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

African Studies, 68, 1, April 2009
Introduction: Labour Crossings

in Eastern and Southern Africa
Peter Alexandera, Philip Bonnerb, Jonathan Hyslopb
and Lucien van der Waltb1
a
University of Johannesburg; bUniversity of the Witwatersrand
This special focus presents a selection of four papers presented to an international

conference on ‘Labour Crossings: World, Work, Society’, organised by the History
Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand, and the Centre for Sociological
Research, University of Johannesburg, from 5 to 7 September 2008. The confer-
ence drew in participants from four continents, with the East Asian and Latin
American presence a particularly noteworthy development.
The intellectual agenda of the conference was to explore a wide range of ‘labour
crossings’: between time periods, between regions and continents, between types
of work, and types of worker, both free and unfree, between different imagined
worlds, religion and labour, and gender and class – as well as between intellectual
disciplines and traditions. The transnational turn in labour history was a key
influence on the framing of the issues. Looking globally, and thinking beyond
the traditional analytical framework of the nation-state, the very character of
the ‘working class’ and its ‘making’ (Thompson 1991) needs to be rethought.
Mobility and control

A key issue is that of labour mobility: what frees and freezes movement of labour,
and how and why does this happen? As the keynote address by Phil Bonner
observed, for industrial capitalism generally – and not just for its offshoots, vari-
ations and repercussions across the world – the ‘freeing’ of potential workers to
labour was vital, yet unfettered freedom presented an equally great threat to capi-
talist economic stability and political control. Mobility, while desired, had also to
be controlled in what became South Africa. This took the form of vagrancy acts
and pass laws, and similar systems were put in place in imperial Britain itself
(see, for instance, Elbourne 1994). Elsewhere, it was enforced through contract
law, more pervasive surveillance and policing and, of course, the ubiquitous
system of industrial time discipline.
This conundrum of worker mobility under capitalism – so closely tied to but so
subversive of labour mobilisation – merits more systematic attention. The mobil-
isation of wage labour in colonial India offers an object case study. As Ajuha
ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010079 – 7

# 2009 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand
DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827456
80 African Studies, 68:1, April 2009
writes, a troubling feature of most writings on the colonial period is they discon-
nect India’s pre-colonial and colonial pasts (2002:793 –826). The pre-colonial
period is often romanticised as harmonious, stable, self-sufficient and communi-
tarian, and as locked in particular localities.
This approach creates a history that lacks any real sense of mobility and change.
As Bremen (1985), Ludden (1994) and Kerr (2006) have pointed out, this is fun-
damentally misleading. Ludden (1994), for example, asserts that half of India’s
population in the eighteenth century was made up of mobile people, ranging
from seasonal migrants to hunters, herders and pilgrims, living out lives in ‘a
terrain of perpetual movement’. Kerr instances the activities of construction
workers (known to the British as Tank Diggers or Wudders), perhaps the most
numerous group of migrant workers, travelling repeatedly from countryside to
town, or from town to town (2006:93 –6). Washbrook (1993:68 –86) likewise con-
tends that spatial mobility was as prevalent as sedentarism in pre-colonial India.
Such itinerant groups, these studies agree, were perceived as actual or potential
threats to social stability and political security in colonial India, and a variety of
legal mechanisms were instituted to settle and ‘peasantise’ them (Osella and
Gardener 2006:xii–xvii). Since access to rural resources was invariably inadequate
to sustain family life, such a pre-existing life of ‘circulatory’ migration had to be
replaced by oscillatory migration to centres of colonial employment, something
more predictable, regular, controllable and less threatening than itinerancy.
An equally illuminating and analogous pattern of labour mobilisation can be seen
in the southern states of the United States of America in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. Wilham Cohen (1991) identifies four successive waves
of legislation being enacted in the south designed to limit the mobility of black
labour in the post-reconstruction period. The fourth wave, which took shape
between 1900 and 1910, was ‘of such ferocious intensity that it dwarfed the
other three’. Its central features linked vagrancy and contract enforcement laws
to the criminal surety system. Once these laws were set in place any black man
found ‘loitering’ or outside of formal employment risked being arrested as a
vagrant and sentenced to a heavy fine or a lengthy spell in prison. Those who
entered into sharecropping contracts found any attempt to escape these fraught
with similar hazards.
Yet this system could only circumscribe black mobility, not restrict it altogether.
Southern farmers seem to have reconciled themselves to at least a modicum of
mobility amongst their black tenants and workers, provided that it was piecemeal
and short-haul, but they found it difficult to contain longer distance movements
from, say Georgia, to the newly opened cotton fields of Mississippi. One
problem facing southern planters was that a measure of mobility was inscribed
in the seasonal agricultural rhythm. The months of July/August and November/
December were slack periods in the agricultural cycle and many black share-
croppers exploited them to secure seasonal work in fertiliser plants, cotton-seed
Introduction: Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa 81
presses, sawmills, logging camps, turpentine camps, coal mines and even steel and
other industries in the rapidly growing southern cities. In July and August farm
owners supplied no food on credit, expecting sharecroppers to meet their own
needs (Gottlieb 1987:19– 20; Pleck 1979:60– 7). Similar dynamics are visible in
African farm labour stability and mobility in South Africa between the 1890s
and 1930s, where pass laws and debt bondage conspired to anchor African
labour tenants on white land.
Each of these case studies forces us to ponder, as did Wilham Cohen, the paradox
of the co-existence of a considerable measure of black mobility and widespread
semi-enslavement. The relationship of mobility and freedom would probably
repay more attention in other societies in other times. Countless life histories of
South Africans who ended up settling in the towns in the middle decades of the
twentieth century are punctuated by repeated moves in search of new, or better,
kinds of employment and constant mobility. In their cases moves were so
common despite the encompassing frame of the pass laws and influx control that
it is difficult to escape the conclusion that they lived out their lives within a
culture of mobility. Such cultures require much closer scrutiny; only then will
we start to fully understand the social, political and labour histories of these times.
Rockel’s article, presented here, engages with the issues of the co-existence of a
considerable measure of black mobility and widespread unfree labour directly. His
subject is the caravan trade in nineteenth-century East Africa, where slaves and
free labourers worked side by side, in a context of multiple crossings. Both
carried out identical functions, and slaves could, and did, cross the boundary
between bondage and freedom by buying themselves out. The key to the slave
porters’ anomalous status was their vigorous assertion of ‘their rights to mobility’,
and their ability to roam over great distances and escape the direct supervision of
the master. It was this that allowed them to negotiate and subvert the limitations of
slave status, and to enlarge their sphere of freedom.
Sabea’s article, in this journal, takes some of these issues through into twentieth-
century Tanganyika focusing upon labour recruitment to the sisal plantations of
the area. Following the displacement of German rule in the latter part of the
First World War, she remarks, the colonial authority and the colonial economy
rested on very shaky foundations. One key concern was the reliable provision
of recruited labour to the coastal sisal plantations, the German period having
resulted in the loosening of controls over African movement, and to use an
evocative colonial phrase, ‘the roaming around of up country natives in the
sisal districts’. In other words, the issue was precisely unconstrained mobility.
The new British overlords quickly set about reinstating controls over movement
via the Masters and Servants Ordinance, proclaimed in 1923, and the institutiona-
lisation of contracts for recruited migrant workers.
A prime objective of the contract, besides curtailing free movement, as Sabea
makes clear was to impose a predictable kind of time-discipline over its migrant
work force, an issue which rarely commands enough attention in the literature.
However, such efforts at controlling mobility and curbing freedom were constantly
frustrated by the subversive activities of the labour force itself. Firstly, workers
successfully exploited loopholes in the operation of this system, and its illegibility
to those subjected to it (and those who operated it) meant a key mechanism
designed to achieve colonial ends – the Kipands or pass laws – were subverted
and effectively rendered unworkable within a few years. Secondly, the colonial
authorities proved incapable of trapping or anchoring recruited migrants into
contract status. The phase of ‘Manamba’ status – variously meaning migrant,
worker, or novice – was both temporary and permeable, and could be escaped
over time. For migrant workers it became a period of learning to negotiate the
system, and to undertake a deliberate crossing of social status to ‘voluntary’
labour which ‘translated into a multi-layered notion of freedom’.
Dhupelia-Mesthrie focuses on issues of mobility in an entirely different context,
linking south Asia and southern African experiences. Her subject is the movement
of ‘labouring passenger’ Indians who crossed the Indian Ocean from India to find
work in the Cape Colony in the early twentieth century. Up until the passage of
the 1902 Cape Immigration, she notes, such mobility was relatively unobstructed,
with immigration controls and passports having not yet made their appearance
(although, of course, an internal pass system was long established).
Even after restrictions had been imposed on the movement of such workers, pas-
senger labourer Indians insisted on maintaining the right to mobility. The issue of
domicile certificates, which should, in theory, have anchored passenger labourers
in South Africa (much as Immigration Controls in the post-First World War
United States served to anchor European immigrants to their new places of dom-
icile) proved fairly ineffective. Most, as Dhupelia-Mesthrie shows kept their wives
and families in their home village in India, where they retained access to plots of
land. Almost universally, they returned to their places and families of origin in
India one or more times.
This not only throws fresh and unexpected light on ongoing connections with the
crossing to India Dhupelia-Mesthrie observes, but also breaks down the standard
stereotypes of different categories of South African labour. ‘The dominant image
of African migrant workers,’ she points out, is of those alienated ‘for long periods
from their wives and children and aged parents on the reserves’. The study of the
Indian migrant, however, ‘reveals a similar pattern of migration but one that
crosses the ocean and is worthy of recognition in the labour histories of both
countries.’
Connecting worlds and workers

Throughout this entire period much that was urban was linked to shipping.
In 1780 the basic pattern of the city was the same as at the outset of the great
sixteenth century expansion – emporium-type ports and bulking centres.
In 1880, well into the industrial revolution, most urban centres – such as Naples,
Alexandria, Calcutta, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires – were commodity bulking
centres and import distribution points. This meant that these port cities were
as closely connected to other port cities in other parts of the globe as they were
to towns in their own countries – and often far more so. The ‘national’ territory
was less a smooth and flat space of shared experiences and unified processes
than the site of overlapping grids, forged by ongoing human movements around
multiple nodes.
The ocean and its crossings thus constitute an important focus of labour history,
telling a story that cannot be captured by a methodological nationalism that
assumes the nation-state to be the key unit of analysis. Braudel pointed the way
in this regard, showing how maritime space can provide an arena for dense
social and economic overlapping of political entities (Braudel 1972–3). More
recently Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (2000) have explored what they
term ‘the Atlantic working class’ in the eighteenth century – a ‘working class’
centred on plantations, quays, docks and sail ships. The connections explored
are multiple: between free and unfree labour, between black and white, between
occupations, and between nationalities. In the eighteenth century, as they point
out, a mixed mass of sailors and navvies formed a key part of wage labour,
quintessentially engaged in the business of crossings and connections.
Critical here was the crossings of ideas and experience, which the authors see as
circulating eastwards from the American slave plantations, Irish commons and
Atlantic vessels and connecting back to the streets of the metropolis, London.
This experience, these ideas and these crossings connected sailors, slaves, coal
heavers, dockworkers and many others of diverse national and ethnic origins, in
a linked set of slave revolts, shipboard mutinies, agrarian risings and prison
riots which fed into a broad cycle of rebellions in the eighteenth century Atlantic
world. As elsewhere, a central component of this cycle was a struggle against
confinement, which was intimately connected with and to some extent premised
on mobility.
Rockel’s article shows that the complex crisscrossings of the African interior
which slave and porter parties undertook had important political and cultural
expressions and repercussions, analogous to those discussed by Linebaugh and
Rediker for an earlier period in the Atlantic world. Slaves who had been socialised
into a Swahili coastal world, after having been snatched as children from their home
societies in the interior, now stood in the forefront of forging ‘a new transregional
supra-elite culture of a very modern type’. Thus, caravans became ‘sites for
the emergence of new ideas and meanings that penetrated much of East and
Central Africa.’ The reshaping of identities and ideas via ‘labour crossings’ is
also touched upon in Sabea’s article, which draws attention to the way in which
colonial labour mobilisation, ironically, expanded aspirations. Besides an extensive
understanding of conditions on the different plantations, the workers were able to
construct both their own social spaces and ‘their own ideals of manamba: free to
choose employer, free to move around the country and around estates in search of
the optimal conditions of work.’
Such cultural and political expressions and repercussions need not, of course,
generate the transnational solidarities and identities that Linebaugh and Rediker
stress. Arrington’s contribution has a much more contemporary focus, and
examines competitive divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean workers in
the Victoria Falls area – divisions often expressed in national and gendered
terms. Her article shows how wars and civil dissension can radically reverse
long-term patterns of migrant and labour crossings, and generate a multiplicity
of social tensions and identity shifts.
In this particular case, Zimbabwe had traditionally drawn labour from Zambia, in
part due to its more sophisticated economy. The contemporary Zimbabwean crisis
has, however, seen substantial Zimbabwean immigration onto the Zambia side of
the Victoria Falls. This takes the form of repeated crossings and returns, and is
undertaken in a particular if familiar social form: the movement of single men
and women, or at least men and women without their families. For both, the
article shows, involves a crisis of self-valuation. Zimbabwean male immigrants
experience ‘an extraordinary blow to their sense of masculinity’ involving ‘a rever-
sal of who sets the standards of masculinity’. For Zimbabwean women, it involves a
catastrophic sense of marginalisation as they are presented with few means of
subsistence and survival other than sex work. This in turn subjects them to a
second form of negative stereotyping, that of purveyors of HIV/AIDS. For
their part, Zambians, long ‘the ugly step sisters’ of Zimbabwe(ans) ‘revel in the
reversal . . . feeling a combination of revenge and fear’. The likely outcome of
all this, seen all too graphically in South Africa in 2008, is xenophobic attitudes
and xenophobic attacks. The ‘making’ of the ‘working class’ need not imply
its unity.
Note
1. All of the guest editors were equally involved in the project that gave rise to this special section.
References
Ahuja, R. 2002. ‘Labour Relations in an Early Colonial Context: Madras, c.1750 – 1800’.
Modern Asian Studies 36.
Braudel, F. 1972– 3. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip
II. London: Collins (2 volumes).
Bremen, J. 1985. Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers: Rural Labour Circulation and
Capitalist Production in West India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, W. 1991. ‘The Great Migration as a Lever for Social Change’, in A. Harrison (ed),
Black Exodus: the Great Migration from the American South. Jackson: Jackson University
Press of Mississippi.
Elbourne, E. 1994. ‘Freedom at Issue: Vagrancy Legislation and the Meaning of Freedom
in Britain and the Cape Colony, 1799 – 1842’. Slavery and Abolition 15(2).
Gottlieb, P. 1987. Making Their Own Way: Southern Black Migration to Pittsburgh
1916– 1930. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Kerr, I.J. 2006. ‘On the Move: Circulating Labour in Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and Post-
Colonial India’. International Review of Social History (Supplement 14).
Linebaugh, P. and Rediker, M. 2000. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso.
Ludden, D. 1994. ‘History Outside Civilization and the Mobility of Southern Asia’. South
Asia 17(1).
Osella, F. and Gardner, K. 2006. ‘Migration, Modernity and Social Transformation in
South Asia: An Overview’. Contributions to Indian Sociology 37(1&2).
Pleck, E.H. 1979. Black Migration and Poverty: Boston, 1870– 1900. New York:
Academic Press.
Thompson, E.P. 1991. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin.
Washbrook, D. 1993. ‘Land and Labour in Late Eighteenth-Century South India: The
Golden Age of the Pariah?’ in P. Robb (ed), Dalit Movements and the Meanings of
Labour in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth

Century East Africa: The Case
of Waungwana Caravan Porters
Stephen J. Rockel
Department of Humanities/History, University of Toronto
Scarborough
The nineteenth century East African caravan system was organised around the labour of itinerant
caravan porters, most of whom were free wage labourers. However, a minority of the caravan
labour force and a section of the populations of new market and caravan towns on the coast and in
the interior were slaves or freed slaves known as Waungwana, or ‘gentlemen’. Waungwana
caravan porters and retainers of Muslim traders were mostly coast-based, although many travelled
for years in the far interior of Central and East Africa. To some degree the Waungwana were assimi-
lated into Swahili culture, with its urban Muslim characteristics. Yet the Waungwana were from
diverse origins across East Africa. They were also very mobile, and they were wage earning and
often entrepreneurial. Paradoxically it is this very mobility and frequently great distance from the
centres of Swahili culture that gave the Waungwana social and economic opportunities, status, and
a role as cultural brokers. They were men of the world, and lived their lives alongside the free
caravan personnel of the non-Muslim interior. Waungwana were able, therefore, to negotiate limit-
ations to their slave status and enlarge a sphere of freedom for themselves. They were also founding
inhabitants of the new centres of urban modernity along the caravan routes. The Waungwana perfectly
illustrate multiple conceptions of ‘labour crossings’. First, they transcended the rather blurred bound-
aries between free and slave labour in nineteenth century East Africa. Second, they utilised space and
mobility in a fluid way to negotiate the conditions of slavery and freedom. Third, they were partners in
processes of transregional, transnational and supraethnic interactions in Central and East Africa.
Key words: caravan porters, East Africa, itinerant wage labourers, porterage, slavery, supraethnic,
transnational, transregional, Waungwana
In my book Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East

Africa (Rockel 2006), I show that the East African caravan system was organised
around the labour of tens of thousands of professional caravan porters, most of
whom were free wage labourers from the interior. However, a minority of the
caravan labour force, and a section of the populations of new market and
caravan towns on the coast and in the interior, were slaves or freed slaves
known as Waungwana, or ‘gentlemen’. CT Wilson and RW Felkin of the
Church Missionary Society (CMS) defined the term as follows:
The word Wang’uána [sic] means gentlemen, and has been appropriated by these
negroes to distinguish themselves from the slaves who work on the mashamba or
plantations. These Wang’uána are not, as a rule, natives of Zanzibar, but slaves

DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827464
who have been brought from the interior when young, and have become to a great
extent naturalized, and have learnt Kiswahili . . . A few of them have obtained their
freedom but the majority are still slaves, allowed by their owners, on condition of
their receiving a part of their wages, to engage in the service of European travellers.1
The point of appropriation was the coastal elite who in this period had adopted an
ideology of uungwana, coastal civilisation, which they believed gave them a
special status in comparison to the lower classes of the coast society – domestic
and agricultural slaves, farmers, fishermen, artisans – as well as the ubiquitous
caravan porters and traders who descended seasonally from the interior, and
were often temporarily resident in the coastal towns. Uungwana meant member-
ship in a well-connected network of elite and sometimes rich families, familiarity
with Islam, rhetorical ability in Kiswahili, and a relatively leisured urban exist-
ence. Visitors from upcountry, in contrast, were disparaged as washenzi (barbar-
ians). They were speakers of Kinyamwezi more than Kiswahili, most likely not
Muslim, and were seen as different in their clothing and habits.2
This article investigates what slavery and freedom meant to the Waungwana, and
elucidates their roles in the caravan system and the emerging centres of urban
modernity along the caravan routes. The Waungwana perfectly illustrate multiple
conceptions of ‘labour crossings’. First, they transcended the rather blurred
boundaries between free and slave labour in nineteenth century East Africa.
Second, they utilised space and mobility in a fluid way to negotiate the conditions
of slavery and freedom. Third, they were partners in processes of transregional,
transnational and supraethnic interactions in Central and East Africa, partly
through their commercial activities and partly through their participation in the
labour culture of the caravans. The historical experience of the Waungwana
with its complex interplay of individual and local initiatives was intertwined
with wider histories of the caravan system and slavery in East Africa, themselves
driven by the acceleration of commercialisation in the western Indian Ocean from
the late eighteenth century, the spread of market relations into many parts of the
East African interior, and links to industrial and finance capitalism in Europe, the
Americas and South Asia.
In East Africa commercialisation meant a combination of the penetration of the
market and the impact of ideas of profit making and wage earning with a new
kind of power resting on the accumulation of measurable wealth, guns and
followers. East Africans responded to the rising external demand for ivory,
slaves, gum copal and cloves, and to the consumer driven internal demand for
mass-produced cloth, manufactured iron goods, guns and beads. These forces
reached their peak during the middle decades of the nineteenth century and
were ultimately fueled by industrialisation in Europe and North America which
led to rising export prices for ivory simultaneously to falling prices for imported
machine-made cotton cloth. By that time the caravan routes stretched between
the Indian Ocean coast and the eastern Congo, even reaching across Africa to
the Atlantic. In East Africa goods were carried on the heads and shoulders of
Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century East Africa 89
professional porters due to the absence of alternative forms of transport and,

particularly, infestations of the trypanosome carrying tsetse fly that killed dom-
estic animals including oxen, donkeys, horses and mules. The caravan system
relentlessly expanded into new territories as the elephant frontier – meaning the
distant regions in which unexploited elephant herds could still be found – was
ruthlessly extended and remote populations were brought into the market
system, either by choice or force. In Carriers of Culture I argue that long-distance
caravan porters working the central trade routes in nineteenth century East Africa
were itinerant wage labourers, and can be usefully compared with workers in other
contexts during the early stages of capitalist development. By utilising the concept
of crew culture I show how caravan porters developed a specialised East African
labour culture that nevertheless had characteristics found in crew or gang cultures
elsewhere, for example, in the maritime world. Deconstruction of the notion often
still found in historical works and many colonial sources that caravan porters were
either captive slave labourers or marginal and unsophisticated sojourners suggests
the lasting influence of the imperialist rhetoric of conquest and subjugation. In
contrast, I argue that professional porters were at the cutting edge of African
engagement with international capitalism, that they were the prime movers in
the economic, social and cultural network building of the period, and that they
expressed an alternative East African modernity (Rockel 2006).
Waungwana caravan porters and retainers of Muslim traders were mostly coast-
based, although many travelled for years in the far interior of East and Central
Africa. Some settled permanently in the towns and settlements of central and
western Tanzania, especially Tabora in the most commercialised Nyamwezi chief-
dom of Unyanyembe, Ujiji in Buha, parts of the eastern Congo (Kasongo,
Nyangwe), northern Zambia and Malawi (Nkhota Kota). To a considerable
degree the Waungwana were assimilated into Swahili culture, with its urban
Muslim characteristics. Yet the Waungwana were from diverse origins across
East Africa, particularly the heavily slaved Lake Malawi region. In Zambia
they called themselves and were known by the identification Alungwana. There
as elsewhere in the interior, Swahili and Zanzibaris who were born at the coast,
spoke Kiswahili from birth, and were perhaps of free status, were frequently
caught up in this catchall category (Wright and Lary 1971:547). The Waungwana
should also be distinguished from the Manyema of eastern Congolese origins, who
also made up a portion of the slave and ex-slave populations of towns such as Ujiji,
Tabora, Bagamoyo, Saadani and Dar es Salaam. ‘Manyema’ identity was itself
constructed through processes of removal or travel from a wide variety of
social and cultural settings in the eastern Congo and resettlement in the towns
and entrepôts of the caravan system. Although also Islamized and to a large
degree integrated into East African Muslim urban culture the Manyema retained
a separate Congolese identity.3
Having roots – even if largely forgotten – in the far interior, and often brought to
the coast as children, the Waungwana asserted their rights to mobility. They were
wage earning and often entrepreneurial.4 Paradoxically it is this very mobility and
ability to roam great distances from the centres of coastal culture that gave the
Waungwana social and economic opportunities, status, and a role as cultural
brokers. They were men of the world, and lived their lives alongside the free
caravan personnel, especially the Nyamwezi, of the non-Muslim interior.
A large proportion of the long distance trading caravans included both Waung-
wana and Nyamwezi porters, traders and askari. The frontier settlements of the
ivory and slave trading system included significant elements of both groups.5
For example, Tippu Tip employed hundreds of Nyamwezi in Manyema country
alongside his Waungwana retainers, and Nyamwezi rugaruga dominated the
military establishments of the great coastal traders Abdullah and Kabunda in
Tabwa country and Ulungu at the south end of Lake Tanganyika (Wright and
1971:547, 550, 559 –60). The opportunities of commerce, frequent access to
firearms, and the social prestige of attachment to powerful employers or
masters combined with spatial distance from the hierarchical coastal towns to
give the Waungwana an unusually high degree of autonomy for an ostensibly
servile caste. They were able, therefore, to negotiate or impose limitations to
their slave status and enlarge a wide sphere of freedom for themselves.6 HM
Stanley noted this active preference expressed by many ‘Wangwana’ (who he mis-
leadingly refers to as the ‘natives’ of Zanzibar):
There is a class of Wangwana living at Ngambu, in the small gardens of the interior of
the island, and along the coast of the mainland, who prefer the wandering life offered
to them by Arab traders and scientific expeditions to being subject to the caprice,
tyranny, and meanness of small estate proprietors. They complain that the Arabs
are haughty, grasping, and exacting; that they abuse them and pay them badly; that,
if they seek justice at the hands of the Cadis [sic], judgment, somehow, always
goes against them. They say, on the other hand, that, when accompanying trading
or other expeditions, they are well paid, have abundance to eat, and comparatively
but little work. (Stanley (1899) 1988:40)7
But even in the most conservative coastal towns there were opportunities for local
Waungwana to rise up the social scale both in terms of status and material prosper-
ity. Jonathon Glassman writes of the Waungwana of Pangani that porterage
on caravans was ‘an occupation essential to Shirazi notions of prestige’. A
Mwungwana typically negotiated with his master for the right to work as a
porter, offering to share any profits from successful independent trade in addition
to carrying the master’s own trade goods (Glassman 1991:291).
Others took their own freedom in their hands: ‘Much of the labor of the booming
Pangani ivory trade was performed by what were essentially petits marrons’
(Glassman 1991:292),8 runaways, finding an enlargement of freedom absent at
the coast, Glassman writes.9 In 1874 ‘large bodies of escaped Arabs’ slaves,
who were well armed’ turned against their former masters and joined other run-
aways ‘who infested the vicinity of Unyanyembe’. A few years later runaway
slaves of Arab traders – perhaps some of the same individuals – and probably
Waungwana, found service with the great Nyamwezi chief Mirambo, who
welcomed the skills of artisans such as carpenters, blacksmiths and gunsmiths
(Cameron 1877:212; Wolf 1976:46).
Nevertheless, the Waungwana were relative latecomers to the main central
caravan routes, and were a minority of the caravan work force, which continued
to be dominated by the Nyamwezi and related peoples including the Sukuma,
Sumbwa and Kimbu. Indeed, there was a direct relationship between the domi-
nance of the caravan system by free people, and the potential for advancement
through caravan work by slaves or the recently emancipated. Jan-Georg
Deutsch argues that in nineteenth century East Africa, including the coast, bound-
aries between slave and free in the context of rapid commercial change were
blurred, and social marginality could be reduced by ‘struggle and conflict’. In
fact, ‘earning relative personal freedom was an in-built feature of the various
forms of pre-colonial slavery’. A number of possibilities existed: ‘manumission
by the owner, flight, slave (self-)ransoming and the integration of slaves into
their owners’ kinship group or patronage network’ (Deutsch 2006:5, 7, also 41,
73).10 Caravan labour offered potential access to all of these routes towards
greater autonomy or freedom, but it went beyond them in that it offered
participation in an occupation with its own notions of honour and freedom
based on experience of the customs of the road and emersion in a well established
labour culture, as well as chances for petty trade and accumulation (Rockel
2006:passim).11 Coast-based slave porters were particularly aware of these oppor-
tunities for personal autonomy and enlarged freedoms. They worked for wages,
had considerable autonomy from their owners, and adopted most aspects of the
caravan culture of the interior peoples. In comparison, there is little evidence
that trade slaves or captives were used for porterage, except sometimes on the
southern (Kilwa) routes, despite the assertions of many contemporary European
observers. Demoralised, sick and feeble captives were hopelessly inefficient and
could not be used by traders for a round trip. They lacked the skills and experience
required for long distance caravan travel. Finally, captives had a greater tendency
to abscond than did free or professional porters. Even at Tabora where Arabs and
Nyamwezi alike owned many slaves, there were few captive porters in the last
decade of the nineteenth century.12 Yet despite the domination of the caravan
system by free porters from the far interior, the Waungwana played a major
role in the history of nineteenth century East and Central Africa as coastal
caravan operators joined Nyamwezi traders in the rush for ivory and profits,
and Waungwana porters worked for European travellers, missionaries, and imperial
agents.
The setting: Coastal entrepreneurs and the nineteenth century

caravan system13
The true pioneers of long distance trade and porterage in East Africa were interior
peoples including the Bisa, Yao, the Sumbwa, Nyamwezi and Kimbu. However,
by the late eighteenth century, the Swahili and Arabs of the southern coastal
regions were venturing into the Kilwa hinterland in search of ivory and slaves.
Further to the north, the Swahili of the Mrima coast and Omani Arabs from
Zanzibar as well as Indian entrepreneurs from Gujarat and Beluchistan had by
about 1820 penetrated to the far western interior of modern Tanzania. Some
coastal caravans had even crossed Lake Tanganyika. The Indian Khoja Musa
‘Mzuri’ – ‘the Handsome’ – was one of those who played a major role. During
the early 1820s his caravans, no doubt employing a combination of slave and
free porters, utilised the old central caravan route through Ukutu, Ruaha and
Isanga in Ukimbu.14 Musa was a founder of the important trading station of
Kazeh (later Tabora) in the Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe in about
1852, and played a prominent role along the route from Kazeh to Karagwe and
Buganda from the 1840s (Burton 1859:181; Burton (1860) 1971:423–4; Gray
1957:228; Sheriff 1987:175– 7). Zanzibar, from 1840 the permanent capital of
Omani Sultan Seyyid bin Said, with its links to the Indian Ocean world,
America and Europe, was the pivot of East African commerce. In 1828 a visitor
to Zanzibar wrote that he had ‘frequently seen the elephant hunters return from
thirty days’ journey into the interior and the governor of Zanzibar occasionally
sends presents to negro kings a long distance inland’ (Edmund Roberts, quoted
in Gray 1957:228). By 1831 caravans from the coast regularly travelled to Ujiji
on the east coast of Lake Tanganyika or places nearby. Lief bin Said, a pioneer
caravan operator of Nyamwezi and coastal parentage was familiar with the
goods traded in the countries to the west of the lake (MacQueen 1845:373). Some-
time during the 1830s the paternal grandfather of Tippu Tip – the greatest of the
coastal ivory traders – visited Uyowa in western Unyamwezi and, in the 1840s,
Tippu Tip’s father married into the ruling family of Unyanyembe.15
Sultan Seyyid bin Said continued to take a close interest in the caravan trade. In
June 1839, 200 of his men departed for the interior to trade on his behalf. The
expedition no doubt included many slaves. In the 1840s a French sailor noted
that Swahili and Arabs from Zanzibar frequently joined Nyamwezi caravans in
order to benefit from the trading opportunities in the far interior and the greater
security that cooperative ventures offered. Many of them remained in Unyamwezi
for two or three years.16 No doubt such lengthy stays created the conditions in
which permanent coastal settlements in Unyamwezi and elsewhere could be estab-
lished. These communities such as the one at Kazeh included significant numbers
of Waungwana in their founding populations.
There is at least one case in which there is clear proof that coast-based caravan
leaders crossed the continent and returned to tell their story. In early 1845 a
large ‘Arab’ caravan ‘under the protection of a great force’ left Bagamoyo for
the far interior. By the time it crossed Lake Tanganyika it consisted of several
Arabs and Swahilis and ‘two hundred armed slaves’, no doubt Waungwana.
One of these Arabs was Said bin Habib of Zanzibar. Seven years later a section
of this great expedition under the leadership of Said bin Habib arrived at Benguela
on the west coast of the continent. Said bin Habib continued his slave and ivory
trading business in the interior for several more years, at Kazembe’s, Katanga,
and the Zambezi Valley, among other places, visiting Luanda three times in the
process. In 1860 he arrived back in Zanzibar, completing a double-crossing of
the continent that had taken sixteen years.17 More typical than these dramatic
exploits was for the Swahili and Waungwana of the coastal towns to combine
caravan trading in the nearer interior with farming. For example, the people of
Sudi, a small town on the southern coast, operated plantations worked, in part,
by slave labour. They sold some of the surplus food to buy more slaves. They
also hunted elephants for ivory. The traditional ‘History of Sudi’ says that the
townspeople borrowed trade goods from merchants and walked ‘to their former
homes’ where they bought ivory and slaves (Freeman-Grenville 1962:231;
Alpers 1969:48– 9). This probably meant the Lake Malawi region, which was a
major source of slaves, or perhaps Makonde or Makua country nearer to the coast.
By mid-century the demand for porters at the coast and in the interior was rising.
The value of going on safari as opposed to staying at home was highlighted in the
Swahili ‘History of Former Times in Bagamoyo’. According to the text, ‘The
strongest men went on safaris up-country, while the fools occupied themselves
washing their clothes and swaggering about the town – with no food in their
homes’ (Freeman-Grenville 1962:239). Caravan work and long-distance trade
made economic sense. All sections of society stood to benefit, as Burton tells us:
The coast Arabs and the Wámrı́má have, besides deceiving caravans [i.e. Nyamwezi
caravans from the interior], another . . . escape from poverty. The lower classes hire
themselves to merchants as porters into the interior; they receive daily rations of
grain, and a total hire of 10 dols., half of which is paid in advance . . . Respectable
men, by promising usurious interest to the Banyans, can always borrow capital
enough to muster a few loads, and then they combine to form one large caravan.
The wealthier have houses, wives, and families in Unyamwezi as well as upon the
coast. (Burton 1859:58).18
Clearly economic incentives were important. Further details on domestic slaves in

coastal caravans are noted by Burton’s travelling companion, Speke:
The Arabs travel in bodies, consisting of several caravans joined together, for mutual
protection, of a number averaging from 200 to 800 men, of which a considerable
portion their own domestic slaves, carry muskets, very often the condemned Indian
Arab ones . . . whilst the common porters, like all the natives of the interior, carry a
bow and a spear. (1860:142)
Speke’s observation offers a further point of comparison. Waungwana porters

travelling with (or without) their owners or masters were armed. Thus not only
were they a part of the wider world of professional porterage and commercialisa-
tion in East Africa, with its affinity to the crews and gangs of the ships, ports,
railway camps, lumber yards, whaling stations and shearing sheds of early capital-
ist development in much of the Americas and Australasia (Rockel 2006:23–8,
passim), but they should be compared with slave soldiers in other parts of
Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.19 Allen and Barbara Isaacman have
described a somewhat similar world in which Chikunda slave soldiers, police,
porters and boatmen in the Zambezi Valley fulfilled a variety of roles in the
service of Portuguese colonialism from the eighteenth and into the twentieth
century, at the same time creating a new ethnic identity and masculine pride
that compensated for their slave origins (Isaacman and Isaacman 2004).20 In con-
trast with the Chikunda, the Tirailleurs or the Mamluks of the Ottoman Empire the
Waungwana were never organised into professional military units by either the
Zanzibari Sultanate or the German colonial state, and more typically served in
slave militia in the armed retinues of large traders or even as askari in mission
and other caravans. Nevertheless, many individuals did follow a martial career,
as the well-known example of Rashid bin Hassani shows. Rashid’s career began
with enslavement as a child in northern Zambia and transportation from Kilwa
to Zanzibar. As a youth he worked on the clove plantation of Bibi Zem Zem, a
relative of the Sultan. He was then recruited as a porter by Smith Mckenzie and
Co., a British caravan outfitter and trading company and served on Imperial
British East Africa Company (IBEAC) caravans to Uganda in the 1890s. He
then saw service with the Uganda Rifles, as a Kenya policeman, as a hunter in
German East Africa and worked as a forest guard for both the British and
Germans. He was freed on Bibi Zem Zem’s death. His biography is notable for
a number of instances of resistance to European authority (Bin Hassani 1963).
In the middle of the nineteenth century Waungwana identity was still evolving.
Yet Burton’s account of a band of slave musketeer/porters he refers to as the
‘sons of Ramji’, illustrates all the themes highlighted here, although nowhere
does the label ‘Waungwana’ appear. Ramji, the Cutch entrepreneur and clerk at
the Zanzibar customs house offered to hire out ten of his slaves or ‘sons’ for
the charge of thirty Maria Theresa thaler (MT$) per head for six months.
Another five ‘ass-men’ were also hired in this way at MT$30 for the whole
journey (Burton (1860) 1971:26, 32 –3, 49 –50).21 The ‘sons of Ramji’ were
each armed with obsolete Tower Muskets and German cavalry sabres, and
equipped with small leather boxes attached to a belt and a large cow horn for
their ammunition. Most of them took the free man’s title of Mwinyi (master).
They had all been pawned to Ramji by their ‘parents’ or ‘uncles’ (no doubt euphe-
misms) as security for loans, and then became his property when their ‘relatives’
failed to redeem them (Burton (1860) 1971:109–10). Their leader was Mwinyi
Kidogo or Mr Little, a man with ‘great influence over his brother slaves’, ‘a
fixed and obstinate determination’ and ‘abundant self-esteem’. According to
Burton his status had no bearing whatsoever on his independence of mind: ‘His
attitude is always humble and deprecatory . . . he rarely speaks, save in dulcet
tones, low, plaintive and modulated; yet in agreeing in every conceivable particu-
lar, he never fails to introduce a most pertinacious “but”, which brings him back
precisely to his own starting-point’ (Burton (1860) 1971:110). Even the
expedition’s caravan manager, the Arab Said bin Salim, evaded his browbeating.
Mwinyi Kidogo was of Doe origin from eastern Tanzania, had a family in
Unyamwezi, and his travelling experience had given him considerable knowledge
of the languages and customs of this most important region. His and his fellows’
disregard for their formal slave status and their assertion of freedom once on the
road is clear in the following:
As a chief, he would have been in the right position; as a slave, he was falsely placed,
because of his determination not to obey. He lost no time in demanding that he and his
brethren should be considered askari, soldiers, whose sole duty it was to carry a gun;
and he took the first opportunity of declaring that his men should not be under the
direction of the jemadar [Beluch officer]. Having received for answer that we could
not all be sultans, he retired with a ‘ngema’ – a ‘very well,’ accompanied by a
glance that boded little good. From that hour the ‘sons of Ramji’ went wrong.
Before, servilely civil, they waxed insolent; they learned their power – without
them I must have returned to the coast – and they presumed upon it. They assumed
the ‘swashing and martial outside’ of valiant men: they distained to be ‘mechanical’;
they swore not to carry burdens; they objected to loading and leading the asses; they
would not bring up articles left behind in the camp or on the road; they claimed the
sole right of buying provisions; they arrogated to themselves supreme command
over the porters; and they pilfered from the loads whenever they wanted the luxuries
of meat and beer; they drank deep; and more than one occasion they endangered the
caravan by their cavalier proceedings with the fair sex . . . they had one short reply to
all objections, namely, the threat of desertion.
Only on the return journey to the coast were the ‘sons of Ramji’ amenable to a
measure of discipline (Burton (1860) 1971:110–11).22 Likewise, the travellers’
right hand man, Seedy (Sidi) Mubarak Bombay, technically a slave of Yao
origin, had ‘tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty’. He was a slave ‘merely
in origin’ and had been ‘adopted into the great family of free men’ to which he
‘identified all his interests’ (Burton (1860) 1971:518–9).23
In January 1859 the two travellers – Burton and Speke – encountered a large
coastal caravan of the type described above near Zungomero (now Kisaki) on
the old southern, Ruaha river, route to Unyamwezi.24 This expedition, originally
of 600 ‘free men and slaves’, had been a year and a half journeying to Ubena, in
the highlands of southern Tanzania, and back. Its personnel, including 150 men
armed with muskets, had been hired at the coast for eight to ten dollars per
man, with half paid in advance. The leaders, Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami, ‘a
coast Arab’ and Mohammed bin Gharib, a Mswahili, had not been able to con-
vince Nyamwezi porters to accompany them to this as yet relatively unknown
country. In Ubena there were ample opportunities to accumulate captives and
slaves, and the caravan’s porters — including no doubt many of the ‘Waungwana’
(once again, they were not called such) — were able to afford the very low prices.
At Ubena the caravan made considerable profits in slaves and ivory. The former,
mostly captured or kidnapped, were sold for four to six fundo of beads, and merchants
being rare, a large stock was found on hand. About 800 were purchased, as each
pagazi or porter could afford one at least. On the return-march, however, half of
the property deserted. The ivory . . . sold at 35 to 70 fundo of yellow and other colored
beads per frasilah . . . cloth was generally refused, and the kitindi or wire armlets were
useful only in purchasing provisions.
On the homeward journey 150 members of the caravan, mostly slaves (possibly
meaning the captives?), were tragically lost when a flash flood swept over their
camp, unwisely situated in a broad stream bed (Burton (1860) 1971:453–4).
Burton’s description highlights several relevant issues. First, Waungwana porters
and askari were central to the expansion of the long distance trade into new
regions not yet fully integrated into the commercial and cultural networks of
the nineteenth century caravan system. Second, they were just as opportunistic
and entrepreneurial as were the free porters and the better financed coastal mer-
chants. By purchasing ivory and slaves they were not only able to enter into the
trading economy, but they were also in a position to accumulate property, even
if on a small scale. Purchases of one or two slaves lightened a porter’s workload
and added to his status in the hierarchy of the caravans and the trading centres en
route. In Ujiji twenty years later, many Waguha (Holoholo) and Warua from the
eastern Congo found themselves enslaved to local Waungwana and Arabs through
the accumulation of gambling debts. Waungwana porters were also able to gain
access to slave women who cooked for them and provided sexual services in
return for cloth to wear and food (see Wolf 1976:118, 18 July 1879 and
1976:106, 29 April 1879).25 French-Sheldon wrote of her Zanzibari slave
porters, many of who were supplied by the Sultan himself:
In my caravan there were men, not in my employ, but the slaves of some of my porters,
who were themselves slaves, and were taken on safari to relieve their slave masters of
their packs, and to do odd jobs for the headmen and others, remunerated by a mere
stipend given to their owners, or remnants of food that would otherwise be thrown
away. They seemed merry and contented to lead the nomadic life of a safari [sic]
in companionship of the regular porters. (1892:160–1)26
In fact during the early and middle years of the century it was not uncommon for
such amateurs to fill out the ranks of coastal caravans. When Speke and Grant left
Zanzibar on their epic journey the caravan included thirty-three ‘Wanguana [sic],
or freed slaves’ – here is the first reference to the identity ‘Waungwana’ applied to
professional porters in the European travel accounts – and thirty-six ‘Watuma
[sic] gardeners’ taken directly from amongst the Sultan Majid’s agricultural
workers.27 Ten of these, afraid of the white men ‘whom they believed to be can-
nibals’ deserted on the first day on the mainland (Speke 1864:45, 3 October 1860).
Third, membership of the caravan itself, an institution with its own culture and
customs, and recognition of a certain status as wasafari, men of the world,
workers in a far flung trading and cultural system, gave slave porters and askari
a degree of power that they often lacked in their coastal homes. In one case
Speke and Grant met a slave of one of the Indian merchants of Kazeh (Tabora)
who led his master’s caravan to the coast and had many servants of his own
(Grant 1864:50).28 It was not unknown for an Mwungwana, freed by the death of
his merchant master, to start an independent career by first working as a porter for
other traders, eventually raising a little capital, and then entering into trade on his
own account (Speke 1864:xxvii). Slave and free porters while on safari could
express themselves with a degree of freedom not possible in more settled circum-
stances, although they were generally restrained by the power of influential chiefs
in the main trading regions and subject to the limits of the customs of caravan
labour culture. Indeed, they were at the forefront of the emergence of a new trans-
regional and supraethnic culture of a very modern type.29
The caravan system itself operated as a kind of cultural sorter and caravans were
sites for the emergence of new ideas and meanings that penetrated much of East
and Central Africa. One only needs to consider the creation of Nyamwezi and
Swahili Diasporas, the spread of Kiswahili and Islam, and the participation of
communities and peoples along the caravan routes in integrating cultural practices
such as utani (ritualised joking relationships).30 Social and cultural links were also
cemented by blood brotherhood rituals and in western Tanzania in institutions
such as the Nyamwezi iwanza, the kaya or village men’s club, where passing
strangers such as caravan porters were welcomed to receive hospitality and pass
the time with storytelling and games.31 We can also think about nineteenth
century urbanisation and even slavery in these terms, because most East
African slaves stayed in the region, especially in commercialised chiefdoms and
emerging urban centres along the main caravan groups. Waungwana caravan
personnel were one of the most important groups of cultural brokers that played
a major role in these processes of the building of new interregional multiethnic
linkages and were at the forefront of the emergence of a unique East African mod-
ernity along the caravan routes. Integration occurred on many levels among slaves
and their comrades, and in commercialised slave-owning communities. For
example, in Mbwamaji, south of modern Dar es Salaam, (and no doubt other
coastal entrepôts) a number of clans originated from processes of integration
between slaves and the inhabitants of the town.32 In Bagamoyo slaves were
owned not only by the town’s business elite, but also by local Doe (and no
doubt Zigua and Kwere) farmers who employed slaves in their mashamba and
as domestic workers.33 In caravan and mission towns such as Mpwapwa and
Tabora, both Islamicised slaves (Waungwana and Manyema) and Christian
ex-slaves formed the basis for new communities centred around church,
mosque, markets and traders’ compounds.34
Slavery, freedom, and the Waungwana

We have established that in contrast to the rare use of captives or trade slaves for
porterage, caravans bound for the interior frequently included coast-based dom-
estic slaves or freed slaves, the Waungwana.35 Here East Africa fits into the
broader African pattern noted by Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy. Along with
other subordinate groups such as poor but able members of society who wished
to advance themselves, and young men frustrated by restrictive lineage ties, dom-
estic slaves used the income-earning and trading opportunities of porterage to buy
their freedom or accumulate a little capital. In this sense they were similar to free
porters. As Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy note, ‘The difference between free
and slave was defined by their social status more than by the nature of their
work or even the means of payment’ (1995:17 –8).36 ‘The Story of Rashid Bin
Hassani’ contains a perfect illustration of how caravan work offered opportunities
for enlargement of freedom:
I saw one day an amazing sight. There were Goan shops that sold wines and cognac
and this day I saw Swahilis spilling money and throwing about rupees. We asked
where they got their money and were told ‘You are all fools here; you will only get
women; go abroad and you will get money. We went with a European from Smith
Mackenzie’s. Have a drink first and then we will go along.’ We sat and drank two
or three days and were given money; these men were like Europeans. Eventually
we went and saw three Europeans at a table; one had no left hand. Some of us
were written on for a safari to the mainland. We were to get 10 rupees a month;
half we drew and half was paid to our masters. (1963:99–100)
As this example shows, whether slave or free, it usually made little difference to
caravan operators looking to hire porters. Glassman notes for Pangani that, ‘The
sources are rife with incidents in which slaves took employment on caravans
without first securing their “masters” consent; in these cases the slave would
have contracted with a load of trade goods from an Indian merchant without
informing the master’ (Glassman 1991:291). Most European caravans leaving
Bagamoyo, Saadani or Dar es Salaam employed Waungwana porters. They
were hired on exactly the same basis as other carriers. Burton writes, ‘For the
evil of slave-service there was no remedy: I therefore paid them their wages
and treated them as if they were freemen” ((1860) 1971:54).37 The first Royal
Geographical Society expedition of 1879– 80 recruited slaves just as if they
were free men. No attempt was made to ascertain or to interfere with the arrange-
ments made between them and their owners, and according to the wage list in only
two cases was half the advance wage – the usual proportion – paid directly to the
master. In only ‘one or two cases’ did the owners prevent their slaves from depart-
ing with the caravan (Thomson 1968:67– 8).38 Another example shows how slave
porters often evaded their owners who had not given permission for them to travel
upcountry. In June 1880, representatives of Boustead Ridley and Co., agents for
the London Missionary Society, recruited 320 porters for the missionaries and
sent the men in dhows from Zanzibar to the mainland. One slave owner, Karihadyi
(Karihaji), had already successfully removed three of his men from among those
already signed up, and their advance wages were returned to the company. But just
as the dhows set sail he attempted to take two more porters from the last dhow.
Muxworthy of Boustead Ridley wrote:
We could not get him to come here and examine them, but after they were all shipped
he went on board and claimed two men as slaves. I told the Captain to weigh anchor
but Kari dragged the men into my boat. However, as soon as the dhow was under
weigh I ordered the men to jump on board which they did, and I shoved the boat
off before Kari could stop them amid the cheers of the men. Karihadji [sic]
complained to the Sultan but both Dr. Kirk and Captain Mathews said I was quite
justified.39
Domestic slave porters were just as independent on the mainland coast, as an

example from Saadani shows. An LMS missionary wrote after recruiting porters
that ‘Two slave owners came up to claim their slaves – we had had three previous
cases similar – but as the men preferred to go with us and held us to our agreement
with them we could not move in the matter. So the owners had to carry their
disappointment home’ (see Bennett (1969:50), 24 December 1877).
Later, during the early 1880s, the LMS took a more conciliatory approach to slave
owners who believed their slaves had joined a mission caravan without per-
mission. An agent appointed by the Sultan witnessed the signing on of porters,
and any Arab slave owner looking for runaways could attend as well. If a slave
porter failed to obtain his owner’s permission to join a caravan, and the caravan
leader discovered this, the porter in question could choose release from his con-
tract, or stay with the caravan. In the latter case, the slave owner had to
produce an order from the British consul for the slave’s return.40 Conversely, in
same cases large slave owners contracted to supply porters to a caravan leader
against the slaves’ wishes, and by doing so avoided the normal division of
wages and trading profits and thus the incentive for the vibarua (contracted
wage earning slaves) in question. In such cases the unwilling slaves ‘having
little in hand and nothing to look forward to but hard work and numerous
dangers, escape at the first opportunity’. The master, having received payment
for the slaves’ future labour from the caravan operator then had little interest in
the whereabouts or performance of his slaves.41
In the 1890s the English anti-slavery lobby fastened on the use of paid slave
porters by European employers arguing that this stimulated the slave trade
(Cooper 1980:34, f.n. 28). The intervention had a short-lived impact on recruit-
ment in Zanzibar during a period of very high demand stimulated by European
military and mission expansion. In June 1891 CS Smith, the British consul, tem-
porarily restricted a large Belgian caravan departing Zanzibar to hiring only free
men, delaying Captain Stairs’ expedition to Katanga (see Konczacki 1994:188, 15
June 1891 and 1994:190, 29 June 1891; Moloney 1893:22-3).42 Yet former Consul
Holmwood defended the earlier practice, observing that the technical status of
domestic slaves in no way affected their work as professional caravan porters.
Once a caravan was beyond the reach of coastal authorities, Waungwana
porters were not compelled to return to their master.43 The reality is that Zanzibari
slave porters were quite independent, often joined caravans without their owners’
permission, and frequently did not pass on the usual half of their wages demanded
of vibarua. Such behaviour was symptomatic of the general expansion of
opportunities for domestic slaves during this period (Cooper 1989:48– 52). In
fact coastal slave porters could use their wages to buy their freedom (Cummings
1973:112–3; Beidelman 1982:613).44
One way to consider what notions of slavery and freedom meant to the Waungwana
is through an examination of questions of professionalism and honour associated
with professional caravan workers. Holmwood argued,
It is true that a large proportion of the porters, guides and guards of all expeditions
from Zanzibar to the interior is composed of slaves, in a technical sense. Whilst repre-
senting England at Zanzibar, I engaged, both for the company, for Mr. Stanley, and for
other travellers, more than a thousand of such porters.
These men are professional travellers whose livelihood is gained by such work, and
the fact of their being slaves or otherwise has no bearing on their engagement, for no
master can compel a slave to travel, and, practically, the moment he is outside the
coast region he can desert and settle as a free man in the interior.
Yet, Holmwood continued, most Waungwana and Zanzibari slave porters, as

trusted retainers of the Arab or Swahili elites, found their relatively privileged
status ‘too advantageous’ to be given up lightly. ‘In cases where they pay to
their owners a stipulated proportion of their wages, they do so voluntarily, and
always retain for themselves much more than they could earn by ordinary work.
In discussing this question with them over the camp fire, they always frankly
acknowledged that the arrangements suited them, and that they received a very
practical return for it in the shape of food, clothing, shelter and freedom from
anxiety when unable to obtain employment.’45 Holmwood’s argument was no
doubt self serving, given his role in organising caravans including large
numbers of Waungwana and Zanzibari slave porters for the IBEAC, yet it contains
a degree of truth. Virtually all employers in Zanzibar and on the coast hired
vibarua or other slave labour when required. Even Bishop Steere of the militantly
antislavery Universities Mission to Central Africa employed vibarua labour for
the construction of the Anglican cathedral in Zanzibar (Johnson (1924) 1970:33).
A brief examination of biographies of individual porters and other caravan experts
suggests both the professionalism of Waungwana and what the caravan life
offered in terms of enlarged freedoms. Among the porters in Count von der
Decken’s Kilimanjaro expedition in 1861 was Muansalim (Mwana Salim), a
slave of a coastal Arab. Muansalim had travelled to numerous countries in what
is now northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, including Upare, Dageta,
Arusha, Ukambani and had worked in others as an elephant hunter (Von der
Decken 1978:229). The kirangozi in Oscar Baumann’s expedition of 1891 –2 typi-
fied the professional Waungwana caravan worker described by Holmwood.
Mkamba, a slave, ‘roamed uninhibited through Massailand year in year out’. To
Baumann he was ‘the typical “msafari” (caravan man) of Pangani. He returns
from Lake Rudolph only a few days later to set out again for Kavirondo; in one
caravan his poor wages are counted out to him and in the other he names his
advance for the next journey’ (Baumann 1894:4–5). Like other experienced
European travellers Baumann respected the competence of such experts as Mkamba.

In another example of Waungwana independence, in 1892, a few days after the return
to Zanzibar of WG Stairs’ Katanga expedition, numerous headmen and porters,
‘unwarned by experience’, signed on to a Uganda-bound caravan (Moloney
1893:277). Many of their friends had starved to death in the famine associated
with the collapse of Msiri’s empire in Katanga. Most of these men were technically
slaves, yet their lives on safari clearly to them represented freedom, to be preferred to
the tighter controls of existence in coastal society.
Waungwana, as professional caravan porters with a certain status to maintain,
defended their dignity and honour. Such behaviour is further evidence of how
the caravan life offered them a large degree of freedom. Questioning the honour
of porters, even slave porters, could have serious consequences for caravan
leaders. In one case in 1879 near Mahenge mass desertion almost resulted from
an unintentional smear by Joseph Thomson on his Waungwana porters’ honour.
Describing the incident the youthful explorer wrote:
Seeing a porter offering beads of a kind suspiciously like my own to a woman to
pound rice for him, I asked Chuma [his headman] where the man got them. The
latter, who heard what I said, immediately went off among the men, telling them I
was accusing them of stealing beads. A dreadful row was at once raised, the drums
were beat frantically, and the horns blown to call all the men together. From all
sides they came rushing, bringing their guns, etc. These they laid down at my feet
with the air of injured innocence. They had never been accused of stealing before!
‘Here are our parcels,’ cried they; ‘look and see if we have anything belonging to
you. Now give us our tickets of discharge, that we may go back to the coast, for we
cannot go with you to be looked upon as thieves!’ Every one was in the utmost excite-
ment. Personal articles were packed, and preparation for a general return made, as if
an unpardonable aspersion had been cast upon their unsullied honour, which as imma-
culate men they were bound to resent.
Thomson was forced to back down and apologise (1968:1, 195– 6.)
What then, can we conclude about questions of status within the caravan system
with reference to caravan personnel of slave origins? A formal separation between
notions of ‘slavery’ and ‘freedom’ is fruitless. Slave and free porters did the same
work, developed the same skill set and generally accepted the customs of the
caravan system (for more see Rockel (2006) passim). Both slave and free took
advantage of wage earning and commercial opportunities, although usually for
different purposes. Both slave and free used their mobility and spatial and
social distance from the conventions of their home communities to construct
alternative lifestyles and participate in the emerging and ‘modern’ lifestyle of
the multicultural world of the caravan system and associated market towns and
caravan stops with its emerging systems of intersocietal networks and linkages.
Yet all this rested on a fine balance. Conflict as well as cooperation was common.
Friction arose when resources were scarce, and large caravans at times threatened
to overwhelm hard-pressed peasant communities with incessant demands for food
and water. For decades caravans from the coast were welcomed in chiefdoms and
villages along the main routes, as local people benefited from trading opportunities
and an opportunity to profit from the supply of provisions. By the 1890s a total
shift in the balance of power between inland communities and coastal caravans
was apparent in favour of the latter, as caravans plundered and raped their way
into the interior, protected and encouraged by colonial militarism (see Rockel
2006a:18 –21 for details).46 Accompanying this dynamic was a change in attitudes
in which porters and askari, many of whom were of slave origin, sometimes
expressed a kind of chauvinistic or aggressive attitude towards the peoples of
the interior. We see an early hint in this quote from Burton, thirty years earlier.
No caravan can safely traverse the interior without an escort of slave-musketeers.
They never part with their weapons, even when passing from house to house,
holding that their lives depend upon their arms; they beg, borrow, or steal powder
and ball; in fact, they are seldom found unready. They carry nothing but the lightest
gear, the master’s writing-case, bed, or praying-mat; to load them heavily would be to
insure desertion. Contrary to the practice of the free porter, they invariably steal when
they run away; they are also troublesome about food, and they presume upon their
weapons to take liberties with the liquor and the women of the heathen. ((1860)
1971:517)
Here was an early manifestation of the power of the gun and dollar or rupee over-
coming older forms of authority. Slaves with guns and backed by the violence of
the early colonial state could lord it over interior peoples threatened on all sides by
environmental collapse, the decline of the political power of their chiefs, military
defeat, and marauding and hungry coastal porters, freed from their old inhibitions.
As Deutsch (2006) argues, colonial rule hastened the decline of a system of
slavery that already contained within it the seeds of its own destruction in the
context of the entry of international capitalism.
The Waungwana therefore occupied a somewhat contradictory role. They were
agents of change, but some of the changes they helped introduce ultimately
undermined their own position as representatives of commerce and the market
in the interior. More importantly in retrospect the various ‘crossings’ that they
made – in negotiating the transition from servile to independent labour, as
pioneers in commerce and wage labour, as builders of linkages and networks
between the coast and the interior, and as agents of a new transregional and multi-
ethnic culture across East and Central Africa – helped build bridges to the
Tanzania of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Notes
1. As we will see, many Waungwana porters travelled far into the interior without necessarily
receiving the approval of their owners.
2. See the useful discussions in Deutsch (2006:40 –1) and Seesemann (2006:239–40). The ideas
of uungwana on the coast gradually gave way to concepts of Arabness (ustaarabu) emanating
from the Zanzibar-based Arab elite.
3. For Manyema slaves at the coast during the German period see Deutsch (2006:64); also Burton
and Brennan (2007:26). Interviewees at Bagamoyo, Saadani and Mbwamaji mention residents
of Manyema origin who intermarried with local people: Mzee Kitwana, Saadani, 13 March
2005; Ayubu Selemani, Mbwamaji, 29 June 2005; Ramadhani Abdala, Mbwamaji, 29 June,
2005.
4. In early colonial Buhaya in northwest Tanzania White Father missionaries described ‘Wang-
wana’ as ‘always in cahoots with a motley crew of social types – Indians, Baswahili,
Muslims, Baganda – who engage in commercial practices’ (Weiss 2002:401). Weiss shows
clearly how the disapproving White Fathers were obsessed with the disturbing examples of
‘independent and collective action’ that the Waungwana of Buhaya flaunted before the
newly converted Haya Christians, who were expected to conform to their missionary
mentors’ views on the virtues of hard work without material gain. But note that the number
of people claiming to be Waungwana increased in the early colonial period. Deutsch believes
that this was a wider strategy to hide slave origins as slavery declined, and as the distinction
between waungwana and washenzi diminished. See Deutsch (2006:231). However, it is
unclear whether or not this applied to Buhaya.
5. For more detail see Rockel (2006) passim.
6. For more on various categories of wage and income earning slaves at the coast including the
Waungwana, see Glassman (1988:97–101) and (1995:61–2); Deutsch (2006:71 –4); Sunseri
(1993:481 –511) and (2002); and Cooper (1977).
7. Ngambu (more correctly Ngambo) is ‘the other side’ of Zanzibar’s Stone Town, and home to
much of the city’s working class. Stanley’s reference to the comparative ease of caravan life is
somewhat self-serving, given his own very poor record as an employer.
8. For an early discussion of these themes see Burton ((1860) 1971:516–7).
9. Thus they must also be contrasted with the watoro, fugitive slaves of the coast regions, who
were always under threat of re-enslavement or the violent dispersal of their communities.
For the watoro of Kenya and southern Somalia see Morton (1990).
10. For elaboration of these ideas in relation to the Waungwana. For an interesting view of the
vocabulary of servitude in coastal East Africa and the complex but changing array of status
labels historically used in opposition to uungwana see Eastman (1994).
11. The comparison with the maritime world is valid, as I have argued elsewhere. Some Waung-
wana served as sailors in the Indian Ocean. Speke observed, ‘The life of the sailor is most . . .
attractive to the freed slave; for he thinks, in his conceit, that he is on an equality with all
men when once on the muster-rolls, and then he calls all his fellow-Africans “savages”’
(1864:xxviii).
12. Interview: Chief Abdallah Fundikira, Tabora, 4 July 2000; Roberts (1970:61); Roberts
(1968:128); Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy (1995:15–6).
13. The first part of this section draws on Rockel (2006:49–52).
14. For the Ruaha route see Rockel (2006a:1–25).
15. Hamid bin Muhammed (Tippu Tip), Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu
Tip trans. and ed. WH Whiteley, 1974, Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam: East Africa Literature
Bureau, 99 § 130, 13 § 2; Roberts (1970:50).
16. Journal of Richard P Waters, 24 June 1839, in Bennett and Brooks (1965:211); Guillain
(1856:380); see also ‘A Visit to Zanzibar, 1844: Michael W. Shepard’s Account’, in Bennett
and Brooks (1965:263).
17. For the full story see Bontinck (1974). There is a brief discussion in Sheriff (1987:186–7). Said
bin Habib’s own account is in Bin Habeeb (1860:146–8).
18. ‘Deceiving’ caravans refers to touting and sharp business practices once upcountry caravans
arrived with their goods at the coast.
19. For an account of slave soldiers in North Africa and the Mediterranean see Hunwick and Trout
Powell (2002:139 –43).
20. In West Africa the Tirailleurs are a well-documented case of a colonial army founded on the
employment of slave and ex-slave soldiers. See Echenberg (1986:311–33) and (1991). A
recent collection on slave soldiers is Brown and Morgan (2006).
21. It is not clear whether this amount was to be divided equally between Ramji and his ‘sons’, as
would have been usual. The terms were later the subject of a dispute between Burton, the
government of Bombay and British consul Captain Rigby. See Rockel (2006:215, f.n. 78 for
sources). For more on such agreements see below; also Rockel (2006:91).
22. In similar fashion, Waungwana employed by the London Missionary Society at Ujiji objected
‘greatly’ to agricultural work, ‘which they say belongs to slaves’. Hore to Mullens, London
Missionary Society (LMS), School of Oriental and African Studies, London 2/1/A, 10
January 1879.
23. Sidi Bombay is a well-known figure in the nineteenth century travel literature. Among others
see Burton ((1860) 1971:431–2); McLynn (1990:137); Simpson (1975:11–12, 192, and
passim).
24. For the mid-century spatial reconfiguration of the central caravan routes, especially the north-
ward shift from the Ukutu, Ruaha River (Uhehe) and Ukimbu corridor, so that they instead
traversed Ugogo via Mpwapwa to reach Tabora (Kazeh) see Rockel (2006a).
25. Also see Decle (1898:319) for Waungwana porters purchasing six Manyema children each for
the purposes of profit making. For more on caravan women and children see Rockel
(2006:117–30) and (2000:748–78).
26. It is difficult to decide if French-Sheldon’s slightly flippant account misrepresents the hardships
represented by the slaves of the waungwana, or whether they also saw an improvement in their
relative status and freedom by going on safari.
27. See the caravan muster list in Speke (1864:553 –4). Speke uses ‘Wanguana’ (Waungwana) to
refer to freed slaves and watumwa to refer to all categories of slaves. As we have seen, this is not
strictly correct, as it ignores the various gradations of slave status and draws an arbitrary line
between slave and free.
28. ‘Confidential slaves’ also represented their masters at the important trading centre of Iendwe in
Ulungu at the south end of Lake Tanganyika, while their masters had their main residences at
Tabora. Also see Thomson (1968:16–7).
29. For more on caravan organisation, its hierarchies, social order, and labour culture, see Rockel
(2006).
30. For utani see Rockel (2006:198 –208).
31. For kwiwanza see Rockel (2006:207 –8).
32. Interview: Ramadhani Abdala, Mbwamaji (Gezaulole), 29 June 2005.
33. Interview: Samhani Kejeri, Bagamoyo, 29 March 2005.
34. See examples in Rockel (2006a).
35. Glassman (1995:74 –8) has dealt comprehensively with the northern route.
36. Even this must be qualified as in the East African caravan business some slaves earned high
status.
37. A porter list dated September 1888 includes details of wage rates and advance payments for a
large caravan leaving Zanzibar. The identified slave porters were engaged according to the
same terms as other porters. See ‘Men engaged for Masai Caravan’, Notebook, ‘Stanley’s
Expedition’, Zanzibar Museum.
38. For the porter list see ‘Royal Geographical Society’s East African Expedition 1879: Draft of
Agreement with Porters at Zanzibar’, Alexander Keith Johnston, Jr., Corr. 1870– 80, RGS;
copy of contract with a list of 128 names dated 17 May 1879 in AA9/10, Consular Records,
Zanzibar National Archive; printed in Rotberg (1971:307). For slave porters handing over
part of their wages, usually half, to their owner see Muxworthy to Southon, Zanzibar, 28
June 1880, LMS 3/4/E; Last (n.d.:14); Swann ((1910) 1969:31); Bin Hassani (1963:99 –
100, 103). In some cases, however, the owner was less generous and seized a greater part of
the slave’s wages. See Parke (1891:285), 18 October 1888; OL McDermott to Under Secretary
of State, Foreign Office, 22 January 1890, MacKinnon Papers, School of Oriental and African
Studies, London, Box 94, File 56.
39. Muxworthy to Wookey, Zanzibar, 28 June 1880, LMS 3/4/E. Dr Kirk was the British consul in
Zanzibar and Captain Mathews was commander of the Sultan’s forces.
40. Stokes to Lang, 26 July 1884, CMS G3A6/01; Hore (1886:60–3).
41. Joseph Thomson reported that GA Fischer’s caravan was thus crippled: ‘As it is he has to march
large numbers in chains and then once he is fairly into the country it will be found that he will
have to march when they please, and stay when they please and that in his own caravan he will
be simply helpless.’ (Thomson to Bates, Zanzibar, 26 February 1883. Thomson Corr. 1881–
1910, Royal Geographical Society, London).
42. In the same year, American traveller May French-Sheldon made a personal arrangement with
the Sultan, in which the latter supplied ‘volunteer’ slave porters for her journey to Mombasa and
then Maasailand. See French-Sheldon (1892:91, 96, 102–3).
43. Zanzibar and East Africa Gazette (ZEAG), 26 April 1893:10 (reprinted from The Times).
44. For a general discussion of porter motivations see Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy (1995:17 –
8).
45. ZEAG, 26 April 1893:10 (reprinted from The Times). My italics. Holmwood’s assertion that
slave status had little impact on the professionalism of caravan porters is borne out by the
case of slave porters in the Merina kingdom. See Campbell (1980:341–56).
46. German officials blamed much of this behaviour on Manyema porters, originally from the
Congo, who due to their foreign and typically slave origins perhaps felt little compassion for
East Africans. Yet it was European-led caravans that did most of the damage. Michael Pesek
(In Press) has done important work on the violence of the early colonial state in German
East Africa; see also his Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militär
und Verwaltung seit 1880 (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2005).
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The Passenger Indian as Worker:

Indian Immigrants in Cape Town in the
Early Twentieth Century
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Department of History, University of the Western Cape
The article argues that the term passenger Indian has contributed to a divisive understanding of
migration from the Indian subcontinent to South Africa. It has led to the stereotype of the wealthy
Gujarati trader and it excludes much. By focusing on Indian migrants in Cape Town, the argument
is made that the term must be redefined to include workers who came from not only Gujarat but also
from Maharashtra and the Punjab and that those marginalised by simplified definitions need to be
given a place in the historiography. Biographical sketches of workers are provided freeing one from
the narrow chronological choices historians have made and include family where possible. Details
are provided of what kind of employment Indian immigrants found in Cape Town and the severe
effects of the permit system and immigration laws on the free mobility of Indians. The article
points to the migrant (and circular) nature of Indian labour in Cape Town with consequences for
wives and children in the villages of India and argues that parallels may be made with African
migrant labour.
Key words: Cape Colony, circular migration, migrant workers, passenger Indian
In 1902, Bhana Poonja (also known as Barnard Manners) left India for the Cape
Colony. The twenty-three year old Gujarati Roman Catholic first worked as a
stonebreaker at the Newlands reservoir in Cape Town. After this he worked as
a labourer in the building trade for two years. Thereafter he worked for three
years with Ohlssons Breweries as a bottle sorter.1 Gopal Uker, a Gujarati
Hindu, came to Cape Town in 1902 age twenty-seven. He soon found work
with the Cape Town and District Gas Light & Coke Co, which operated from
Dock Road in the city centre and also at Woodstock. He remained with this
company for a total of eleven years if not more.2 Ebrahim Bassa (also known
as Ebram Basar) came to Cape Town in 1900 at the age of twenty-seven. He
was a Muslim and his home was Rajwadi in the Kolaba District of the Bombay
Presidency. For some fifteen years he worked with the Union Castle Mail Steam-
ship Company as a donkeyman tending to the machines producing steam.3
Another Muslim, twenty-six year old Ebrahim Amin, left his village Dabot in
the Ratnagiri district of the Bombay Presidency arriving in Cape Town in 1902.
Between 1902 and 1919 he worked for W&G Scott Ltd Timber Merchants in
Salt River as an engine driver, but he also had a one-year spell with the South
African Candle Works and a few months as a hawker.4 Bareyam Singh came

DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827498
from Shoepur in the Punjab at the age of twenty-seven. A Sikh, whose language
was Gurmukhi, he secured work between 1903 and 1908 as a groom and stable-
man with AR Mackenzie & Company, custom and delivery agents whose
stables were at Upper Canterbury Street.5
All these individuals were what the literature on Indian South Africans defines as
passenger Indians, migrants who paid their own way to the colonies of South
Africa as opposed to the indentured who came under contracts to work in Natal.
This article begins by looking at definitions of the passenger Indian in the litera-
ture and its central argument is that the term has become very simplified and has
lent itself to the development of stereotypes. It excludes more than it elucidates.
The article focuses specifically on those who have been marginalised from
definitions – these were the labouring poor.
The passenger Indian apart from being a misunderstood category of migrant is
also much neglected in the historiography. Indentured workers are better served
by the historiography – studies have elaborated on the journey by ship, the
nature of work in Natal, the conditions on the estates, the experiences of the
women, the cultural adaptations taking place and the use of leisure time (Bhana
1991a, 1991b; Brain 1985; Mesthrie 1991; Brain and Brain 1982; Vahed 2001).
While some studies tended to be quantitative, the recent work of Desai and
Vahed (2007) humanises the indentured worker instead of seeing him or her in
the abstract by providing snatches of biographical information. The social
world of the passenger Indian in colonial times, by contrast, is hardly understood
and knowledge of those who came to the Cape Colony in particular is documented
in but a small number of published works (see Bhana and Brain 1990; Bradlow
1979; Davids 1981).
This article draws attention to the kinds of work that poor passenger Indians found
in Cape Town,6 the extent of upward mobility, the pattern of migration and the
nature of family life. In doing this it also points to the way in which restrictive
immigration laws passed by the Cape Colony in the aftermath of the South
African War (1899–1902) affected the mobility of the Indian labouring class.
Cape Town was nonetheless an important port in the Indian Ocean interregional
area and that movement of human beings between Bombay and this port occurred
in the colonial period needs to be recognised. A biographical approach, as Desai
and Vahed have shown, has advantages. Biography, as some of the sketches in
this article show, also breaks down the tight chronologies that historians have
favoured – they transcend these and provide a greater understanding of migration
patterns.
Defining the passenger Indian

Eminent historians Surendra Bhana and Bridglal Pachai were necessarily brief in
their documentary collection about the complex process of migration from the
Indian sub-continent to South Africa:
The Passenger Indian as Worker 113
It is common knowledge that Indians came to South Africa in two categories, namely
as indentured Indians and as ‘free’ or ‘passenger’ Indians. The former came as a result
of a triangular pact among three governments [Natal, India, and Britain] and the latter,
mainly traders ever alert to new opportunities abroad, came at their own expense from
India, Mauritius and other places. (Bhana and Pachai 1984:2)
The use of the term passenger Indian had gained currency amongst academics by
this time but this had not always been the case. There is some evidence that those
who came in as migrants who had paid their own ship’s passage used the term pas-
senger themselves though this was far from frequent.7 The word was not employed
in earliest writings about Indians in South Africa. Gandhi ((1928) 1950:21– 3)
made a distinction between two groups of Indian migrants in early colonial
Natal: the indentured workers who came under contract and the ‘free traders
and their free servants’. The free servants referred to the Hindu accountants
who came to serve the Muslim traders. He also recognised the category of those
indentured Indians who had served out their contracts. They were, in his
opinion, not really free. He distinguished between the traders and accountants
who were ‘absolutely free’ and the workers whose indenture had expired as a
qualified ‘free’.8
Works by Joshi (1942:46– 9), Burrows ((1943) 1952:2), Wetherell (1946:8) and
Calpin (1949:10) do not employ the word passenger Indian – instead they refer
to ‘free Indians’ embracing at times both traders and ex-indentured. Mabel
Palmer (1957:42 –3) may well have been the first academic to define the passenger
Indian. She writes of the ‘free immigrant’ Muslim and Hindu traders and argues ‘to
distinguish these from other classes of free Indians, those who had served their
period of indenture, these are commonly called “passenger Indians”.’ All sub-
sequent published works then favour this term and it solidifies so that passenger
and trader become synonymous. Hilda Kuper’s definition though became
the most adopted description (1960:3). Passenger Indians were those ‘who
entered the country under the ordinary immigration laws, and at their own
expense. The majority came specifically to trade or serve in commerce . . .’ She,
like Gandhi, recognised that the ex-indentured or ‘time-expired’ Indians were
hardly ‘free’9 Meer (1969:7), Pachai (1971:7, 11) Pillay (1976:1), Swan
(1985:1), and Bhana and Brain (1990:22 –3) all adopt the term passenger Indian.
Most follow three categorisations of Indian immigrants 1) the indentured
worker, 2) the ex-indentured or free Indian (the status ‘free’ is no longer ques-
tioned), and 3) the passenger Indian or, as Pachai put it, the ‘free passenger’ Indian.
Bhana and Brain also trace the movements of free Indians and absconding inden-
tured labourers to the various port cities and to the diamond-fields. About Cape
Town, in particular, they note that the vast number of Indians were passenger
Indians (mainly Muslim) while ‘free Indians moved there from Natal after 1897
and engaged in labour on the docks, on the railways and on farms. Later, free
and passenger Indians were engaged in various occupations, particularly trade’
(Bhana and Brain 1990:127). Bradlow argued that Indians in the Cape Colony
are ‘exclusively from “passenger” origin’ and that ‘lacking skills of other kinds, the
Cape Indians almost without exception became traders and shopkeepers . . . The
Moslems tended to become wholesale and retail general dealers and butchers.
The Hindus . . . set up as fruit and vegetable hawkers, and shoemakers . . .’
(Bradlow 1979:134, 136 –7). In these works and more so in that of Pillay on the
Transvaal (1976:2) the impression is created that a worker in the Transvaal or
the Cape was of indentured background while the passenger Indian was a trader
or hawker.
Maureen Swan’s work contributed to a further equation: the term passenger Indian
became associated with wealth for she focused on the richest merchants who had
extensive trading networks and owned substantial property. While she recognised
that there were ‘smaller traders and hawkers’ whose fortunes were inextricably
connected to the merchants by credit loans she did not pursue this category
with any significant interest. We are left with the dominating image of the passen-
ger as a migrant of much resource, influence and investment (Swan 1985:3–8).
Others like Padayachee and Morell (1991:77, 81– 2) have argued for a nuanced
definition of passenger, a two tier one: the wealthy merchants and the small
trader or hawker. But here too, we are not offered much more. In this work and
that of Kalpana Hiralal (2000:135 –6) the definition passenger equals trader
(with levels of gradation) endures. Hiralal, in fact, provides a rigid passenger
Indian equals trader equals Gujarati definition whereas an earlier work like that
of Kuper (1960:7– 9) provided a much more comprehensive listing of regional
and linguistic origins.10
There are some pointers in the literature to avoid simple definitions of the passen-
ger Indian. Joy Brain compiled a list of Christian passenger Indians to Natal
among whom were traders, teachers, interpreters, catechists (1983:150ff, 243,
245). Kuper also provides an important detail – there were some indentured
Indians who on expiry of their contracts returned to India and came back to
Natal as passenger Indians (1960:8). There is also the aforementioned reference
by Gandhi to the ‘free servants’ of the merchants. Bradlow, too, writes about
the Indian employees of Indian traders in the Cape who were on contract. She pro-
vides a further intriguing sentence, which unfortunately she does not expand on.
Indians, she argues, were ‘prepared to do any manual labour including heavy
work on railway & dock construction for lower wages than other coloured
labourers [but] as soon as they were able . . . they did go into business indepen-
dently or worked as shop assistants’ (Bradlow 1979:134, 136– 7).
In many works we are also left with the impression that the passenger Indian is a
male.11 While Bhana and Brain refer to ‘the men and women who arrived in
various ships from western India at their own expense’ (1990:23) their book is
singularly silent about the female passenger immigrant. The statistics reveal
that there were female immigrants from India even if they were few in number
before 1910 (Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2007:17). The historiography neglects the
small storekeeper, hawker, shop assistant, accountant, priest, women and chil-
dren.12 That the passenger Indian could also be a worker is not a scenario contem-
plated by historians. The following section moves to discuss the Cape Colony’s
attitude towards securing labour from India and immigration restrictions which
affected the flow of passenger Indians.
Stopping the flow: The Cape Colony and Indian immigration

Indian immigration to the Cape Colony never quite reached the numbers in Natal,
understandably, since the former chose not to import indentured labour.13 Bradlow
has shown how, on several occasions in the 1870s, a debate surfaced about the use
of such labour but that the colonial government was against it. There was a
reluctance to comply with the strict regulations set up by the imperial government
and government of India. Employers of labour were urged to look within the
colony for black unskilled labour and to whites for skilled workers (Bradlow
1979:132–3).
Indian immigrants had been coming to the Cape from the 1870s and 1880s,
some from Mauritius but many directly from India. There was a growth in
numbers in the 1890s and more especially during and immediately after the
South African War (1899– 1902). In 1904 the Cape Colony seems to have overta-
ken the Transvaal in numbers: 10,242 to the Transvaal’s 9,979. Indians were to be
found in many small interior towns of the colony such as Swellendam, Oudtshoorn,
Beaufort West, Colesberg, Preiska, Barkly West, Upington, Vryburg, Middelburg,
Mafeking and the eastern Cape towns of Uitenhage, Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort,
Somerset East, Cathcart, Burgersdorp, Aliwal North, Indwe and Engcobo. In the
early years, between the 1870s and 1880s, Kimberley was the most favoured
city in the colony for Indians. In later years, the port cities especially Port Elizabeth
and Cape Town became more popular (Bhana and Brain 1990:78, 109, 194;
Bradlow 1979:134–5).
Indians in Cape Town came mainly from the Bombay Presidency, an extensive
area along the west coast of India that included the then Districts of Surat and
Broach (now in Gujarat), and the Districts of Kolaba and Ratnagiri (now in
Maharashtra). Smaller numbers came from the Punjab, Bengal and the Madras
Presidency. The languages spoken were Gujarati, Urdu, Kokanie, Mahratti,
Hindi, Tamil and Gurmukhi. Tamil-speaking immigrants coming directly from
Madras were more likely though to have gone to places like Kimberley and
Port Elizabeth.14 The vast majority of Cape Town’s immigrants came from
poor agricultural villages in India. Their migration is characterised by chain
migration – many followed the example of others who had left from their villages
and there was an extensive village and kin network. On landing many of the poor
took to hawking – an activity that required little capital investment. As this article
will detail many became workers as well. Indian barbers, shoemakers, tailors,
butchers, general dealers, hawkers and workers lived mainly around the city
centre (District Six and Woodstock having substantial numbers) but they soon
spread out towards the suburbs.
Ebrhaim Norodien was one of the seasoned entrepreneurs in Cape Town. He came
in 1896 and in just over a decade he had twenty shops. He was a direct importer of
goods, grocer and provision merchant.15 Purseram Lutcheram was based in
Orphan Street. He had first spent six years in Natal before coming to Cape
Town in 1896 aged nineteen. Ten years later he was a silk merchant and owned
substantial property.16 His firm Pohoomul Brothers was originally established in
Durban and expanded to Cape Town. The wholesale and retail shop was
located in Longmarket/Parliament Street in the city and sold silk, embroidered
goods, curios, Eastern jewellery, art works and ornamental objects. Parsi
Mancherji was a merchant and importer and also an agent of the German East
African Line Shipping Company (Indian Department) (Dhupelia-Mesthrie
2000:13).
While there were these successful individuals, there were in Cape Town many
poor Indians. We fortunately have an account written in 1911 of how Osman
Yjir/Vazir of Dungri village in Surat came to Cape Town in the early 1890s
when he was in his twenties. He points to poverty and chance contacts:
. . . my brother, father and mother left me alone in this world, owing to their deaths and
I have no house or piece of land to sustain myself thereby. I am living from hand to
mouth at present and such were my condition before, too; when I could not get any
job in my native place, I resorted to Bombay and there I tried my luck. But poor as
I was born, in Bombay too, I failed. After a short time in Bombay, a gentleman
showed his desire upon my request, and took me along with him to Capetown and I
served under him for seven years with all faith. He gave me some money in return
of my service and by this . . . I started for Delagoa Bay and entered Transvaal on
21st October, 1897. I stayed for a year or so in Transvaal for better earning but I
failed there. And owing to my failure in Transvaal I returned to Capetown, where
I had served so faithfully to my first master beyond the sea, on 14th August 1898. I
served myself here in Capetown for two years in the Frieman Co. and six years in
the Gas Co as a general labourer . . .17
The numbers of poor immigrants threatened to grow in the aftermath of the South
African War. Vivian Bickford-Smith has shown how the total population of Cape
Town grew from 79,000 in 1891 to 170,000 in 1904, making it the most populated
city in South Africa. Amongst the new migrants in this period, the vast majority
were whites from Europe numbering 34,000 while 2,000 were Australians.
There was movement within the colony with 2,000 Afrikaners arriving in the
city. The second largest number of new migrants to the city, 21,000, were colour-
eds from the rural areas of the Cape. In addition, there were 9,000 new African
arrivals from the eastern Cape or Transkei and 2,000 immigrants from India
(Bickford-Smith 1995:11, 130). The city provided many attractions.
The economy of Cape Town boomed in the 1890s and after the war (Bickford-Smith
1995:129–30; Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:25–7). There was significant expansion
at the Table Bay Harbour, which struggled to cope with the large numbers of ships
docking. There was development in the rail and transport systems. This time was, as
Bickford– Smith records, ‘a golden period for Cape Town’s merchants’. Imports
soared from £3,000,000 in 1891 to £14,000,000 in 1902. The food and clothing
industries, which dominated Cape Town’s light industry registered growth;
12,000 Capetonians found work in factories in 1904. The construction industry
enjoyed a boom period as new buildings, houses, schools, factories and shops
were being constructed.
While Cape Town may have been attractive in itself, Indian immigrants also
arrived here simply because the Transvaal and Natal were far more difficult to
get into. During the war, Indians like others, fled the Transvaal and there were
many refugees in Cape Town. Some lived in tents at Dock Road, thereafter in
Maitland and ultimately District Six (Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:13). After the
war, there were huge difficulties getting back into the Transvaal. As for Natal,
ever since 1897, there were only three main ways new Indian immigrants could
enter the colony: demonstration of writing proficiency in English (which few
from India could accomplish), or if one was indentured or if one was a wife
and child of a domiciled Indian (Bhana and Brain 1990:131–6, 142– 6).
The case of passengers on the steamship, the SS Nowshera, in 1901 provides an
example of how some immigrants came to disembark in Cape Town and points
to the eagerness evident in the port of Bombay for a ship bound for South
Africa.18 The Protector of Emigrants in Bombay wrote a report on the 800 passen-
gers due to leave Bombay in September on this ship. Those bound for Natal had
papers and were returnees. They included hawkers and market gardeners. The Pro-
tector is silent about those bound for the other ports, for the ship was due to call not
only at Durban, but also at East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. The offi-
cial was sure that three or four other ships bound for South Africa ‘will all fill up’.
On 10 October the SS Nowshera arrived in Cape Town with 363 passengers, the
rest having landed at the three preceding ports. The medical officer of health wrote
about 49 Indian soldiers on board, eight visiting Indians and 306 ‘coolies’. He was
concerned about the latter who, he argued, were rejected for landing at Natal and
were ‘the worst of the batch’. They were ‘very feeble and of inferior physique’.
Given that there were no immigration laws to prevent them from landing they
were allowed to disembark.
Amongst the authorities in Port Elizabeth, East London and Cape Town there
arose some hysteria at the prospect of ships laden with passengers who would
be rejected in Natal and then disembark at their ports. The editor of the Cape
Times whipped up similar hysteria and wrote about ‘the horde of coolies’
coming to the Cape ports. He argued that while Natal protected itself from ‘the
scum of the Far East’ the Cape, unless it acted, was destined to become ‘a
dumping ground’. He called for some legislation to protect the colony ‘from the
undesirable elements from the East and European ports’.19 In 1901 alone 3,311
Indians had been prohibited from entering Durban and numbers remained high for
the decade (Bhana and Brain 1990:132–3). In 1902 the Cape government rushed
through the Immigration Act. Bickford-Smith (1995:126) has made the insightful
comment that times of prosperity (like times of great economic stress) brought
their own troubles to the ruling class, such as ‘how to maintain material and
social order’. The Act was one such attempt.
The Immigration Act of 1902 all but put paid to fresh immigration from India. It
came into effect at the end of January 1903, and, as the medical officer of the Cape
Colony, A John Gregory, explained, it was aimed ‘to restrict undesirable immigra-
tion’. It prohibited the landing of any person who could not write out an appli-
cation or sign in the characters of any European language and who could not
provide evidence of some financial means to support himself/herself (the
minimum sum was first £5 but quickly raised to £20). Males and females who
were prostitutes and lunatics were also prohibited. The Act did not apply to
those who were already domiciled in the colony and the wife and children of
such domiciled persons. It specifically excluded from its prohibitions ‘European
persons who are agricultural or domestic servants, skilled artisans, mechanics,
workmen or miners’ who could prove that they had already been contracted to
an employer in the colony. Undesirable whites, by implication then, would be
the illiterate and poor who just turned up at the Cape ports from Europe and else-
where – the door was open to white as opposed to Indian or Chinese labour.20 The
Jewish poor arriving from Russia were also the focus of negative attention in Cape
Town, but Jewish leaders in Cape Town succeeded, at least, in getting Yiddish
recognised as a European language for the purposes of the Act (Mendelsohn
and Shain 2008:47, 57, 60).
The case of Attarsing Ralaram reflects how the door to fresh immigration was
shut. A carpenter from India he made his way to Lourenço Marques where he
lived for three years. In 1908 he wished to move on to Cape Town to combine
work and sightseeing. He wrote to the immigration officer of the colony: ‘wher-
ever I go I make my livelihood without any difficulty’. He was given a stock
answer if he had £20 and could write in a European language he would not
have difficulties. Attarsing indeed had £20 but could write only in an Indian
language. So he was denied entry.21 Many such examples of refusals can be
provided and many did not have the £20.
The Immigration Act of 1902 put paid to the desires of any employers in the
colony who looked to India for labour. Already in 1902 there had been two signifi-
cant approaches to the colonial government to import labour from India. The one
came from the Standard Lime Syndicate operating at Lansdowne Road on the
Cape Flats. Its manager had some experience in Natal and was of the view that
‘Indians are more reliable than Cape Boys whom we cannot depend upon’. He
claimed to have difficulties obtaining African labour.22 A second and more sub-
stantial application for Indian labour came from the Sir John Jackson Ltd
company charged with developing the harbour at Simonstown. The proposal was
for 400 to 500 Indians to come under contracts similar to the indentured. The area
suggested for recruiting was the Punjab and towards the Himalayas because the
company already had some satisfactory experience of workers from the Punjab
who had come to Simonstown on their own means. The company claimed
they could not secure sufficient African labour but also they preferred Indian
labour believing the latter to be more ‘tractable and intelligent’. This request
was denied.23
Another group of employers, extremely annoyed at the restrictions imposed by
the Immigration Act, were Indian shopkeepers. They needed shop assistants
and preferred to have young males from India – people they knew from their
villages – rather than local youth. Evidence indicates shop assistants were inden-
tured to their Indian employers with a specified period of service with salary plus
board and lodging.24 Other employers wanted servants of a different kind:
Purseram Lutcheram of Pohumool Brothers, for instance, employed two Indians
Tillmal and Hermandas as valet and cook respectively.25 The traders wanted
the right to import servants from India who would be bound for a few years and
who would be repatriated by them at their cost. This request was not acceded to
though it seems that some small exceptions were made.26
The Immigration Act excluded poor Indians but the language requirements also
affected the trader, against whom there had been rising prejudice since the
1890s (Bradlow 1979:143–5). Between 1903 and 1906, the Immigration Depart-
ment used the Act to get rid of Indians (traders, hawkers and workers) who were
within the colony. With families in India, most Indians wished to return to India
for a period of time but to re-enter the Cape they required a domicile certificate.
These were regularly denied them as domicile was strictly interpreted to include
not just length of stay in the colony but evidence of property holding and most
importantly a family in the colony. As long as wives were in India, Indians
were not regarded as domiciled. On being denied a certificate, the choices were
limited: they could remain in the colony or leave for India with no possibility
of return.27 Abdol Cader noted a drop in the number of Indians in the Cape
suburbs: in 1902 he believed there were about 5,000 Indians but six years later
there were not more than 2,000.28 The drop in numbers in the Cape as recorded
in the 1911 census supports this perception.29 The only fresh legal immigration
that could take place after 1902 was if a domiciled Indian wished to bring out
his wife and children.
There was some softening later on temporary movements to India by those within
the colony. In 1906 permits were issued to Indians leaving the colony at a charge
of £1. The permit system was a means of state surveillance over the movement of
Indians. It was like a pass and the document of identity carried a photograph,
thumbprints and general descriptions of the body. The permit stated the time
within which the holder had to return to the colony or forfeit a right for good to
re-enter. Initially, only a period of one year was given but after 1913 this was
extended to three years. The Chinese had been subject to such monitoring for
some time to the extent that it was claimed that the government knew the where-
abouts of all Chinese in the colony.30 Gandhi who was involved in the satyagraha
campaign in the Transvaal against the documents of identity required there
regarded the Cape permits as ‘certificates of freedom’ or a ‘ticket of leave’ with
the implication that Indians were like prisoners just given parole.31 The operation
of the permit system was crucial, as we shall see, in understanding the experiences
of Indian workers in the colony.
The biographical detail utilised in this article are drawn from this site of power and
surveillance and may be inaccurate in some respects. It was important when filling
in forms for permits to say that one had arrived in the colony by 1902 for any date
after that would indicate an illegal entry. Many Indians also said that they were
single in the early years – there was the belief, inspired by the strictness with
which domicile certificates were issued, that if they indicated they had wives
and families back home in India they would not get a permit. The permit appli-
cations also bear the hands of interpreters and this provides further reason for
approaching them with caution. Despite the serious limitations of this source
they provide useful biographies of Indians in the colony.32
Work, employers, patterns of migration and family

While one cannot provide statistics of exactly how many Indian workers there
were in the 1900s in greater Cape Town, one can say that while a large number
of Indians were general dealers and hawkers a significant number of them were
workers. This section is based on 175 files in an archival collection that runs
into the thousands so it provides but a preliminary picture. The biographical
sketches reveal a pattern of circular migration with the inevitable return to
India. For many individuals, Cape Town was just a short interlude in their lives.
Some of this was by choice as they had families there. The permit system also
required re-entry within a restricted time. The indentured worker had his/her
passage to Natal paid for and, over time, the vast majority lost contact with
their families in India. For those formerly indentured who returned to India on
a paid passage, a return route was to re-indenture. The Indian workers in Cape
Town needed to have enough for the passage back to South Africa (£14 in
1924) after spending a year or more in India.
Several took advantage of the assisted emigration scheme to return to India but
this paid passage had its consequences – domicile had to be surrendered.33
Elderly Indians, in particular, made use of this scheme after ensuring the domicile
rights of young sons who remained in the country.
India at all times remained important. Even after several decades in the country,
India beckoned – there were visits to wives and children were born during
these visits. Some maintained wives and children in both India and South
Africa while for others the circle of mobility ended once they married local
women in Cape Town. In the rare instance, the Cape-born wife was taken back
to the village in India. Wives and children were only brought from India when
workers were well established and had secured better positions.34 There are
some instances of upward mobility and substantial material progress.
Of the 175 Indian workers, sixty-eight were employed at the harbour works in
Simonstown. The men who worked for Sir John Jackson Ltd between 1900 and
1910 when the works were drawing to a completion were predominantly from
the Punjab and were Sikhs. Ajam Chajoo,35 however, was a Muslim Gujarati
from Malekpor in Surat. Abdul Ragman Mahomed Sharief36 was an Afghan
and Dawood Amien37 was from Bombay. The majority were married, had
young children back home and owned some land. Some of them like Kishen
Singh had served in the South African War and after taking their discharge
sought employment.38 A few like Rala Singh39 and Banta Singh40 worked at
the Salt River Locomotive Works before moving to Simonstown. Dhar (Thakar)
Singh41 first worked at the Table Bay docks and then moved to Simonstown,
while Jamet Singh first started at Ohlssons Breweries.42 Gulwant Singh43
worked for the Cape Government Railways (CGR) for eighteen months before
being employed by John Jackson. We have a few specific descriptions of what
work they did. Kara Singh was a coachman, Gulwant Singh was a ganger,
Dalel Singh44 was a coal ganger, Hazara Singh45 was a boss boy, Basant
Singh46 was a labourer and watchman. Dawood Amien was a fireman (stoker)
and looked after the air compressors. Many worked for John Jackson for about
five to seven years after which the majority returned to India. Some like Kishen
Singh went on to South West Africa and others like Basant Singh were making
enquiries about work possibilities in Nigeria. Rala Singh returned to Cape
Town in 1910 after a trip to India. By 1926 he was a greengrocer. After a short
trip to India in 1926–27 he remained in Cape Town until 1936 when he left
under the assisted emigration scheme.
One hundred and seven Indians worked in Cape Town city itself and of these at
least twenty –three secured employment with the CGR. Some of them were
general labourers like Kesir Singh, Goorndat Singh, Kisheim Singh and Sunder
Singh.47 Burgas Omar48 and Omargee Mousa,49 both Gujarati Muslims, were
cleaners. Mogul Jan of Calcutta also called Mongel John was a cleaner.50
Mahomed Moosa was a traffic manager.51 Chiba Daya Mitha,52 a Gujarati
Hindu, from Dandi, Surat worked in the stores department, as did Puncha
Boolah53, also from Dandi. Kada Desai54 whose brother Nathoobhai Bhimbhai
Desai had a shop in Tyne Street worked as porter for five years (1901–05).
Some had very short periods of service after which they returned to India. Kesir
Singh, Goorndat Singh, Kisheim Singh, and Sunder Singh all became victims of
the harsh implementation of the Immigration Act and were denied domicile certi-
ficates in 1905 after which they disappear from the record. Burgas Omar worked
for seven years but returned to India in 1907.
The economy of Cape Town took a downward turn so that by 1905– 06 there was
considerable unemployment and poverty, which manifested in the unsettling
hunger riots (Bickford-Smith et al. 1999:33–7). The depression lasted for yet
another two years. The immigration officer described ‘the condition of the
labour market . . . as deplorable’ and noted the departure of many artisans and tra-
desmen from the colony in 1906 and 1907 with many ‘hundreds of men in the
colony out of regular employment’.55 Mogul Jan was retrenched from the CGR
in 1907, worked for two years as a hawker and returned to India in 1909. Walla
(Valla) Ravjee56 was retrenched in 1908 after four years of work. He went to
India, returned in 1911 and worked as a hawker for the rest of his years in Cape
Town. He left for India under the assisted emigration scheme in 1938 aged
fifty. Further into the interior, Deva Ratting, a Gujarati Hindu, lost his job with
the CGR at De Aar in 1908 ‘when all the Indians were replaced by Europeans’.57
Some Indians, however, stayed with the railways for many years. Chiba Daya
Mitha was with the CGR from 1902 to 1911. He visited India in 1911– 12 after
which he resumed his job with the CGR until 1919. He made one more trip to
India in 1919– 20. In 1934 when he left Cape Town, aged sixty-three, he was
still listed as a labourer but his employer is not disclosed. For almost three
decades, Chiba saw his wife, Daya, and son, Lalla, in Surat only on those two
one-year visits to India.
Nagina Sing58 worked for three years at the municipal yard in Claremont. There
were several Indians working there as refuse workers as a photograph testifies
(Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2000:pic48). Nagina wanted to leave in February 1906 for
German South West Africa where his brother was. Denied a domicile certificate
he probably left Cape Town for good. Some Indians like Ally Mohamed59 from
the village Peeplol in Ratnagiri worked for the city corporation. After a brief
spell as a shop assistant he was a foreman in 1914 in the city engineer’s depart-
ment. Four years later he worked at the municipal electric station. Two decades
later he was a shopkeeper. During this latter period he brought out his two sons,
while his wife and daughter remained in India. He left in 1937 on the assisted
emigration scheme.
A few Indians found work in the Public Works Department, the Army Ordnance
Department, Cape Town Tramways and at the Barracks in Cape Town. Dewa
Bhana60 came to Cape Town in 1901 aged thirty-one. He worked as an ‘office
boy’ first with the Harbour Board for ten months and then from 1903 to 1908
with the Army Ordnance Department after which he returned to India. Dhik
Naranji61 aged nineteen in 1903, first worked for a land contractor as a general
labourer between 1903 and 1905 and then worked till 1909 for the Cape Peninsula
Garrison at the Barracks as a ‘fuel and light labourer’, after which he returned to
India.
A few Indians worked for the Cape Town & District Gas Light & Coke Company.
Adam Ebrahim62 was nineteen years old when he left Navsari for the Transvaal.
After four years there he came to Cape Town in 1901 and first hawked fruit. A year
later he secured employment with the Gas Company and stayed with them for
fifteen years. In 1906 he married a Cape-born Malay named Asa and they set
up home in Hanover Street, District Six. The couple travelled to India in 1907.
While Adam returned to his job in 1908, Asa remained behind in Navsari
giving birth to their daughter, Fatima. Adam visited his family in 1911 –12 and
in 1912 Asa gave birth to a son, Ismail. For five years Adam remained in Cape
Town away from his young family but returned permanently to India in 1917.
This is an unusual story. Generally when Indians married a local their trips to
India became less frequent and family life was constituted in Cape Town.
Ohlssons Breweries (Newlands), Phoenix Breweries (Chapel Street), Castle
Brewery (Woodstock), Castle Wine & Brandy Company, Van Ryn Wine & Spirit
Co also employed Indians. Nathoo Bagwa (Bhagvan)63 of Navsari, Surat was
thirty-five when he took a position with Ohlssons in 1903 where he worked for
four years. His employer referred to him as ‘a good hard working boy’. He remained
in Cape Town until 1936 (making three trips to India in that period) but moved to
hawking. He had a shop for a while in 1930 and in 1936 he was hawking fish. He
returned to India that year aged sixty on the assisted emigration scheme. He had
three children with his wife Pemi during his three trips to India between 1912
and 1925. The oldest son Chagan was brought to Cape Town in the 1920s.
Balla Bapoo64 was an elderly employee of Castle Brewery. He came from India in
1902 aged forty-four. He was employed by Castle Brewery for a brief period in 1908
as a cleaner in the engine room but was retrenched that year. He tried selling eggs
but left for India in 1908. Gopal Dya65 came from Astikagam in Surat at the age of
fifteen in 1902. He first hawked fruit and then worked for Castle Brewery for six
years in the fermenting and bilking departments. After a visit to India in 1909–
10 during which time he and his wife Amba had a son he returned to Cape Town
in 1910. For five years he worked in the bottling department of the Beaconfield
Hotel, also serving as barman and canteen-worker. In the period 1915 to 1917 he
visited India and a second son was born. On his return he tried his hand at being
a greengrocer but returned to India in 1920 aged thirty-five. Gafoor Antullie66
came to Cape Town in 1902 from Chanwar in Alibag (Kolaba) aged thirty-two.
He was Urdu-speaking. He worked at the docks for a year then for the next
decade he was with Castle Brewery. He left Cape Town in 1931 under the assisted
emigration scheme after ten years of running a butchery. In the twenty-nine years he
was in Cape Town, he visited India four times: 1909– 10, 1913, 1917– 21, 1927. His
wife Amina remained in Chanwar while three sons died during this period.
H Henry Collison Ltd were wine merchants in Sir Lowry Road and EK Greene
was a wholesale and family wine merchant in Somerset Road. Gullabhai
Raghnathge Desai67 from Pipaldhara, Surat, worked for Collison for nine years
(1903–12). He was an exception amongst immigrants in that he could read,
write and speak English and entered in March 1903 age nineteen on that basis.
At Collison he was employed as a labeller and capsule samples maker and did
general work. He left for India in 1912. Baba Bapoo68 was illiterate and aged
thirty-eight when he left behind his wife Bai Sahib in Rajwari in Kolaba in
1902. He found a job with Greene as a cellar hand soon after his arrival and
worked here for a total of twelve years. He visited India three times in 1909–
10, 1915 –17 and 1921–24. By 1921 he was a general dealer. In 1924 he
brought out his son Shaik Allie aged seven and in 1927 he left permanently for
India to rejoin his wife and the rest of his children.
A few workers from the Punjab secured employment with the Hout Bay Canning
Company. Mihmahl llana69 came to Cape Town aged thirty-three in 1902 and for a
while he did odd jobs around the town. Then between 1903 and 1909 he worked
for the Hout Bay Canning Company. Surjan Singh70 came in 1900 aged twenty-
three. During the war he was employed at Green Point Camp and Stellenbosch.
He then worked at the Locomotive Department in Salt River and spent two
fishing seasons in 1906 –07 with the Hout Bay Canning Company. Both Llana
and Singh returned to India.
Indians also secured employment with the Manolis & Paetache Mineral Water
Manufacturers in Sir Lowry Road, The Freeman & Co Lemonade Factory in Sir
Lowry Road, Freeman Aerated Water Factory in Hatfield Street, M Smith
(Mineral Water Manufacturer) in Selkirk Street, Lake Spa Aerated Water
Factory in Newmarket Street, Table Mountain Soda Water Factory in Woodstock,
SA Mineral Water Factory in Selkirk Street. Allie Shaboodin71 who was
thirty-two in 1902 when he came from Dabot in Ratnagiri worked for M Smith
as a handyman until 1908. Smith was pleased with him; he was ‘honest and
respectable’. Allie later became a shop assistant to Abdurhaman Bala.
The Woodstock Sweets Factory and JJ Hill & Co Steam Confectionery & Fruit
Preserving Works in Sir Lowry Road, Newmarket Street and Russell Street also
employed a few Indians. Mahomed Baba72 worked as a handy man for Woodstock
Sweets in 1911, while Mahomed Ismail73 from Kurgawn, Kolaba was a fireman
with them in 1909. In 1916 he was working as a fireman on the tugboats at the
harbour. Camal Ismail74 worked as a labourer in the jam department for Hills
between 1907 and 1908 while Ismail Ayob75 from Pabra, Kolaba worked for
Hills as a fireman between 1902 and 1916. In 1924 he gave his occupation as a
butcher. He spent a full ten years in Cape Town before he was able to return to
India to see his wife and son in 1911. He brought his fifteen-year-old son out in
1913 but his wife and daughter remained in India. The son became a shop assist-
ant. He was able to go three further times to India in 1916– 18, 1924– 26 and
1930– 33 before he left finally for India on the assisted emigration scheme in
1935 aged sixty-four.
Indians seem to have secured work with numerous individual white merchants and
firms. Kooverjee Naranjee Desai76 from Besna, Surat came to Cape Town in 1902
aged twenty-two. He first worked for the city for two years, then as a parcel boy
and messenger for five years with W Kohling of Long Street. He was still a
labourer in 1919 when he left for India. He managed to go to India between
1910 and 1911 where his wife Echa and son Chowtoo (age nine) lived and it
would be seven years before they saw him again. Naran Ratan77 worked for a
fish merchant W & J Greig at the Dock Road fish market between 1904 and
1906 and for B Brown of Cape Fisheries at the stall in the fish market between
1907 and 1909. He then returned to his wife Geevie in India.
Abdulla Enus78 who was also known as Mattagie (he came from the village Meta-
ghar in Chiplun, Ratnagiri) worked for nine years as a fireman on an Italian vessel.
He worked for a while for a fellow villager after which he secured employment
between 1907 and 1910 with Nanucci Ltd in Long and Church streets. His
employer found him to be a ‘good workman, honest, sober, industrious’. Ten
years later he was working for Empire Steam Laundry. In 1936 he was a
hawker. He lived first in Claremont, then Athlone and later Elsies River. He main-
tained two families. Latifa and two sons lived in India. He visited India on three
occasions, 1910 –11, 1920 –21 and 1936 –38. Latifa died in 1921, as did his seven-
teen-year-old son Mohedien two years later. While Latifa was still alive he
married Abiba in Claremont and they had five children.
Moosa Sonie79 came to the Transvaal in 1892 at the age of fifteen and in 1899 no
doubt due to the war moved to Cape Town. He first worked as a shop assistant in
Ceres then found work with Heynes Mathew & Co. This was a chemist and photo-
graphic dealership and there were numerous branches in Cape Town and Moosa
had a long period of service with them from 1903 to 1915. Moosa, who was a
Gujarati Muslim from Dabhol, Surat, like Abdulla maintained two families.
Ayesha was his wife in India and in Cape Town he married Sabida with whom
he had two children. They lived in William Street in District Six. In 1922 he,
Sabida, Katija age three and Jacob age five months went to India. It ended in
tragedy, Sabida returned in 1923 a widow.
Mahomet Sallie80 was thirty-seven when he came from Mobkhay, Ratnagiri. He
first worked as a hawker and then for the Union Castle Mail Steamship
Company for a year. Between 1905 and 1916 he worked for Conningham &
Gearing Atlas Works as a ‘serang of native labourers’. He worked as a shop assist-
ant in 1924 and left for India in 1928 under the assisted emigration scheme. During
his stay in Cape Town he made four trips to India and his wife Sharifa remained in
India and bore him seven children (two of them died in infancy). The Union Castle
Mail Steamship Company employed Mahomed Kassiem81 as a messenger
between 1902 and 1905. Allie Dawood Shaik Nana82 of Tira in Ratnagiri was a
‘donkey man’ with the company between 1906 and 1909. By 1923 when he
decided to return to India to his wife of thirty years, who bore him five children,
he was a greengrocer.
Several Indians secured work as gardeners and house servants. Gooka Lala83
worked for Percy O Wathes of Sea Point from 1902 to 1908. Sardar Rasool84
from Malekpur Surat was a house servant for James Burns in Buitengracht Street
between 1902 and 1906. His employer found the teenager ‘a very honest trust-
worthy obedient boy . . . a first class servant’. Jetta Kisha Paitel (Patel)85 came
from Khandhili in the District Kaira in 1901 aged twenty-nine. He had a wife
in India. He worked as a gardener for two years for a Mr Horsburgh in
Wynberg then secured a job with R Neugebauer. This was a company that
described themselves as merchants and engineers, contractors to the Imperial
German government, the Orange River Colony (Orange Free State as it was
known before the war) and to various mining and colliery companies. They
imported various metal stock, electric accessories and supplied ship cables.
They also had a good supply of second-hand stock. The owners were pleased
with Jetta describing him as a ‘very willing diligent labourer of some skill’. He
was particularly knowledgeable about the metal and iron department. Jetta went
to India on a permit but never returned.
Some Indians started off in Cape Town and then made their way further out.
Doolab Bhika86 first worked as a building labourer in the city when he moved
out to the Hex River Valley where he was employed as a fruit packer by Cape
Orchards for five years. The Kuils River Mines drew some skilled Indian
labour. Sana Rana from Surat was regarded as an ‘expert in tin mines’.87
Bareyam Singh, the stable groom mentioned earlier, provides an example of suc-
cessful upward mobility. For him the pattern of circular migration did not apply.
He did not make any trips to India until a brief visit in 1930 and then twenty-four
years later when his sister Rajkor aged ninety-three was ill. One of the reasons for
these limited trips is that he had married a local woman known as Kitty and they
had two children, Francis and Nellie. By 1931 Bareyam was a produce merchant
in Reform Street and lived in Walmer Estate. He had been active in politics, repre-
senting the Cape National Indian Association at a conference in Durban in 1928.
When Kitty died he married Lettie in 1941 and they had two children Bareyam and
Elaine. By the time he was in his seventies he had an annual income of over £2,400
and owned property over £48,000.88
Experiences of loss
For those who secured a permit to visit India it was the most important document
one could possess. It guaranteed a right to return to Cape Town within a specified
time. Without it and if it had expired, no matter how long one had been in Cape
Town, one could not re-enter. That was not negotiable. Baba Bapoo, who worked
for EK Greene, understood the importance of the permit only too well. He lost the
permit en route to Durban where he was due to get the steamer to India. He wrote
urgently in Urdu to his friend Mohomed Janoodien in Cape Town.
Dear brother,
I let you know that on the 2nd March on board the steamer we had place to sleep on
deck, unfortunately my wearing coat has been stolen away at about 2 pm, and when I
have been awake at 3 pm my coat has gone away. I have searched but without avail. I
have reported but could not be found; My dear brother by losing my coat that has put
me in a very heavy lost as there was £5 in it; and other document and books all has
gone. Since I have made the lost my heart has turned into madness. I could not
sleep night and day; my dear Brother if I write to you the whole particulars it will
be too long; all seem to be my luck; and at present my dear Sir be kind for me and
do this work for me take the number of my permit and go to Mr Cousin [Cousins,
the chief immigration officer] and explain to him the particulars and beg him on
my behalf to issue duplicate permit; I have also wire Mr Cousin concerning this
matter unfortunately I have received no reply today the boat are leaving and I am
very depressed but my dear Sir for the sake of God towards this poor man try yours
best to obtain my permit and send.89
After some trouble and an additional cost of five shillings he secured a duplicate
permit and was able to return from India with it. But the ‘madness’ in his heart
says a lot about how important this document was.
Few could return in time as life in India distracted them: there was unexpected
sickness, inability to raise the money for a passage in time, deaths of family
members and village work. Baba Ismail who worked for W&G Scott wanted
more time in 1929. He got someone in his village Dhabet in Ratnagiri to write
to the immigration officer for him as he was illiterate. He requested an additional
year in India.
Dear Sir,
Immigration officer of Cape Town South Africa
Re Very Sick Present and I could not come. in the time to Cape Town And other thing
is this my wife she has been died 27/3/1929 therfor Nobody to looked for my house
and e.t.c. So please available my permit for other one year . . . If you give me one year
time I will be very glad & Thanks Instead of you helf me the God will save you & your
childrens
My Photo all so herewith.
When he was given only six months he pleaded again as he could not finish his
work in India.
if you do not give me the time then Dear I am nearly Die Because No Body can
loocked Me so the God will keep you well and Glad all ways and save you and
your family I am always asking the god to half you Please dear Half me & give
Sam six months time again and oblige
Officials stuck to the rules and Baba Ismail was not given that extra time. He never
returned.90
Perhaps the most tragic case was that of Osman Vazir who worked for the Gas
Company. He and his wife Haji Khatija left Cape Town suddenly without
getting a permit as he was ill. He wrote many pleas from India to be allowed
back. His losses were many as he explained:
In India I got better by Grace of God and in short my wife fell victim to some disease
and succomed to death. From the death of my this faithful and loving wife I was
deeply engrossed in sorrow and pain which words cannot describe. I have two children
by this wife and now being destitute of both wife and wealth, I am now living as a
beggar with my children. Some day getting food or some day starvation. Such has
been our condition. No doubt we had some money and estate but all this is in Cape-
town for the last two years. I am a lover – a true lover in sense of our Indian tongue, of
Capetown. And I every now and then dream a dream of it too. And so request with my
both hands joined, as one to the Almighty and a father, to allow me, taking my former
long residence in consideration, to enter Capetown and I will always pray to god that
the Capetown Govt may still be long reigning and prosperous . . . I have got many cer-
tifcates and letters of my services there and it will, I hope, prove of my very long long
residence in Capetown. I have a register of Transvaal, a pass of Free State, a certificate
from Gas Co., a receipt for a pass which was received by me in 1907, a card from Som-
erset Hospital while I was sick there and a certificate from Gas Co., while returning to
my native place. Also there will be on record in the Immigration Office the original
copy of the pass given to me on 14th January for India. I have lived there from
21st Oct 1897 to 13th June 1909 and to prove this the above details will be sufficient,
I hope.
The one document he did not have was the permit and the reply to this outpouring
of grief and trouble was short, a refusal.91
Vazir’s impassioned letter indicates how conditions in India could get desperate
and how Cape Town offered a light of hope. Others were driven by this despera-
tion to come back without the document. Picera Canje92 who worked for Phoenix
Breweries returned in 1907, but at Port Elizabeth he was declared a prohibited
immigrant. He jumped ship and reportedly made his way to Cape Town by
train. He joined the uncertain world of the illegal migrant in Cape Town of
whom there were many. The bureaucracy lost these individuals, the latter lost a
legal life.
The loss of rights was painful. Yet these are other losses. There were the women
and children in India who lost years of companionship and guidance of migrant
husbands and fathers. For some the loss was permanent. The story of Gunga,
the wife of Harnam Singh, is one of epic tragedy.93 Harnam left his wife and
son in the village of Chokra in Jallandar in the Punjab in 1902. Among his jobs
in Cape Town was that of a fireman and night watchman for Bingley Brickworks
in Sea Point. He returned to his family in 1909 and another son was born. As he set
out for Cape Town in 1911, Gunga was not to know that would be the last she
would ever see him. Harnam set up home with a local woman called Syna and
they had four children. He was not entirely forgetful of his family in India but
according to the immigration laws he could not bring Gunga to Cape Town as
he had a local family. Gunga’s desperation grew. After two decades of his
absence she wrote directly to the immigration department to find her now sixty-
year old husband. She wrote ‘I am pining for his separation’. She wrote again
and again and by 1938 was so desperate she came as far as Mombasa hoping in
vain that the immigration authorities would let her see her husband whom she
had last seen twenty-seven years previously. Harnam Singh lived another
decade to a ripe old age in Cape Town. Some of his children with Syna sought
and received classification as coloured at the height of apartheid. Of Gunga we

know no more. Her story, while amplified by such great loss, represents also
the grief and difficulties in the smaller stories of separation as migrant husbands
travelled to Cape Town in the 1900s and left behind, for long periods of time,
wives and children in the villages of India.
Conclusion
This article does not argue that Indian workers made a significant contribution to
the economy of Cape Town as academics writing about Natal’s indentured
workers have done. The numbers are far too small in terms of Cape Town’s
larger economy – there were far more white, coloured and African workers.
However, when an audit is taken of the poor of the city then Indians have to be
counted. The term passenger Indian imported into writings about the Cape from
the Natal and Transvaal historiography requires redefinition. Its simplified defi-
nition leads to a divisive understanding of migration from the Indian subcontinent
and contributes to the stereotype of the rich Gujarati. The term needs to embrace
workers and in terms of regional origins to include not just those from west India
and certainly not just Gujarat but also those from other parts of India such as the
Punjab. Passenger Indians secured work in Cape Town in menial positions and
some remained in these for more than just an initial phase.
India was a crucial reference point at all times for most Indian migrant workers –
family and village commitments endured. Migration tended for the most to be a cir-
cular one with time being variable. While the assisted emigration scheme has been
perceived in the literature to be a repressive one (Mesthrie 1985), the workers dis-
cussed here seem to have used it to advantage at the end of their work lives in South
Africa. Some constituted family life in Cape Town with repercussions for family in
India. The newly constituted family with local Cape women challenged notions of
Indianness and for some, especially the children, India receded.
In the South African historiography on capital and labour we have the dominant
image of African migrant workers on the diamond and gold mines alienated for
long periods from their wives and children and aged parents on the reserves.
This study of the Indian migrant reveals a similar pattern of migration but one
that crosses the ocean and is worthy of recognition in the labour histories of
both countries.
The Cape permit system originating from an exclusionary immigration law must
be regarded as a damaging one that affected the free mobility of Indians and it
tarnishes the liberal image of the region. It extinguished the dream of Africa in
the poor villages of India.
Notes
1. WCAD, IRC 1/1/101 2485a.
2. IRC 1/1/216 4987a.
3. IRC 1/1/142 3449a.

4. IRC 1/1/159 3833a.
5. IRC 1/1/139 3374a.
6. In this article Cape Town is used as it is understood today – greater Cape Town rather than
the small municipality that it was in the early 1900s, with Mowbray, Rondebosch, Wynberg,
Claremont, Woodstock and Kalk Bay for instance all having their own local government.
7. In 1905, for instance, Hardit Singh of Durban wrote to the Cape Colonial Secretary that he had
come to Durban seven years ago with a ‘passenger pass’ (IRC 1/1/116 2825a). Vendenayagum
Lawrence who had worked as a clerk for Gandhi in Durban argued in 1907 that he was ‘a pas-
senger from India’ and asked to be exempt from the various restrictive laws such as the liquor,
gun and franchise laws (Bhana and Pachai 1984:23).
8. There is some justification for this separation – the ex-indentured could easily slide back
into indenture if they were unable to pay the annual £3 tax, the price of their freedom from
indenture.
9. She gives administrative reasons for a separation. The ex-indentured were still listed under the
records of the Protector of Indians Immigrants and were subject to separate registration of mar-
riages, births and deaths.
10. Kuper, for instance, draws attention to passenger Indians from Madras and Calcutta and also
Ceylon and east Africa. She focuses on Parsis and Jains as well as Urdu and Memon speakers.
11. Kuper (1960:16–7) and Meer (1969:19) are exceptions.
12. Badassy (2005) has, however, focused on interpreters. While Vahed (2005) has pointed to the
fairly large number of shop assistants amongst the passenger Indian he does not deal with them
in any substantive manner.
13. This article recognises that many slaves came from the Indian subcontinent between the seven-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries but that historians have failed to find any lingering Indian
identity.
14. The IRC files which deal with movement between India and the Cape indicate some movement
from Tamils between Kimberley and Port Elizabeth to India and back but at this stage of the
research very few Tamil names surface for Cape Town.
15. See SC 16-1908, Report of the Select Committee on Asiatic Grievances, pp 13, 15 –19, 30; also
IRC 1/192 2282a Ebrahim Norodien’s file.
16. IRC 1/1/ 71 1738a.
17. IRC 1/1/124 3076a, see letter from Vazir to Capetown Government, 21 September 1911.
18. See WCAD, CO, Vol 7415 file 409, Report of the Protector of Emigrants, 5 September 1901;
Medical Officer of Health to Colonial Secretary, 10 October 1901; Note from Colonial Sec-
retary to Medical Officer, 11 October 1901.
19. Cape Times 9 October 1901, editorial.
20. G.63-1904, Report on the Working of the Immigration Act, 1902 (Cape Town, Government
Printers, 1904:8, 11, 21 –2, 35–6.
21. IRC 1/1/141 3417a, Attarsing Ralaram to Immigration Officer, 28 October 1908, 11 November
and reply of Immigration Officer, 21 November 08.
22. WCAD, NA, Vol 511 Part 1, 281, James King to Commissioner of Native Labour, 14 January
1902 and 8 March 1902, reply to King, 7 February 1902.
23. WCAD, NA Vol 511 Part 1, 281, Director, John Jackson Ltd, to Civil Engineer in Chief, Admir-
alty, London, 30 October 1902, Secretary to Native Affairs Department to Prime Minister, 24
February 1903 and to Director, John Jackson Ltd, 6 March 1903.
24. See IRC 1/1/167 4036a, contract of Mahomed Salie and others with Hoosen Ebrahim.
25. IRC 1/1/71 1738a, Note by A Karie, 1905 and reply of Officer in Charge, 6 March 1905.
26. See SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, Appendix, pp ii–iii, petition of South African Indian
Association; Thawerdas Shewakram was allowed to enter in February 1909 as a cook ‘for
reasons of religion’ for Pohumool Brothers (IRC 1/1/177 4191a).
27. See for example IRC 1/1/137 3336a, case of Faker Ebrahim, 1905.
28. SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, pp 35–6.
29. By 1911 numbers in the Cape had decreased to 6,606, with Natal at 133,031 and the Transvaal
at 10,048 (Bhana and Brain 1990:194).
30. SC 16-1908, Asiatic Grievances, p 40, evidence of Hing Woo, President of the Chinese Associ-
ation of Cape Town.
31. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (cd Government of India, New Delhi, 1999), Vol 6, pp
201 –2, Indian Opinion, 29 December 1906 (Gujarati) and Vol 7, pp 254–5 Indian Opinion
12 October 1907.
32. For a greater discussion of the issues around this archive and knowledge production see
Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2009.
33. Indentured Indians were at first the only ones offered a free passage back home but in 1914 any
Indian wishing to return home was provided with a free passage on condition they surrendered
their rights to return to South Africa. Bonuses were also offered as additional incentive in 1921.
The state did not have altruistic motives, it wanted to reduce the size of the Indian population
(Mesthrie 1985:36–56).
34. The attitude of Indians to female migration needs to be explored further. There seems not only
to have been patriarchal attitudes but females themselves were reluctant to relocate. After 1927
the law specified that a wife had to accompany a minor child being brought to South Africa and
this raised the numbers of female migration. Some women returned to India after fulfilling this
requirement.
35. IRC 1/1/125 3107a.
36. IRC 1/1/89 2217a.
37. IRC 1/1/159 3838a.
38. IRC 1/1/116 2833a.
39. IRC 1/1/205 4798a.
40. IRC 1/1/182 4290a.
41. IRC 1/1/214 4925a.
42. IRC 1/1/214 4942a.
43. IRC 1/1/100 2442a.
44. IRC 1/1/100 2469a.
45. IRC 1/1/214 4933a.
46. IRC 1/1/100 2441a.
47. See IRC 1/1/185 4340a and IRC 1/1/205 4797a.
48. IRC 1/1/132 3240a.
49. IRC 1/1/86 2140a.
50. IRC 1/1/222 5086a.
51. IRC 1/1/85 2090a.
52. IRC 1/1/152 3683a.
53. IRC 1/1/229 5238a.
54. IRC 1/1/216 4984a.
55. G.9-1908, Report of the Chief Immigration Officer for the year Ending 31st December 1907, p 6.
56. IRC 1/1/147 3540a.
57. IRC 1/1/105 2608a.
58. IRC 1/1/187 4401a.
59. IRC 1/1/225 5137a.
60. IRC 1/1/135 3290a.
61. IRC 1/1/170 4078a.
62. IRC 1/1/185 4356a.
63. IRC 1/1/21 504a.
64. IRC 1/1/160 3857a.
65. IRC 1/1/162 3914a.

66. IRC 1/1/151 3657a.
67. IRC 1/1/33 784a.
68. IRC 1/1/148 3591a.
69. IRC 1/1/214 4948a.
70. IRC 1/1/116 2841a.
71. IRC 1/1/141 3420a. For other workers in this sector see IRC 1/1/103 2533a, 1/1/166 4004,
1/1/70 1709a, 1/1/151 3652a, 1/1/163 3945a.
72. IRC 1/1/116 2826a.
73. IRC 1/1/182 4295a.
74. IRC 1/1/145 3493a.
75. IRC 1/1/178 4211a.
76. IRC 1/1/230 5253a.
77. IRC 1/1/105 2598a.
78. IRC 1/1/71 1755a.
79. IRC 1/1/117 2862a.
80. IRC 1/1/109 2693a.
81. IRC 1/1/198 4659a.
82. IRC 1/1/90 2224.
83. IRC 1/1/140 3409a.
84. IRC 1/1/164 3966a.
85. IRC 1/1/133 3257a.
86. IRC 1/1/125 3098a. He worked there for four years and returned to India in 1908.
87. IRC 1/1/104 2570a. For others working at the mines see IRC 1/1/181 4277a Mackan Bangia;
IRC 1/1/31 705a Heera Dajee and IRC 1/1/120 2974a Meta Vallabh.
88. IRC 1/1/139 3374a.
89. IRC 1/1/148 3591a, Letter to Janoodien, 4 March 1915. This is a translation.
90. IRC 1/1/140 3403a, Letter from Ismail, 28 June 1929; reply of immigration officer, 27 July
1929; letter from Ismail, 7 August 1930; reply 6 September 1930.
91. IRC 1/1/124 3076a, Letter from Vazir, 21 September 1911; Cousins to Vazir, 21 October
1911.
92. IRC 1/1/125 3105a.
93. IRC 1/1/153 3699a, See Gunga to immigration officer, 19 July 1935 and 8 November 1935; reply
of principal immigration officer, 7 August 1935 and 21 November 1935; secretary of the Siri Guru
Singh Sabha Mombasa, 10 January 1938 and reply of immigration officer, 18 January 1938.
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Bpk.
The Limits of Law in the Mandated

Territories: Becoming Manamba
and the Struggles of Sisal Plantation
Workers in Tanganyika
Hanan Sabea
Anthropology, The American University in Cairo
This article examines the limits of legal regulation of sisal plantation workers in the Mandated Ter-
ritories of Tanganyika 1923 –1958. By focusing on the making of the 1923 Labour Ordinance and its
subsequent amendments I demonstrate the tension and conflict between colonial desires to control
and manage labouring subjects, while simultaneously ensuring a regular flow of labouring bodies
to plantations. The failures confronted on a daily basis in managing migrant labour – that origi-
nated not only from diverse provinces within the territories but also from across the boundaries
of empire – rendered the limits of legal codes visible and necessitated their constant revisiting.
Migrating men and women capitalissed on the ambiguity of the laws, the multiplicity of regulating
agents, and a dense social network among migrant workers in challenging the laws as well as the
racial and gendered assumptions about ‘native’ subjects that were embedded in the laws and the
practice of their implementation.
Key words: British mandatory authority, colonialism, kipande, manamba, migrant labour, recruit-
ment, sisal workers, twentieth-century Tanganyika
This article examines the limits of legal regulation of sisal plantation workers in
the Mandated Territories of Tanganyika 1923– 1958. With the introduction of
sisal in 1893 into the then German East Africa and the eventual establishment
of the sisal industry by the turn of the century, sisal plantations became, as
Rodney once remarked, the ‘colonial institution par excellence’. Since then the
quest for controlling people and moulding them into manageable subjects on
the part of the state, and establishing a steady and disciplined labour force on
the part of plantations never ceased to dominate the agenda of administrators
and plantation managers. In the same vein, the attempt of workers to subvert
and challenge these agenda in constituting their lives also never ceased to mark
workers’ social reality. How these diverse agenda were formulated in laws
that were reconfigured in practices is the subject of this article. Indeed as
Kaplan and Kelly argued in the case of Fiji, ‘in colonial societies, especially,
the routinization of a ruling order, however productive, is inevitably vulnerable
from many angles’ (1994:127). And among these ‘many angles’ in the case of
Tanganyikan sisal plantations, was the contingency of the Mandate status of the
territories, the very ‘illegibility’ of the laws (following Das 2007) formulated

DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827548
by competing agents of the colonial state, as well as workers’ relentless recourse to

tactics to manage the systems of control to which they were subjected and from
whose powers and structures they were officially excluded.
Combining oral histories of sisal workers with colonial archival records, I analyse
the making and unmaking of the legal codes shaping the management of sisal plan-
tation labour in Tanganyika under British mandatory authority. In designing and
enforcing the legal framework to manage sisal labour, administrators and planters
had to be cognisant not only of the effects of the re-ordering of Tanganyika politi-
cal economic map after the First World War, or the demands of standardisation of
the sisal industry that started to take more of a shape after the Depression. Equally
pertinent were extra-territorial spaces that shaped the course of labour relations in
the territories. The Mandate status and the supervisory functions of the Permanent
Mandate Commission (PMC) influenced directly and indirectly the design and
implementation of labour legislation and practices on sisal estates. Additionally,
oscillations in the world market of sisal left their imprints on the political
capital and power of plantat4ion managers, their willingness to invest in labour,
and their ability to enforce discipline on workers. The Second World War
brought about significant shifts in ideas about labouring native subjects, which
shaped how managers and administrators dealt with the labour question.
The trade union movement in East Africa and the activities of the International
Labour Organization added another layer to developments within the sisal labour
sector, specifically during the last years of the Mandate when trade unionism and
labour strikes reached their peak. In short, the making of the 1923 Labour
Ordinance – the hallmark of the legal apparatus regulating labour – and its
subsequent amendments bespeak thus the tension between the colonial desires to
manage labouring subjects, legal stipulations of the Mandate, as well as pressures
exerted from global markets and various international bodies. Equally important,
the failures confronted on a daily basis in managing migrant labour rendered the
limits of legal codes visible and necessitated their constant revisiting. Migrating
men and women capitalised on the ambiguity of the laws, the multiplicity of regu-
lating agents, and a dense social network among migrant workers in challenging the
laws as well as the racial and gendered assumptions about ‘native’ subjects.
The Mandate and the legal wrangle over labour

When in 1917 the British started administering the territories formerly belonging
to Germany, they confronted the dilemma of administration under a Mandatory
system: namely having full governing powers over the territories, while being
subject to regular oversight by and annual reporting to the PMC.
Respecting the labour question, and even prior to the formal establishment of
the Mandate in 1922,1 the British were keen on negating any connotations of
slave-holding,2 forced labour, and compulsion in the employment of what they
construed as ‘natives.’ Compulsory or forced labour for private enterprise was
The Limits of Law in the Mandated Territories 137
declared impermissible, while for/of ‘public’ nature was limited to particular con-
texts, some of which relegated to the domain of ‘the tribe and the customary’,
while the rest were justified as a service to the state (for example porters, public
works, government requisitions). The former was further legitimated under the
pretext of preserving and respecting ‘native customs’, while the latter was con-
strued as a moral obligation to the state equivalent (and in some cases substituta-
ble) to the payment of taxes.3
Compulsory work within the ‘native domain’ was construed as ‘merely one part of
the duty of a citizen to the community to which he belongs and is rendered as a
matter of course in accordance with native law and custom. Any interference
with it would be bound to disturb the course of native life and to weaken the auth-
ority of the native chiefs which it is the duty of HMG to support’ (PRO CO/822/
17/7/25263).4 Moreover, since the Mandate was built around the ‘paramountcy of
native interests’, administratively implemented through indirect rule, ‘HMG have
not the power to interfere in the affairs of native communities to the extent that
would be necessary to regulate in any detail the recourse to forced labour; in
other cases such interference would be contrary to a fundamental principle of
policy’ (ibid.). Yet, compulsory labour in whatever form was construed as anti-
thetical to development and progress. Steps aiming at its eradication were not
only ‘obligatory on the British Government by virtue of their undertaking under
the Mandate and the Forced Labour Convention’, but were ‘essential for the
future welfare of the people of this Territory’ (PRO CO/691/130/5125).
The contours of the labour question however were not limited to compulsion and
use of force, but extended to notions of free will, compensation for work, and free
movement. Indeed, until the 1950s in every annual report the British authorities
had to submit to the PMC evidence of the free movement of labour and justifica-
tion for the use of compulsory labour was included.5 However, whatever the
nature of the problematic shaping the labour question, the assumption about the
inherently male nature of working bodies conjured with a racialised construction
of ‘the native’, resulting in a fixation in the imagination (and consequently the
regulation) of labouring subjects. This inability to see the presence of women
and children (or to read the complexity of the composition of the work force)
was written in the laws and enacted in practice, thus allowing labouring men
and women space for shaping social realities on the plantations in ways never ima-
gined nor desired by the colonial mandatory state and its agents. By virtue of the
nature through which labouring men (and women) were constructed (or rendered
invisible) in ‘the technologies of writing of the state’ (Das 2007:163) labouring
subjects struck back at the heart of the colonial state and its institutions.
The making of the 1923 ordinance

Initially (1917– 1923) while taking cognisance of the international principles
advocating free labour, the British administration continued German inherited
practices and laws governing labour relations, recruiting and contracts. Labour on
the sisal plantations (a total of 91,892 workers) ‘was divided into day (or casual)
labour and contract (or recruited) labour. The day labourers were not bound to any
master, and worked on plantations near their homes. They were usually given pie-
cework, and paid for it the same day. Contract labourers were recruited up-
country, and were signed on for 180 or 240 working days’ (TNA ES/3046/11).
References were also made to up-country migrant men who were ‘voluntarily pro-
ceeding to the coast to look for employment’ (TT Annual Report 1922). First
World War disruptions to the sisal plantation sector reduced the demand for
labour, and with it the inclination on the part of the administration and plantation
managers to change inherited conditions. Recruiting workers from one district to
work in another continued under the ‘supervision and control’ of the government.6
This entailed the presence of administrative officers at the time of contracting to
safeguard the ‘welfare of workers’. Officers were to ensure: 1) consent of workers
to the terms of contract which was limited to no longer than six months; 2) pro-
vision of services including housing, food, and travel costs; 3) proper remunera-
tion depending on prevailing local rates; and 4) accompaniment by dependents
to places of work.
Already during these few years the administration felt the brunt of the continuation
of the German laws, which ‘fell into abeyance’ rendering conditions ‘undesirable’
(Tanganyika Labour Department Report 1926). These included migrant labour
squatting on abandoned plantations, non-payment of wages to workers especially
during the 1920s slump in sisal prices, slackened discipline on the estates, and the
roaming around of ‘alien up-country natives’ in plantation districts threatening the
norms and morality of gendered and racial relations. Further, the 1920 regulations
aiming at standardising forms of contracts for labour recruitment lacked legal
enforcement. Hence, the passing of the 1923 Master and Native Servants Ordi-
nance, which specified the meaning of contract, regulated the work of recruiters,
and detailed the conditions of service under which workers were to be employed.
It is worth mentioning that despite few amendments, the 1923 Ordinance (Cap 51)
remained the main legal framework for regulating labour relations until 1955,
when the administration passed the Employment Ordinance No. 47 of 1955.
The shift reflects changes in how colonial administrators reconstructed the
notion of the labouring native subject during the post-war era.
The terms of the 1923 legislation remained ambiguous, embodying the inherent
tension between a desire for control and adherence to the principles of consent
and free will of workers,7 compensation for work, and the freedom to move
within the territory (i.e. between districts) and across territorial borders. The ordi-
nance also reflected the interests of ‘capital’ (represented by the lobby of plantation
companies and settlers) in tightening their control over the various categories of
workers employed, especially in terms of length of engagement, method of pay,
possibilities for prosecution, and workers’ eligibility for provision of services.
The ambiguity embedded within the ordinance allowed employers of labour to
find loopholes to increase their control over workers at the least cost, much as it
enabled workers to defy the powers exerted on them, whether by planters or admin-
istrators. By the same token, it allowed the administration to control as far as poss-
ible the movement of Africans and the work of recruiters, while simultaneously
challenging any allegations by the PMC as to its handling of the labour question.
The binding contract

One of the ambiguities related to the definition of terms, including who was the
‘native’, ‘servant’, and what constituted a contract.8 ‘Contract of service’ was
‘any contract, whether in writing or oral, expressed or implied, to employ or to
serve as a servant for any period of time’. Later in the ordinance, it stated that ‘a con-
tract of service, which or a sufficient memorandum whereof, is not in writing and
signed by the parties thereto, shall not be binding on the servant for a longer
period than one month from the making thereof’. Moreover, for workers engaged
to work in another district, a contract was not binding unless it was written and
signed, and more important ‘bears an attestation or certificate by a magistrate or
administrative officer’, for which a fee was payable. Each written and attested con-
tract had to specify: 1) nature and duration of work; 2) place of work; 3) rate of pay;
and 4) interval at which wages were due. The length of the contract was set at a
maximum of two years. Offences committed under the ordinance were ‘criminal
offences’ prosecuted under penal code. The administrative attesting officer, the
employer and the employed each had to retain a copy of the contract.
In practice this ordinance reflected prevailing constraints faced by administrators
and managers in dealing with labour and its various categories. The ‘enforcement
of contracts and the settlement of disputes between master and servant became a
matter of difficulty, while the resuscitation of the sisal industry foreshadowed a
demand for recruited labour from the interior which it was deemed wise to regu-
late’ (TT Annual Report 1923). The crux of the ordinance, in terms of possibilities
for prosecution, provision of services, and demarcation of offences by employ-
ees,9 targeted primarily one category of workers, namely recruited labour on a
contract. The latter’s terms of engagement provided for maximum control:
labour recruited by licensed agents, working in a district other than its own,
under a legally binding contract, lasting for a specified term, with the contract
written, signed, attested, and for which copies were available, fees were payable
and legal prosecutions possible.10 Although kipande11 (labour card) was not
recognised as a legally binding contract, the stipulation that contracts, or memor-
anda thereof, lasting for no longer than a month were sanctioned under the law,
allowed indirectly for the inclusion of other categories of workers (voluntary
and local) under legal rubric.
Recruited and voluntary: between free will and control

While the legal construction of contracts allowed for the division of workers along
recruitment lines (hence the proliferation of classifications of workers as contract,
recruited, attested on the one hand, and non-contract, unattested, voluntary,

kipande, local on the other), the ‘care of servants’ built on the local/migrant
division. Housing, food, medical services, water supply, and repatriation were
obligations due by the employer for only a ‘servant employed at such distance
from his home as to render it impossible for him to return to his home at the con-
clusion of daily work’. Although legally recruited labour was under the tightest
control for the purposes of administrators and managers,12 it was also at the
highest cost, in terms of recruitment fees, service entitlements and administrative
infrastructure. Local labour (both ‘alien’ and ‘native’) was at little or almost no
cost, yet workers engaged on a casual daily basis or even on a kipande for more
than one month were outside the domain carved out by the original version of
the ordinance. In later amendments, the administrative arm of the state aimed at
engulfing them under its regulatory and coercive powers. Voluntary labour, those
who made the trip to the plantations on their own, had an ambiguous status
under this law: they qualified for service provision as non-local labour, yet were
hard to contain within the definition of contracts and offences outlined in the law.
The difference between recruited and voluntary labour for the administration
reflected further the inherent tension between free labour movement on the one
hand, and control over labour on the other. While recruited labour represented
the maximum of control, it was tarnished with connotations of coercion and
force in procuring workers, lack of choice as to place of work, and the obligation
of staying away from ‘home’ for a long time, as charged by members of the PMC
against the Mandatory Authority.13 To denounce the allegations, Sir Cameron
emphasised in 1927 ‘that there was a distinct movement amongst the natives
against labour on contract. The native was showing a tendency to choose his
own employers and the Government was strongly of the view that it should do
nothing to destroy this spirit’ (PRO CO/691/89/18168). The voluntary move-
ment of workers was further presented by the administration as a sign that the
labourer ‘was becoming sophisticated’ (ibid.). This was hailed by the authorities
as evidence of the success of the British administration in its civilising mission of
making it possible for Africans (termed ‘natives’) to exercise choice within free
labour markets.
The dilemmas the administration faced with regard to recruited and voluntary
labour came to the fore when the movement of labour entailed crossing territorial
borders, a sore point with the Labour Group at the Geneva Conference. The latter
precluded ‘any restriction on the movement of labour from one area to another’, a
position which was ‘based somewhat on the general principle that capital is free to
move where it will and that labour ought to enjoy a like freedom’ (PRO CO/691/
105/29532). In the same light, ‘any systematic recruiting of native labour’, was an
‘approximation of indentured labour system’ (ibid.).
While the British certainly had no qualms with labour movement into Tanganyika,
they invoked the sanctity of administrative sovereignty14 when the Belgian
authorities applied to the Foreign Office (FO) for recruiting 1,000 natives from
Kigoma. The FO claimed it had no opposition to the free movement of labour
‘if it was only intended to apply within the area of a single Territory, but . . .
must resist any suggestion that the right of an administration to control the emigra-
tion of labour over its frontiers ought to be restricted’ (ibid.). However, territorial
sovereignty and the ‘desire to retain labour in the territory for public works’ were
objections ‘unwise to quote to the Belgian Government, as it could easily be used
against us in argument and represented (with a good deal of truth) as an instance of
our preventing labour from seeking its most profitable market’ (ibid.). These
objections further could mean nothing but ‘trouble over his [Sir Cameron, then
Governor of Tanganyika] abroad policy of refusing consent to recruiting’
(ibid.). The FO hence proposed to ‘maintain the past distinction in Tanganyika
Territory between the recruiting of labour for outside the Territories which is
not allowed [unless consent of governor is granted] and the free movement of
labour which is allowed’ (ibid.). On both fronts, locally and internationally, the
British proclaimed to adopt a policy of no interference with ‘the free flow of
voluntary labour’, while recruiting (within the territories and outside) remained
tightly regulated by law. Control and free flow were legitimated as guarding the
welfare of the so-called ‘native’.
The Kipande: regulating time and movement

Within a couple of years, the British administration passed Ordinance No. 11 of
1926, whereby kipande became legally recognised.15 This amendment to the
1923 ordinance brought a whole array of workers (voluntary and local) previously
spared the regulatory machinery of the state under the force of possible criminal
prosecution.16 Facing an increased rate of absenteeism and desertion (both on
the plantations and on route to the plantations) and with little success in tracing
such workers, the amendment aimed at tightening the grip of administrators and
planters over the time and movement of workers. The law specified maximum per-
missible time (six successive days) during which an employee could absent himself
[or herself] from work without reasonable excuse or permission from an employer,
after that the worker would be liable to prosecution. Further, it aimed at enabling
administrators and managers to trace workers in cases of absenteeism or desertion
through the details provided on labour cards, and the daily check of completion of
work/task on the labour cards.17 This ordinance as well was limited to male
workers, although women and juveniles also worked on plantations, but they
rarely appeared on estate books, nor considered by administrators as part of the
labour pool. This gendering of labour was not limited to the Tanganyika sisal plan-
tations, as Cooper documents in both French and British Africa, ‘Industrial man, in
officials’ eyes, was indeed a male’ (1996:2, 1983). In the case of sisal more specifi-
cally, the gendering of the imagination of labour was compounded by the insistence
on the migratory nature of workers. The myth of the male migrant worker remained
a key symbol of sisal labour until the present.
Like every other piece of legislation, the limitations of these two laws were
magnified in practice resulting in an endless process of amendments and calls for
revisiting the original version (1923 or Cap 51). Already by the late 1920s and
early 1930s – and compounded by the effects of the Depression – administrators
and employers of labour recognised the vagueness of the legislation and their
inherent limitations. For instance, officials within the secretariat described the
1926 ‘Kipande Ordinance’ as ‘clumsily incorporated’ and ‘rather mixed up’
(TNA v14/18679/Vol II). The Tanga Provincial Commissioner contended,
‘there was no control of natives on plantation by legal means’ (PRO CO/691/
125/31232).18 Employers of labour, prime among them members of the Sisal
Growers Association, viewed the legislation as ‘unworkable and of no value’,
and the ‘present Master and Native Servants Ordinance was ineffective in its
entirety in so far as the Planters were concerned’ (ibid.). Indeed as Das argued in
the case of India, the illegibility of the laws was not limited to the marginalised
on whom the laws were enforced, but equally pertinent to the thesis of the double
nature of the state, is that functionaries of the state (and in the case of sisal its
main beneficiaries the planters) found the laws and their practices illegible (Das
2007:169). This illegibility and confusion, Das continued, blurs the boundaries
between the legal and the illegal, and ‘institutes the possibility of forgery, imitation
and the mimetic performances of its [technologies of writing] power’ (2007:163).
I will briefly note some of the illegibility of the laws and its consequences as
exemplified in the case of kipande, definition of native, and enforcement of
penal code. Already by 1930, administrators perceived kipande as ‘of all docu-
ments the most liable to fraud, and those in respect of which fraud is most fre-
quently committed, or if not fraud, illegality’ (TNA v14/18679/Vol II). Yet,
they recognised its pervasive use and even argued that, ‘the African looks upon
his labor card as his contract’ (TNA v14/25939). The legality of kipande as a
form of contract was questioned within a few years of the enforcement of the
1926 law. In 1933 the Chief Secretary referred to it as merely ‘an accounting
memorandum’ (TNA v14/20352/Vol I). By 1937 the question of kipande legality
centred on the unit of time19 by which the specification of the length of contract
was set. The Kipande ordinance allowed for double the period of days shown
on the card, whereas the 1923 law required recruited workers to ‘be contracted
for employment for a definite period expressed in days, weeks, or months’.
Hence ‘[i]t would appear that all written contracts are illegal if the words
“Kipande” or “Labour Card” appear under Head 2, Duration of Service, and
therefore labourers whose names are shown on such contracts can desert with
impunity’ (TNA v14/13066/Vol II). And indeed that was the case since
workers insisted on flexibility in the use of time. As the district commissioner
wrote in 1937 ‘in all the contracts concerned a healthy labourer need only have
presented himself for work if he wished to do so, as the wording of the contract
does not compel the employee to turn out daily for work, with the result that if
he neither worked for the day nor attended the sick parade the conclusion
drawn has been that he has just taken a day off’ (PRO CO/691/167/42191/9).
Hence the call for contracts to be ‘made for the calendar month with provision
for one and a half days rest during the week on full rations’ (ibid.). Ironically,
the monthly engagement materialised not under the colonial Mandatory system,
but rather under the post-independence regime! The furthest the Mandate went
was in 1954 when it specified on the card a total of forty-two days during
which thirty working days (i.e. one labour card) were to be completed.
This legal wrangle of kipande, much as it reflects the attempt to provide maximum
guarantee over a specified and legally binding temporal unit, bespeaks the central-
ity of prosecution of labouring natives. Yet, the question of which laws – civil or
penal codes – to apply to natives who breach their contracts involved more than
just the administration within the territories. It implicated the Home Office in
London, with its aims at standardising laws in British East Africa possessions,
shielding itself from condemnation by British public opinion, and saving face
within the international arena. The latter, represented in the International
Labour Conference and the League of Nations, was influenced by reformist
critics who emphasised the ‘morality and normalcy of colonial rule’ with the
aim of ridding member states of a ‘kind of colonialism [that] was not acceptable
in polite company’ as in the cases of Leopold’s Congo, Portuguese Angola, and
Liberia (Cooper 1996:26–7).
Penal sanctions and the native

Within two years of passing the Master Native Ordinance, the PMC raised in 1925
the desirability of removing penal sanctions on employees’ for breach of contracts,
especially with regard to desertion. Furthermore, it requested the removal of the
power granted to the police to arrest Africans without warrant and without
formal complaints filed in court by employers, as well as reduction of the punish-
ment from imprisonment to fine. While local administrators accepted the curtail-
ing of police powers, they advocated imprisonment on the grounds that it was ‘in
the interest of the native himself, in his present stage of evolution’ (PRO CO 691/
88/18085/27). A few years later (1930) the Secretary of State of the Colonies
expressed the desire ‘that any penal sanctions applicable to labour engagements
should be eliminated or reduced to an absolute minimum, and that the relations
of employer and employed should be left to be governed by the ordinary law’
(TNA v14/18679/Vol II). The Labour Committee appointed to deliberate the
matter however recommended that ‘the peculiar local conditions governing the
circumstances of employment in Tanganyika Territory were such, that it was at
present quite impossible to transfer the whole matter to the domain of civil law’
(ibid.).
The reasons were framed again in the name of ‘the native’ and ‘progress’. First, they
argued most of the penal clauses anyway weighed heavier on the employer and the
recruiter rather than on the labourer, to ‘secure proper treatment for the employee’
(TNA v14/18679/Vol II). And it ‘is quite essential that this should be so, in order to
protect the African labourer at his present primitive condition, which would other-
wise render him liable to the oppressive exploitation by unscrupulous persons’
(ibid.). Second, with regard to the penal clauses against workers, they were ‘pro-
vided to meet the situation created by the fact that the labourer is hardly ever in
a position where any other penalty would be feasible’. Moreover, since a labourer
possessed ‘very small means’, he was thus in ‘urgent need of prompt settlement of
any dispute’, a possibility enhanced under penal code (ibid.). Third, enforcing crim-
inal procedures for contract breaking was a teaching mechanism. ‘[I]f the native is
to advance to a position where he is able to take advantage of the power of collective
bargaining and similar modern methods, it will only be when he has realised the
nature of a contract’ (ibid.). Therefore, if ‘some effort is not made to impress this
upon him, his progress will to that extent be retarded’ (ibid.). Finally, the Commit-
tee warned against the ‘danger of introducing unduly advanced measures, merely to
furnish a plausible but fictitious appearance of progress’ (ibid.).
By 1936 the same Labour Committee altered its stance. ‘[E]ducation, good working
conditions and the provision of amenities will do more to decrease desertion than
recourse to penal sanctions’ (PRO CO 691/167/42191/7). The rationale for
such a shift was the ‘ease with which natives can disappear, the difficulty and
expense of tracing them and bringing them to conviction added to the fact that a
recaptured deserter is more likely to infect a whole gang than to add to output’
(ibid.). Yet, the shift also corresponded to a move within international circles
towards posing the labour question in different ways. ‘The problem was really in
the “hands of the employers”, who should dispense with old habits of treating
workers “as an easily replaced quantity” and offer “normal wages” and good treat-
ment’ (Cooper 1996:30).
One other domain the administration had to reshuffle in the successive revisions of
the Master Native Ordinance pertained to the very construct of ‘the native’. The
1923 law defined ‘native’ as ‘a member of the African race and includes a
Swahili or Somali’. The question was raised explicitly in 1934 when pressures
mounted to incorporate international labour conventions in the revisions of the
1923 law. Sir Harold MacMichael (then governor) argued that such incorporation
‘can only be achieved by abandoning the restriction of their application to native
servants’(PRO CO/691/141/25259). The Attorney General added, ‘a satisfactory
definition of native in a country such as Tanganyika is extremely difficult, if not
indeed impracticable, especially in the coastal areas where the greater part of the
sisal industry and many other labour employing activities are to be found’ (ibid.).
Explicitly acknowledging the conjuring of native with race, he contended it ‘can
hardly be argued . . . that race is a defensible criterion by which to judge of the
applicability of the law. Although in practice the great majority of servants and
labourers are natives, there are a great many who are not natives. It is both
logical and desirable that the special responsibilities imposed upon servants, and
the protection afforded to them, should apply to all alike’ (ibid.). The desirability
for such elimination was further guided by the clauses of the Mandate that prohib-
ited discrimination against any races or nationals. Yet, the Governor cautioned that
he might ‘find it politically convenient not to press it to an issue’ given the possi-
bility that ‘public opinion may not yet be prepared’ (ibid.). And the looming
threat of ‘extensive and determined public agitation’ retained race (as one layer
in the construction of ‘the native’) as the basic principle around which labour
relations were ordered.20 The elimination of ‘native’ (and race) from the legal
framework did not take place until 1955. Gender however remained an unmarked
category in the construction of labouring subject.
Technical conundrum notwithstanding, the limitations of the laws were most
evident in the process of their implementation, more precisely in the practice of
everyday life as Das contends. I use the stories of workers pertaining to processes
of procurement and movement to the plantations to show how the legal system
faced its practical limitations on the ground.
Becoming Manamba
It was in 1952. I decided to sign manamba and come to Tanganyika for work, not
because there is no work in Burundi. In Tanganyika there was more money to
make.21 The further you go away for work the more money you earn. (Michael)
Michael was born in Belgian Congo (now Burundi) in the late 1920s, the youngest
of six living siblings. His parents were wakulima (small farmers) who tilled a piece
of land and he helped along. ‘We used to farm one piece of land until it was tired
and then we moved to another plot. My brothers were much older. They had their
own children and their own plots. I helped my parents farm the land.’ When in
1952 at the age of twenty-four Michael signed manamba, meaning signing a con-
tract as a recruited migrant worker, he was already married with two children. Fol-
lowing the pattern of many migrant workers on their first trip to the plantations
(Giblin 2005), Michael left his children and wife behind. ‘I left my children
with their mother so as not to have them ruka ruka [jump from one place to
another] and decided to come here for work.’
Some of my neighbors and I wanted to work. We went to the Labor Office in Burundi,
district of Asidrida and wrote manamba. Manamba was for three years. There was a
mzungu [white person] who wrote the manamba. I was part of a larger group of people
who were signing up for work. The manamba was for three years because we came
from outside Tanganyika. We all had one contract. They gave us one passport for
all of us. We were 37 people, with only two women among us. Kabembe [labour
recruiter] was the one who took us. He moves around the villages and tells people
about work in Tanganyika. He said we were going to work in sisal.22
The road to the coast

From Michael’s words manamba for one refers to the process of singing a collec-
tive contract. As he mentioned, there was one contract for a whole group of
workers, who were attested and registered at the same time. And hence the
oft-recounted version of the meaning of manamba as a ‘common word for

migrants: manamba, “numbers”’(Iliffe 1979:306).23 In their home areas, for
administrators and for staff on the plantations migrant workers were also identified
by their recruiter, and another usage of manamba came to designate the recruits of
a particular labour agent. For instance, ‘manamba ya Senga’, meaning the
manamba of Sanger,24 one of the most famous recruiters in Kigoma. Government
officials, plantation managers/owners, and recruiting agents referred to a group of
attested recruited labour with one contract as a ‘batch’, a ‘gang’ and a ‘safari’.
Safari – literally meaning travel – was in reference to a group of travelling
migrant workers who arrived together and who would be repatriated to their
home areas together. District officers also used the term ‘imported’ labour to dis-
tinguish migrant from local workers (Tanga District Annual Report 1927).
When in 1952 Michael embarked on the trip from Burundi to Tanga 170,568 other
‘natives’ were on the road moving to places of employment and 112,310 others
were returning from employment areas, giving a total of 282,87825 natives who
passed through government labour camps on major routes of travel (Tanganyika
Annual Labour Department Reports 1940 –65). However, not all of them, or actu-
ally the majority of them, were non-recruited labour. The latter fell under the
category of ‘voluntary’ or ‘non-contract’ labour. When he signed his contract,
Michael also was one among 11,372 natives from Belgian Congo (twenty per
cent of total) who went to Tanganyika seeking work, of a total of 57,884 non-
Tanganyika labourers coming from Northern Rhodesia, Portuguese East Africa
and Nyasaland. That same year as well, the sisal industry employed a total of
114,190 workers (twenty-five per cent of total wage employed in Tanganyika),
of whom only twenty per cent (21,937) were recruited workers on contract, the
rest were ‘non-contract’ labour, of whom sixty-six per cent were local (including
alien natives) and fourteen per cent voluntary. In addition to the male workers on
the plantations, there were 23,485 listed as dependents, which were also engaged
in some form of work on the estates (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department
Reports 1940 –65; TSGA Annual Reports 1942 –65).
To place these figures historically, the 1950s represent the peak of labour in sisal, as
well as the maximum reached in the numbers of recruited workers. Thus, ironically
known as numbers, the numbers of manamba on the plantations even during their
prime years betrays the label. With regard to proportion of workers on sisal estates,
recruited workers on contract reached the maximum of twenty-six per cent of the
total sisal labour force in 1953, and during most of the 1950s they stabilised
between twenty and twenty-four per cent. Labour Department statistics available
from 1942 onwards indicate an average of fifteen per cent recruited on contract
of total workers on the plantations. The rest was lumped under the category
‘non-contract’ without further distinctions. Conscription for sisal work was
enforced between 1944 and 1946 and conscripts constituted about twelve per
cent of the total work force. Sisal maintained its average share of thirty to thirty-
five per cent of total wage employment during most of its history. The areas of
supply of labour varied. While the Lake Province followed by the Western
Province provided the bulk of recruits prior to the Second World War, during the
post-war era the Southern Highland and the Western Provinces supplied most
recruited labour to sisal, followed by Lake and the Southern Provinces (Tanganyika
Annual Labour Department Reports 1940 –65; TSGA Annual Reports 1942– 65).
Passing the desired bodies: medical tests and tax tickets

Michael recollected:
He [Kabembe] said we were going to work in sisal. We got in his car and only 17 could
fit. We were given money before we left26, which was enough for the trip. We drove in
his motorcar to Bujumbura and from there we got on a boat to Kigoma. There we had
to go through the medical tests and only those said to be fit passed.
Medical testing was enforced as a prerequisite for recruited labour by virtue of

Ordinance No. 24 of 1928. Medically examined workers were divided into five
grades. Grade 1 and 2 designating those fit for heavy work; Grade 3 for light
work; Grade 4 for very light work; and Grade 5 was unfit. According to the direc-
tor of medical services, the criteria of fitness of labourers were ‘good muscular
development, up to standard weight, a haemoglobin level of 80 per cent or
over, and clinical fitness; the presence of a few parasites in men who conform
to the above-stated standard would not be any reason for rejecting them as fit
labourers’ (TNA v14/13066/Vol I).27 Michael remembered:
Before signing [the contract] medical tests had to be completed and those declared
unfit were returned to their home villages. Some of the unfit were given treatment
to qualify for the second round of testing with another gang of manamba. The
testing was mainly measuring of height, weight and some body examination. We
also had to give stool and urine sample and blood. We did not understand what
they said. But there was a certain way of how you looked that qualified you as fit.
You were supposed to look above 16 years28, since children were not allowed as
manamba. You had to have muscles and be tall. That was what counted most.
The procedure of medical examination undertaken by Michael in 1952 resonates

with the description provided by the medical officer in Kigoma in 1928.
The recruits are lined up in order according to the list on the contract form. They are
then brought into my office in pairs, leaving all clothing including caps outside. Each
pair is then examined for specific diseases, and if found free they are then considered
from the point of view of physique. Any who seem to be unable to carry a safari load
on the day of the examination are rejected. Each man is then asked to state his name,
which when found on the list is ticked off as fit or deleted as unfit. If considered
necessary a bacteriological examination is carried out at the time for Sleeping Sick-
ness. (TNA v14/12431/Vol I)
The passing of the 1928 ordinance was motivated by several instances where
recruited labour (primarily from Kigoma) sent to the plantations was ‘unfit’ for
work.29 This triggered uproar among planters who felt cheated of their money’s
worth (fees for recruiting, attestation, advance wages and taxes, transport expenses
and rations along the road).30 Receiving unhealthy or unfit bodies mitigated
against the aims of plantations of limiting the flow of workers to able-bodied
adult men who were strong and not suffering from any endemic diseases, to with-
stand the long trip to the coast, the change in climate and diet. Able-bodied healthy
men were the only ones imagined as capable of completing the task of one ton of
fibre per worker, thus achieving optimal production, reducing medical costs and
decreasing the number of sick-days per worker (TNA 304/25/6/2).
The administration not only had to deal with angry planters, but equally important,
bear the cost of repatriating ‘destitute workers’ who wandered around the planta-
tions (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). Passing unfit workers by government employees
(i.e. the medical and administrative officers) added to the liability bill the govern-
ment had to bear, paying for ‘the cost of repatriation and the refund of commission
fees paid by the estate to the recruiter’ (TNA/v14/13066/Vol I).31
Further, viewing Africans as the vectors of diseases, medical examination allowed
for some degree of control over the spread of diseases that were believed to be
transmitted from one part of the territories to another through the movement of
natives.32 Restricting diseases (especially sleeping sickness and meningitis) to
certain areas were goals constantly subverted by the ‘free’ and ‘unregulated’
movement of voluntary labour. Medical examinations of workers allowed for
selection of the kinds of bodies to move around the territories, hence the additional
value from the perspective of administrators and managers placed on recruited
labour in comparison with voluntary labour. Medical testing was coupled with
screening of populations, imposition of quarantine, and the closure of certain dis-
tricts to population movement (TNA v14/11557 Vols III and IV). Workers who
intended to make the move to the coast however were not inhibited by the array
of restrictions imposed. If certain areas were closed, they walked to other stations
that were open or continued to the coast as voluntary workers. ‘The would-be
recruits after walking the hundred odd miles from their homes to find work
would not walk back again to their homes, they would walk on further if they
were not recruited here’ (TNA v14/11557/Vol III).
Looking at workers through the tribal lens, administrators and managers also
conjured ideas about the kinds of bodies to pass and the different tribes within
the territories, guided in that endeavour by the compilation of information on
the different tribes. For instance, in 1928 the Waha from Kigoma were said to
be ‘not renowned for their physical powers. The people . . . have had little
contact with the outer world in the past, they do not travel or at least they did
not travel (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). Such images about the Waha continued
into the late 1930s.33 Yet within a decade, with the increased demand for
labour and the reliance on the Western Province as a major area of supply, the
Waha became the source of valued labour, a quality they retain until the present.
Testing was also envisioned as tightening the grip of the administration over the
operation of recruiters, screening out (through permits, fees, and proof of sound
financial standing) undesirable labour agents or touts, who ‘scramble to seize

every able bodied native’ (TNA v14/25516). Medical testing also constituted
an additional means through which control over African taxpayers can be
exerted and legitimised. Only those with valid tax tickets could be medically
examined for recruiting. In sum, medical testing and attestation of workers was
a means of facilitating the functions of the state in rendering society ‘manageable’
and ‘legible’ (Scott 1998:2).
However, testing had its limitations. ‘If every batch of recruits were submitted to
full exhaustive exam and all with potential or actual disease excluded until cured,
the employers of labour would have very few labour left on their estates’ (TNA
v14/13066/Vol I). Recruiters always found ways of subverting the system and
getting as many bodies as they could through to the plantations. Substituting
workers, using false names, or asking would-be-recruits who did not look fitting
the criteria to join a safari after examination was completed,34 were not uncommon
practices. One recruiter even went further threatening the medical officer that ‘a
strict medical examination frightened labour away. And if too close an examination
was made he would stop sending his men altogether’ (TNA v14/12431/Vol I).
What brought the question of medical examination and the resultant recruiting of
the ‘wrong stamp of native’ (PRO CO/691/167/42191/9) to full administrative
and international attention (the PMC and the Labour Group in Geneva) were a
‘large number of deaths . . . reported to have taken place among employees on
sisal estates on the Central Line’ in 1937. This was followed by a number of
‘native labourers being repatriated to their homes in a terrible state of health’
and suffering from ‘extreme debility and neglect’ (ibid.).
A series of strikes followed one after the other on several sisal plantations, which
‘have been usually due to breach of contract on the part of the employer due to
feeding and tasks’ (TNA v14/11168/Vol I). The explanations and justifications
for the ‘incidences’ generally oscillated between the poor supervision and
control over recruiting and the laxity of controls on the plantations over the
feeding, medical care, sanitary conditions and movement of workers. The
former was blamed on pressures exerted on medical officers ‘who hurry over
their inspections to meet impatient recruiters’ (ibid.). This hurried inspection
was exacerbated, especially during the late 1930s, with the surge in labour
demand for sisal plantations after the effects of the Depression withered away.
Given this increased demand, new areas and tribes were tapped by recruiters.
‘It appears that peripatetic labour from the Belgian Mandated Territories of
Ruanda and Urundi had this year for the first time been contracted in considerable
numbers in the Western Province for work in the sisal areas . . . They were,
however, unable to adapt themselves to the low altitude of the Eastern Province
or to maintain working health on the diet locally available’ (ibid.). The ‘unsophis-
ticated native’ who viewed ‘all medical attention with profound distrust and in
some cases they would, when ill, retire to the bush rather than report sick’
(ibid.) served as the second excuse. The ‘Asiatic sub-assistant surgeons whose
conception of their duties is apt to be purely formal and lacking in imagination’
(ibid.) added to the state of affairs. Since these incidences also coincided territo-
rially and internationally with shifts in how the labour question was posed, the role
of the industry and employers in controlling and educating their labour was para-
mount. More checks with regard to the feeding of workers, fining them if sanitary
conditions were not followed, fencing off the labour camps, appointing of askaris
in the camps to oversee workers, daily checking on the whereabouts of each
worker, immediate reporting of deserters, and generally ‘keeping in closer
touch with the labour’ (ibid.), were recommendations made to the industry to
avert similar incidences in the future.
But hurried inspectors and unscrupulous recruiters were not the only limitations of
medical testing. Workers who wanted to move to a place of work found their way
around medical examinations. The Tabora labour officer observed in 1940 ‘I am
not certain men struck off the lists by the Medical Officer are not included in list of
dependents etc. on the following contract, or perhaps given an ordinary railway
ticket to enable them accompany their party’ (TNA v14/11557/Vol V). And
Michael witnessed ‘some of us were qualified unfit, but they really wanted to
come. They used to agree with others who were tested as fit to declare them as
dependents, so that they could cross and arrive at the place of work.’
Beside medical exams the administration (under pressure from powerful sisal
interests) instituted in 1937 (Government Notice No. 31) valid tax tickets as a pre-
requisite for recruited labour on a contract. Non-Tanganyika workers were to
present in addition to tax receipts, an identification certificate, also referred to
as the identification book (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV). The aim, much like
medical testing, was to allow only ‘desired’ bodies to move around the Territories
between districts and provinces. ‘Cleansing’ the labour market of potential dis-
eases and disease carriers was an undisputed aim for administrators and managers.
Tax tickets were also a venue for controlling the spread of diseases. For instance,
in sleeping sickness areas, natives who were vaccinated got marks on their tickets.
Those who lacked such ‘marks’ were considered ‘carriers’ of the disease and
hence not allowed to cross the boundaries of ‘infected areas’ (TNA v14/
11557/Vol IV).
Additionally, tax tickets were a means of identifying natives, tracing their
movement and assuring that taxes were paid in the ‘home areas’ before adult
males migrated. For provincial administrators ensuring a steady flow of revenue
(which primarily came from African hut and poll tax) was a priority in demonstrat-
ing ‘development’ within their areas of administration. Linking recruiting to the
holding of a valid tax ticket also allowed for controlling the number of men
leaving certain districts. District and provincial administrators were worried
about ‘depopulation’ and not having enough able-bodied men for the planting
season (TNA/v14/11557/Vol III). Further in sleeping sickness areas, the fear
was of less bodies and reduced vegetation, and hence increased spread of the
disease (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV). Through tax tickets workers were also
traced for purposes of remitting wages to home areas, identifying deserters or
those who committed legal offences.
But much like medical tests that could be evaded, tax ticket identification had its
flaws. ‘Tax tickets were borrowed and paratas were loaned so that it was frankly
impossible to say with accuracy whether a-would-be recruit had a tax ticket or
not, or in other words it was practically impossible to identify him by means of a
tax ticket’ (TNA/v14/11557/Vol III). Though initially applauding the restrictions,
within a year employers of labour resented the imposition, since it slowed down
the flow of labour, both recruited and voluntary. Since sisal estates had been
involved in the collection of taxes from ‘alien natives’ living on their estates,
hence allowing for the remittance of revenue to districts from which labour
came, they were ‘unable to understand why restriction should be placed on
natives who have failed to pay their tax in home district with consequence that
free flow of labor is impeded’ (TNA v14/11557/ Vol IV).35 Government officials
also came to realise the limitations of the tax tickets. The reasons included: ‘(a) it is
by no means infallible and encourages traffic in tax tickets between natives desiring
employment; (b) it associates the payment of tax with eligibility for recruitment
both in the mind of the native and, strange to say, in the mind of the DO [district
officer]; and consequently (c) it irritates employers and recruiters because they
cannot or will not understand the real object’ (TNA v14/11557/Vol IV).
The main culprit for ‘traffic in tax tickets’ and the defying of medical regulations
was the category of voluntary labour. While Michael came from Burundi as a
recruited worker on a three-years contract, Dunia, from Ufipa in the Southern High-
land Province came to pwani, meaning the coast in 1947, as a voluntary worker.
Dunia was born during the First World War. He worked in Ufipa as askari nzige
[watchman on locust control scheme]. The money he made was not enough to
meet his needs and those of his family of a wife and three children. He started think-
ing of ways to earn more money. Some of his relatives from the village had already
gone to Amboni in Tanga as manamba to work on sisal plantations.
There were other options for work when I decided on sisal, but the nauli [wages,
money you earn] and huduma [services] on the estates were better than other kinds
of work, like in coffee, cashewnut, tea or kapok. I did not want to work in coffee
because it does not pay and we did not know it and its conditions. We only knew
of sisal and its conditions. Wenzangu [my people, relatives] had gone to Amboni
and they wrote to us about their life on the estates [mashambani].
With the resolution to seek work in sisal, particularly on Amboni Estate where his
relatives were, Dunia started saving up money for the trip. Some time later:
I took a car from Ufipa to Mbeya costing me 30/¼.36 I waited for a week in Mbeya,
because the train had already left and the next one was in a week. From Mbeya I took
the rail to Korogwe. In Korogwe I waited for 2 days and then got on a bus to Tanga,
which was 3/¼. I knew that I was going to Amboni, and I asked people around and
they showed me the way. I arrived at shamba la Amboni and looked for wenzangu [my
relatives] who are Wafipa as well. I slept with them that night in the camp and in the
morning I went to the office and registered myself as a cutter and started to work there.
My kipande was for a year. But I stayed at Amboni for three years after that.
As I mentioned above, migrant workers who made the trip from their home areas
to the plantations on their own, constituted the bulk of the sisal labour force.
Voluntary labour became more prominent as a form of engagement with the
expansion in social knowledge about the sisal industry. This became possible
through the movement of workers back and forth to plantations, the sharing of
knowledge between old and newcomers about which plantations were good and
which were to be avoided, and the social networks that linked plantations on
the coast to villages geographically distanced by thousands of miles. The social
space between villages and plantations collapsed in movement, shared knowledge,
and social networks. Physical distance became socially compressed. Even for
recruited labour, this expanded horizon of knowledge had its implications. ‘In
actual practice the large majority of natives, who engage on a contract, have a
very fair knowledge, through village gossip, of the conditions on the estates for
which they volunteer, and recruiters find it easy to obtain labour for some
estates and difficult for others’ (TNA v14/13948 Vol I).
This knowledge and shared social space enabled workers to construct their own
ideals of manamba: free to choose employer, free to move around the country
and around estates in search of the optimal conditions of work. This ‘freedom’
constituted one of the main pillars upon which sisal workers based their power
in their encounter and negotiations with colonial administrators and estate
managers. These two latter groups recognised the power of workers that came
with such knowledge. It was not uncommon for administrators to acknowledge
the ability of workers to ‘nullify all our efforts at a system of control’ (TNA
v14/11557 Vol IV).
For administrators, voluntary workers, their movement and their settling in plan-
tation areas, were a major threat. And various schemes were tried to tighten the
control over such movement, especially within plantation areas. As Michael
recalled: ‘If you walked around you had to carry your cheti [identification card,
permit] showing that you are working on a particular estate and that you have
paid your taxes. If you don’t have it with you, you can be locked up.’ And
hence, recruited labour remained for the colonial administrators the optimal
‘form of control over labor movement’ (TNA v14/11557/Vol III). It enabled
the administration to deal with the labour question in ways that were ‘manageable’
(Scott 1998).
For plantation managers, the contract number of a gang became one of the markers
of the gang’s identity in as far as a ‘lot’ of workers with a ‘theoretical’ life span on
the plantation. The marking by number was thus also a time-marking, its defining
feature being the length of the contract. The time-marking was important for estate
managers to replenish their requirements of labour, since upon completion of a
contract, the estate was legally bound to repatriate recruits to their home areas.
Yet, in many instances, recruits decided to sign on as ‘voluntary’ labour after
the completion of their contracts. Still in terms of each plantation economics,
prior to the termination of each gang’s contract another ‘order for workers’ was
placed with recruiting agencies. The aim was to have a regular and guaranteed
flow of labour all year round. In terms of economic and social value, not sheer
numbers, recruited workers constituted the ‘core’ of that body of labour. It sym-
bolised for managers the most guarantees (in terms of possibilities of legal prose-
cution), the highest degree of control (in ordering a calculated number of bodies
for a targeted production over a specified time, in enforcing tasks, and tracing
people), and the maximum uniformity and regularity. Like managers, the contract
time-marking was important to colonial administrators, who looked at workers
with completed labour cards as ‘time-expired men’, whose presence was a
nuisance as ‘detribalized’ or ‘alien natives’ in the plantation areas.
For workers, on the other hand, the time-marking had a different meaning. It
signified a transformation in the social status of a worker and his/her acceptance
as full member within the collective. Manamba was reserved for newcomers to the
estate, who were also referred to as wageni (strangers, guests). Once a worker
completed his/her labour cards (vipande) they were transferred to the status of
wenyeji (natives of a place, inhabitants, hosts in relation to guests, or wageni).37
Once this transformation took place, workers became recognised by their
fellows as knowledgeable persons who can transmit their acquired knowledge
onto others; they became full members within the ‘community of practice’
(Lave 1991:29) on the estate.
When you are still a mgeni you follow your wenyeji all day. They will teach you all
you need to know about work. They will tell you about the estate and its different parts
and names, the fields and their numbers. They will teach you language. The wenyeji
take care of the newcomers and teach them how to work and live on the estate.
(Francis, sisal cutter, August 1996)
Manamba for workers thus was a social process of learning whose entry was
marked by the signing of the collective contract and its end by the completion
of the contract labour cards. And while manamba for workers was socially
defined blurring the lines between recruited and voluntary labour, the delineation
between the two was significant for managers and administrators. On the basis of
the demarcation different measures of control were envisioned and exercised.
For estate managers, estate economics (output and productivity per worker)
rendered also recruited labour the least problematic compared to other forms of
labour.38 For most managers and administrators the ‘labour question’ was
summed up as one of ‘high turnover, desertion, absenteeism, long and costly jour-
neys and low output’ (TNA v14/30011). With that general outlook on labour,
managers – like administrators – believed that contracted recruited labour was

more susceptible to control, was ‘cost-effective’ in terms of training and output
over a specified period of time, easier to conform to a regimented work routine,
and disposed to hard work and submission to authority (TNA v14/13948 Vol I).
However, managers and administrators also recognised the benefits that accrued from
other types of labour (voluntary and local) and its constant movement: a regular flow
of experienced and willing men at lower costs, as well as a pool of labour to sup-
plement the core of recruited workers. Managers were caught between the contradic-
tions embedded within their own interests: having a stable permanent labour force yet
enjoying the gains from a free flow of labour. Additionally, labour movement,
especially of voluntary workers, and the knowledge that expanded with it, was
considered one of the best means of advertisements for increasing wage employment,
one of the parameters of ‘development’ within the Territories.
Yet, these labour categories had also their backlashes, namely desertions and
absenteeism. Under written forms of contracts, desertion was illegal. Recruited
labour appeared as the most vulnerable to the legal machinery designed to
tighten the controls over workers. However, despite all controls, desertions and
absenteeism remained high to the lament of administrators and managers, not
only of sisal, but also of the various agricultural enterprises in the territory.
Higher wages and claims to better working and living conditions were good
enough reasons to entice labour to move. Deploring the ‘inability to handle deser-
tions’, an estate manager wrote in 1946 ‘all our efforts to stabilize and rationalize
labour to the benefit of both employer and labour . . . are about to break down and
degenerate into a wage war between the various agricultural industries’ (TNA
v14/12431/Vol II).
Desertions and absenteeism at the same time resulted in cleavages between admin-
istrators and managers. The former were eager to prosecute for either offence and
blamed managers for their reluctance to keep a close watch on the whereabouts of
the workers on the estate or to file cases in court (TNA 4/729/1). For instance, in
1953 there were 1,276 cases of reported desertions, with only 279 cases brought to
the courts (Tanganyika Annual Labour Report 1953). Additionally, labour officers
contended that ‘the pernicious system of weekly advances . . . is to a very large
degree responsible’ for absenteeism (TNA 4/962/9). Some officers went as far
as deploring conditions on the estates, which forced workers to absent themselves
in order to increase their income and food resources (ibid.). Much like desertion,
recruited attested labour was the least inclined to regular absenteeism,39 and hence
most valued for its regularity.
Yet, for the same reasons that administrators and managers preferred attested con-
tract labour, workers detested it as ‘oppressive’ (TNA 4/962/9).40 But for many,
this was a ‘timed’ phase, bound to terminate with the end of the contract, when
workers socially passed into full members of a ‘community of practice’. Many
of the workers who started their engagement in sisal as attested recruited
labour, decided to reengage, after completion of their initial contract, as voluntary

labour. Others decided to settle in neighbouring villages, acquired land to farm,
married within Tanga communities, and continued working as local labour on
the plantations.
For many workers, manamba was thus more than just a number on a contract.
It was a socially ‘marked time’, that translated into multi-layered notions of
freedom which allowed workers to construct and reproduce their life and work
on the plantations as a ‘way of life’ (Francis, sisal cutter, June 1996). Constructed
as such, many workers were able to negotiate the harsh conditions under which
they worked and lived on the plantations. Although the technologies of govern-
ance of the colonial state had permeated their everyday lives, it was also precisely
there that they confronted the machinery of the state, rendering its limitations
visible, and its coercive power and abuses explicit.
Notes
1. The Mandate clauses (Article 5, sections 3–4) made explicit reference to labour, prohibiting
‘all forms of forced and compulsory labour, except for essential public works and services
and only in return for adequate remuneration’ (The British Mandate for East Africa, PRO
CO 737/2).
2. With regard to slavery, ‘the Indian penal code, which makes the detention of a person against
his will as a slave a punishable offence, was applied to the Territory in 1920’ (Tanganyika
Territory (henceforth TT) Annual Report 1921). In June 1922 slavery was legally abolished.
The ordinance ‘prohibits the detention of any person against his will in service as a slave or
the recognition by the courts of the status of slavery, and further secures from dispossession
of his property a person who may be alleged to have been a slave’ (TT Annual Report 1922).
3. ‘[N]atives may commute their tax for a period of labour on the roads and on necessary works of
advantage to the community, but compulsory labour in lien of tax has been instituted only spar-
ingly and as a last resource in the case of recalcitrant natives who are suspected of habitually
avoiding their liabilities to the state. In no case is labour substituted for taxation if tax is forth-
coming in cash, or produce, or live-stock’ (TT Annual Report 1921).
4. Labour to the chiefs was also rationalised as ‘feudal due’. ‘It is in a way incorrect to regard
labour for the benefit of a chief as forced labour. It is really in the nature of a feudal due or
service’ (PRO CO/822/17/7/25263). If not for the chief per se, labour was deemed necessary
for village public works. People called upon for native or public works were limited to men
above the age of eighteen, their numbers being proportionate to the density of population in
a given area.
5. By the 1950s the rhetoric of decolonisation shaped the debate and manner of reporting on forced
labour. ‘As all officers are fully aware, “imperialism”, or as it is now the fashion to call it, “colo-
nialism”, is under constant and often hostile criticism, not only from the propaganda machines
of the Soviet Union and her satellites, but from India, some of the South American nations, and
(though to a decreasing extent) from the United States. The admission by Colonial powers that
they employ thousands of men-days of “forced labour” each year can easily be exaggerated by
hostile propaganda . . . It is therefore important that the numbers of those returned as being
required to do forced or compulsory labour should not be over-stated’ (TNA 304/L1/28).
6. Except for conscription during the Second World War, the administration – both German and
British – did not get involved in direct recruiting for private enterprise, though their support
for the plantation sector never ceased. The central administration in Dar es Salaam regularly
issued circulars urging district officers to support calls for labour by plantations; officers in
turn summoned local chiefs to accomplish the same task. Individual private recruiters (mostly
Greek, but also Indians and Germans) or trusted employees on the estates (especially
headmen) would travel to ‘recruiting areas’ and along the borders to enlist workers,
earning the title of ‘the scramble to seize every able-bodied native’ (TNA v14/25516).
Though the colonial state was not directly involved in recruiting, it was immensely implicated
in regulating the movement of Africans, the length and conditions of contracts, labour recrui-
ters, as well as the provision of necessary infrastructure for Africans on the move to and from
places of work.
7. The ordinance specified: ‘No written contract of service shall be enforced as against any servant
who is unable to read and understand writing unless it bears an attestation or certificate by a
magistrate or administrative officer to the effect that he read over and explained the contract
to the servant and that he is liable to criminal prosecution for breach of the contract and that
the servant voluntarily assented to the contract with full understanding of its meaning.’
8. Servant was limited to native, the latter meaning ‘a member of an African race and includes a
Swahili or Somali’. Servant meant ‘any native employed for hire, wages, or other remunera-
tion’, with a host of possible forms of work listed ranging from labourer, to herdsmen, clerk,
sailor, messenger, porter and domestic servant.
9. Offences committed by servants were divided into minor and major breaches. The former
included failure to commence service, absenteeism from work, neglect of duty, use of property
belonging to employer, use of abusive or insulting language to his employer/supervisor, giving
false names or addresses, and refusing to obey command. Major offences included damaging
the property of employers and desertion, i.e. quitting service without good reason and before
working off or paying back advances obtained from an employer. Offences by employers
were failure to pay wages, return property of servant or provide services as stipulated in the
ordinance.
10. For comparative instances within British Africa see Cooper 1996:44 –5.
11. Kipande means labour card and started as a system regulating labour at the turn of the century in
the Usambara. Within a short space of time it spread around sisal plantations and became the
main marker of its labour relations. Kipande was premised on combining time and task in
setting the parameters of work, pay, and the length of the working day. The system looked
like this: ‘[T]he employer supplies the employee with a card showing the man’s name, rate
of pay, nature of work, etc., etc., and 30 blank spaces for days worked; as the employee
completes his daily task, a space is filled in and when all the spaces are filled, the wages due
are paid’ (TNA v14/13066/Vol II).
12. Recruited labour for employers meant ‘security that the men provided will remain for a reason-
able time to work’ (PRO CO/691/99/29125).
13. Private recruiters were also a major source of disturbance to the administration in terms of their
competition for working bodies, the means used to capture labour to work on the estates, alle-
gations of fraud, and dubious alliances with chiefs to supply workers. The law empowered
administrative officers to issue permits for recruiters after examining their financial standing
and professional reputation. The governor was empowered to limit recruiting in certain
areas, impose regulations as to feeding, advances and transport of recruited labour, and
‘impose such conditions upon labour agents and the recruitment of natives as servants as he
may consider proper for the protection of natives’. Crimping of labour (also known as ‘poach-
ing’) was declared a criminal offence.
14. The French, similar to the British, were alarmed about the international community meddling in
national territorial matters (Cooper 1996:30).
15. ‘A contract made under this Ordinance shall not be required to be in writing, but the employer
shall give to the servant a memorandum thereof (herein called a labour card).’ The latter had
to specify: 1) name, address and signature of employer; 2) name of servant, his father, his
headman and district; 3) nature of employment; 4) number of working days; 5) daily wage
rate; 6) a notification of each day upon which a day’s work is performed by the servant under
the contract.’
16. It is worth noting that this legislation was passed at a time when the labour situation was
described as ‘the worst in the history of the local sisal industry’ (Tanga District Annual
Report, 1925). Reasons for such a state of affairs included competition from the Lupa gold-
fields, railway construction, rubber tapping, cotton production by natives in Tabora and
Mwanza, and restrictions on recruiting in some districts due to the spread of sleeping sickness.
17. The law also allowed for double the time entered as length of the kipande. Recruited workers
were also engaged on kipande, whereby the length of the contract was computed on the basis of
‘so many labour cards of so many working days each to be completed within a specified period
of days or calendar months’ (TNA/13066/Vol II).
18. In his 1936 report on labour conditions on sisal estates, Mr Longland argued that the 1923 law ‘has
broken down’ (TNA H3/23544). Administrative officers in 1937 were instructed to ‘refrain from
taking drastic action in matters involving interpretation of the law as it now stands’ (TNA v14/
13066/Vol II). The labour officer in Tanga complained, ‘we do not in this Territory need very
elaborate legislation to deal with [labour] matters. We require simplicity and briefness combined
with usefulness and an ordinance which is easily workable’ (TNA v14/25475).
19. The unit of time was also intimately related to payment of wages: wages were computed on the
basis of daily tasks. However except for casual labour, wages were not set on daily basis. ‘“[I]n
practice a contract is made for a monthly, not a daily, wage and the amount of the monthly wage
cannot conveniently be sub-divided so as to be expressed as a daily wage. Moreover, some
labour work upon a combination of piece and time work, a day’s work being marked on
the card when a given task is performed, the labourer being free to take more or less than
the time of a normal working day to perform it’ (PRO CO/691/99/29125).
20. Tanganyika presented a similar case to Lourenço Marques where categories of labour, like
manamba and indigenato, mixed race and class relationships (Penvenne 1995:5).
21. Other reasons might have included the use of forced labour for public works practiced in the
Belgian Congo and the labour conditions on the Belgian mines, which rendered Tanganyika
attractive (TNA v14/11557 Vol III).
22. Zakaria, a Mhutu from Burundi recounts a similar experience to Michael. He used to work as a
cook at a French mission station in Burundi. ‘I stopped that work because God had written that
down for me. I thought I would get more money by coming here.’ He added that the group with
whom he left home consisted of more than eighty people and only a few could get on the car of
the same recruiter, Kabembe, who also arranged for Michael’s trip to Tanga. Zakaria added
‘Kabembe is German and he was the recruiting man in Burundi. He worked under Sanger
the other recruiting man in Kigoma. Kabembe stayed in Burundi and he used to send
manamba to Tanganyika from Rwanda, Congo and Burundi. This was his work, to get
people to work on contract in Tanganyika. Kabembe met me near my home and told me
about the work in Tanganyika. His car was small and we crossed the border to Tanganyika
with him, then we took the train to Kigoma.’
23. Another version of the derivation of the term manamba is many or innumerable due to the high
number of workers who were involved in sisal work, many of whom were recruited from distant
areas.
24. Sago explains that Sanger started large-scale recruiting of labour in Kigoma in 1927. ‘This
[Sanger] became a household name in Kasulu district, most long distance migrants having
passed through the hands of Sanger’s agents. “Manamba ya Senga” is a phrase which survived
and attested to the dominance of this individual in labour recruitment’ (1983:68). For similar
stories of recruitment and movement to the coast see Giblin 2005.
25. To put this figure in some context, that year there were 443,597 people in regular wage employ-
ment. Since 1926 the Labour Department compiled statistics of workers passing through gov-
ernment labour camps, which were built along major travelling routes to areas of employment.
It should be noted however that more labourers made it to employment areas without passing
through the government labour camps.
26. Government Notice No. 39 of 1928 regulated the amount of advances paid to workers before
embarking on the trip to the coast. It set the maximum at half the amount of monthly wage
payable to the worker. At the same time, taxes due in home districts were also payable by
the recruiter and deducted from wages on the plantations (PRO CO/691/99/29125).
27. Medical officers stationed in recruitment areas argued the ‘only criteria for fitness lie in the
clinical assessment and rejection of obviously unfit and borderline cases’ (TNA v14/13066/
Vol I).
28. The 1923 law defined child as less than sixteen years and children were prohibited from wage
employment. By 1930 the Labour Committee recommended the reduction of age of child to
twelve years and the addition of the category ‘young person’ (ages twelve to sixteen) who
were eligible for wage employment (TNA v14/18679/Vol II).
29. Some of the workers died on the road, while others died upon arrival. There were two cases of
lepers, and some were found in a destitute condition roaming the villages and the bush around
the plantation (TNA v14/12431/Vol I). These cases brought to light the complacency of some
recruiters in substituting workers after they were medically tested and the length to which
workers would go to make their trip to the plantations, if they were declared unfit. Lack of
proper medical examination, the conditions of the trip, and workers ‘gambling away their
posho money or even posho itself’ were further factors. Hence the beginnings of the calls for
the institution of identification cards for travelling natives (ibid.).
30. Administrators and managers thought of recruited labour as property, and hence the loss to
employers when batches of recruited labour were ‘damaged’. The labour commissioner
wrote: ‘In the case of this particular property, the unfortunate employer has now, in all, had
some sixty men sent to him who have proved unfit for work; on these he has paid recruiting
fees, registration fees, the medical officer’s private emolument for inspecting the recruits and
in addition, the rail fare from Kigoma’ (TNA v14/12431/Vol I).
31. Failures at medical examination in recruitment areas increased government costs by adding
medical examination and treatment at government labour camps (TNA v14/13066/Vol I).
32. By 1930 compiling demographic statistics became an administrative urgency. ‘[W]ork was
urgently needed on such questions as the spread of disease from infected areas of employment
to uninfected areas of recruitment; the physical effects of the introduction of the wage-earning
habit on tribes previously unaccustomed to it; the alteration in the diet of the native owing to
his experience on the plantations and the physical result of this; the effect on the fertility of
a tribe of the absence of a portion of its male members at work at a distance’ (TNA v14/
18679 Vol II).
33. The Chief Inspector of Labour wondered in 1939: ‘Why do sisal planters continue to get
Kigoma labor. It is notoriously inefficient and there are other sources of supply in Tanganyika’
(TNA v14/13066/Vol I). Qualities of workers by tribe were not limited to physique. Attitudes
toward recruiting and recruiters were believed to differ. ‘The Irangi will not have anything to
do with the professional recruiter; others like the Angoni, utilise his services reluctantly;
others again, such as the Haa depend almost entirely on contracts for finding work’ (TNA
v14/12215).
34. A worker testifying before the labour officer said: ‘When I was contracted at Singida by Mr.
Kikkides, the recruiter, he told me not to go before the Medical Officer with the other
natives. I did not go for a medical examination, nor did I go before the District Officer.
When the labourers returned from the Boma [district headquarters], I was told to accompany
them on the journey to Kilosa. I have a deformed ankle which is the result of a fall when I
was a child. I cannot walk properly’ (TNA v14/13066/Vol I).
35. Government Notice No. 33 of 1937 allowed Africans to pay taxes in districts other than their
own.
36. 30/¼ in the 1944 were equal to a monthly wage of a semi-skilled worker in the Southern High-
lands and double that of an unskilled worker. The former ranged from between 15 and 30/¼;
the latter between 8 and 15/¼ (Tanganyika Annual Labour Department Report 1944).
37. Administrators implicitly reproduced this social ‘time-marking’ of the workers in the practice
of tax collection from alien native workers on the estates. For the first two years, which is the
legal length of manamba contract of Tanganyika labour, workers were to pay taxes at their
home district rates. After that tax payments by alien natives followed local rates (TNA H3/
41957).
38. Labour recruiters on their part and for their own interests pushed the benefits of recruited
attested labour. One recruiter wrote in 1933 ‘The advantages of contracted labourers over
casual labourers are too obvious to need mentioning, but it may be remarked that with
contract labour, the employee has a) a fixed known quantity of labour on which to draw,
always available for any kind of work required; b) risk of desertion is lessened, owing to
their homes being far away; c) no need to increase wages to induce good boys to remain;
and the advantage of the practical impossibility of boys refusing work or going on strikes’
(TNA v14/11020).
39. For instance in 1938 the rate of absenteeism in Tanga Province sisal estates was sixteen per cent
for attested labour and forty-two per cent for non-contract voluntary labour (TNA 4/962/9).
40. ‘There is not the slightest doubt that the contract labourer is often obliged to work under
conditions which the non-contractor will refuse to accept’ (TNA v14/13948 Vol I).
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Competitive Labour: Divisions

between Zambian and Zimbabwean
Workers1
Andrea L. Arrington
Department of History, University of Arkansas
By the late nineteenth century, Victoria Falls was a popular travel destination for Europeans, South
Africans, and Americans who hoped to find adventure amidst what they deemed a wild physical and
cultural landscape. Although a tourism industry was first established on the northern side of the
Zambezi (Zambia), the southern side of the Falls (Zimbabwe) quickly joined in commercial develop-
ment. Victoria Falls is now one of the most visited sites in Africa, and labour patterns around this site
continue to be strongly influenced by developments in the tourism industry. Because the waterfalls
served as a natural border between Northern and Southern Rhodesia, the colonial policies and
development strategies on either side led to different commercial activities. The imbalanced
nature of the development of tourism at this border continues to affect the working lives of local
populations today. The Zimbabwean side of the border dominated the tourist market for decades,
and Zambians living just across the Zambezi often crossed into Zimbabwe hoping to find employment
or customers for their goods. Over the past eight years though, that trend has reversed, and
Zimbabweans living in the border town of Victoria Falls Town are flooding Zambia’s tourist town
of Livingstone. The recent economic, political, and social upheavals in Zimbabwe are forcing
Africans in this area to search for employment, stability, and resources on the Zambian side of
the border. In this article, I focus on the rather strong tensions between Zimbabweans and Zambians
and men and women who are trying to earn money around the Falls, specifically in Victoria Falls
Town, Zimbabwe and Livingstone, Zambia. I am particularly focused on those who earn money
by working in what some scholars identify as the ‘informal sector’, or less commonly as the
‘semi-formal sector’. It is clear that gender and nationality are playing an increasing role in the
competition among workers, and that the intensity of such tensions are reaching a boiling point.
In the tense political landscape of the region, the contemporary divisions between (and among)
Zimbabweans and Zambians serve as a reminder that the problems in Zimbabwe are quite clearly
not contained within that country’s borders. This analysis also contributes to a growing literature
on Zimbabwean migrants living and working outside of Zimbabwe. Most studies on the Zimbabwean
Diaspora focus on the activities of Zimbabweans in South Africa, which is host to the largest number
of migrants, and Britain, where a strong network of Zimbabweans exists. No studies dealing expli-
citly with Zimbabweans in Zambia are available, yet this is an increasingly popular destination
of Zimbabweans forced to flee their country but without the means to travel abroad or too afraid
to go to South Africa. This article adds another dimension to the growing attention on Zimbabwe’s
economic refugees.
Key words: colonialism, gender, HIV/AIDS, informal sector, Livingstone, masculinity, migrant
labour, tourism, transnational, Victoria Falls Town, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean Diaspora,
xenophobia

DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827589
Victoria Falls is one of Africa’s most recognisable tourist destinations. For over
100 years, people from all over the world have flocked to the waterfalls, and
most come with hopes for an ‘African adventure’.2 The Falls serve as a natural
border between modern Zimbabwe and Zambia (known in the colonial era as
Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia respectively), so visitors have the
option to get two new stamps in their passports instead of one. Tourists delight
in white water rafting down the Zambezi, not only because it is a fun component
of the adventure tourism offered by the Falls area, but also because they are told by
the raft guides that depending on which side of the river they are positioned, they
may be in Zimbabwe or they might be in Zambia. Likewise, the ever popular
bungee jump on the bridge that links Zimbabwe and Zambia offers tourists
another opportunity to straddle the two countries sharing Victoria Falls as a
border. After the jump is executed, the brave tourist literally swings back and
forth into Zimbabwe and Zambia before being reeled back onto the bridge.
This transnational experience that seems to bring great pleasure to tourists only
speaks to a fraction of the depth of the transnational character of this area. Tourists
from around the world, rafting or swinging between two African countries,
provide an important reference to international or global connections that occur
at tourist sites, but it is hardly the only one. Zimbabweans and Zambians, as
well as a smaller number of people from South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia,
are creating a transnational labour experience by participating in the dynamic
economy around the Falls.3 With these exchanges and migrations, competition
among labourers seems unavoidable. In this article, I focus on the rather strong
tensions between Zimbabweans and Zambians and men and women who are
trying to earn money around the Falls, specifically in Victoria Falls Town,
Zimbabwe and Livingstone, Zambia. I set the study in the context of mounting
tensions developing at the porous border between tumultuous Zimbabwe and a
much calmer Zambia. I am particularly focused on those who earn money by
working in what some scholars identify as the ‘informal sector’, or less commonly
as the ‘semi-formal sector’.4 It is clear that gender and nationality are playing an
increasing role in the competition among workers, and that the intensity of
such tensions are reaching a boiling point. In the tense political landscape of
the region, the contemporary divisions between (and among) Zimbabweans and
Zambians serve as a reminder that the problems in Zimbabwe are quite clearly
not contained within that country’s borders.
This analysis also contributes to a growing literature on Zimbabwean migrants
living and working outside of Zimbabwe. Most studies on the Zimbabwean
Diaspora focus on the activities of Zimbabweans in South Africa, which is host
to the largest number of migrants, and Britain, where a strong network of
Zimbabweans exists. These Zimbabweans are thought to be the one thread
keeping Zimbabwe from total collapse because of their financial contributions
to their families still in the country (Bracking and Sachikonye 2006). Hundreds
of millions of United States dollars are sent back into Zimbabwe each year as
Competitive Labour: Divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean Workers 165
remittances provided by the Zimbabwean Diaspora.5 Migrants are experiencing

varying degrees of alienation and support in their host countries. No studies
dealing explicitly with Zimbabweans in Zambia are available, yet this is an
increasingly popular destination of Zimbabweans forced to flee their country
but without the means to travel abroad or too afraid to go to South Africa.
Background
Since the late 1990s, Zimbabwe has undergone a dramatic transformation from a
relatively dynamic economy and stable society into what many scholars and world
leaders label a basket case and country in crisis. Since independence in 1980,
Robert Mugabe ruled over the country with an increasingly tight fist. By the
late 1990s, Zimbabwe’s economy showed signs of strain, and Mugabe invoked
rhetoric over land rights to gain support from citizens that were weary of his
stale leadership. White farm owners, still in possession of large tracts of arable
land, were targeted by campaigns to reclaim land for Zimbabwe’s ‘sons of the
soil’. Mugabe and his supporters argued that for Zimbabwe to succeed, black citi-
zens must be reinstated to the land. Through legal and violent manoeuvrings,
white farmers were evicted from their farms and the land occupied by either
landless squatters (some proclaiming to be veterans of the independence struggle)
or high-ranking officials and business partners of Mugabe’s cronies. Agriculture
came to a stand still, and an already stagnant economy slid into crisis. The
situation worsened during elections in 2002, 2005 and again in 2008 when
more Zimbabweans voted for opposition candidates. The elections were marked
with violence, harassment, and determined by many foreign observers to be
unfree and unfair.
Instability, and later, chaos, ensued in the 2000s, not just because of the land inva-
sions but because repressed economic tensions finally surfaced and foreign cur-
rency became scarce. One writer explains the state of affairs in 2004:
Just five years earlier the country had been a major exporter, but repression and
misrule had led to the collapse of the agricultural, mining and tourism sectors. As a
result, money sent home by exiles was now the largest source of foreign earnings.
One third of the total population of 13 million had fled the country. (Hill 2005:2)
As more Zimbabweans search for relief in other countries, Zambia is experiencing

a large influx of migrants. The border at Victoria Falls is particularly porous
because of tourism. It is a place of historical transnational exchanges; there is
less security and strictness at the actual border because of tourism traffic and
the tourism industry’s informal sector provides migrants with hope that there is
space for them to earn a living. The shared history of tourism development and
Zambia’s relaxed immigration laws makes this border an ideal crossing point
for desperate Zimbabweans.
Tourism is hardly a new sector of the economy for either of these two countries.
For 100 years, entrepreneurs focused their energy on promoting this part of the
continent as the ‘Real Africa’, a place where romanticised images and stereotypes
about Africa come to life. After David Livingstone’s widely publicised visit to the
Falls in 1855, a wave of explorers and early traders went through the area, to be
followed by a group of entrepreneurs who saw the location, with the Falls as the
piece-de-resistance, as the perfect place to exploit a growing European interest in
leisure and travel. The northern side of the Falls, or Zambia, was the first to
develop a tourism infrastructure, but much to the dismay of those entrepreneurs,
the southern side quickly joined suit and by the 1910s, an intense competition
developed between the two sides, as both vied for the tourism traffic. The diver-
gent paths of tourism development are reflective of the colonial policies and com-
mercial activities that created two very different colonies. The development of
Southern Rhodesia into ‘the Second Rand’ might not have come to fruition, but
the settler colony certainly experienced a different economic and social evolution
than did Northern Rhodesia. Both colonies were first administered by the British
South Africa Company (BSACo), and the policies set by the company and British
Foreign Office sent the two colonies down very different paths of development.6
The result was noticeable to residents and visitors alike. One writer noted in a
1917 magazine publication that, ‘. . . between Northern and Southern Rhodesia
a much greater gulf is fixed than the bed of that river [the Zambezi], for the
south is older, has a greater population of white people, and talks derisively of
the “Black North”.’7 In fact, administrators argued against allowing European
settlement north of the Zambezi,8 leaving the small number of entrepreneurs in
Livingstone vulnerable to unsupportive and restrictive colonial regulations.
White settlement in Southern Rhodesia, on the other hand, was encouraged
even after the disappointment that there was no ‘Second Rand’ to exploit
(Alexander 2006:20– 1).9 The land itself presented ample opportunities for colo-
nial development under the tight control of minority rule. Victoria Falls became a
location of dynamic development and tension as the BSACo offered more flexi-
bility and allowances for Southern Rhodesia’s entrepreneurial efforts to create a
tourist destination. It also became a site where the energy and wealth created
through entrepreneurial efforts in Southern Rhodesia quickly and steadily out-
paced the activities just north of the border.
A newspaper article in 1934 suggested that the project to construct a road from the
Limpopo River to the Zambezi demonstrated ‘that the first shots have been fired in
the battle to attract a valuable tourist traffic to [Southern] Rhodesia . . .’10 This may
have been less of a ‘first shot’ and more of a fatal blow to Northern Rhodesia’s
tourism industry around the Falls. Southern Rhodesia’s administration began
strongly promoting tourism to what they labelled ‘the open air Paradise of the
world’ and ‘Unspoilt Playground of Africa’11 at a time when Northern Rhodesians
felt increasingly less supported by their government in their economic efforts. To
be sure, the town of Livingstone worked hard to promote itself as ‘the Tourist
Centre for the Victoria Falls’,12 a title it was still claiming in the early 1940s,
but the decision of the Southern Rhodesian government to endorse and promote
tourism allowed Victoria Falls Town the support it needed to outshine Living-
stone. The commitment of the colonial state to tourism development was
clearly stated in a memo from the minister of internal affairs, when he wrote to
the prime minister, ‘It appears to me that one of the ways in which prosperity
can surely be brought to this Colony is by a thorough, systematic and courageous
development of the Tourist Traffic’.13 There is no comparable exchange between
officials in Northern Rhodesia, and the differences in development became
increasingly stark between the two tourist destinations until the late 1990s.
It was evident that the involvement of Africans in the development of a tourist
industry was essential to the tourism project, regardless of which side they lived.
African labour made possible the building of roads, hotels, restaurants, and
shops that were necessary to accommodate the growing number of visitors. By
the early twentieth century, African men and women found work in the town of
Livingstone, about ten kilometres from the Falls. Just as Livingstone served, and
continues to serve as the hub of Zambia’s tourism economy, Victoria Falls
Town also quickly developed as an important centre for Zimbabwe’s emerging
tourism market. With the establishment of hotels and restaurants on the Zimbab-
wean side of the Falls, the competition between the two sides was quick to follow.
African labour was utilised to keep the tourist towns running – the hotels, shops,
and restaurants relied on the cheap labour proffered by members of the local popu-
lation. Work in these towns, particularly in Livingstone, was an appealing alterna-
tive for men who would otherwise migrate to mines in Zimbabwe. African women
found a space to generate their own income, and interestingly, their activities were
not criminalised in these towns to the degree that we see in urban areas throughout
southern Africa during this time period. Africans outside of these urban settlements
also accessed the new colonial economy by growing vegetables and fruit desired by
the European residents, and by brewing beer and producing local food for urban
Africans to purchase. African labour was essential to making tourism work, and
the local population met those needs. What scholars would eventually label as
the ‘informal sector’ thrived as the tourism industry in the area grew.14
While Victoria Falls Town flourished, Livingstone languished and Zambians
increasingly crossed over the border to participate in the thriving tourism
economy. Historically speaking, Zambians were much more likely to migrate
into Victoria Falls Town than Zimbabweans crossing into Zambia. The
Zambian migrants earned money as traders, food preparers, temporary construc-
tion workers, and domestic workers. These migrants contributed significantly to
the development of Zimbabwe’s extremely strong tourism economy. Their
flight south of the Zambezi also likely negatively affected the strength of Living-
stone’s economy.
I visited Victoria Falls for the first time as an undergraduate student participating
in a study abroad programme in Zimbabwe in 1999. It became clear that the
area deserves recognition and further examination as an important example of a
transnational economy and the backdrop of a multifaceted, important migrant

experience. It was during this first stint in the field that I realised how competitive
and profound the migrant experiences were for Zimbabweans and Zambians
trying to get a piece of the tourism pie. In addition to nationality, it was
obvious that gender also affected transnational competition and experiences.
In 1999, Zambians crossed into Victoria Falls Town to find work in the informal
sector. This flow of labourers was cushioned in a long history of Zambians moving
south to find work. Starting in the late nineteenth century, the British South Africa
Company pushed into modern day Zambia, where the company hoped to export
‘cheap labour for the mines and factories it had established in South Africa and
Southern Rhodesia [Zimbabwe]’ (Todd and Shaw 1980:411). Although during
this period, most of these migrants found work in mines and commercial farms,
a small but slowly increasing number found themselves in the growing tourist
town of Victoria Falls. Although Livingstone started off as the hot spot for visitors,
by the 1930s, development shifted to Victoria Falls Town, and Zambians moved
across the border to find work there.
These migrants worked alongside Zimbabweans producing and selling curios,
preparing food for fellow informal sector workers, hawking produce and sweets,
and working in hotels and shops and private residences. Some went home every
night to Zambia, while others lived in Chinotemba, the high-density township
outside of Victoria Falls Town. Livingstone essentially became a backwater,
crumbling town that simply could not compete for tourist traffic. By the late twen-
tieth century, it was inconceivable for Zimbabweans to head north into Zambia and
Victoria Falls Town was a popular destination of Zambian workers.
Men against women: Gender-based competition

In 1999, the most obvious source of competition among informal sector workers in
Victoria Falls Town was gender, not nationality. I created the term ‘the informal
sector of the informal sector’ to identify and describe the role of women in this part
of the tourism economy. Women described to me the problems they experienced
because the men insisted that they remain in the background of labour activities.
Here is one example to demonstrate this: Dozens of women sat outside in a cleared
field a few blocks away from the large open air curio market and off the main
roads of town. The women were surrounded by countless wood and stone sculp-
tures, which the women sold, for a minimal profit, to men who would take the
sculptures and sell them in the market or on the street. These men could expect
wildly inflated profits – they reported earning sometimes a hundred times more
than what they paid the women.15
When asked why they did not just go out and sell the items themselves to increase
their profit margins, the women responded that it was not women’s work to go and
do that. When pressed, a few indicated that if they competed with the men for
selling directly to tourists, they would be beaten or have their supply stolen from
them.16 Thus, these women took a backseat to men who dominated the informal
sector. At the time, tourism was still an extremely strong industry in the area,
and market men were enjoying the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded by their
involvement in the informal sector. Women, on the other hand occupied a different,
even less defined and recognised sub-section of the informal sector.17 They sold
unfinished products for low profits, cooked and sold food to the market men, and
sometimes received small pay for polishing and cleaning the crafts. They partici-
pated in the informal sector at what was deemed, in this local context, a lower pos-
ition. In many ways, they were the backbone of the informal sector, but suffered
economically and sometimes physically because of their lower status.
This type of competition is even fiercer in Victoria Falls Town today, where the
tourist traffic is down to a trickle and traders must fight hard to make a sale. In
June 2008, two afternoons spent at the large in-town crafts market revealed the
potential for violence between Zimbabwean men and women battling for sales.
In the main lines of stalls, most sellers are male (probably around ninety to
ninety-five per cent). These stalls are the easiest to identify and access, and
allow for prominent displays of the curios and goods. Curious about the lack of
women, I approached one seller and asked him where the women were. He
laughed and asked why I wanted to know. I persisted, and eventually he guided
me to an unmarked metal structure with a small doorway leading into a narrow
barn-like building. The only light came from the doors at either end, which
revealed dozens of women seated on the floor with their items for sale. As I ven-
tured into the building, the man who took me there got in a heated exchange with
two of the women standing outside the building. He yelled that they needed to
send me back to him to buy his products or he would come and find them later.18
These women sold curios and crafts that were essentially the same as the variety in
the main market. I sat with one woman, Peace,19 for a total of four hours over a
period of two-and-a-half non-consecutive days to observe her economic activities
and discuss the state of her business.20 Peace revealed that market men insisted
that the women occupy a different space. She laughingly explained that the
men suggested the women needed ‘protection’ from the environment, but
pointed out that the dark, dank room was sweltering in the summer and chilly
in the winter, and that the roof leaked during the rains. Peace then suggested
that the women all know it was not for protection but to keep them from competing
with the men. She has seen market women beaten for trying to sell their items
outside the ‘women’s market’, and also recalled a couple of times when she
saw market men physically deter potential customers from entering the
women’s market. The women have often put up signs advertising their space in
the public market, but the men repeatedly tear the signs down.21
As the flow of tourists slows down and the economy continues to deteriorate,
Zimbabwean men and women in Victoria Falls view each other as enemies in
the struggle to survive. The women believe they are at a major disadvantage
being tucked away in an uncomfortable building. During my observation periods,

no tourists came through the women’s market. To be fair, there were not that many
tourists in the entire market, but the few that were there stayed at the men’s stalls.
One of the women next to Peace told me that she is being forced to sell her items to
men for extremely low prices because she has no ‘real’ customers. Peace and one
other woman said they sometimes take their items to the border to sell them to
Zambian market men and women to try to get at least a bit of money for their pro-
ducts that are not selling. The few men I spoke with at the market implied that it
was not fair for women to take away their customers. When I pressed them on why
both were not equally entitled to try to sell their goods, the men had little response.
One said that he had to provide for his whole family and thus needed business
more, though of course women are as responsible for their families’ livelihoods
as men.22
The tensions I first noticed between men and women working in Victoria Falls
Town’s informal sector are much more apparent now. My claim that women
are reduced to the background of the informal sector is further substantiated, as
I observed the ways that women are increasingly positioned as the ‘informal
sector of the informal sector’. They are finding it even more difficult to assert
themselves, and perhaps most importantly, they are finding it nearly impossible
to make any money as they get edged out by their male counterparts.
Good neighbours? Competition between Zambians and

Zimbabweans
Gendered competitions are only one part of the story of competitive labour around
Victoria Falls. In 1999, though Zambians were not welcomed with open arms by
Zimbabweans, they were tolerated as part of the inevitabilities commensurate to
such a strong local economy. One scholar estimates that by the late 1980s,
‘approximately one fifth of the immigrants in Zimbabwe now come from
Zambia which has overtaken South Africa as the major source within Africa’
(Zinyama 1990:760). Obviously these Zambian migrants fanned out throughout
Zimbabwe, but many found work in Victoria Falls Town, where tourism was a
booming economic sector.
On the surface at least, Zambians and Zimbabweans coexisted, probably because
the booming tourism economy was big enough for both groups to benefit. In an
interesting and historic reversal of migration patterns, now Zimbabweans are
flooding into Livingstone in search of work. This is, undoubtedly, unsurprising
to any of us, as we are aware of the mass exodus of Zimbabweans out of their
country and into neighbouring countries. The political, economic, and social
crisis in Zimbabwe is pushing men and women from all over the country
into Livingstone. And Livingstone’s tourism industry is benefiting greatly from
the instability in Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls Town is steadily fading, and foreign
investors are pushing millions of dollars into Livingstone to raise its standards
and amenities. In June this year, I conducted interviews with Zimbabwean and
Zambian informal sector workers in Livingstone to better understand this new
trend in border crossing and labour competition. Gender remains an important
divisive category, but nationality is becoming equally significant in the relation-
ship between the workers from both countries.
This shift in economic activity around Victoria Falls should not be underesti-
mated. Tourism at the Falls brings in highly desired foreign currency, something
Zimbabwe is in dire of need of these days. It seems obvious that with Zimbabwe’s
recent political and economic crisis, tourism would suffer. Eric Neumayer reiter-
ates the relationship between political strife and the success of tourism in devel-
oping countries. He explains that political crises
harm affected countries also indirectly by significantly lowering tourist arrivals . . .

Violent conflict is well known to be detrimental to economic growth in developing
countries . . . and the negative impact on tourism is one of the ways in which
violent conflict harms the economy. (Neumayer 2004:278)
Although Zimbabwe is not experiencing a full-blown civil war, the reports of

politically motivated torture, kidnappings, and killings certainly affect the
decisions of would-be tourists.
Throughout the 1990s, Zimbabwe far outpaced Zambia in terms of international
stay-over arrivals. At that time, Zimbabwe had a well-developed infrastructure
and itinerary to attract tourists not just to the waterfalls, but to other parts of the
country as well. Zambia, on the other hand, had a less developed tourism industry
that was not comprehensive enough to lure a large number of tourists. According
to one survey, Zimbabwe had 664,000 international visitors compared to a mere
171,000 in Zambia (Weaver and Elliott 1996:209). By the beginning of the
2000s though, Zambia saw an upswing in tourism traffic and Zimbabwe’s hold
on the market began to falter. The increase in tourist numbers into Zambia,
coupled with Victoria Falls Town’s declining hotel occupancy rates demonstrate
the negative impact of political conflict on Zimbabwe’s tourism industry and the
boost that it gave Zambia.23 As the situation deteriorated in Zimbabwe, tourist
arrivals continued to decline.
The slow death of Zimbabwe’s tourism industry has meant the rebirth of
Zambia’s, and the Zambian government and people are well aware of what the
crisis in Zimbabwe means for their country. One Zambian interviewed by a jour-
nalist said, ‘Tourists who were supposed to go to Zimbabwe would now rather
come to Zambia, and as a result our business will boom.’24 The Zambian govern-
ment began programmes to add infrastructure and amenities to serve the growing
number of tourists. Through these programmes, the government hopes ‘to bring in
a million tourists annually by 2010 – a move which could generate more than
$520 m in revenue alone’.25 While the news stories covering the rise of
Zambian tourism give credit to the economic significance of this opportunity,
they fail to recognise that Zambia was the original tourist destination around
Victoria Falls. They also tend to ignore the question of what will happen to
Zambia’s tourism when Zimbabwe pulls out of its political and economic crisis.
The Zambian government is more sensitive to that particular concern, as demon-
strated by a recent parliamentary debate during which the minister of tourism,
environment and natural resources was questioned about how his ministry
planned on sustaining tourism growth after Zimbabwe’s crisis is over.26 Zambians
around Victoria Falls are also concerned, and their worries over the future of
Zambian tourism are likely contribute to the tensions developing in this area.27
For several years now, I have been interested in this reversal of fortune, and even
more intrigued by the impact Zimbabwe’s crisis is having on the border between
Zimbabwe and Zambia at Victoria Falls. During my last few trips to Livingstone,
I noticed an increasing number of Zimbabweans working as traders in the market
places and on town roads, and became aware of a mounting sense of resentment
held by Zambians who feel Zimbabweans are edging them out of the tourism
boom they so desperately need. To better understand the relationships and conflicts
among Zimbabwean and Zambian informal sector workers around Victoria Falls, I
conducted interviews in three Livingstone locations, and in all three, I was forced
to end my interviews prematurely. When my assistant and I selected Zimbabwean
interviewees, we found that it generated tensions based on both gender and nation-
ality, and quite frequently, these two factors intertwined. These interviews exposed
several fissures that are gradually intensifying between Zimbabwean and Zambian
workers. My interviews were cut short when verbal and physical altercations
developed between my Zimbabwean informants and Zambians who are feeling
increasingly irritated by the presence of these economic refugees.
Before speaking with Zimbabweans, I visited the immigration office to find out
how substantial the flow of Zimbabweans really is to this small town. On the
condition of anonymity, an immigration officer with about thirteen years experi-
ence in Livingstone and twenty-three years with the office of immigration spoke
with me about the influx of Zimbabwean migrants. He explained that legally,
Zimbabweans can be in Livingstone, but that they are not legally allowed to
work, although they are allowed to trade. That is why so many Zimbabweans
are seeking work outside of the formal sector – they do not have the paperwork
that allows them to work with businesses that report to the government. I asked
him how many Zimbabweans are now in the Livingstone area. Although he did
not have exact figures, he reported that
There are thousands of Zimbabweans here. Last month in just a few days over 800
came over . . . After the March election many unregistered voters crossed to avoid pro-
blems. When results still weren’t released 3 days later, there was a queue 2 kilometers
long of Zimbabweans trying to get in.28
The immigration officer confirmed my observations that Zambians no longer cross

into Zimbabwe. He said, ‘Zambians used to cross to Zimbabwe, but they are
stopping that because of Zimbabwe customs making it too difficult’.29 He also

explained that Zambians were frightened by the reports of violence and terror
and that many who used to live in Zimbabwe were returning home to Zambia
to avoid problems. Zimbabwe is clearly the pariah of southern Africa.
All of the men I interviewed have some professional or vocational trading.
At home, during better times, these men worked as welders, painters, teachers,
and one held a degree from the University of Zimbabwe. Under the current situ-
ation in Zimbabwe, their jobs dried up, and they felt forced to leave because of
economic pressures. The men expressed discontent with basically every aspect
of their experiences in Zimbabwe. First, they identified that they felt forced to
move into Zambia because of the economic and political situation in Zimbabwe.
Tonderai30 was a welder who left Zimbabwe last year to try to find work in Living-
stone. He was unable to get a job as a welder and now sells biscuits, sweets, and
cough drops. He shares a room in Dambwa, a high-density township outside of
Livingstone, with about ten other Zimbabwean men. When he earns enough
money, he takes a short trip back to Harare where he shares his earnings with
his family, and then returns back to Livingstone.31 It is interesting to note that
many of the Zimbabweans living and working around Livingstone are not from
just across the border, but instead come from all over Zimbabwe. My original
hypothesis was that most of them would come from Victoria Falls Town across
the border, but it seems many Zimbabweans feel the tourism economy in Living-
stone has room for them. It is also more affordable than travelling abroad, and
perhaps less nerve-wracking than moving to South Africa.
Michael also comes from Harare, and he decided to move to Livingstone along
with his wife. Their children now stay with his mother in a rural area. They
stay in Dambwa, where they share a room with a number of other Zimbabweans.
Michael said the number changes by the day, and that the owner of the room will
put as many Zimbabweans as possible in the room to increase his profits from rent.
He charges by person rather than a set rate for the whole room. Michael worked as
a welder, road paver, and painter in Harare, but in Livingstone he sells sweets and
bananas.32 This was one of the few people I interviewed who had travelled with a
spouse to Zambia. Most were separated completely from spouses and children.
Two men in particular stood out during these interviews – Andrew and Nelson.
Andrew was trained as a print designer and Nelson had a bachelor’s degree
from the University of Zimbabwe. Although I tried to hide my surprise that
these two young men with vocational and college degrees were now selling
sweets on the streets of Livingstone, I would guess that they are even more
shocked than I am by their circumstances. Both seemed somewhat dazed by it
all, and were embarrassed by their present situation. They reminded me numerous
times that this was not the way their lives were a few years ago. Andrew is single
and from Harare. He saves up his small earnings to travel back to Harare to give
money to his parents, and then returns to Livingstone to earn more. He spoke
extensively about the skills and work experience he has, and at those points in the
interview he sounded enthusiastic and proud. The rest of the interview though he
was flat and aloof.33
Nelson’s interview was never finished because his was one that caught the atten-
tion of Zambians passing by the interview site. Nelson sought me out after hearing
that a college professor was in the area talking to Zimbabweans. He seemed
worried that I would not believe that he had a degree from the University of
Zimbabwe and kept telling me the names of professors there, campus building
names, and courses that he took to prove to me that he was a college graduate.
Nelson is Ndebele and returned to Bulawayo after finishing his degree. He is
married and has one child, and both still live outside of Bulawayo. He stays in
a room with thirteen other men. When I mentioned my interest in the growth of
tourism in Zambia, his eyes lit up. His BA was in tourism and hospitality and
he said he came to Livingstone thinking that one of the hotels or shops would
hire him because of his field of expertise. No one would hire him though,
which might be due to a lack of working papers or simply because he is a Zimbab-
wean, and now he sells sweets.34
These men were soft spoken and appeared embarrassed when I asked questions
about their jobs and living situation. They report being harassed by the police,
but even more so by Zambian men and women who ridicule the Zimbabwean
men. Tonderai reported being teased by Zambians and implicitly blamed for the
problems in Zimbabwean. He said, ‘they will taunt us to vote for Tsvangirai
and to make things better for ourselves’.35 These men are called ‘dogs’ and are
told to go home and fight like men against the government. There is less divisive-
ness between the Zimbabwean men and women, or so it appeared, and may be the
result of the two groups leaning on one another for support. Zimbabweans, as
pointed out by several attendants at the University of Witwatersrand Labour Con-
ference in September 2008, are stereotyped around the region as arrogant and pri-
deful people, and Zimbabwean men hold a reputation of being particularly proud
and confident.36 Up until this last decade, Zimbabweans living in neighbouring
countries were often there as trained and highly desirable workers in the formal
sector. The situation in Zimbabwe that has forced so many to flee to neighbouring
countries and work as small-scale traders puts these once ‘confident’ men in an
uneasy position.
A couple of the men mentioned that they are called dogs by Zambians, but I also
saw that firsthand numerous times. During my interviews, interested Zambians,
upon realising what I was discussing with my interviewees, began heckling both
men and women informants, and they often yelled out ‘dog’. In informal conversa-
tions with Zambians about the growing number of Zimbabweans around Living-
stone, I often got sneering responses about them coming and trying to take the
money and jobs of Zambians. They described Zimbabweans as ‘low’, ‘dirty’,
and as ‘dogs’. It appeared that both men and women are described in those
terms, but that the ‘dog’ reference is most often directed towards the men. These
Zimbabwean men, all who felt great pride in what they used to do to earn
money, are experiencing an extraordinary blow to their sense of masculinity.
They come from a country where other Africans used to flock; now they are
working as the lowest level sellers in a host country that is in many ways benefiting
from Zimbabwe’s problems. The immigration officer I spoke with said, point
blank, ‘Originally Zimbabweans are proud people, but now they have lost their
self sufficiency. They are put at the level of dogs now.’37 There is not just a reversal
in migration flows and tourism trends; there is a reversal in who gets to set the stan-
dards for masculinity, and Zimbabwean men are finding themselves in a vulnerable
position as economic refugees. This goes beyond competing for resources –
Zambian and Zimbabwean men are now engaging in a battle over masculinity.
The relationships between Zimbabwean women and men seemed friendly and
supportive, but I believe that below the surface, there are some conversations
among Zimbabwean women that also speak to questions over the masculinity
(or lack thereof) of Zimbabwean men. Many of the women I spoke with were sep-
arated from their husbands. They were not explicitly critical of their spouses, but I
could discern what may be a subconscious discourse over the loss of Zimbabwean
masculinity. Several of the women recalled earlier phases in their married lives
when their situation was much better, and they related that to their husbands pro-
viding for them and their families. Mary told me that life was better for her in the
1980s and 1990s because her ‘husband worked and I was enjoying being at home.
I was a housewife and stayed there. We could eat well and shop well.’38 Now
Mary works as a market woman in South Africa and Zambia, where she travels
and lives without her husband. She reports such little income that she cannot
afford rent in one of the group rooms, and instead sleeps outside wherever she
can. Another woman, Kuda, shared a similar story. She also offered a demarcation
between a good life as a housewife and a much more difficult life as a market
woman in Zambia. Although these women are not explicitly questioning their
husbands’ ability to provide for their family, it does raise a question over how
Zimbabwean women now view their husbands. It may be that Zimbabwean
masculinity is not only vulnerable to outsiders’ perspectives.
Zimbabwean women are also finding themselves in tense relationships with their
Zambian hosts. Like the Zimbabwean men interviewed, the women informants
also sell sweets and fruit, perhaps the lowliest of all the items sold on the
streets and in the markets. The women I spoke with did not share the same enthu-
siasm as their male counterparts for talking about their working lives prior to
coming to Zambia. Instead, they focused their energy on telling me about the chal-
lenges they face in finding housing and money in Livingstone. One consistent
theme was that of access to restrooms. There are no public restrooms in Living-
stone, and local businesses are not allowing them into their premises. Many
women expressed concern about not having relief throughout the day.39
Obviously, there are Zambian women and men who share the same working
conditions, and my understanding is that there are toilets at the marketplaces in

town, but my assistant and I suspect that they are often blocked from using
those facilities.40
Another issue that the men touched on but the women emphasised was the housing
situation in Livingstone. It was evident that housing is a major concern to the
women. About twenty per cent of the interviewees (all whom were women)
reported sleeping outside on the street, and the rest rented rooms, sometimes
sharing a small room with up to thirteen other Zimbabweans. Gloria said that
she stays in a two-room place with fourteen other Zimbabweans. Of her dwellings
she said, ‘we are fifteen, so it can’t be expensive but it is just a room with no elec-
tricity and no real floor. Even this floor here is better than in my room [pointing to
the crumbly concrete under her feet].’41
While it is clear restrooms and housing are real concerns of these Zimbabwean
women, I suspect it is creating strong tensions between would-be landlords and
would-be renters. This is another relationship in which Zambians exercise power
over Zimbabwean refugees. Whereas it used to be Zimbabweans who could set
the standards and prices of housing for Zambian migrant labourers, now Zambians
are in the position of authority. Although I did not visit any of the lodgings my
informants live in, I found out through my interviews and through informal conver-
sations with Zambians that there is a boom industry in quickly (and shoddily) built
rooms in Dambwa, Linda, and Maramba, the high-density suburbs outside of
Livingstone proper. Entrepreneurial homeowners and tenants are building
rooms, often as four walled boxes with no water, flooring, or electricity and
renting them to the flood of Zimbabweans entering Livingstone every day.
Zambians are eager to profit from the need for cheap housing, and Zimbabweans
feel exploited and resentful of the position they find themselves in when looking
for lodging. The immigration officer also commented on the exploitative nature
of the new housing situation. He believes that as long as more people are
coming in, the situation is going to get even more critical. He explained,
Zambia can’t cope with this. We need help to offer these people services. Right now
no services are being offered. We are supposed to be strict on these people but we
can’t turn people away.42
Housing is not the only issue the women feel particular concern about as they navi-
gate life as economic refugees in Livingstone. They are having serious problems
with business practices that are clearly targeting their vulnerable group. Several
said that Zambian traders are buying their sweets and fruit on credit to supply
their own stands. The Zimbabweans feel forced to agree to the credit arrangement,
but most said they have yet to be paid for any of those transactions. Chipo told me
that, ‘these days business is a problem. Big problem. Customers try to buy on
credit . . . My biggest problem is people not paying’.43 Her concern was shared
by many others. Joy also complained that ‘sometimes they [customers] take
things on credit and then they won’t pay us for the things’.44 Tendai was more
to the point. She believes they are being targeted as vulnerable. She told me,
‘problems are of people buying on credit and not paying for it. They take advan-
tage. They know we are foreigners and struggling’.45 Clearly Zimbabweans are
not only being taken advantage of in rental agreements. Zambians are exploiting
their weak position and profiting greatly from it. Once again, the stratification of
the informal sector is evident. These Zimbabwean women are on the lowest rung
of this economic activity, and simultaneously support and get exploited by their
vulnerability. They exemplify the concept of ‘an informal sector to the informal
sector’ mentioned above.
I asked the women how they were treated by Zambians. A few responded posi-
tively, and said that the Zambians were very nice and welcoming to them. More
responded in a negative way though, and from my observations it is clear that
Zambians are becoming progressively more hostile to the growing number of
Zimbabweans working around Livingstone.46 Joy said of the treatment she experi-
enced, ‘Sometimes it’s tough, sometimes it’s better. Some they hate us, don’t like
us’.47 Rita said that ‘some people are not good to us at all. They will yell at us and
chase us’.48 Women also reported being taunted about the political crisis in
Zimbabwe. Veronica explained that ‘they harass us about our president and tell
us to leave and push him out’.49 Harassment by Zambians was one problem
Zimbabweans reported, but there were also comments about problems with the
Livingstone police. Gloria told me that ‘sometimes the police council will chase
us . . .’.50 and Farai also described being caught and chased by the police.51
Although no major altercations have occurred between Zimbabweans and
Zambians, it feels like the situation could escalate into a real problem for both sides.
During each set of interviews, tensions erupted as Zambians felt rejected by my
interest in interviewing only Zimbabweans. In the main market, a large group of
Zambians surrounded the area where I was set up and started screaming insults at
my interviewees. Two young men began throwing stones at us and I decided to
disband. Sadly, one of my interviewees was a woman who until recently worked
in South Africa. She left out of fear of being attacked in the xenophobic riots that
broke out in South Africa. She said she thought she might have to try Botswana
next because she was getting afraid again. Of the insults I heard, there were refer-
ences to Zimbabweans being the ‘dogs of the region’ and of stealing Zambians’
money. But there were also accusations of Zimbabwean women working as
prostitutes and bringing HIV/AIDS with them to Zambia. None of my informants
discussed this with me, but through informal conversations with Zambians and a
discussion with the immigration officer I interviewed, it is clear that Zimbabwean
women are regarded as suspect in terms of prostitution and disease.
Although the accusations are often misplaced, there is obviously a reality to this
issue. Impoverished and without resources, many women are offering sexual
services in exchange for cash and housing. The immigration officer spoke at
length about the issue of prostitution. He said,
It is traumatic for Zimbabweans [coming into Zambia]. Many are coming as prosti-
tutes. In one operation last month between the police and immigration there were
88 Zim prostitutes caught and deported. From short interviews conducted then they
said they took as little as 20,000 kwacha [$6.19 US] for their full services, or for
an overnight 50,000 kwacha [$15.47 US].52
Many other Zambians expressed concern to me that Zimbabweans were bringing

HIV/AIDS into the country, highlighting another source of tension between Zim-
babweans and Zambians. While there is evidence that Zimbabwean women are
engaging in prostitution in Livingstone, it is unfair of Zambians to suggest that
these women are mainly responsible for the spread of STDs. Zambia has long
been on the list of countries with high infection rates, and Livingstone itself is
known to be a town hit especially hard by HIV/AIDS.53 Certainly, the number
of Zimbabwean women engaged in the sex industry could result in more infections,
but it is hardly the cause for Zambia’s already staggering HIV/AIDS infection rate.
Conclusion
The concerns expressed by Livingstonians, many who remember too well the lean
days before the decay of Zimbabwe’s tourism industry, demonstrate their incli-
nation to blame the influx of Zimbabweans on problems that certainly existed
prior to the last five years. There is likely anxiety about the pressures these
economic refugees put on an already weak economy, and a sense of foreboding
over what will happen to Zambia’s tourism when Zimbabwe’s crisis is resolved.
Until that happens though, Zimbabweans are finding themselves at the centre of
public scrutiny and a perceptible attitude of hostility and wariness from their
Zambian hosts.
Is it surprising that there are growing tensions between these two groups of
people though? Since early colonialism, Zambia existed as the ugly step sister
to Zimbabwe. Aside from copper exploitation, Zambia was seen as a source of
cheap labour and not much else. Very little development occurred under colonial-
ism, while in Zimbabwe, the economy thrived and development progressed to
meet the needs and whims of the large white settler population. Although colonial
rule in Zimbabwe was obviously harsh and unjust, Zimbabweans benefited much
more than Zambians because of economic and educational advantages. Before
2000, Zimbabwe had the upper hand on tourism development and profits while
Zambia remained relatively stagnant, despite sharing Victoria Falls. As Zimbab-
weans will admit and Zambians are quick to remind, Zimbabweans developed a
regional sense of superiority that they held over their neighbours for decades.
Zambians around Livingstone are now seeing and benefiting from the political
and economic turmoil across the border and they are revelling in it and extremely
protective of it.
I believe Livingstone’s residents are feeling a combination of revenge and fear as
tourism grows and Zimbabwe spirals into economic despair. Zimbabweans, on the
other hand, are feeling vulnerable and ashamed as they eke out livings in ways
similar to how migrants used to work and live in Zimbabwe. The informal
sector of this transnational tourism economy offers a particularly important
insight into the survival of an extremely vulnerable section of Zimbabwean
society. For those that remain in Victoria Falls Town, the pressure to capture
scarce tourist dollars is heightening tensions between men and women, and
women are finding themselves increasingly vulnerable to harassment, isolation,
exploitation, and even violence. They are being forced further into the background
of a sector of labour already severely disadvantaged by the economic crisis in
Zimbabwe. In Zambia, informal sector workers are not battling each other
along gender lines, but are instead facing a host town that is becoming less hospi-
table. Male and female Zimbabweans alike are susceptible to the unenviable
position of serving as the underbelly of the informal sector.
This is not just a critical moment in Zimbabwe’s future; Zambia has much at stake
and the relationship between these once friendly neighbours is in jeopardy. This
historical reversal in migration patterns is uncovering deeper tensions that speak
to issues of masculinity, economic exploitation, and public health hysteria.
While the number of Zimbabwean migrants in Zambia is nowhere near that in
South Africa, the conditions and needs of this population must be addressed.
Zambia is too poor, and perhaps too busy working on its own economic develop-
ment, to provide for these economic refugees. With the situation in Zimbabwe
deteriorating by the day and more citizens leaving, it is clear that interactions
between Zimbabweans and their host towns will become further strained.
Zimbabwe’s crisis is bleeding over its borders, and migrant labourers are likely
to continue their suffering because of it.
Notes
1. I have several people and entities to thank for providing funding for this critical period in my
research programme. The University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences was
most generous in making sure I could make the trip. In particular, I thank the dean’s office under
outgoing Dean Don Bobbitt and the outgoing and incoming chairs of the Department of History,
Jeannie Whayne and Lynda Coon who were exceedingly helpful and enthusiastic about this
research and made sure I secured funding to make the trip. Elliott West of the Department of
History also provided financial support. My time in Zimbabwe was stressful to these supporters,
and I am most grateful for their financial, intellectual, and emotional support.
2. For an insightful introduction to tourism development around Victoria Falls, see McGregor
(2003).
3. This is by no means a new labour experience or industry. Tourism around Victoria Falls has
existed for over a century now, and has proven to be an important aspect of both Zimbabwe
and Zambia’s colonial and postcolonial economic development. My manuscript, Turning
Water into Gold: Tourism and Economic Development around Victoria Falls, 1880-2008 exam-
ines the evolution and importance of the tourism economy.
4. ‘Informal sector’ is a much debated and contested term among scholars today. Kamrava (2004)
offers a succinct definition of the formal and informal sectors, but makes the case for the
inclusion of a third category of sector, the ‘semi-formal sector’. Under this tri-level categoris-
ation of retail enterprises, the informal sector is identified by the general characteristics of
‘mobile vendors’ and ‘stationary stalls’, the semi-formal characterised by ‘informal shops’ and
‘bazaar shops’, and the formal sector characterised by ‘formal shops’ and ‘supermarkets’
(Kamrava 2004:67). Kamrava and others who are critical of the binary and arbitrary identifi-
cation of either a formal or informal sector remind us that these categories must be further
studied and the definitions need to be refined to reflect a much more complex reality. I
further contend that it is difficult to definitively place workers themselves in one of these cat-
egories. For example, around Victoria Falls, many people are engaged in multiple income-
generating activities and at various levels if formally and informally. It is impossible then to
determine the sector in which they fit. Another problem with the discussion of different
sectors of economic production is that there is an implication that the less formal sectors are
less organised and more vulnerable to dysfunction, thereby creating a sense that the most desir-
able sector to work in is the formal sector. In this article, I am not debating the usefulness or
problems with these identifications; instead I only use the term to define the activities of the
workers interviewed, which are for the most part, small-scale trade.
5. The International Association of Money Transfer Networks was told by one money transfer
company that they process remittances valuing over $1.5 million per day. IAMTN website
,http://www.iamtn.org/press-release/zimbabwes-people-kept-alive-by-remittance-market..
6. Although it would be misleading to suggest that the divisions between these two colonies
focused significantly on ideas about tourism around Victoria Falls, my dissertation ‘Power,
Culture, and Colonial Development around Victoria Falls, 1880 –1910’ and manuscript in pro-
gress Turning Water into Gold: Tourism and Economic Development around Victoria Falls,
1880–2008 offer abundant colonial documentation that does support my claim that develop-
ment around Victoria Falls was well discussed by colonial authorities. The overall visions
for these two colonies most certainly helped define the policies for economic activities
around the waterfalls, and, I argue, can explain the two very different states of the tourism
industries of Zambia and Zimbabwe in the post-colonial era.
7. NAZ S/AF 751. ‘The Far North. A Trip to the Falls’, Cape Argus. The African World Annual,
December 1917:147. National Archives of Zimbabwe.
8. No. 126 and enclosure in No. 126. (CO 879/102, Public Records Office, Kew), 166. Correspon-
dence between High Commissioner Selborne and BSACo official Wallace.
9. In this impressive analysis, Alexander discusses the making of the settler state, arguing that
control over land (and thus resources and labour) was of paramount importance to the
creation of the colony. The authority given to the government and settlers alike exceeded
that given to white settlers living in Northern Rhodesia because of the different aims of the
two colonies.
10. S 914/12/1. ‘Yeoman’ [pseudonym of writer]. ‘The World’s Wonder Game Reserve: Wild life
of the Wankie Park Development will Make an Outstanding Tourist Attraction’, The Sunday
News V(18), Bulawayo, 9 September 1924. National Archives of Zimbabwe.
11. Full page advertisement with picture of Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe, and Eastern High-
lands, created by the Director of Publicity, Salisbury. British South Africa Annual. December
1936:146. National Archives of Zimbabwe.
12. GEN/LIV 1937 Livingstone Publicity Bureau Publications. Tourist Brochure Published by the
Livingstone Publicity and Travel Bureau, Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company Ltd.
Bulawayo, 1941.
13. S 246/682. Letter from the Office of the Minister of Internal Affairs to the Prime Minister, 12
October 1933. National Archives of Zimbabwe.
14. This narrative of the early days of tourism development can be found in my dissertation ‘Power,
Culture, and Colonial Development around Victoria Falls, 1880–1910’.
15. Arrington, Andrea. Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe, June 1999. Author’s
possession.
16. Arrington, Andrea. 2000. ‘Zimbabwe’s Working Women’. Unpublished Honours Thesis.
17. To be sure, some women did engage in profitable tourism trade, competing with men in the
high-profit sales of statues, carvings, batiks, and baskets. But most women working in the
main public markets sold lower priced items or did not engage in direct trade with tourists.
18. Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe. 15, 17, and 18 June 2008. Author’s
possession.
19. Pseudonym, as requested by the respondent.
20. I did not conduct any formal interviews with Peace, but rather asked if I could sit and observe
her work and ask questions as they developed. Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town,
Zimbabwe. 15, 17, and 18 June 2008. Author’s possession.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. ‘Travel Advisory: Correspondent’s Report; Zambia Strives to Lure Victoria Falls Visitors’, The
New York Times 17 June 2001.
24. ‘Zambia Cashes in on Victoria Falls’, BBC News 12 October 2001.
25. ‘Zambia Beckons New Wave of Tourists’, BBC News 13 June 2006.
26. Daily Parliamentary Debates for the Second Session of the Tenth Assembly, Thursday 7 August
2008. Session on Zambia’s Tourism Earnings from 2005 –07.
27. While in Victoria Falls Town, I met with three high level officials working with a privately organ-
ised tourism business bureau. The three interviewees, all who requested to remain anonymous,
spoke with me for about two hours about their organisation’s plans to lure tourists back to
Zimbabwe. They do not blame Zambians for seizing the opportunities provided by Zimbabwe’s
current crisis, but they also asserted that they were not afraid to make sure they regained the upper
hand as soon as the problems in Zimbabwe are resolved. They spoke of international campaigns
and promotions they will initiate to bring tourists back, and showed little concern about their
ability to win back their position as the more successful side of the Falls. Zambians I spoke
with seemed to understand that the crisis is, though prolonged, only temporary and expressed
anxiety about sustaining the advancements Livingstone has made in the past eight years.
Arrington Field Notes. Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe. June 17, 2008. Author’s possession.
28. Arrington Interview Notes, Office of Immigration Livingstone, Zambia. 20 June 2008. Author’s
possession.
29. Ibid.
30. I use pseudonyms for all my informants in Livingstone, Zambia. I was accompanied by Wendy
Inyambo, a Livingstone resident who has assisted me during three research trips in Zambia. Ms
Inyambo works at the Office of the President, Southern Province. She is conversant in Lozi,
Tonga, Shona, Ndebele, and English. Most informants chose to speak to us in English, code
switching occurred with Shona and Ndebele. In instances when my Shona comprehension
was uncertain, and with all the Ndebele, Ms Inyambo translated.
31. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and
Tonderai. 21 June 2008. Author’s possession
Michael. 21 June 2008. Author’s Possession
Andrew. 21 June 2008 and Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone
Market. Arrington, Inyambo, and Nelson. 21 June 2008. Author’s Possession.
Nelson. 21 June 2008. Author’s possession.
Tonderai, 21 June 2008. Author’s possession.
36. I would like to thank those who attended the panel in which this article was presented as a paper.
The comments about the once high standing Zimbabweans enjoyed in the region helped me
further contextualise the significance of the insults and harassment Zimbabweans are subject to
in Livingstone. I emphasise though that these are regional stereotypes, employed not always as
blunt insults but as a descriptive mechanism to differentiate Zimbabweans from their neighbours.
I do not mean to perpetuate stereotypes, but rather wish to point out that there is a history of
regional categorising, and that Zimbabweans are sometimes considered in those terms.
37. Arrington Interview Notes, Immigration Office Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008. Author’s
possession.
38. Arrington Interview Notes, Livingstone Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and
Mary, 21 June 2008. Author’s possession.
39. Arrington Interview Notes, Maramba Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and
Kuda, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
40. My assistant, a Livingstone resident, discreetly questioned a couple of Zambian market women
who would not admit to blocking the Zimbabwean women but instead talked about having to
pay fees to use the facilities.
41. Arrington Interview Notes, Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo,
and Gloria, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
42. Arrington Interview Notes, Office of Immigration, Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008.
Chipo, 21 June 2008. Author’s possession.
and Joy, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
46. This article is not meant to be overly critical of the reaction of Zambians to the growing number
of Zimbabweans. After conducting research in Livingstone over the past eight years, I appreci-
ate and sympathise with how strained the economy of an already struggling town must be due to
the increase in migrant labourers. For decades now, Zambians have felt slighted by their neigh-
bours to the south and seen their development suffer as Zimbabwe expanded, so it seems natural
that there would be resentment and perhaps even feelings of revenge with this change.
48. Arrington Interview Notes, Maramba Market, Livingstone, Zambia. Arrington, Inyambo, and
Rita, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
Veronica, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
and Gloria, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
and Farai, 20 June 2008. Author’s possession.
52. Arrington Interview Notes, Office of Immigration, Livingstone, Zambia, 20 June 2008.
53. During previous stays in Livingstone, this discussion often came up. Livingstone is a site of
transnational exchange because of tourism and because of its proximity to a border crossing.
Truck drivers from all over southern and eastern Africa pass through that border and often
stay for several days while awaiting clearance. This location is, unfortunately, a vulnerable
site for STD infection to occur.
References
Alexander, Jocelyn. 2006. The Unsettled Land: State-making and the Politics of Land in
Zimbabwe, 1893 – 2003. Athens, Ohio, Oxford, and Harare: Ohio University Press, James
Currey, and Weaver.
Bracking, Sarah and Sachikonye, Lloyd. 2006. ‘Remittances, Poverty Reduction and the
Informalisation of Household Wellbeing in Zimbabwe’. Global Poverty Research
Group of the Economic and Social Research Council, GPRG-WPS-045, June.
Hill, Geoff. 2005. What Happens after Mugabe? Can Zimbabwe Rise from the Ashes?
Cape Town: Zebra Press.
Kamrava, Mehran. 2004. ‘The Semi-formal Sector and the Turkish Political Economy’.
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 31(1):63–87.
McGregor, JoAnn. 2003. ‘The Victoria Falls, 1900– 1940: Landscape, Tourism and the
Geographical Imagination’. Journal of Southern African Studies 29(3).
Neumayer, Eric. 2004. ‘The Impact of Political Violence on Tourism: Dynamic Cross-
National Estimation’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 48(2).
Todd, David M. and Shaw, Christopher. 1980. ‘The Informal Sector and Zambia’s
Employment Crisis’. The Journal of Modern African Studies 18(3).
Weaver, David and Elliott, Katherine. ‘Spatial Patterns and Problems in Contemporary
Namibian Tourism’. The Geographical Journal 162(2).
Zinyama, Lovemore M. 1990. ‘International Migrations to and from Zimbabwe and the
Influence of Political Changes on Population Movements, 1965– 1987’. International
Migration Review 24(4).
Contributors
Peter Alexander is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Socio-
logical Research at the University of Johannesburg. He is currently working on a
history of South African coal miners and on class perceptions and class positions
in Soweto.
Andrea L. Arrington is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the
University of Arkansas. She is currently completing her manuscript ‘Turning
Water into Gold: Tourism, Economic Development, and the Commercialization
of Victoria Falls, 1880–2008’, which is a transnational study of development in
Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Andrew Bank is an Associate Professor in History at the University of the
Western Cape. His research in recent years has focused on the history of anthro-
pology in southern Africa. He is the author of Bushman in a Victorian World: The
Remarkable Story of the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman Folklore (2006) and
co-editor with Keith Dietrich of An Eloquent Picture Gallery: The South African
Portrait Photographs of Gustav Theodor Fritsch, 1863–1865 (2008). He is cur-
rently working, with his brother Leslie Bank, on a collection entitled Interpreters,
Intermediaries and Indigenous Intellectuals, which will explore the complex and
changing relationships between Monica Hunter Wilson and a wide cast of research
assistants and native scholars at her field-sites in South and Central Africa.
Philip Bonner is National Research Foundation Research chair in the programme
‘Local Histories, Present Realities’ and Head of the inter-disciplinary Wits
History Workshop. He has published extensively in the field of comparative and
social history.
Janine Clark is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the International
Politics department at Aberystwyth University. She has a PhD from the University
of Nottingham and has recently published her first book, Serbia in the Shadow of
Miloševic: The Legacy of Conflict in the Balkans (IB Tauris 2008). Her research
interests include post-conflict societies, in particular the former Yugoslavia;
reconciliation; war crimes tribunals and transitional justice.
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is a Professor of History at the University of the
Western Cape. She has written widely on Indian South Africans and is author/
editor of Not Slave, Not Free: Indentured Labour in South Africa (1992); From
Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South Africans (2000); Sita:
Memoirs of Sita Gandhi (2003) and Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s
Son Manilal (2004).

DOI: 10.1080/00020180902827597
Shireen Hassim is Associate Professor in Political Studies at the University of the

Witwatersrand. She is the author of Women’s Organizations and Democracy in
South Africa: Contesting Authority (2006).
Jonathan Hyslop is Professor of Sociology and History, and Deputy Director of
the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of
the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is currently working on two research
projects, one on ideas about war in twentieth century South Africa, and another
on Indian Ocean sailors in the steamship era.
Stephen J. Rockel teaches African History at the University of Toronto and pre-
viously taught Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.
He is a specialist in Tanzanian and East African history, but maintains strong inter-
ests in South African history, African labour history, slavery, and war and society
throughout the continent. His book, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in
Nineteenth Century East Africa, was published in the Heinemann Social History
of Africa series. An edited collection (with Rick Halpern), ‘Collateral
Damage’: Civilian Casualties, War and Empire, is in press.
Hanan Sabea is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American Univer-
sity in Cairo. She received her PhD in Anthropology from The Johns Hopkins
University in 2001. Her research examines the dynamics of land and labour on
plantations in colonial and postcolonial Africa, their implications for remoulding
state-subject relations, and the production of histories thereof.
Lucien van der Walt is coordinator of the postgraduate programme in Sociology
at the University of the Witwatersrand. Winner of the 2008 international Labor
History dissertation prize, he has recently published Black Flame: the revolution-
ary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism, volume one of Counter Power:
new perspectives on global anarchism and syndicalism (with Michael Schmidt).

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African Studies, 68, 1, April 2009

Introduction: Labour Crossings

This special focus presents a selection of four papers presented to an international

Mobility and control

ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010079 – 7

Connecting worlds and workers

Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth

In my book Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East

ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010087 – 23

professional porters due to the absence of alternative forms of transport and,

The setting: Coastal entrepreneurs and the nineteenth century

Clearly economic incentives were important. Further details on domestic slaves in

Speke’s observation offers a further point of comparison. Waungwana porters

Slavery, freedom, and the Waungwana

Domestic slave porters were just as independent on the mainland coast, as an

Yet, Holmwood continued, most Waungwana and Zanzibari slave porters, as

European travellers Baumann respected the competence of such experts as Mkamba.

The Passenger Indian as Worker:

ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010111 – 24

Defining the passenger Indian

Stopping the flow: The Cape Colony and Indian immigration

Work, employers, patterns of migration and family

and received classification as coloured at the height of apartheid. Of Gunga we

3. IRC 1/1/142 3449a.

65. IRC 1/1/162 3914a.

Cape Colony. SC 16-1908, Report of the Select Committee on Asiatic Grievances.

Documentary works and memoirs

Dhupelia-Mesthrie, U. 2000. From Cane Fields to Freedom: A Chronicle of Indian South

The Limits of Law in the Mandated

ISSN 0002-0184 print/ISSN 1469-2872 online/09/010135 – 27

by competing agents of the colonial state, as well as workers’ relentless recourse to

The Mandate and the legal wrangle over labour

The making of the 1923 ordinance

The binding contract

Recruited and voluntary: between free will and control

recruited, attested on the one hand, and non-contract, unattested, voluntary,

The Kipande: regulating time and movement

Penal sanctions and the native

The road to the coast

oft-recounted version of the meaning of manamba as a ‘common word for

Passing the desired bodies: medical tests and tax tickets

Medical testing was enforced as a prerequisite for recruited labour by virtue of

The procedure of medical examination undertaken by Michael in 1952 resonates

financial standing) undesirable labour agents or touts, who ‘scramble to seize

managers – like administrators – believed that contracted recruited labour was

labour, decided to reengage, after completion of their initial contract, as voluntary

PRO. CO/691/130/5125. Government Labour: Recruitment, Employment and Care,

TNA. v14/11168/Vol I. Labour Matters in Tanga Province, 1927 – 1939. TNA.

Competitive Labour: Divisions

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remittances provided by the Zimbabwean Diaspora.5 Migrants are experiencing

As more Zimbabweans search for relief in other countries, Zambia is experiencing

transnational economy and the backdrop of a multifaceted, important migrant

Men against women: Gender-based competition

being tucked away in an uncomfortable building. During my observation periods,

Good neighbours? Competition between Zambians and

harm affected countries also indirectly by significantly lowering tourist arrivals . . .

Although Zimbabwe is not experiencing a full-blown civil war, the reports of

The immigration officer confirmed my observations that Zambians no longer cross

stopping that because of Zimbabwe customs making it too difficult’.29 He also

conditions, and my understanding is that there are toilets at the marketplaces in

Many other Zambians expressed concern to me that Zimbabweans were bringing

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