that it had to be soaked in tea.
Others would have consumed the buns on the first day.
44 Communication with Audrey Mwanyungwi, February 2011.
45 Interview with Mr. C. Moonga.
46 Interview with Dr. Gilbert Mudenda.
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instance allying himself with UNIP, wiped his political support in his
home area.47 In Nabulyato’s own words:
My adhesion to UNIP was not well-received in Namwala, where Nkumbula’s
ANC remained dominant. Once, a Congress meeting was convened at
Banamwaze, my home, with the aim of discrediting me and my family as sell
outs. The meeting was addressed by Nkumbula. There was commotion;
drums were beaten, and the whole of Namwala district seemed to converge
on Banamwaze. The ANC youth went berserk beating everyone they met
who was not a member of their party and especially those whom they suspected of belonging to UNIP or who hailed from different provinces of the
country.48
This lack of local political support continued after independence, as can
be witnessed in the transfer of Indian shops to Zambians. This process was
in the hands of the local district development committee and was highly
politicised. The perceived lack of support left Nabulyato embittered. In a
confidential letter to Kenneth Kaunda he complains about the lack of support from fellow businessmen and cooperatives throughout the years:
It has taken over 20 years of individual trial and error to build up my business. This after having failed to get response to my organizing co-operatives
or companies in 1948 with Mr. S.H. Chileshe, Rev. M.S. Lucheya, Mr. J. Mwela
and others. As a Provincial Chairman, then, of Zambian African Traders’
Association, I similarly failed to get response in 1968, in Southern Province, when dealing with economic reforms regarding the formation of
co-operatives or companies in preparation for take-over of foreign business
operating in Zambia (…)49
Decline of Business
The decline of the Banamwaze enterprise in the 1970s can clearly not be
attributed to Nabulyato’s business ethics and acumen. Two main factors
are most likely at the heart of business’ demise: Nabulyato’s prolonged
absence and the decline of rural trade in the 1970s. Nabulyato’s presence,
turned out to be the prerequisite for its success; the period from 1969, after
his appointment as speaker of parliament, is characterised by long periods
of absence. Despite the fact Nabulyato’s wife and children remained
47 Interview with Dr. Gilbert Mudenda.
48 Nabulyato, African Realities, 58.
49 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, R. Nabulyato to Kenneth Kaunda, Lusaka 12 November 1973 (marked
confidential and personal).
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behind in Banamwaze ‘to look after the business affairs’, the company
went into decline. They might have lacked his particular commitment,
bookkeeping skills, discipline and precision.50
External factors were most definitely at play. As Beveridge pointed
out, after the economic reforms, Zambian businessmen got caught
between the price controller, the state supplier and the state competitor.
Additionally, when businessmen made good profits, they were no longer
allowed to take much of that profit as income. Individual tax rates had
been raised to 90% for those in the above 30,000 kwacha bracket and company rates became a high 45%.51 Nabulyato asserts in his memoirs that
African businessmen like him were ruined by this lethal combination of
socialism, economic mismanagement and, particularly for Southern
Province cattle keepers, the rise of preventable cattle diseases:
In Lusaka, I received my salary between January 1969 and April 1976, when it
was discontinued on account of my owning a business in Namwala. This
clashed with Zambia’s socialist laws against so-called capitalists! […] as a
result of my long absence, our business in Namwala took a turn for the
worse. The transport business collapsed in 1976, when the 4 ½ ton iron boat
sank at Chonamabwe, Banamwaze. All my cattle died of tsetse fly bites in
1978, when, due to the Itezhitezhi dam having flooded the Kafue plains for
longer periods than in the past, my cattle had to be kept upland, in the dry
and tsetse-infested bush. Mrs Nabulyato and I have been ruined irreparably
by politics. Had I remained at home twenty years ago, things would undoubtedly have been different. Perhaps, as one of my closest friends once remarked,
my ‘reward is in heaven’. Perhaps the socialists – whom I see preaching poverty in public, but amassing wealth in secrecy – have a better clue!52
Economic liberalism, as envisaged and promoted by Nabulyato, did not filter into the national economic development plans, until the demise of UNIP
in 1991. By then, it was too late for Nabulyato to resuscitate his business.
This bitter experience clearly influenced his writings from 1980s onwards.
Business and Political Ideology
Until the 1940s, Nabulyato’s writing exposed him as a well-read, radical
thinker, influenced by writers like Marcus Garvey:
50 Still, Nabulyato’s wife kept the store running until her death in the early 1990s, and
then the enterprise collapsed entirely.
51 Beveridge, ‘Economic Independence, Indigenization’, 485.
52 NAZ, HM79/PP/1/F1, Letter R.M. Nabulyato to Kenneth Kaunda 12 November 1973
(marked confidential and personal).
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No trace of cowardice has been found in Marcus Garvey, even by his bitterest
foes for he was courageous. His dream of “Africa for the Africans” shall surely
come to its climax. All Europeans have no room in Africa for exploitation as
we, Africans, have no room in their countries for anything.53
Little of these radical thoughts can be observed in later life. In fact,
Nabulyato was considered to be a conservative and a ‘disciplinarian’. In
this section I want to speculate in what ways Nabulyato’s business interests and experience changed his outlook. How do years of navigating the
Kafue River, traversing the poor road networks in the area, negotiating
relationships with various consumers shape his political thought? I will
consider the most direct impact, namely his role as a representative of the
business community and perhaps more importantly, as a product of the
entrepreneurial spirit which was so characteristic of the area.
As a member of the Legislative Council in the 1950s, Nabulyato already
promulgated the interests of the African businessmen, promoting their
representation in relevant authorities:
I refer to you letter of 7 December, 1957, asking for an amendment to be
made to Section 24 (d) of Business Ordinance, 1957, to provide for two members to sit on the Appeal tribunal so as to allow African traders to be represented [so far provision for Indian traders only] (…) I regret that it is not
proposed to proceed with your suggestion at present.54
Suggestions at improving infrastructure in his area, which had been a
major hindrance in his business, are also a recurring theme in Nabulyato’s
writings and evidence. It implies that in his capacity as a Speaker of
Parliament, he attempted to influence this process. In a letter to the
Minister of Power, Transport and Works he writes:
This is an appeal to you to the effect that since the Lusaka/Kaoma/Mongu
Road is completed, the Mumbwa P.W.D. will either be withdrawn, heavily
depleted as they will have no regular road work or they must turn attention
to Mumbwa/Namwala Road which needs improvement, together with the
erection of two bridges at Nansenga and Kasaka streams en route.55
Nabulyato also positioned himself in relevant business organisations,
seeing he was board member of the Credit Organization of Zambia, the
53 Nabulyato, African Realities, 17.
54 NAZ, HM79/PP/1, Economic Secretary to the Government of N.R. to R.M. Nabulyato,
Legislative Council Chamber, Lusaka, 10 January 1958.
55 NAZ, HM79/PP/1/F8, R.M. Nabulyato, Speaker of the National Assembly (no place),
to Minister of Power, Transport and Works, 27 October 1972.
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Agricultural Development Corporation, Zambia Consumer Buying Corporation and Zambia Safaris Ltd.
In the 1970s Nabulyato’s notebooks were filled with little philosophical reflections, which are informative of his business and political
experiences in Namwala. One of them is marked ‘Village attitude of/to
Democracy’:
People value hard work but when one works hard, the following arises:
a) work hard and you get apparently unpopular for it with neighbours in the
village because they can’t do likewise b) As for elections, nowadays people
don’t understand when a man/woman says on the platform “I can do this &
that”. Hence when a man loses election, his people are happy because they
think he wanted to make himself different from the rest of them (…)56
Macola describes how during the UNIP days, Nabulyato tirelessly defended
the African business community whose interest had increasingly been
sidelined by the party. This expressed itself in harsh criticism of nationalisation and defence of free enterprise, in Nabulyato’s words:
Ushering in the nationalisation of the economy, these ideologies resulted in
the people being deprived of the means to earn an independent livelihood.
Private enterprise was sabotaged and everyone was reduced to looking to
the government for everything. By the time African leaders realised that private enterprise sustained more people than governments ever could, unemployment, starvation and misery had already set in. A state-led economy
produces more thieves than honest citizens.57
Nabulyato’s attendance at official state visits around the world, especially
those that took place in communist countries, lent further credence to his
convictions. But clearly, within UNIP this kind of reflection was not welcome and forced Nabulyato to withhold his critique from the public. In
parliamentary report to USSR produced in 1977, Nabulyato states that
‘This Report is confidential for I intend to make it critical of some situations we observed. […]. I dare have to report that our observations show
that USSR is basically a poor and badly organised country. […] (…).’ And he
observed that ‘the Communist Party in USSR caters mainly for 16 million
people who are its Members. The rest out of the 260 million people fend
for themselves which means living in dire poverty and starvation as the
cream of production and consumption is under control of the Party.’ 58
56 NAZ, HM79/PP/10, Handwritten notes in Office Diary 1971.
57 African Realities, xxiii.
58 Robinson Nabulyato, 105–6.
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Nabulyato’s concerns about the negative impact of UNIP’s policies on
the private sector were supported by data, despite the economic reforms
of the late 1960s, Europeans and Asians were still better off than the ‘average’ indigenous businessman.59 This contradiction, Macmillan argues, was
a result of policies that encouraged the emergence of entrepreneurs, but
not of ‘capitalism.’60
Conclusion
Looking at Zambia as a whole, we might not be able to discern any noticeable differences between rural businesses in terms of the kind of products
that were traded. However, when it comes to stratification, we can distinguish some regional differences. Clearly the cattle economy of Southern
Province, and Ila society in particular, serves to remind us how important
it is to consider the context, a factor that was neglected in the study by
Beveridge and Oberschall. In Nabulyato’s case study, it is evident that
Banamwaze store made a limited impact in terms of wealth creation and
stratification; this pattern continued to be determined by the cattle trade.
The specific economic background also determined the political stance;
being an entrepreneur enabled people like Nabulyato to have the means
to take a comparatively independent political position.
59 Beveridge, ‘Economic Independence, Indigenization,’ 487.
60 H. Macmillan, “The Devil You Know’: The Impact of the Mulungushi economic
reforms on retail trade in rural Zambia, with special reference to Susman Brothers &
Wulfsohn, 1968–1980’, in: J.B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar and G. Macola (eds.), One Zambia, Many
Histories: Towards a History of Post-colonial Zambia (Lusaka, 2009), 187–212, 195.
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BUYING PINEAPPLES, SELLING CLOTH: TRADERS AND TRADING
STORES IN MWINILUNGA DISTRICT, 1940–1970
Iva Peša
Between 1940 and 1970 the number of traders and trading stores increased
significantly throughout Mwinilunga District, in the North-Western
Province of Zambia. Whereas previously trading stores had been limited
to the Boma1 and Ikelenge, and outlying villages had merely been serviced
by occasional passing traders, from the 1940s onwards trading enterprises
run by European or African traders were set up in all corners of the district.2 Why did the number of traders increase so rapidly and how did
this increase influence the patterns of production and consumption of the
local population?
The main aim will be to highlight the pivotal role which traders played
in linking production to consumption, thereby influencing both. As levels
and patterns of production and consumption underwent major changes
during this period, Mwinilunga provides an interesting case study to discern the influence of traders hereupon. Did the presence of traders stimulate the acquisition of consumer goods, and did this acquisition in turn
encourage higher levels of agricultural output, for instance? During the
colonial period traders not only bartered or sold consumer goods such
as salt, cloth and soap, but also bought agricultural produce locally.
Production and consumption were physically linked in the trading store,
as the selling of cassava directly enabled the buying of cloth in the same
store.3 What happened after independence in 1964 when separate (semi-)
government institutions, mainly marketing boards, took over the buying
of agricultural produce, whereas trading stores started focusing primarily
on the sale of consumer goods?
1 The term Boma will be used to refer to the district administrative centre, the town of
Mwinilunga, in order to differentiate it from the district as a whole.
2 National archives of Zambia, Lusaka (NAZ) SEC2/131, Kasempa Province annual
report 1929–30 and NAZ SEC2/156, Western Province annual report 1949 – a comparison of
these documents shows an increase in the numbers of traders.
3 NAZ SEC2/137, P.L.N. Hannaford, Mwinilunga District annual report 1955.
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Caravans and Early Colonial Rule – Precedents of Trade
The people of Mwinilunga have long been connected to regional trade
networks, involving the exchange of iron tools, locally manufactured baskets, salt and other scarce goods.4 From the eleventh century onwards
items from as far away as the Indian Ocean coast started reaching the area,
but it was especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that
long-distance trade goods, coming from the Atlantic coast via Angola,
became available in large quantities.5 Products such as beads, cloth, firearms and gunpowder, but also tobacco and liquor, were obtained from
Portuguese traders and African intermediaries, the most significant of
which were the Ovimbundu.6 In exchange for these goods the inhabitants
of the area offered beeswax, rubber, ivory and slaves, but also cassava.7
Cassava, a crop introduced to the area by the long-distance trade itself,
served to feed the caravans, which could consist of up to 6,000 individuals
travelling for months at a time. Cassava production increased during this
period, as sale of the crop enabled the obtaining of other highly desired
items in return.8 The link between (agricultural) production and consumption, which would prove so important during the colonial and postcolonial periods, was thus already apparent during this earlier period.
Although by the turn of the twentieth century the long-distance caravan
trade had virtually collapsed due to a combination of factors including
intertribal warfare, slavery, the imposition of colonial rule and the ensuing
demarcation of international boundaries, trade had established some
4 For references to the broader region see: J. Vansina, Paths in the rainforests: Toward a
history of political tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), 58–61 and J. Vansina, How
societies are born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600 (Charlottesville and
London, 2004), 60–7.
5 See: Vansina, Paths in the rainforests, J.A. Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu: Style, change
and social transformation in South Central Africa (Madison, 2001), 210–11 and R. Gray and
D. Birmingham (eds.), Pre-colonial African trade: Essays on trade in Central and Eastern
Africa before 1900 (London, etc., 1970).
6 E. Bustin, Lunda under Belgian rule: The politics of ethnicity (Cambridge, etc., 1975)
1–40 and A. von Oppen, Terms of trade and terms of trust: The history and contexts of precolonial market production around the Upper Zambezi and Kasai (Munster, etc., 1994) 45–99
and 211–35.
7 J.J. Hoover, The seduction of Ruwej: Reconstructing Ruund history (The nuclear Lunda;
Zaire, Angola, Zambia) (Yale, 1978), 340–53 and J.L. Vellut, ‘Notes sur le Lunda et la frontière
Luso-Africaine (1700–1900)’, Etudes d’histoire Africaine, III (1972), 78–84.
8 Vellut, ‘Notes sur le Lunda’, 139, Von Oppen, Terms of trade and terms of trust, 91, A. von
Oppen, ‘“Endogene agrarrevolution” im vorkolonialen Afrika? Eine fallstudie’, Paideuma,
38 (1992), 269–96 and J. Vansina, ‘Histoire du manioc en Afrique central avant 1850’,
Paideuma, 43 (1997), 255–79.
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261
enduring patterns.9 This was particularly so in the sphere of material
expectations: ‘the custom is for a black trader to appear twice a year to
purchase rubber and ivory. If he does not appear the village becomes
uneasy – the ladies impatient for their new clothes and gentlemen half
wild for tobacco.’10
When at the outset of the twentieth century the British tentatively
established colonial rule in Mwinilunga, it was evident that they could not
hope for fast economic returns. The area seemed to hold potential for neither mining nor large-scale agricultural development.11 Nevertheless, it
was attempted to make the colonial venture profitable, most notably by
seeking avenues for trade. Besides encouraging the production of goods
such as beeswax, groundnuts and livestock for export to other areas, the
colonial administration established a local market for staple crops such as
cassava, finger millet and sorghum – providing an impetus to the rise of
the Boma as a trade and distribution centre. However, major exports
from the area never materialised, mainly because of high transport
costs, and local markets remained limited in size.12 A frequent complaint
by colonial officials concerned the ‘apathy’ of producers in the area, particularly when they failed to satisfy demands to feed labourers or dependants of the administration.13 However, markets were often far away,
small or erratic in nature, offered prices which were low or fluctuated
excessively, and in short were too unreliable to spur producers to significantly increase their output. As a result, most producers confined themselves to selling whatever ‘surplus’ they had left from previous harvests
when a market was available, not opening up new fields or growing crops
especially for sale.14
Though initially limited, the colonial administration, missionaries and
traders did provide a market where individuals could sell their goods.
Moreover, this sale enabled access to various consumer goods. The motivation for selling part of the harvest or for disposing of honey could easily
be traced back to wanting to purchase ‘an arm length of cloth’ or ‘a bar of
9 See: Bustin, Lunda under Belgian rule, Hoover, The seduction of Ruwej, Vellut, ‘Notes
sur le Lunda’ and Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu.
10 E.A. Steel, ‘Zambezi-Congo watershed’, The geographical journal, 50:3 (1917), 187.
11 Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu, 33–5.
12 See: NAZ KSE and SEC2 files.
13 NAZ KSE6/1/1, G.A. McGregor, Balunda District annual report, 1909.
14 I. Peša, ‘Cinderella’s cassava: A historical study of agricultural adaptation in
Mwinilunga District from pre-colonial times to Independence’ (unpublished MPhil thesis,
University of Leiden, 2009).
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soap’.15 Agricultural production, consumption and trade became increasingly intertwined, and this affected some of the core values of society –
including attitudes towards work: ‘The Lunda people are extremely fond
of calico, and later on they will be found to improve in physique and will
turn out a good working population.’16 Because of a desire towards ‘articles
they now look upon as necessary’ – such as various types of calico,
shirts, blankets, enamel basins and beads – the district administration
expressed justified hopes that the population could be spurred to produce
crops in plenty, as well as seek employment to earn tax income.17 This
familiarisation with consumption goods and with production for a market
laid a basis for the later colonial period, when levels of trade increased
markedly.
Trade as a Booming Business
The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a rapid increase in the number, volume and
geographical dispersal of traders and trade throughout Mwinilunga
District. To start with, this increase was enabled by infrastructural development. Previously roads in the district had been little more than ‘paths
through the bush’.18 This started to change during the 1930s with the construction of rudimentary motor roads connecting Mwinilunga to Solwezi
and to neighbouring areas in Angola and Congo. After 1945 expansion continued, as all chiefly capitals were linked to the Boma through roads passable by motorised vehicles.19 This enabled European and African traders
to more easily traverse the district, using modes of transport such as bicycles, motor cars and lorries – access to which had become increasingly
widespread.20 Traders would buy (agricultural) produce in the villages
and thereafter sell this at local markets, on the Northern Rhodesian
Copperbelt or in Congo and Angola. A wide range of consumer goods
was carried in return, thereby familiarising even outlying villages with
items such as sugar, tea and blankets.21 By facilitating access to markets
15 Interview with Mr. Samakai, Ikelenge, 23 March 2010 and interview with Mr. Wombeki,
Nyakaseya, 4 and 16 May 2010.
16 NAZ KSE6/2/1, J.M. Pound, Lunda sub-District Quarterly report, December 1913.
17 NAZ KSE6/1/4, F.V. Bruce-Miller, Mwinilunga sub-District Annual report, 31 March
1921.
18 E. Burr, Kalene memories: Annals of the old hill (London, 1956), 10.
19 NAZ KSE4/1, Mwinilunga District notebook.
20 NAZ SEC2/957, R.N. Lines, Mwinilunga District tour report July 1949.
21 NAZ SEC2/958, D.G. Clough, Mwinilunga District tour report, November 1950.
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263
infrastructural development attracted traders to the area, providing an
incentive for increased levels of production and consumption. The District
Commissioner in 1949 noted that: ‘All road extensions and improvements
in this district have so far lead to increased production.’22 Whereas prior to
1945 the Boma and Ikelenge, where a large mission station was situated,
had been virtually the only places in the district where consumer goods
could be obtained and local produce could be sold, by means of expansion
of the road network traders and trading stores started penetrating even
smaller and more remote villages throughout the district.
A set of broader (inter)national developments was at play as well.
Particularly significant in this respect was the expansion of mining enterprise on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, which necessitated both
increased amounts of labour and food for workers rations. The number of
African employees on the mines rose from 5,000 in 1925 to 30,000 in 1930
and peaked at 38,000 in 1964. While the early years of operation still witnessed occasional overproduction of food on a national level, during the
1939–53 period all agricultural produce was consumed internally and
costly imports had to be resorted to.23 As demand outstripped supply, the
call for food even resonated in Mwinilunga District. Although transport
costs seemed to pose a clear impediment towards the profitable sale of
agricultural produce from the area, due to the distance of 306 miles (492
kilometres) separating the Boma from the line-of-rail, such sales became
an established fact, especially during the years 1947–51.24 At the peak of
commercial activity in Mwinilunga in 1949 120 tons of cassava, 45 tons of
maize, 30 tons of finger millet and 30 tons of sorghum were marketed
along the line-of-rail.25 Next to providing a large market for (agricultural)
produce, the Copperbelt was also a place where a variety of consumer
goods could be obtained. Clothing, bicycles and other items were purchased in bulk along the line-of-rail and sold to individual consumers or
petty traders within Mwinilunga District.26 Andrew Sardanis, who owned
several stores throughout the district, pointed towards the ‘backload
advantage’. The problem of high transport costs over the long haul from
Mwinilunga to the Copperbelt and back was lessened by the fact that
there was always a backload, be it in the form of agricultural produce or
22 NAZ SEC2/957, R.N. Lines, Mwinilunga District tour report, August 1949.
23 K.P. Vickery, ‘Saving settlers: Maize control in Northern Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern
African studies, 11:2 (1985), 212–34.
24 NAZ SEC2/157, Western Province Mwinilunga District annual report, 1949.
25 NAZ SEC2/156, R.C. Dening, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1949.
26 NAZ SEC2/137, P.L.N. Hannaford, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1955.
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Fig. 12.1 Map portraying the establishment of licensed trading stores throughout
Mwinilunga District in 1930, 1950 and 1970. Note the expansion of the road network after 1945 (Source: NAZ Mwinilunga District Annual Reports, map drawn by
Eric Dullaert)
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
265
consumer goods. Therefore traders’ lorries never had to remain empty,
making trade profitable and efficient.27 The existence of markets – not
only on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, but equally importantly in
neighbouring Angola and Congo – coupled with infrastructural developments, acted as major catalysts, attracting numerous traders to the area.
Trajectories of Trade
Who were these traders and how were their enterprises organised? Far
from being a homogenous category, there were various types of traders in
Mwinilunga District, operating in different markets. For example, there
were European traders, some of whom had started trading in the area even
before the establishment of colonial rule. Whereas initially they concentrated on buying items such as rubber and ivory, from the 1930s onwards
beeswax and honey predominated.28 The variety of transactions was
much wider, though. Consumer goods including clothes, salt, soap and
cooking utensils were traded in exchange for a range of agricultural produce and locally manufactured goods (mats, baskets, hoes, axes, etc.).29
European traders’ activities intensified from the 1940s onwards, particularly with respect to handling agricultural produce. Once they had
obtained a licence from the district administration, traders could establish a store, a (semi-)permanent depot, or send a capitao to collect and buy
agricultural produce from surrounding villages.30 Although trading stores
remained concentrated in areas where population density and production
were relatively high, such as the Boma and mission centres, from the 1940s
onwards some stores did open up in smaller settlements.31 The positive
effects hereof were noted by the District Commissioner: ‘The extension of
produce buying facilities has resulted in the increased production this
year of many crops. The opening of a road has awakened an interest
in agriculture as a money producing occupation.’32 Traders benefitted
from encouraging agricultural production and offering high prices to
27 A. Sardanis, Africa: Another side of the coin: Northern Rhodesia’s final years and
Zambia’s nationhood (London and New York, 2003).
28 NAZ A5/2/1 Loc. 4003, G.A. McGregor, Balunda sub-District annual report, 1908–9
and NAZ SEC2/41, Development of Mwinilunga: Benguela railway, 1937.
29 NAZ KSE6/1/5, F.V. Bruce-Miller, Mwinilunga sub-District annual report, 1926 and
NAZ NWP1/2/17, F.M.N. Heath, Mwinilunga District tour report, June 1947.
30 NAZ SEC2/956, Jones, Mwinilunga District tour report, September 1948.
31 NAZ SEC2/963, P.L.N. Hannaford, Mwinilunga District tour report, September 1955.
32 NAZ SEC2/963, P.L.N. Hannaford, Mwinilunga District tour report, September 1955.
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producers, as the money earned by the sale of foodstuffs was likely to be
ploughed back into their stores through the increased purchase of consumer goods. Traders argued that if individuals were able to sell cassava,
they could spend this money on the purchase of matches, cloth and other
items from the trading store.33 This proved true, as: ‘at some village stores
the daily turnover during the food buying season from March to August
increases tenfold. Such a practice does much to raise the standard of
living in the rural areas.’34 Evidently, the sale of agricultural produce
enabled, and was motivated by, the purchase of consumer goods. However,
European traders were not merely attracted to Mwinilunga District
because of the high profits they aspired to make. Several farmers and missionaries (most notably W.F. Fisher of Hillwood farm) engaged in trade as
a side-business, as an attempt to make the total sum of their enterprises in
the district profitable. Furthermore, some traders, such as Sardanis, were
attracted to the area by transport contracts with the government, in order
to supply goods, passengers and sometimes foodstuffs to the Boma.35
Whatever their motives might be, these traders sought to make their ventures profitable, and for this they depended to a large extent on cooperation with other traders, most notably Africans.
Many African traders operated on a somewhat smaller scale than their
European counterparts. Due to restrictions imposed by the colonial government, coupled with a lack of capital and transport facilities, the initial
establishment of African trading enterprises proved problematic.36
Nevertheless, there was a steady increase in their numbers after 1940. For
example, there were hawkers who collected small amounts of consumer
goods, in the range of £4 to £8, from the Copperbelt or other commercial
centres, which they thereafter traded within the district for agricultural produce or locally manufactured goods.37 One example of such a
small-scale trader is Mr. Ndoji. He hawked goods between Ntambu and
Ikelenge/Nyakaseya area, using a bicycle acquired with earnings from
employment in Kitwe and Ndola. Relying on a network of kin, he sold
dried fish from village to village and thereafter bought goods such as salt,
33 NAZ NWP1/2/78 Loc. 4913, F.R.G. Phillips, North-Western Province annual report,
1956 and NAZ SEC2/156, R.C. Dening, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1949.
34 NAZ LGH5/5/8, Mwinilunga District development plan, 10 September 1956.
35 NAZ KSE6/1/5, F.V. Bruce-Miller, Mwinilunga sub-District annual report, 1926 and
Sardanis, Africa another side of the coin.
36 NAZ SEC2/955, F.M.N. Heath, Mwinilunga District tour report, November 1947.
37 NAZ SEC2/154, F.M.N. Heath, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1947.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
267
cloth, trousers and shoes in Fisher’s store before returning to Ntambu.
Reselling these goods, keeping them for personal use or utilising them to
purchase additional dried fish, Mr. Ndoji would make one or two such
round trips per year. However, the lack of an established market, competition from other traders, transport difficulties and government licensing
requirements all prevented the expansion of his enterprise.38 In the food
buying process African traders did, nevertheless, play a pivotal role. They
acted as intermediaries, handling individual transactions with agricultural
producers and thereafter offering the produce in bulk to European traders
or the colonial administration.39 Officials noted that: ‘African traders
have practically a monopoly in the meal buying business.’40 Furthermore,
because they established themselves in remote villages and areas where
Europeans did not operate, African traders played a key part in spreading
trade geographically.41 The transport, collection and distribution of supplies could, however, present difficulties. Whereas some owned bicycle
carts, other traders depended on lorries, often operated by Europeans,
coming from the Copperbelt with loads of consumer goods, but this
dependence had negative effects – in particular limiting the available
range of trade items.42 Notwithstanding obstacles, African traders succeeded in providing goods and buying produce from individuals who
would have otherwise lacked a market.
The conduct of trade was also influenced by the colonial administration. Employees, road labourers, schools, dispensaries and others had to
be provided with food, and the expansion of district staff during the 1940s
and 1950s raised demands even further.43 Securing regular and steady supplies of food was thus imperative to the colonial administration. A ‘Boma
meal store’ was set up where the buying, storage and distribution of agricultural produce was handled. The administration either relied on direct
sales by producers, or on bulk provisions from European or African traders.44 The importance of such transactions was manifest:
38 Interview with Fascen Ndoji, Ntambu, 12 October 2010.
39 NAZ SEC2/135, D.B. Hall, North-Western Province annual report, 1951 and
W.G. Reeves, North-Western Province annual report, 1952.
40 NAZ SEC2/135, D.B. Hall, North-Western Province annual report, 1951.
41 NAZ SEC2/963, R.S. Thompson, Mwinilunga District tour report, June 1955.
42 NAZ NWP1/2/37 Loc. 4903, D.G. Clough, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1950.
43 Sardanis, Africa: Another side of the coin, 69 and NAZ SEC2/133, N.S. Price, Mwinilunga
District annual report, 1935.
44 NAZ NWP1/2/17, H.H. Thomson, Mwinilunga District tour report, February 1947.
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The closing of the Boma meal store would disrupt the whole economy of the
District. It is true to say that since it was started, the District has changed
from a District of food shortages to one having a surplus for export.45
In 1962, for instance, the district administration required 90 tons of cassava, 35 tons of maize, 15 tons of beans, 15 tons of fish, 10 tons of meat,
5 tons of fruits and vegetables and 2 tons of rice for its own supplies, the
majority of which were procured locally.46 The administration, by providing a stable market for agricultural produce, could stimulate producers to
increase output. However, by imposing buying control on traders, for
example by issuing trade licences, and by agreeing or even fixing (bottom)
prices for produce, the administration could also regulate or more negatively influence levels of trade and production.47
Due to the geographical location of Mwinilunga District, adjacent to
both Angola and Congo, cross-border trade had always been of vital
importance. In spite of the limits posed by the demarcation of international boundaries, customs regulations and import/export control, this
trade, conducted via formal and less formal channels and based on longestablished historical ties, was by no means ever completely prohibited
or blocked.48 Especially during the period of protracted boom on the
Congolese mines from the 1940s onwards, which resulted in the growth of
towns such as Kolwezi just across the international boundary, markets for
produce from Mwinilunga District became available.49 Exports consisted
of items such as livestock and cassava meal, which after being bought by
traders within Mwinilunga were either sold on Congolese markets directly,
or transferred to middlemen in bulk. In return consumer goods such as
bicycles, cigarettes and clothes in particular, were imported from the
Congolese line-of-rail.50 Next to regulated trade, there was also a good deal
of unregulated trade and smuggling going on. Certain goods for which no
market could be found within Northern Rhodesia, or which could be marketed more profitably across the border, were sold in Angola and Congo.
45 NAZ SEC2/960, K.J. Forder, Mwinilunga District tour report, June 1952.
46 NAZ NWP1/2/102 Loc. 4919, Department of Agriculture, North-Western Province
annual report, 1962.
47 NAZ SEC2/136, R.C. Dening, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1953 and NAZ MAG
2/2/25 Loc. 114, Provincial team minutes, North-Western Province, May 1953.
48 NAZ NWP1/2/63 Loc. 4910, R.S. Thompson, Mwinilunga District tour report, August
1954.
49 See: J.L. Vellut, ‘Mining in the Belgian Congo’, in D. Birmingham and P.M. Martin
(eds.), History of Central Africa II (London etc., 1983), 126–62.
50 NAZ SEC2/966, M.A. Hinds, Mwinilunga District tour report, September 1958.
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During the early days of colonial rule there was a lively trade in rubber and
ivory, which were exported from Mwinilunga to traders in Angola, in
exchange for guns, gunpowder, calico and liquor.51 Unrecorded trade persisted, even after independence, in order to avoid custom regulations and
maximise profit margins. Beeswax, honey, livestock and other items were
sold in exchange for consumer goods, some of which were scarce or difficult to access within Northern Rhodesia itself.52 By moving across international boundaries and looking for profitable markets nearby, people in
Mwinilunga could access various avenues of trade. The existence of alternative markets in Congo and Angola, in itself providing an impetus to
increase production, consumption and trade, also alleviated the marginal
position of Mwinilunga vis-à-vis the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt,
caused by distance and ensuing transport difficulties.
In 1929 the outlook for trade in Mwinilunga had still been gloomy:
‘Local trade is very small, as natives have very little money. All stores now
open are run by farmers as a sideline merely. There is no living for a trader
pure and simple.’53 However, by 1950 the situation had changed and more
positive views seemed justified: ‘Local people are only beginning to realise
that being near a road and European traders’ stores makes it possible for
them to have access to a market where they had none before.’54 Different
groups of traders, all operating in separate niches yet also complementing
one another, not only offered a market for local produce, but also spread a
variety of consumer goods. These consumer goods could be deployed in
multiple ways, for instance as status symbols, to accumulate wealth and to
cement or challenge social relationships.55 Gender relations, age hierarchies and ways of asserting authority were all influenced by the availability of trade items. To give only one example, whereas elders had previously
dominated the marriage choices of youths, by working hard young men
could accumulate wealth, purchase goods – most notably cloth, bangles
and beads – and increasingly negotiate the marriage partners of their own
preference.56 Consumer goods were not frivolous, but socially embedded
51 NAZ KSE6/1/1, C.H. Bellis, Balunda District annual report, 1910.
52 NAZ SEC2/952, N.S. Price, Mwinilunga District tour report, June 1939.
53 NAZ KSE6/2/2, Mwinilunga sub-District quarterly report, 30 June 1929.
54 NAZ SEC2/958, D.G. Clough, Mwinilunga District tour report, November 1950.
55 See: T. Burke, Lifebuoy men, Lux women: Commodification, consumption, and cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe (Durham and London, 1996) and J. Prestholdt, Domesticating the
world: African consumerism and the genealogies of globalization (Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London, 2008), for examples of the social embedding of consumer goods.
56 Various interviews, including: Zakewa Kahangu, Nyakaseya, 26 April 2010 and
Marciana & Suzana, Nyakaseya, 29 April 2010.
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iva peša
Fig. 12.2 The house of Thomas Kapita, a prosperous trader, at Ikelenge, 1954
(Source: NAZ KSE4/1, Mwinilunga District Notebooks, Photograph by R.C.
Dening)
and held meaning.57 It is exactly therefore that individuals could be
spurred to work hard and produce crops in order to obtain items such as
salt, sugar and bicycles. The economy of the district as a whole was stimulated by this close link between production and consumption, which was
enhanced by traders. Following independence, however, established practices were transformed in far-reaching ways.
Marketing Boards, Mulungushi Reforms & Pineapples –
Trade after Independence
During the 1960s and 1970s the number of traders throughout Mwinilunga
District continued to increase. Although the obtaining of Zambian independence was far from a complete rupture with the colonial past, certain
changes did materialise. These changes will be illustrated by examining
three cases, namely agricultural marketing boards, the Mulungushi
reforms and the pineapple trade.
57 Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu and V.W. Turner, Schism and continuity in an African
society: A study of Ndembu village life (Manchester etc., 1957), provide numerous examples
of this.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
271
ARMB and NAMBOARD – Delinking Production from
Consumption?
After independence the humanist rhetoric of Kenneth Kaunda’s UNIP
government afforded a major role to government-controlled marketing
boards in stimulating agricultural production. A desire was professed to
close the development gap between the Copperbelt and the line-of-rail
areas on the one hand, and the neglected rural areas, such as Mwinilunga,
on the other.58 Whereas the colonial Maize Control Board and Grain
Marketing Board had exacerbated the gap between white commercial
farmers and black small-scale producers, the Agricultural Rural Marketing
Board (later National Agricultural Marketing Board)59 aimed to even out
differences by providing credit opportunities, transport subsidies and
agricultural inputs, nominally without discriminating between individuals.60 How did these marketing boards influence trade in Mwinilunga
District?
Although marketing boards and individual traders existed side by side,
the ARMB and NAMBOARD held a near-monopoly on trade in agricultural produce between Mwinilunga and the urban centres of Zambia.61
Individual traders continued to supply local markets, certain niches
within urban markets and occasionally even export produce, but the marketing boards handled the majority of all agricultural trade. When the
ARMB started buying produce in Mwinilunga District in 1965 it faced
many difficulties, as proper marketing infrastructure and depots were
lacking. Problems persisted because existing depots remained closed,
were far removed from areas of production and offered governmentcontrolled prices which were generally too low to attract producers.62
Furthermore, the marketing boards had a limited buying repertoire. Only
maize, beans, groundnuts, finger millet, rice and selected fruits and vegetables (most notably pineapples) were accepted at the depots within
Mwinilunga.63 This meant that the staple crop cassava, which had been
58 Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu, 239 and A.P. Wood (ed.), The dynamics of agricultural
policy and reform in Zambia (Ames, 1990), 21–58.
59 Abbreviated as ARMB and NAMBOARD respectively.
60 Wood, The dynamics of agricultural policy and reform, 23 and NAZ Annual report of
the ministry of agriculture, 1965.
61 NAZ Bulletin of agricultural statistics, January 1970.
62 NAZ LGH5/2/5 Loc. 3612, North-Western Provincial development committee, March
1968.
63 NAZ LGH5/5/12, J.F.M. Chipili, North-Western Province marketing officer, 30 July
1970.
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iva peša
marketed in large quantities during the colonial period, henceforth
remained confined to the local market and individual traders. No longer
being able to function as a cash crop, cassava was degraded to the status of
‘subsistence crop’, primarily serving to feed the local population. The government rather promoted maize cultivation, although maize was much
less suited to the natural environment and agricultural system of the area,
as well as requiring the adoption of expensive inputs – particularly for
hybrid varieties fertilisers and pesticides proved imperative to yield a
good crop.64 In spite of obstacles, a substantial amount of produce was
marketed by individual producers and small-scale co-operatives at the
NAMBOARD depots. During the 1969/70 season a total of 180 tons of
maize, 9.6 tons of groundnuts, 5 tons of beans, 24 tons of rice, 10 tons of
vegetables and 480 tons of pineapples were purchased within Mwinilunga
District.65 However these figures compared unfavourably to other areas,
where levels of production and sale were much higher. Despite optimistic
rhetoric Mwinilunga remained a remote area, and the development gap
with the line-of-rail showed few signs of narrowing.
Furthermore, marketing boards disrupted the links which had
previously existed between production and consumption. ARMB and
NAMBOARD merely handled the buying of agricultural produce, without
selling consumer goods. Contrastingly, individual traders came to focus
mainly on the sale of consumer goods, though some did continue to buy
produce such as beans and pineapples for sale at local or urban markets.66
During the colonial period it had still been possible to sell agricultural produce in the same store where pots and pans were purchased, for example.
Groundnut sales would rise in the months when children bought their
school uniforms, as both transactions could be conducted in the same
store. Therefore, the desire to buy a school uniform provided a stimulus to
sell part of the groundnut crop in order to raise money.67 After independence, with the advent of marketing boards, this physical link increasingly
disappeared. Individuals could no longer rely on a single trader, but
instead had to sell their produce at a marketing board depot in order to
raise money to purchase the desired goods from a different trader. This
situation was further aggravated by the recurrent failure of marketing
64 C.G. Trapnell and J.N. Clothier, The soils, vegetation and agricultural systems of NorthWestern Rhodesia – Report of the ecological survey (2nd edn., Lusaka, 1957) and (NAZ)
Annual report ministry of agriculture, 1964.
65 NAZ LGH5/5/12, Marketing of produce North-Western Province, 23 July 1970.
66 NAZ LGH5/1/10 Loc. 3608, Mwinilunga rural council, March 1968.
67 Interview with Andrew Sardanis, Lusaka, 12 December 2009.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
273
boards to pay producers on time.68 Individuals could be left without cash
in their pockets for months, making it impossible to buy goods on the spot:
‘People were given small receipts, but no cash (…) [they] could not survive
like this when they had to wait for more than one year for cash.’69 The
‘backload advantage’ was also negatively affected. Marketing boards
lacked loads to carry when coming to buy agricultural produce from
Mwinilunga, except when delivering agricultural inputs. Traders, on the
other hand, were often unable to fill their lorries before collecting consumer goods from the line-of-rail. Transport costs were exacerbated
because vehicles remained half-filled or even empty during their long
journeys. This raised the cost of consumer goods and lowered the potential profits of agricultural produce, although the far-reaching measures of
government price control levelled things out to a certain extent.70 Thus,
although marketing boards did offer an outlet for agricultural produce
from Mwinilunga District, they also distorted previous links between production and consumption, affecting the profits and attractiveness of trade.
More Traders, more Trade?
Throughout the colonial period European trading stores – owned by individuals or companies, such as Norton, Pioneer, Northern Transport, W.F.
Fisher and A.F. Serrano – operated side by side with African traders.71
However, debates about limiting the role of European traders and promoting African trade did arise occasionally. The difficulties in doing so, and
the interrelated nature of European and African traders, are illustrated by
the following excerpt:
stocks [in African stores] are very limited (…) [they] seldom have the things
you want, European stores usually have everything you want (…) If we say
we do not want European stores in our villages then we are also saying that
all the things in our homes should be taken away. I do not think any of us
here today is wearing clothing bought in an African store (…) Where do you
think Africans get their knowledge of trading, if our teachers leave us how
are we to carry out our duties to our people?72
68 NAZ LGH5/2/8 Loc. 3613, H.D. Ngwane, Acting resident secretary North-Western
Province, 17 September 1968.
69 NAZ CO4/1/3, North-Western Province development committee minutes, 9 October
1967.
70 Wood, The dynamics of agricultural policy and reform, 24.
71 See: NAZ SEC2/135, R.C. Dening, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1952.
72 NAZ African Provincial Council North-Western Province, May 1958.
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In spite of potential pitfalls, the policy of Zambianisation was implemented after independence. Through a series of economic reforms, starting with the Mulungushi reforms in 1968 and followed by the Matero
reforms in 1969, the freedom of expatriate (European and Indian) traders
was severely restricted in favour of Zambians. These reforms came down
to the virtual prohibition, with the exception of several goods, for expatriate traders to carry on their enterprises in rural areas.73
In Mwinilunga District, judging from the list of trade licences issued in
1971, all expatriate traders had by then indeed closed down their stores or
transferred (nominal) leadership to Zambian managers. D.T. Rea, Evangel
Trading Company and CBC, who had operated a number of stores throughout the district after independence, no longer appeared as licensed traders. Instead Zambian traders, predominantly local individuals, dominated
the lists.74 Some of these traders ran profitable stores, gradually building
up capital and expanding their enterprises. Mr. Kahangu, for example,
started a business in the 1940s, using money his mother had saved from
rice sales in Ntambu. He would buy wax locally and sell this to European
traders, Fisher in particular. With the profits he purchased various goods,
such as salt, soap and liquor, but most notably clothing, in order to resell
these in his small store in Ntambu. After independence, Mr. Kahangu
involved his son in the business and they started buying cattle from
Zambezi District, later opening the first butchery in Mwinilunga Boma.
The success of this business enabled them to acquire a vehicle, and eventually expand into the buying and selling of pineapples, shuttling between
Ikelenge and the Copperbelt.75 Others, such as Mr. Lemba, were less successful. After having served as a tribal representative in colonial Mufulira,
Mr. Lemba retired and invested his savings in opening a trading store in
the northwest of the district. Selling a variety of goods, ranging from pots
and pans, to screws, clothes and tinned food, he eventually went out of
business because he had given too many goods on credit to customers and
failed to recover the debts.76 Cases such as these exemplify that the void
73 A.A. Beveridge and A.R. Oberschall, African businessmen and development in Zambia
(Princeton, 1979), 46–54, H. Macmillan, ‘‘The devil you know’: The impact of the Mulungushi
economic reforms on retail trade in rural Zambia, with special reference to Susman
Brothers and Wulfsohn, 1968–1980’, 187–212 in: J.B. Gewald, M. Hinfelaar and G. Macola
(eds.), One Zambia, many histories: Towards a history of post-colonial Zambia (Leiden and
Boston, 2008) and H. Macmillan, An African trading empire: The story of Susman Brothers &
Wulfsohn, 1901–2005 (London and New York, 2005), 247–50.
74 NAZ LGH5/1/10 Loc. 3608, Mwinilunga rural council, 17 December 1971.
75 Interview with Martin Kahangu, Ntambu, 30 September 2010.
76 Interview with Philip Lemba, Lusaka, 21 January 2010.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
275
left by the disappearance of European-owned stores could not simply be
filled by Zambian traders. The following correspondence between Ikelenge
co-operative and the District Governor in 1969 is equally illustrative:
I write to remind you of the store which was Fisher’s. We are looking forward
for the money promised to us because we want to start. It was from this store
where people were being fed, this I mean to say it was from this store where
all necessities were found i.e., Kapenta mealie meal and other essential
things. We are looking forward from you as you said you will do your best as
for us to open this store [sic].77
In spite of (financial) encouragement by the government, local traders frequently lacked the capital, knowledge and business ties to effectively take
over or replace the larger trading chains which had existed. Macmillan has
argued that ‘the old-established retail trading networks, with their decades
of managerial experience, and their international lines of credit, intelligence and supply’ ran ‘small shops in remote places’ with remarkable ability and efficiency.78 One local example was the chain of stores run by W.F.
Fisher, where numerous people came for supplies of cloth, foodstuffs and
other essential items, as well as for the sale of goods, ranging from beeswax to cabbage. In case of petrol shortage the district administration
relied on Fisher, who secured petrol from Congo, rather than their own
channels of supply.79 Fisher, through years of experience, had developed
ingenious solutions to problems of transport, capital and international
supplies, issues with which local traders frequently struggled.80 Therefore,
the numerical increase in traders during the 1970s was not necessarily due
to a rise in trading activity per se. European trading chains were replaced
by a large number of (small-scale) local traders, who were by no means
inherently less able to run successful enterprises, but nonetheless faced
manifold challenges.
Pineapples: The Yellow Gold
Initially spread through the pre-colonial long-distance trade, the pineapple was probably introduced to Mwinilunga District via Congo during the
77 United National Independence Party archives, Lusaka Zambia (UNIPA), 5/3/1/40,
Ikelenge co-operative store to District Governor, 19 April 1969.
78 Macmillan, ‘The devil you know’, 212.
79 NAZ LGH5/2/7 Loc. 3612, J.A.B Stewart correspondence, 15 September 1964.
80 Interview with Paul Fisher, Hillwood farm Ikelenge, 27 September 2008.
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early colonial period.81 Individual producers, missionaries and the colonial administration all played a role in disseminating the crop and promoting its cultivation. Initially pineapple cultivation was limited to local
consumption, small amounts being sold to the European population of
the district.82 However, due to the acidity of its soils Mwinilunga District
proved to be more suitable to pineapple cultivation than any other place
in the country. Therefore, sale of the crop, which was considered to be a
‘luxury fruit’ and fetched high prices on urban markets, tentatively
increased during the 1950s.83 Together with their other loads, traders
started carrying pineapples to the Copperbelt for sale. Only after independence, however, did the production and sale of pineapples really take off.
Whereas in 1965 43 tons of pineapples had been marketed, by the 1969/70
agricultural season this figure had risen to 480 tons, sold at a price of 3
ngwee per pound of weight.84 Within the single month of February 1968
the sale of 66,443 lbs of pineapples had raised K1,328.66 – thus bringing
large amounts of cash into producer’s pockets.85 The potentials of
pineapple production in Mwinilunga, together with the existence of profitable markets, spurred the government to invest in a pineapple canning
factory, erected under the parastatal G.M. Rucom Industries in 1969. The
factory proved to be unprofitable from the beginning, though. In 1974 it
already suffered temporary closures, and ‘farmers preferred to sell their
pineapples to the Copperbelt where they received high prices rather than
at the factory.’86
ARMB and NAMBOARD, though handling large amounts of the pineapple trade, never had a monopoly. Local traders supplemented the marketing boards, either by transporting pineapples from the areas of
production to the canning factory, or by selling fresh pineapples at urban
markets. The potentially high profits of this trade enabled some traders to
purchase their own vehicles and expand their enterprises considerably.
Traders continued to sell pineapples at urban markets even after the
81 J.E. Mendes Ferrão, The adventure of plants and the Portuguese discoveries (1994) and
various interviews within Mwinilunga district.
82 NAZ SEC2/133, N.S. Price, Mwinilunga District annual report, 1935.
83 NAZ MAG2/5/91 Loc. 144, Tour Minister of agriculture North-Western Province, 6
January 1968.
84 NAZ LGH5/2/2 Loc. 3611, Marketing of produce North-Western Province, 23 July 1970
and NAZ MAG2/17/86 Loc. 199, Pineapples, July 1970.
85 NAZ MAG2/5/91 Loc. 144, Tour Minister of agriculture North-Western Province,
March 1968.
86 NAZ Rural development seminar: Programme for the nation, 19 September 1974.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
277
canning factory had (temporarily) closed down.87 Despite the difficulties
facing the canning factory (transport proved cumbersome, the buying of
produce was not handled efficiently and levels of pineapple production
were insufficient to keep the factory running throughout the day), the fact
that a market existed for pineapples spurred many producers to grow the
crop.88 Not only in the northwest, where cultivation had started and was
most viable, but throughout the whole district producers opened up new
fields of pineapples or extended existing ones. However, after the closure
of the canning factory and the subsequent contraction of the market, the
crop started rotting in the fields. Mainly due to transport difficulties,
excess pineapples could not be absorbed by urban markets. Although
some individuals continued to maintain small fields of pineapples, most
were discouraged and simply abandoned the crop.89
Pineapples were sometimes referred to as ‘yellow gold’, because they
brought large amounts of money into the district, enabling individuals to
buy more and better goods.90 The period when the canning factory was
still in operation is remembered as a time when people ‘started building
good houses and wearing nice clothes.’91 One woman who cultivated a
large pineapple field together with her husband proudly recalled that she
‘had cloth of which other women were jealous’ and she ‘could eat lots of
meat every day while others were just eating vegetables.’92 Thus, the prospect of obtaining material goods (consumption) could act as incentive to
cultivate pineapples (production). Traders played a key role in this process. By locating profitable markets, especially in urban centres, traders
promoted and spread pineapple cultivation throughout the district. A fact
which could not be offset, however, was that markets were influenced by
broader economic and political factors and could prove highly volatile.
During the colonial era pineapple cultivation remained rather limited, but
after independence it expanded with remarkable speed, only to slump
again equally suddenly after the canning factory closed down. Traders
continued to sell some fresh pineapples on the Copperbelt, but they could
not compensate for the disappearance of the main market for the crop,
87 Interview with Mr. Kamafumbu, Ikelenge, 6 March and 25 April 2010 and interview
with Mr. Saipilinga, Ikelenge, 8 April 2010.
88 Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu, 60–1.
89 This view is based on interviews, especially with Paul Fisher and with John
Kamuhuza, Ikelenge.
90 Interview with John Kamuhuza, Ikelenge, 4 April 2010.
91 Interview with Mr. Saipilinga, Ikelenge, 8 April 2010.
92 Interview with Mrs. Kamafumbu, Ikelenge, 25 April 2010.
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the cannery. Even today the potential for pineapple production remains.
Mwinilunga is still known as ‘pineapple country’ within Zambia,93 and
if large-scale markets became available and transport difficulties were
overcome, producers and traders could resume the marketing of the crop
once again.
Production, Consumption and Trade
Traders, though affected by broader economic and political factors, could
influence production and consumption in far-reaching ways. By locating
markets and offering prices which were attractive to producers, traders
could encourage the production of certain crops and goods.94 A prime
example is rice cultivation in the 1950s. Prices offered for rice were substantially higher than for other produce, as profitable markets for the crop
existed within the district, at urban centres and even in Congo. This stimulated rice cultivation to such an extent that district officials expressed concerns, as ‘no attention is paid to other staple foodstuffs which are badly
required for local consumption.’95 By adjusting pricing policies, traders
could influence which goods were, but also which goods were not produced within the district. After independence the government policy to
promote maize cultivation resulted in high prices being offered for the
crop by marketing boards, in addition to providing technical support and
inputs to farmers. This indeed led to an increase in maize cultivation
throughout the district, at the expense of cassava, a crop not accepted at
marketing board depots. Nevertheless cassava remained the staple food
crop of the area. Individual producers, though growing maize for the market and occasionally for their own consumption, continued to rely on cassava, which offered distinct benefits, such as being drought-resistant and
flexible in its labour demands.96 The persistence of cassava cultivation
was rather due to the preference and agency of individual producers than
a response to trade incentives. Traders further had to reckon with issues
such as the instability of markets, transport difficulties, (inter)national
93 Remark frequently made by people in Lusaka and on the Copperbelt when talking
about Mwinilunga.
94 W.W. Rostow, ‘The stages of economic growth’, The economic history review, 12:1 (1959),
1–16.
95 NAZ SEC2/957, T.M. Lawman, Mwinilunga District tour report, July 1949.
96 NAZ MAG2/5/91 Loc. 144, Tour North-Western Province, 6 January 1968 and Von
Oppen, Terms of trade and terms of trust, 126–7.
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trade in mwinilunga district, 1940–70
279
pricing policies and consumer demands.97 Although these factors could
negatively influence the possibility and profitability of trade, traders
expressed remarkable ingenuity in dealing with such problems. The case
of the pineapple canning factory is illustrative. Traders overcame transport difficulties and offered high prices in order to promote pineapple cultivation. After the closure of the factory, although this was a major setback,
traders nevertheless continued to seek urban markets where pineapples
could be sold, providing an alternative outlet for the crop.98 Next to influencing production, traders also stood at the base of changing trends in
consumption.
During the period under study, patterns of consumption underwent
radical changes in Mwinilunga District, as locally procured or produced
goods were increasingly replaced by items obtained through the mediation of traders. The pre-colonial long-distance trade brought goods such as
beads, guns and cloth to the area, but the transition accelerated in the
1930s and 1940s when store-bought goods became truly widespread
throughout the district.99 Cloth and tailored clothes replaced animal skins
and bark cloth; mass-manufactured hoes, axes and knives replaced the
tools produced by local blacksmiths; salt and soap supplied by traders
replaced the varieties which had previously been extracted from grasses
and roots. Such transitions could be motivated by issues of quality, consumer taste or the availability of labour and expertise. Salt purchased from
traders had a different – arguably ‘better’ – taste than salt which was
obtained by burning certain types of grass, whereas axes could be purchased in stores without having to rely on the expertise of blacksmiths.100
In order to obtain these goods, individuals had to offer traders either
money or goods, such as agricultural produce or beeswax. Thus, by spreading consumer goods, traders could simultaneously encourage increased
levels of productivity. Clothing, bicycles and brick houses with iron-sheet
roofs were only available to individuals who sold part of their harvest,
earned money through paid employment, or otherwise.101 According to
colonial officials, the desire to obtain certain goods was such, that there
97 NAZ SEC2/962, R.S. Thompson, Mwinilunga District tour report, August 1954.
98 Interview with Mr. Saipilinga, Ikelenge, 8 April 2010.
99 E.L.B. and V.W. Turner, ‘Money economy among the Mwinilunga Ndembu: A study
of some individual cash budgets’, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute journal 18 (1955), 19–37.
100 These observations are derived from numerous interviews conducted in the
Ikelenge/Nyakaseya area during March-May 2010.
101 Interview with Solomon Kanswata, Mwinilunga, 26 March 2010 and Turner, ‘Money
economy among the Mwinilunga Ndembu’, 19–37.
For use by the Author only | © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV
280
iva peša
was the risk of ‘over-selling’ of produce. They complained that: ‘the Chiefs,
as well as the people, prefer money and a ‘tightened belt’ for a few months
than well stocked grain bins in their villages.’102 Connections between
consumption and production were yet more multifaceted. Bicycles could
assist in the marketing of crops over long distances, whereas fertilisers and
pesticides could increase agricultural yields, just to name a few examples.
Conclusion
To recapitulate the argument, traders constituted an indispensable link in
the chain of production and consumption. During the colonial period
traders combined the purchase of agricultural produce and the sale of
commodities within the same store, and it has been argued that this direct
link contributed towards the economic boom in the district during the
1940s and 1950s. After independence, however, marketing boards changed
the situation. It was no longer possible to rely on a single trader for both
the sale of produce and the purchase of consumer goods. Although the
numbers of traders continued to increase during the post-colonial period,
this was rather because of the replacement of European-owned trading
chains by a large number of small-scale local traders, than due to an absolute increase in the volume of trade. The scarcity or instability of markets,
marketing board policies and the disappearance of the backload advantage all affected the viability of trade in the district. However, because
consumer goods had by then become so widespread, individuals and traders continued to forge the link between production and consumption
through their own agency. Because of pineapple sales individuals gained
access to goods such as bicycles, vehicles and clothing. Traders, though
having to take account of factors such as the availability of markets, (inter)
national pricing policies and political agendas, exposed remarkable ingenuity in locating markets, stimulating production and spreading a wide
range of commodities throughout the district.
102 NAZ SEC2/193, Kaonde-Lunda Province newsletter, July 1941.
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INDEX
Advertisements 10, 12, 143–165
Mail-order 152, 173
African Lakes Company (ALC) 217, 220–2
African National Congress (ANC) 162,
241, 253
Northern Rhodesia African National
Congress (NRANC) 241
Alpers, Edward 17
Banamwaze Store 237–257
Barotse, Kingdom 35
Barotseland 93–113
Belinga, Samuel O. 4
Bemba 17, 19, 22, 33–5, 90
Beveridge, A.A. 237, 240, 254, 257
Birmingham, David 19
Bisa 23, 25–6, 30
Bontinck, François 78
Brandon, Ruth 169
British South Africa Company
(BSAC) 97–8, 215–6, 220–3
Burke, Timothy 145, 152
Campbell, Dugald 90
Castle Lager 143–153, 198
Chewa 34, 229
Chikunda 22, 29–30, 33
Chipalo 101
Chipata (Fort Jameson) 189, 192, 200,
215–236
Chipungu, Samuel N. 206
Chokwe (Tshokwe) 22, 30–1, 35–6, 48–9,
58, 64
Civilising mission, The 145, 156, 251
Clothing 6, 12, 17, 96, 99, 107–9, 143, 148,
158, 162, 167–185, 198, 202, 210–12, 214,
246, 252, 263, 268, 273
Chitenge 175–6, 179–81, 203
Cloth 20–39, 189, 228, 230, 259–61,
275, 279
Design 180–4
Salaula 176, 179
Secondhand 168, 171, 174, 176, 179
Clyde Mitchell, J. 2, 6, 157
Codrington, Robert 216–7, 220
Colson, Elizabeth 6–7, 127–8
Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM) 81
Copper 39, 57
Copperbelt 3, 5, 23, 67, 75, 82, 85, 87, 91,
96, 130, 143–165, 170, 174, 234, 262–3,
266–7, 269, 271, 274, 276–7
Deane, Phyllis 1
Dickens, Charles 117, 127
Dotson, F. & L. 194
Eastern Province Co-operative Marketing
Association 232
Ellsworth, Ronald 124, 127
Epstein, A.L. 2, 147, 160
Faith, Nicholas 115, 118
Family, Nuclear 143–5, 148,
153, 158
Firearms 3, 10–11, 17, 20–39, 41–64, 67, 249,
260, 268, 279
Dowry 57–9
Legislation on 52–5
Mourning 60–1
Fisher, W.F. 266–7, 273, 275
Gamitto 25–6
Gann, L.H. 247
Garvey, Marcus 241, 254–5
Giraud, Victor 34
Gluckman, Max 2
Gray, Richard 19
Grillo, R.D. 135
Guyer, Jane 4, 158
Hagemann, Mike 215
Hamer, E.D. 133, 135
Hansen, Karen Tranberg 109, 152
Harries, Patrick 5
Hemptinne, Jean-Félix de 77, 85
Herbert, Eugenia 97–8
Honey, Martha Spencer 218
Hunting 52–4, 57–8
Ila 240–1, 244, 251–2, 257
Industrial revolution, The 1–2, 116,
120, 129
Iron 51–2
Blacksmiths 51–2
Ivory 20–1, 24–5, 29–31, 33–8, 41, 44, 48–9,
57, 260, 265, 268
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282
index
Johannesburg 93, 102, 106, 108, 110, 112, 123,
202, 213, 240
Johnston, Harry 215, 220
Juma Merikano 27, 46
Kafue Training Institute 240–1, 244–5
Kalabo 93–113
Kanduza, Ackson 206
Kasai 75
Katanga 50, 57, 75, 77–8, 80–4, 90–1,
170–1, 245
Kaunda, Kenneth David 8, 93, 162–3, 219,
231, 235, 241, 253, 271
Kazembe, Kingdom 17, 25
Mwata 22, 32, 35
Keller, Bonnie 128
Kiewiet, de 130
Kololo 32, 35
Labour migration 5–7, 11, 85, 87, 90,
93–113, 121–3, 127, 150–65, 167, 170,
173–4, 190, 202, 213–4, 221, 244–6
Labour recruitment 99–113, 123–4, 171
Leya 211–2
Licht, Walter 129, 132
Livingstone, David 27–8, 69
Livingstone, Town 128, 189–214, 215,
234, 241
London Missionary Society 68, 84, 88, 155
Lovejoy, Paul 17
Lozi 22, 32, 35, 96, 99–101, 128
Luapula Province 167–185
Luba 18, 22–4, 26, 29, 36–7, 42, 80–1, 90
Luba Kasai 48–50, 59, 60–3
Luba Lubilanji (Baluba Lubilanji) 44, 62–3
Lumpungu A Kikolo, Chief 42–64
Lumumba, Patrice 85
Lunda (Ruund) 18, 22–4, 29–30, 34–7, 49,
58, 69, 71, 74–5, 79–81, 91, 262
Lunn, John 132–4
Lusaka 177, 182, 193, 234, 249, 254
Macmillan, Hugh 216, 257, 275
Macola, Giacomo 17, 256
Mandala, Elias C. 207
Mandala Stores 171–3
Mansa 167–185
Marketing Boards 278–80
Agricultural Rural Marketing Board
(ARMB) 270–3, 276
National Agricultural Marketing Board
(NAMBOARD) 270–3, 276
Marx, Leo 117–8
Masebo, Sylvia 181–4
Masekela, Hugh 123, 127
Matero Reforms 249, 274
Mawiko (Wiko) 99, 101
Mbunda 93, 111
McKenna, Frank 132–4
Miller, Joseph 4, 17
Mkunga, Chiwomba 201
Moore, R.J.B. 155–6, 159
Mpezeni, Paramount Chief 216–7
Msiri (M’siri) 3, 19, 22, 33–8, 42, 50, 67, 75
Mufuzi, Friday 128, 215
Mukuni, Chief 197–214
Mulenga, Angela 181
Mulungushi Reforms 12, 219, 249,
270, 274
Muntemba, Maud 206
Mwalukanga, George 206
Mwinilunga District 13, 259–80
Nabulyato, Robinson 13, 237–257
Namwala District 240, 243–8, 250, 252–4
Nayee, Riverbhai V. 196
Neo-patrimonialism 9
Ngongo Leteta, Chief 42, 49–50
Ngoni 18, 22, 33, 35, 216
Nkumbula, Harry Mwaanga 241, 252
North Charterland Exploration Company
(NCEC) 216–7, 220, 227
Nsapu Nsapu, Chief 43
Nshila 143–150, 153, 160, 163
Nyamwezi 18–19, 29
Nye, David 118
Nyengo 98–99
Oberschall, A.R. 237, 257
Onselen, Charles van 124
Ovimbundu (Mbundu) 21, 29, 30–1, 33,
35–6, 41, 48–9, 64, 69–70, 80, 260
Padmore, George 241
Phiri, Bizeck J. 201
Pineapples 270, 272, 274–9
Pirie, Gordon 121–4, 127
Plymouth Brethren 73, 77, 84, 90
Pokrant, R.J. 184
Powdermaker, Hortense 158–9
Railway 11–12, 115–140
Central African Railways (CAR) 126
Colour bar 135–9
Industrial Work Discipline 129–137, 140
Irregularities 124–5
Railway African Workers Union
(RAWU) 132, 138, 140
Rhodesia Railways 130–1, 134–8, 140, 193
Western songs on 118–9
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index
Rhodes, Cecil 70–1, 121, 215
Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau
(RNLB) 99–100
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute 1–2, 10
Roberts, Andrew 17
Robinson, Ronald 116
Rodney, Walter 17, 206
Rubber 31, 39
Salisbury, Lord 115
Sardanis, Andrew 263, 266
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 119
Seleti, Ngalaba Y. 201, 238
Sembene, Ousmane 120–1, 126
Sendwe, Jason 85
Sewing machine 6, 12, 167–185
Shapiro, Frank 216
Sharma Brothers’ Trading Store 189–214
Shamkerlal Motiram Sharma 190, 195–6
Vithaldas Motiram Sharma 190, 195–6
Singer, Isaac 168–9
Singer, I.M. & Co. 169, 179
Sipilingas 11, 67, 78, 85, 90
Slavery 4–5, 20–2, 25, 28–31, 33–8, 41–2, 44,
48–9, 51–2, 57, 61–3, 90–1, 260
Songye 11, 42–64
South African Chamber of Mines 94, 105
Springer 11, 70–91
John 71–91
Helen Emily (Chapman) 70–91
Sublime, Industrial 118
Technological 118
Susman Brothers and Wulfsohn Trading
Store 190, 200, 243
Swahili 18, 22, 26, 29, 31, 33, 35–6, 64, 67,
77, 91
Tailors 167–185
Taxation 97–8, 150, 219, 262
Taylor, Bishop William 68–9
Thomas, Nicolas 160
Thompson, E.P. 130–2
Thoreau 131
Tippu Tip (Hamed bin
Muhammed) 29–31, 36, 41, 44, 47–8, 67
Tolstoy 117
Tonga 3, 6, 116, 127, 245
Traders 12–13
283
African 202, 223, 225–6, 232, 235–6,
237–257, 259, 262, 266–9, 273–4
Arab 41, 44, 46–8, 50–2, 56, 62–4
European 191, 202, 220–2, 226, 231, 237,
243, 245–6, 252, 257, 259, 262, 265–9,
273–4
Indian 12–13, 189–214, 215–236, 237, 243,
246, 249, 253, 257, 274
Jewish 191, 194, 202, 237
Tshombe, Joseph Kapend 81, 85
Moïse 85
Tumbuka 18
Ulere 103, 105, 112
United Church of Zambia (UCZ) 91
Union Minière du Haut-Katanga 75–7,
85, 88
United Methodist Church (UMC) 67–91,
240–1
Methodist Episcopal Church
(MEC) 68–9, 73–4, 81, 84
United National Independence Party
(UNIP) 8, 162, 231–3, 240–2, 253–4,
256–7, 271
Vail, Leroy 18
Vera, Yvonne 126–7
Vickery, Kenneth P. 245
Warlords 18, 30, 33–6
Wealth-in-people 4–5, 9
Welensky, Roy 133–40
WENELA (WNLA), Witwatersrand Native
Labour Association 105, 112
Wesley, John 68
Westbeech, George 96
Wiese, Carl 33, 216
Wilson, Godfrey 3, 171
Wissmann, H. Von 62, 69
Witwatersrand 5, 76, 96, 103, 121
Wordsworth 117–8
Yao 23, 25–6
Yeke 3, 22, 35–6, 67
Young, Crawford 77
Zambia Consumer and Buying
Corporation (ZCBC) 233
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