Book dossier

African workers and colonial racism

by Jeanne Penvenne

This path-breaking history of the African working class in Lourenco Marques proceeds from the assumption that Mozambican labor history was not fundamentally about skills, wages, or productivity - it was about racism, human dignity, and contested masculinity. While white officials proclaimed their intent to protect the innocent "natives" and assimilate the African elite into Portuguese society as full citizens, African workers in Mozambique believed the Portuguese were there to "drink our blood" and "steal our wages." Concerted attempts by Africans to improve their lives through hard work were frustrated time and again by white employers determined to keep them in their place. The author argues persuasively that the imperatives of race and racism outweighed considerations of class in shaping the relations between colonizer and colonized. Brutal forced-labor policies made it difficult for rural Africans to survive despite their continued access to agricultural land and family labor. Thus the majority of African men living in southern Mozambique spent their adult lives in wage labor, whether they worked in the South African mines or took low-paying jobs in and around the port city of Lourenco Marques. This lively and balanced analysis brings the voices of African workers to the foreground and contrasts their historical vision with that found in letters, newspapers, and confidential Portuguese documents. By detailing the individual experiences of gang laborers, stevedores, domestic servants, and petty clerks, the author focuses our attention on the human dimensions of colonial racism.