Making our own way women working in Lourenço Marques, 1900 - 1933
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Citation
Abstract
INTRODUCTION:
In the course of writing up research on the development of
a predominantly male African working class in the colonial
capital of Mozambique, I was struck by the seemingly
contradictory patterns regarding women which came to my
attention through colonial archives, mission archives and
interviews. Male informants typically viewed the
acquisition of bridewealth, lobolo, as a principal goal in
their lives. They left their villages to seek wage labor for
many reasons: to acquire cash for lobolo, consumer goods,
taxes, and food, and to avoid labor conscription for low wage
or unpaid work. Workers and work seekers alike, however, cited
the desire to accumulate a full or partial lobolo as the
principal motivation for seeking the higher wages paid in the
South African mines. Mission and colonial archives similarly
emphasize the fundamental role lobolo acquisition and exchange
played in Southern Mozambican society. Those same interviews
and archives, however, also revealed that men, particularly
mine migrants, commonly abandoned one or more wives for whom
they had paid a partial or full lobolo. Colonial policy
was, to some extent, designed to ensure that labor migrants
periodically returned to their rural households, not only to
invigorate tax rolls and local commerce with their repatriated
wages, but also to reinforce their ties to the women and lands
of Mozambique. [TRUNCATED]
Description
African Studies Center Working Paper No. 114
License
Copyright © 1986, by the author.