Migrants No More

Settlement and Survival in Mambwe Villages, Zambia

Johan Pottier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429815966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1988, this book documents genealogical developments which, together with changes in agricultural production, religious ethic, politics, gender relations, patterns of solidarity and trade were local adjustments to the economic crisis of the 1970s and 80s in Zambia. The book explores the dynamics of a peripheral 'traditional' economy, examining the extent to which village structures and value systems have changed.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Zambia moved into the 1980s as a nation on the brink of famine. Poor harvests in 1979 and 1980 had forced the Zambian authorities to import maize – expensive maize – from the U.S., Kenya, Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), and even South Africa. The cost of importation, paid in precious foreign exchange, was well above the usual cost of paying local farmers for their maize. The 1970s had been a decade marked by loss of revenue due to falling copper prices, massive borrowing from the international market and repeated currency devaluations.

The huge maize deficits demanded a fresh appraisal of Zambia’s agrarian policy. One inquiry, by French agronomist René Dumont, called for a grassroots solution: a path to progress which honoured local traditions, local values and local know-how. Zambian agriculture, Dumont thought, suffered from an excessive dependence on foreign models and costly external inputs (Dumont 1979; Woldring 1984). Zambia did not lack in resources. High-level bureaucratization and consumerism were at the root of its problems. Both stood in the way of a scheme for meeting the ‘basic needs’ of small-scale producers. Dumont recommended that the ‘forgotten’ subsistence farmers be reached via programmes that emphasized appropriate, labour-intensive technology.

The Zambian response was to ignore Dumont’s approach and philosophy. Operation Food Production, the 10-year revival plan launched in 1980, aimed to reinstate large-scale commercial food farming. In spite of the very mediocre past record, state farms were given a new lease of life. But public opinion differed. The State Farm Project, as Woldring has noted, ‘was received generally with a good deal of scepticism. The Times of Zambia came out against it and made a strong plea for multi-purpose cooperatives based on the village structure’, (Woldring 1984: 109, emphasis added; Times of Zambia, 5 October 1980). Paradoxically perhaps, Operation Food Production did state some faith in ‘peasant and family farms’ that would cooperate ‘through common funds, common dipping tanks, common marketing facilities and a common machine centre’ (Woldring 1984: 107). For Dumont’s followers this was a move in the right direction: a long-term ‘basic needs’ approach, in line with earlier proposals by the International Labour Office (ILO 1977) and tuned to ‘the village structure’.

This hope-giving view is not without its reverse argument. As interested observers have noted, the new policy depends on the spread of development schemes run by foreign donor countries. Although their personnel, when based ‘in the field’, may well be committed to showing respect for tradition, local values or ‘the village structure’ (the latter being a poorly understood concept), it remains probable that some price is being paid at another level of organization. Bornwell Chikulo, a Zambian political scientist, believes this to be the case. He argues that the proliferation of projects since 1980 points to ‘the centrality of international capital in rural development’ and exposes the fact that foreign ‘donors and agencies have become the major consideration in the choice of development policy’ (Chikulo 1986: 6).

Zambia’s search for a viable food strategy is still hampered by ideological uncertainty and confusion. There is support for increasing broad-based producer participation, as can be seen from the agenda for Operation Food Production (which includes the revival of cooperatives), yet there is also increased reliance on state farms and large capital inputs (Chikulo 1986; Woldring 1984:107). The uncertainty at the base of this paradox may relate to the persistent references to ‘the village structure’. The concept of a village structure is being used, in my opinion, to raise hope, while the concept itself is difficult to grasp and far from static. When hope for a recovery in the food sector is expressed in terms of a positive response to ‘the village structure’ (Times of Zambia) or with praise for ‘African values and traditions’ (Dumont 1979), then one must consider that such notions may well impress primarily because they have never been put into practice (in Zambia), and because their content is ‘vague’ and presumed ‘noble’.

There is consensus amongst academics that the part replacement of traditional farming with a western package-approach has created the condition for rural poverty and malnutrition (Chikulo 1986; Dumont 1979; Klepper 1979; Woldring 1984; and many others). Within this debate no-one would dare suggest that rural food production systems might have survived in some pristine state. With ‘village structures’, on the other hand, the assumption is often made that these structures are self-perpetuating and static. I would like to see the awareness of change extended to the debate about local social structures. Whatever the degree of egalitarianism these village structures may have contributed to in the past (which is debatable), they currently testify to the occurrence of significant organizational changes and even disruptions, particularly since the post-independence adoption of a capital-based policy for rural development. It is preposterous, as I hope to show in this book, to talk of ‘the village structure’ or of ‘traditional values’ without acknowledging that such social variables need to be qualified in the light of recent history. I shall describe and clarify aspects of ‘village structures’ as I observed them in one remote area of Zambia, during the turbulent late 1970s. The area, inhabited by the Mambwe people, lies in Mbala district, Northern Province.

The Mambwe area is important for assessing the relationship between local culture and national programmes for development, since we are now able to build a historic profile for that relationship. The area had been the focus of a 1950s investigation into how so-called ‘labour reserves’ changed under the impact of industrialization. In those days, migration was the officially endorsed road to ‘progress’. William Watson, who researched the Mambwe economy, suggested that the relative material success of the Mambwe and their ability to cope with migration lay in their social structure. The patrilineal structure of the Mambwe village enabled households to deploy their labour on two fronts, mining and village agriculture, in such a way that households benefitted from both. Watson’s account provides first-hand information on the structure of Mambwe villages.

Tradition, cultural norms and values do change over time. If these variables are to play a meaningful role in policy re-orientation, as Operation Food Production suggests, then they must first be understood as part of an evolving structure. One of the aims of this book then is to highlight the evolving structure of Mambwe villages and to clarify some of the values held by the inhabitants.

Mambwe villages straddle the border between Zambia and Tanzania. Increasingly, these villages (on both sides of the border) suffer from population pressure and environmental bankruptcy. Today many qualify as rather good examples of how ‘rural neglect has to be understood within the context of labour demands for the mining sector’ (Chikulo 1986:2). Of course, at this stage in my own argument, the topic of such a relationship is among the issues that require examination. In the 1950s, however, when the Mambwe homeland came to the attention of anthropologists, its relationship with the mining sector became a cause célèbre in countering the idea of a negative link: the Mambwe people benefitted from the engagement as miners.

The situation did not last. When access to the mines became restricted, shortly after independence, the Mambwe homeland had to turn to alternative sources for generating cash. Initially, there was hope that the Zambian leadership would redistribute the ‘fruits of independence’ via programmes for aiding the neglected rural sector. But independence changed little in terms of the inherited, colonial pattern of resource allocations. By the late 1970s, cut off not only from the mining sector but also from urban employment generally, Mambwe villagers had in a sense been thrown back on the land. When I lived and researched in Mambwe country, the villagers were working out their own solution to the economic downturn and rural stagnation. Theirs was a homemade attempt to bring about recovery; an attempt largely unaided and almost wholly outside the spheres of influence laid down by local government. My observations, therefore, are about the impact of non-impact, about the outcome of the administrative failure to reach the ‘forgotten’ subsistence farmers.

During the late 1970s, in the wake of a national economic crisis caused by falling prices for copper (Zambia’s dominant export), social change in Mambwe villages was progressing at a fast pace, in relation to agriculture, village and neighbourhood solidarity, food production, trading, politics, morale, gender, religious tolerance… Many changes related directly to the economic downturn. What I am concerned with in this book is the implication of such changes for understanding ‘the village structure’ and everything this entails. When my manuscript was virtually completed, I came across the following village-level social sketch by Thayer Scudder, based on his return to the Gwembe Valley, Southern Zambia, in 1981. The sketch may exemplify the fast rate at which village lives are changing.

‘Drunkenness was common, while relationships at household, village and neighborhood levels had deteriorated. Especially noticeable was an increase in neighborhood violence and sorcery suspicions and accusations, with disgruntled villagers venting their frustration in a number of highly destabilizing ways. Returning home drunk, they frequently insulted those whom they passed, and periodically, from the edge of their homestead, heaped insults and threats on the unnamed person or persons whom they accused of undermining the wealth of their homestead…. [It was very common] to seek the services of witch finders or to retaliate violently.

Though village violence had always occurred sporadically in the past, its incidence and malevolence appears to have increased significantly in recent years. During 1981, there were a number of cases … where men died after the insecticide Rogor had been added to their beer. Rogor was also being used more frequently to poison an adversary’s livestock, including cattle, smallstock, dogs, ducks and chickens. No household that was trying to better itself during trying times could consider itself immune from the possibility of attack by jealous neighbors. (…)

I do not know the extent to which the community responses noted above can be generalized to the rest of the district, if at all (Scudder 1985: 54–55).’

Scudder’s telling description points to dramatic changes in the Gwembe value system and leaves little room for optimism with regard to ‘recovery’ programmes based on ‘the village structure’. My own account of Mambwe reactions to Zambia’s economic downturn is a little more hopeful, but there are significant parallels.

I have opened this introductory chapter with a summary of the current debate on rural policy in Zambia. This debate underscores the central importance recently accorded to local cultures and calls for analysis of structural and conceptual changes, especially since the economic depression that hit Zambia from about the mid-1970s onwards. To understand the dynamics of ‘village structures’ with reference to the Mambwe economy, I must now turn to Watson’s account of rural life in the 1950s.

WATSON’S THESIS: THE 1950s

When I left for Mambwe country in 1977, I sensed that I was heading for the area of exception. The labour-sending ‘reserve’ I was about to visit had ‘survived’ circulatory migration, had even prospered from it. Watson’s monograph, and the commentary by Gluckman, had established such a positive view – maybe not once and for all, but certainly with persuasive arguments. In its more extreme version, their theory held that the positive Mambwe response had come about not in spite of migration, but because of it. There were signs of improvement in the material culture. Migrants invested in clothing and household goods, better houses, ploughs, agricultural implements and cattle (Watson 1958:220). Moreover, and most crucially, with regard to its internal politics, family life and its food production capacity, Mambwe culture had preserved its integrity. There were only gains. Traditional values lived on, and had in some cases even become stronger, while cash flows were welcomed and enjoyed by all. The Mambwe economy of the 1950s was a fine contrast to earlier studies of rural Zambia under the impact of industrialization (Richards 1939; Wilson 1941/2).

I shall now present a brief summary of Watson’s thesis, focusing on the parameters he chose for framing the ‘survival’ debate: food production capacity, family life and internal politics.

1. FOOD PRODUCTION

First, I wish to recall how Watson accounted for the maintenance of the Mambwe food production capacity, which in the eyes of many critics today could only have suffered from the exodus of migrant labour. There is, readers will note, discrepancy between Watson’s analytic conclusions and my own interpretation of the evidence he presented. However, and much to Watson’s credit, it is equally important to stress that his concern with the capacity for achieving local food-sufficiency remains central to any debate of rural development.

Watson argued, in the final analysis, that the maintenance of village-level food productivity hinged on whether or not male labour could be redeployed during the stage of field preparation. He affirmed that such was indeed the case in Mambwe country generally, provided the exodus of migrant labour remained within limits. Initially, though, Watson had stressed the lack of gender-based specializations as the key to understanding the ability to maintain food production at the village level. The initial position read:

The absence of large numbers of men has not meant less food for those at home, owing to the lack of specialization in the work of men and women. Even when the proportion of women to men in a village is high, they are able to provide their own subsistence, although there is a limit to this disproportion. A connection undoubtedly exists between the number of women in a village and the maintenance of subsistence production; when the men are too few the women cannot carry on by themselves (1958: 225).

His calculations suggested that the critical ratio was 2:1.

‘This critical point is reached when there are more than two women to each man in the village: anything higher than this disrupts both the economy and social life’ (1958: 34).

The argument that Mambwe food organization had remained intact in the face of heavy outmigration provided a contrast with Audrey Richards’ account of economic decline in Bemba villages, where the matrilineal mode of organization prevailed (Richards 1939, 1961). As a result of that ethnographic contrast Watson decided to push his argument further: the Mambwe capacity for food-sufficiency had remained intact because of their patrilineal organization. In the 1950s, residence in Mambwe villages was virilocal and migrant men had a strong allegiance to the parental home. Watson considered this practice superior to the uxorilocal arrangement common in matrilineal societies. Matrilineal villages, he suggested, lacked a cohesive element, since they were organized ‘around a core of women’ (1958: 227).

To reach this final conclusion, Watson shifted the analytic focus away from the evidence that women’s labour was dominant in Mambwe agriculture. His earlier suggestion – that lack of gender-specific specialization facilitated survival – carried surprisingly little weight in the final analysis. Instead, he moved towards the idea that the permanence of the Mambwe village, with its principles of patrilineal organization and virilocal residence, accounted for the survival and heightened cohesion of the Mambwe ‘reserve’. Two principles of patriliny stood out as most instrumental in this survival: father-son inheritance, and the specific mode of land-holding and usage (1958: 226–7).

The formidable contrast between, on the one hand, Watson’s evidence about agricultural task performance and work-party organization, and on the other, the construed gloss offered at the end of Tribal Cohesion (and taken over by Gluckman in his Foreword to the book) remains something of an enigma. While his descriptions portrayed a mode based upon the mobilization of women’s labour – which dominated collective and individual tasks – his final thought focused on the redeployment of male labour. Watson’s model reduced the viability of the Mambwe food system to just one variable: availability of men.

The contrast between evidence and theory does not need to be elaborated here, since it is a central issue in Cliffe’s well-known paper on labour migration and peasant differentiation in rural Zambia. I deplore the condescending tone in Cliffe’s paper, as does Van Donge (1985:61), yet feel that the reductionism and sexist overtones in the concluding chapter of Tribal Cohesion must be acknowledged. Admittedly, the critical 2:1 ratio applied mainly to food production under woodland conditions (where men climb trees to lop branches), but there remains nonetheless a wide gap between Watson’s rich observations and the paucity of the theoretical model.

The sexism in Tribal Cohesion is not restricted to that remarkably reductionist ending. It also permeates certain claims about the division of labour – for example, the claim that the women and men of grassland villages were ‘interchangeable units’ for the task of hoeing (1958: 33). I doubt that this statement was based on observation. Rather, as is true for other parts of rural Zambia, it is more likely that men were technically capable of undertaking women’s work. But for men to actually have done so might well have been shameful. As C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps and diagrams
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A peripheral setting
• 3 Migration today: viewed from a rural district town
• 4 Cohesion today: Kowa revisited
• 5 Food security, food trading and local administration
• 6 Land, labour and cash
• 7 Kinship and the border economy
• 8 New developments in shifting agriculture
• 9 Settlement and survival: conclusions
• Appendices
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index