No long theoretical preamble here — I’ll try to provide a brief history of colonial Mozambique. I focus mostly on when it gets closer to independence (in 1975), because that’s what we’re gunning for in my paper (and because colonial occupation gets more systematic after the 1880s). I’m also leaving out the pre-colonial history, not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I do think colonialism radically transformed a lot of things, and to whatever extent it preserved, eradicated or transformed pre-colonial relations, that’s what the post-colonial moment had to work with.

Colonialism is brutal, and just about anywhere you go in the world today you can see its after-effects reverberating. There are those who would consider themselves critical and yet try to pass off one kind of colonialism as better than another (because, I don’t know, the French causing a million deaths in Algeria is better than the British causing a few more million in India?), and then there are snots like Sarkozy who imagine that colonialism was the best thing to happen to savage races since Jesus. The truth is that colonialism fucked shit up, everywhere. The violence was tremendous, physically, morally, psychologically, structurally, violence to modes of thought and production of knowledge. Many more forms of violence beside. After significant, bloody and often violent resistance (yeah, even in India, Gandhi notwithstanding) many colonizing powers decided to give up formal political control to the emergent native bourgeoisies of the colonies (something Frantz Fanon referred to as “false decolonization”), maintaining significant political ties and dependent economic relations, i.e., establishing neo-colonialism.

But when it comes to brute force and utter persistence in maintaining formal political control over colonies, Portuguese colonialism wins. (Remember, Rhodesia and South Africa were no longer British colonies, so much as they were ruled by gangs of rich white men, and so that took longer — 1980 and 1994 respectively, and 1990 for Namibia.)

Thanks to our friends in the CIA, there is a map of Mozambique on the right. Mozambique is located on the eastern coast of southern Africa; to the north it is bordered by Tanzania, to the west by Malawi, Zambia and mostly Zimbabwe, and to the southwest by South Africa and Swaziland. Mozambique is effectively bisected by the Zambezi river into a northern and a southern part.

The Portuguese established trading posts starting in the 1500s along the coast of southeastern Africa, looking for slaves, gold and whatever else they could. In the late 19th century, driven in part by the European powers’ “scramble for Africa” Portuguese elites endeavoured to extend their control to the interior. [JF 77] It should probably be noted that Portuguese armed trade was also established on the western coast (what is now Angola), and the Portuguese rulers sought to connect the western coast to the eastern coast and create, I guess, some kind of Portuguese strip running across southern Africa. It wasn’t successful, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and a bit of Malawi — British controlled all — getting in the way. [EAH 78] The Portuguese also had other, small territories, under their control — Guinea-Bissau and the islands of Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. All on or off the west coast of Africa.

Ultra-Colonialism

Perry Anderson, following Angolan nationalists, refers to the Portuguese brand of colonization as “ultra-colonialism” — “both the most extreme and the most primitive modality of colonialism” [PA 97]. In 1869, slavery was formally abolished in the Portuguese empire [PA 95]. Yet, well into the 1960s, Portugal made use of forced labour through a variety of legal instruments. For instance, Mozambicans had to prove that they had been employed for at least six months in the previous years, and if not, then could be forced to work for private or state enterprise [PA 89]. The Portuguese enforced production of cotton as a cash crop, taking land away from subsistence agriculture and forcing cultivation [PA 92]. The colonizers also entered into treaties with regions in South Africa where they would provide a quota of migrant labour, in return for a quota of South African goods passing through Mozambican ports [PA 92-93]. Anderson notes that many Mozambicans sought to flee the forced labour regimes — official estimates put it at 500,000 legal or illegal emigrants and the actual number was probably higher [PA 94]. Forced labour according to Anderson (who quotes Basil Davidson) was central to the Portuguese colonial economy [PA 96].

The point, Anderson notes, is to force away labour from subsistence agriculture to the production of some kind of surplus goods for exchange [PA 97]. Forced labour was not the exclusive preserve of the Portuguese, virtually all colonizers used it (in the most brutal of ways: consider, for instance, the slaughter of up to 10 million Congolese Africans by the Belgians at the dawn of the 20th century). Most imperialist powers moved away from this kind of explicitly forced labour to the implicitly forced labour of market capitalism — rather than forcing labour physically, you provide incentives for workers to work. Creating a commercial market within the imperial dependency requires a workforce capable of monetary income for consumption of commodities; and the introduction of advanced technology leads to a relatively well-skilled workforce [PA 98]. The exceptions, Anderson notes, are where a white proletariat exists, which can be provided with the skills necessary for the running of industry, while the Africans are kept to unskilled labour. In Mozambique, there were plenty of white settlers, relatively speaking [PA 101]. The Portuguese could not invest enough capital and technology to move over to an incentive-based system, and so continued to rely upon mass forced labour for the extraction of surplus [PA 98].

The Portuguese regime was practically fascist, and Portugal was not, in terms of its own industrial sector, ‘advanced’ as much as other European colonizers (notably, Brtian, France and Germany) were. There wasn’t much Portuguese capital (money to invest) to go around. Portugal had its own rather large peasantry, and also I suspect significant unemployment. Transferring Portuguese to the colonies was a way of relieving population pressures, creating opportunities for skilled labour, management and military purposes, but also resettling Portuguese farmers to Africa — for no particular economic gain (and perhaps even loss) [PA 103].

Economics

The vast majority of the Mozambican population was involved in agriculture — and overwhelmingly subsistence agriculture. The staple crops here being maize and cassava. What J. Fitzpatrick refers to as “modern commercial farming” developed around towns, developed mainly by non-Africans settlers and multinationals [JF 78]. The food produced therein was sold to those who resided in towns and urban areas. But also, commercial farming was responsible for the production of cash crops meant for export — cotton, cashew, tobacco, wheat, rice, among others. And also prawns were exploited in the 1960s — though that was fishing, not farming. These cash crops were processed by the limited industry that was introduced in Mozambique.

I’m not sure why Fitzpatrick doesn’t talk about plantations. I suppose that’s part of what comes under the “modern commercial farming”? Mozambicans around the country were often forced off of their own farms into plantations where they were supposed to provide labour. This meant that many would work on plantations and also try to tend to their own private fields. Also, many were forced to grow cash crops on their own lands. Sometimes, men worked at plantations and women grew cash crops on the private lands. [BO 517] Needless to say, Mozambicans didn’t like this very much, “there is a rich historical record of flight, evasion and sabotage” notes Bridget O’Laughlin [BO 518]. Also, let me reiterate, after Anderson and O’Laughlin, that this agricultural exploitation of labour was not some kind of benevolent process or free market transaction, but was forced out of Mozambicans through repressive measures. It was violent, forced labour.

The introduction of industry to Mozambique came mostly after 1945, and was concentrated around urban areas, and particularly around the capital Maputo, which practically borders South Africa. Fitzpatrick describes how two types of industry developed:

One was the processing of agricultural commodities — cashew nuts, cotton, sisal, sugar and tea — for the export market. The other provided consumer goods and inputs for the domestic market, eg, milling, brewing, oil-refining and cement production. [JF 79]

Most of the raw materials were imported, and industry was run almost exclusively by the Portuguese and other expatriates (British, South African, etc.). Fitzpatrick also notes the tremendous importance of the services sector, notably transport — Mozambique’s coastal cities would be the send-off points for goods from South Africa, Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi. Infrastructure was built around this (ports and rails) and “contributed nearly half of annual gross national product (GNP)” as a major source of foreign exchange [JF 79]. What’s interesting here is that the infrastructure was built to move goods from other countries (and from Mozambique) out to ports. To this day, the major transportation lines move basically ‘horizontally’ from west to east, and not from the northern part of Mozambique to the southern part. Julie Silva notes there is only one bridge within Mozambique that crosses the Zambezi river (connecting the north to the south), and it is relatively inaccessible, located far in the western part of the country, near the border with Malawi [JS 113-114].

As I noted earlier, the guarantee of a transport quota resulted in the provision of Mozambican migrant labour to these other colonies (as part of the forced labour deals). Fitzpatrick figures over 100,000 migrants worked in South Africa alone [JF 79] — probably there were more, and certainly hundreds or thousands more worked in other countries. There were many who also went to Rhodesia and even the Congo [BO 516]. To this day (and I’ll talk about this in a later post), thousands of migrant workers sell their labour power in South Africa.

What Fitzpatrick doesn’t note is that most of the capital that was invested was not Portuguese, but rather foreign capital — British, American, West German, French, even Japanese [PA 117]. The Portuguese regime would grant concessions to certain companies (I’m not sure if this was lump-sum, or leases, or taking off a percentage or what). Foreign capital thus had tremendous influence in commercial farming, industry, and services that operated in Mozambique.

Sectoral dualism or sectoral dialectic?

Fitzpatrick describes the colonial economy as characterized by “dualism” — two economies, and not one:

The peasant subsistence sector, involving most of the population, continued to exist with a minimum of influence from the economic development initiated by the colonisers. Parallel to this a commercial market economy emerged which was geographically concentrated on the towns and oriented towards the urban and export markets. It was run, administratively and technically, by Europeans, Asians and some assimilated Africans (assimilados). [JF 80]

There may be some merit to the idea that there were two economies, but this view reproduces a particularly pernicious dichotomy between “traditional” (peasant agriculture) and “modern” (commercial market) economic sectors. The facile distinction relies upon looking at these sectors in isolation, without examining the way in which they are and were interdependent and how they played into the colonial and capitalist economies. Here, perhaps, we can answer some of the questions I posed earlier about the mode of production (e.g., peasant agriculture vs. capitalist commodity production) that predominated in Mozambican society. The answer isn’t simple, because modes of production are not exclusive to one another, and history is frequently messy. (And so much for avoiding theoretical discussions….)

The classical Marxian defining feature of a society in which the capitalist mode of production prevails is the abundance of commodities. Commodities are things which satisfy human needs, which are produced primarily for exchange for money in a market. Commodity production itself is predicated upon the extraction of a surplus from a worker who works for wages (basically, getting a worker to produce more than she is adequately remunerated for). The point is, the capitalist sells more stuff produced by making the worker work harder while depressing wages, so as to maximize profits. But there are plenty of differences between this and subsistence agriculture organized around localized communities, with limited trade and cultural exchange. We might be tempted to slot these off as two vastly different modes of production that have little to do with each other. The problem is that they exist temporally and spatially, side-by-side, and there’s little avoiding that.

Moreover, as I’ve pointed out, the tremendous involvement of foreign capital meant that production in Mozambique (regardless of whether it was done by peasant labour or wage labour) was inevitably linked to the global flows of capital. That so much was produced for export meant it was linked to the global flows of commodities. That so much labour went, one way or the other, over borders meant it was linked to global flows of labour. Mozambique and Mozambicans had to be hammered into these global flows — and often literally. The question isn’t one of which mode of production predominates in Mozambique — because, certainly, the capitalist mode of production prevailed upon Mozambican society, in uneven ways — so much as it is of how the introduction of capitalist modes, forces and relations of productions impacted upon the non-capitalist modes, forces and relations, and vice-versa.

The various political (and economic) instruments of the Portuguese colonial regime — the various forms of forced labour — transformed the way agricultural production worked in Mozambique. Various forms of resistance employed by Mozambicans against Portuguese colonial economic policy, perhaps ironically, also facilitated their integration into more capitalist class relations and relations of production. O’Laughlin refers to this as the process of the proletarianisation of the peasantry. Proletarianisation here doesn’t refer to where the peasantry is systematically deprived of land and forced to wage labour in urban and peri-urban factories. Rather, proletarianisation refers to the continual movement between wage labour, non-waged labour, self-employment, unemployment, and so on [BO 516]. Needless to say, this is characteristic of capitalist economy.

We’ve already discussed many of the ways that Mozambicans were forced into wage labour: working on large commercial farms, working on plantations, working in settler farms, doing work for railroads and ports, and being sent across borders for mine labour, or working in incipient industries. This took labour away from subsistence farming. But also, Mozambicans were forced to grow certain cotton alongside their own subsistence farming — they would be allocated five or six hectares and then be forced to grow cotton and food for themselves [AP 120] — and then were required to sell the cotton to foreign cotton ginning enterprises located in the area. The rise of settler farms and plantations also created a demand for cheaper staple foods (maize and cassava) that was beyond the capacity of the settler farms [BO 517]. Peasants could also supplement incomes by attempting to market their own produce.

Mozambicans did attempt to resist forced labour, or would submit to certain kinds of forced labour that were less onerous than other kinds of forced labour. But, this did not occur “in opposition to labour and commodity markets in colonial Mozambique, but within them” [BO 527]. So, as we’ve noted, Mozambicans would attempt to escape certain types of forced labour by migrating abroad and working for wages in South Africa. In other cases, ratcheting up production of certain crops could result in certification as a commercial producer. Mozambicans could acquire credit and hire waged labour to become commercial producers and thus escape forced labour [BO 518]. Where they were forced to grow cotton and food on the five or six hectares allocated to them, they could retain their own private lands for food and use all of the five or six hectares to grow cotton by hiring waged labour [AP 120]. But none of this meant escape from capitalist relations (particularly those of wage labour and credit), but rather further integration into them.

Since the forced labour applied largely to men, women were forced to take upon food production — though, forced cropping of, say, cotton, was also applied to women. Women would thus seek to minimize the time they spent on cotton production [BO 524]. Since men were absent, they looked to make farming more efficient through “ploughing and intense cultivation” [BO 525]. The changes in agricultural production meant an increased reliance on purchased inputs, like hoe-blades and ploughs. Buying things like blankets and cloth eased the burden on women as well. Migrant remittances and the sales from surplus food were thus used to buy food or beer, to pay hired casual labour that helped with farming, and to buy commodities [BO 525]. In the south, mine wages were invested in bedsteads, cisterns, more solid roofing, and in the centre, in more solid housing and glass windows. Manufactured commodities thus became a part of everyday lives.

It’s interesting to note how the exchange between manufactured commodities and dispersed agricultural produce occurred. João Cravinho notes that by the time of independence (1975) there were somewhere around 6000 small-scale rural traders who formed an important part of the colonial economy — they were almost all Portuguese or Asian (I think that’s referring to Indians and Pakistanis — at that point probably mostly Indians) [JC 94]. The traders would go from towns to rural areas, taking with them manufactured commodities and consumer goods — soap, cloth, batteries — and manufactured (and non-manufactured) agricultural implements — hoes, machetes, sacks, seeds. On their way back to towns, they would take agricultural produce — maize, cassava, beans, cashews, groundnuts. (Rice, cotton, tobacco would reach towns through the particular concessionary companies and enterprises.) These rural traders were also an important source of credit for farmers. [JC 95]

So what have we got? Even though wage labour was limited and the total wage labour force was small, wage labour became a part of everyday existence. Mozambicans moved between self-employment, casual employment, employment in settler farms and foreign enterprises, and migrant labour. Some Mozambicans became employers. Many Mozambicans also produced for commercial markets. Manufactured commodities acquired a growing significance in daily lives. Nevertheless, the vast majority were still involved in some form of agricultural production. The point is that there’s no clear split here between the peasant sector and the commercial sector — despite the limitated wage labour force — the two sectors were deeply interlinked because of the operations of the colonial economy. “The primary mechanism,” to quote John Saul, “was forced labour.”

Edit: I forgot to mention taxes, one of the most important politico-legal instruments used by colonial regimes anywhere, and certainly not forgotten by the Portuguese. Mozambicans were required to pay hut taxes, and were required to pay these in cash:

Needing cash to pay the tax, families were forced to cultivate cash crops such as groundnuts, sesame, cashew, castor oil, and rice for sale to local merchants, or to enter into contract labour arrangements with colonial interests. [HW 148]

Forced labour and the various economic activities of the Portuguese regime were carried out through a number of political and social arrangements. So next, we take a look at the political and social organization of colonial Mozambique — but, well, a lot of stuff was going on, so it’s not simple. So we’ll try to get an idea of some of the various political and social arrangements and try to lift some general ideas about colonial Mozambique from that.

References

PA: Perry Anderson. “Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism 2.” New Left Review I, no. 16 (July-August 1962): 88-123.

JC: João Cravinho. “Frelimo and the Politics of Agricultural Marketing in Mozambique.” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (March 1998): 93-113.

JF: J. Fitzpatrick. “The Economy of Mozambique: Problems and Prospects.” Third World Quarterly 3, no. 1 (January 1981): 77-87.

EAH: Axel Fleisch. “Angola: ‘Scramble’.” In Encyclopedia of African History, edited by Kevin Shillington, 1:78-79. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005.

BO: Bridget O’Laughlin. “Proletarianisation, Agency and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique.” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3, Special Issue: Changing Livelihoods (September 2002): 511-530.

AP: M. Anne Pitcher. “Disruption without Transformation: Agrarian Relations and Livelihoods in Nampula Province, Mozambique 1975-1995.” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (March 1998): 115-140.

JS: Julie A. Silva. “Trade and income inequality in a less developed country : the case of Mozambique.” Economic Geography 83, no. 2 (2007): 111-136.

HW: Harry G. West. “’This Neighbor is Not My Uncle!’: Changing Relations of Power and Authority on the Mueda Plateau.” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (March 1998): 141-160.

Note: I realized, after going back to John S. Saul’s A Difficult Road: The Transition to Socialism in Mozambique, that I just rewrote and expanded upon a lot of what he speaks about in the first chapter (“The Context”). He even talks about the articulation of modes of production (p. 44). But there’s a lot to be said about working through this by myself, and I’m glad I did, because it’s given me a stronger base to build upon and has forced me to consult more recent or more diverse scholarship. Also it was good to work out the question of the articulation, or dialectic, between modes of production. I’ve also tended to avoid Saul’s work so far because I will be drawing upon it a lot in talking about the anti-colonial resistance of Frelimo, coming up in Part 5, I imagine. As far as I can tell, few others have focused on the development of Frelimo and peasant revolution in the way he has — at least in the English language. We’ll see.