6 Labor, tribute and authority

The apparent duplication of state authority in Nampula’s rural areas was but one aspect of a broader tendency: namely, the proliferation of local claims to political authority and, by extension, to access to, and control over, labor, land and tribute. This latter tendency, a defining feature of colonial rule throughout sub-Saharan Africa,1 had hardly been absent during the first seventeen years of Mozambican independence. But it became ever more pronounced as Frelimo took the first tentative steps to implement political reforms in Nampula’s rural districts starting in 1992.2 As a result, local grievances against the state multiplied among grassroots rivals for official recognition and their actual or would-be subjects. To this extent, the retraditionalization of rural administration accentuated the political crisis at the grassroots level. This outcome is only fully intelligible when situated within the framework of national economic and political change and, especially, of the dynamic interplay between the two.

The evidence from Nampula sits uneasily alongside of revisionist accountswhich contend or presume that the return to chiefly rule, both in Nampula and further afield, was a fait accompli before it was officially sanctioned by provincial- or district-level government authorities. These accounts, both scholarly and otherwise, ascribe the political ascendancy of chiefs qua chiefs over party–state institutions in government-held zones to three factors: (1) Renamo’s resurrection of indirect rule in areas under rebel military control, a political and administrative arrangement that was allegedly both acclaimed and assisted by the populace; (2) the insurgent army’s wartime attacks on Frelimo representatives (which, apparently, did nothing, or nothing much, to compromise Renamo’s initial popularity); and (3) the mutually reinforcing combination of declining state capacity and legitimacy.

On this view, the rising stock of chiefs simultaneously contributed to, reflected and enforced a new, more equitable, distribution of power between the Frelimo regime and the rural population. Specifically, the emerging balance of forces compelled an increasingly debilitated and embattled state to bow to peasant interests and needs in matters relating to residential patterns, work arrangements and rhythms, and cultural and religious practices.

194 Labor, tribute and authority Even the peasantry’s subsequent disillusionment with Renamo’s predations and parasitism in zones under rebel wartime control did not modify the legacy of the insurgent army’s strategy of rural destabilization and mobilization. Geffray, whose last stint of field research in Eráti was carried out as the war in the district was escalating, was the first to articulate a narrative of this ilk. Variants of it were subsequently echoed by MAE officials involved in determining what role traditional authorities might assume in postwar local government, and by the governor of Nampula in the early 1990s, among other state authorities.3

The discussion below presents a different picture of the configuration of power in the postwar period and of the local dynamics that produced it. The upturn in the political fortunes of chiefs was indeed symptomatic of the weakening of the state and may well have been, in certain cases, underwritten by substantial levels of popular support. Nonetheless, my findings suggest that this upturn did not necessarily denote rural empowerment visà-vis central authority. Nor did the retraditionalization of rural administration signify a growing capacity of chiefs to exert influence over state policies or to act as a meaningful check on its more exacting (and unjust) demands. Indeed, chiefs were hard-pressed to defend their own, let alone anyone else’s, interests.

Moreover, while rural explanations of the realignment of traditional and official authority were far from uniform, in all cases they identified the reassertion of chiefly power as a consequence rather than a determinant of state recognition. Other indicators would appear to support this interpretation. The general outcry from community court judges, for instance, only began after the Namapa administration had given chiefs the official nod to resume the judicial functions they had exercised in the colonial period. Likewise, most longstanding succession and territorial disputes both within and between families with royal pretensions only broke out anew, or reverted back to their colonial form, at this time. I address each of these topics in turn.

The discussion which follows is organized into seven sections. Section one presents evidence supporting the case that, in the main, chiefly political ascendancy in the rural areas had been enabled at least in part by the state and was dependent on state patronage for its ongoing reproduction. Section two examines contemporary struggles between traditional authorities and community court judges over judicial authority, while section three details wrangles within and between chiefly hierarchies. Both sections show the ways in which the provincial and district authorities inadvertently created the conditions for conflicts over rural leadership to multiply and thrive, becoming murkier and more intractable in the process. Partisan politics, the legacies of civil war, and personal and professional rivalries within the district administration produced a similar effect. Section four examines the uncertain standing of chiefs in relation to the district authorities and the local cotton company. Section five explores the ambiguity of chiefs’ political

Labor, tribute and authority 195 position vis-à-vis the populace. Section six shows the extent to which cultivating local officialdom was perceived by traditional authorities as the most effective, expeditious means of defending against, undermining or displacing their fiercest political competitors. This was the case irrespective of the rank, pedigree or personal prestige of the claimant. It was also true whether or not the individuals concerned were nursing any grievances against either the colonial state or its successor. The conclusion ties together threads in the discussion that follows with several of those that run through Chapters 4 and 5.

The provenance, ambiguities and uncertainties of chiefly political ascendancy

Interviewees dated the return to chiefly rule anywhere between 1989 and 1992. The vast majority placed it in 1991 and linked the rising political star of chiefs to a change in local administration in 1990. The reassertion of chiefly power not only occurred after the arrival of a new administrator but, more crucially, followed from his tenure. In keeping with this logic, informants maintained that the state itself had fundamentally altered the preexisting balance of power between secretaries and chiefs. According to Chief Mepera of Odinepa Locality, “When the traditional authorities were removed and the secretaries put in their place, they thought all power would be theirs. Already since the traditional authorities were given power, they [the secretaries] are weakening.”4

While growing state backing had enabled chiefs to elbow secretaries aside, or at least to compete with them on an equal footing, those on the upswing did not necessarily consider current levels of government support sufficient to reign unchallenged over the population. Chief Muhula, for instance, was candid about the prevalence of ongoing questioning and even defiance of his authority, a state of affairs that he attributed to the partiality and indeterminacy of recently restored powers. The full recovery of chiefs’ former stature in the eyes of the population awaited state definition of the scope and substance of chiefly jurisdiction, measures he did not feel he could prevail upon the state to take:

We have recuperated some respect but not so much because ... our responsibilities are not well-defined ... I never went to speak to the administrator [about this] because it was they [people in the government] who decided for us to continue with the work and we are still waiting to see what they are going to do ... What I know is that we don’t have our powers totally. Also, the people know that we don’t have all of our powers.

If the state clearly delineated the powers and prerogatives of traditional authority, Muhula predicted, “they [the population] will respect us.

196 Labor, tribute and authority Because they will be clear about our responsibility. But as we were withdrawn and they are not clear about our responsibilities, they don’t respect us.”5 As Chief Vaquina (Vakina) matter-of-factly put it, “The government is studying. It will tell us how we are going to work. For better or worse, who dictates is the government.”6 In short, power was conferred rather than confirmed.

Precisely because chiefly ascendancy had been state- (rather than Renamoor self-) driven, its continued reproduction was heavily dependent on ongoing state patronage. And no one, least of all traditional leaders, was assuming that such patronage would be forthcoming indefinitely. Chiefs evinced an acute awareness that they were effectively “serving an apprenticeship,” whose successful completion held out little to no guarantee of permanent employment.7 Indeed, the continued existence of secretaries constituted living proof of the provisionality and reversibility of recent gains. Chief Intalia probably spoke for many when he snapped,

we don’t know where this thing is going to end. Because, right now, when we are starting to work, there are still secretaries. And therefore we’re thinking that Frelimo still doesn’t want to work with mpéwé. This is a way of hiding a truth. Because we don’t understand how two people can be in charge in the same place. We don’t know if, in the future, we’ll be sitting [out of power] again or if it will be the secretaries sitting.8

Ironically, if the apparent duplication of state authority underscored chiefs’ probationary status, the government’s demonstrated willingness to sacrifice grassroots party secretaries had only served to point up the expendability of all local actors who risked alliance with it.

Notwithstanding serious misgivings about the state’s long-term intentions, all the chiefs who had been given the opportunity had agreed to serve the state without any assurances of job security. The fact that, in the eyes of traditional authorities themselves, state backing might, without advance warning, be withdrawn is itself revealing of rural notions of causality: theeffects of Renamo pressure were not only limited; they were also, it seems, short-lived, having already subsided with the cessation of military hostilities.

The variability of government-sanctioned local political arrangements, both within and between provinces, also served as a constant, unsettling reminder to chiefs that their newly recovered paramountcy lacked the codification it self-evidently sorely needed. In Nacarôa District, for instance, chiefs’ courts had not been revived although, as the district administrator explained to me, there was a “certain coincidence” between official judicial and traditional authority.9 The balance of forces obtaining just across the Lúrio river in Chiúre District, Cabo Delgado, served as another point of contrast to that which prevailed in Namapa. As Chief Mepera put it,

Labor, tribute and authority 197 There the régulos still haven’t taken power. Who has power are the secretaries. I have cousins that are régulos and a cousin who is a rainha [queen in Portuguese; the term used to denote an apuiamuene, the highestranking female notable in a chieftaincy, typically the paramount chief’s eldest sister or mother].10 They say that we still haven’t been given power. Who works are the secretaries. What kind of government is that? It should be the same thing in all of the nation from the Rovuma to Maputo.11

The patent lack of standardization (or even the pretense thereof) also emboldened those who had fallen from official favor to contest the newly emergent socio-political order. One set of contestants was community court judges.

Traditional versus community courts and other struggles over tribute

In a spirited, at times raucous, meeting, local lay magistrates in the district traced the progressive expansion of chiefs’ powers over the course of the previous decade. As one explained,

The administrator [Bahia] said to the mpéwé that the government had been wrong when it said that it didn’t want to work with mpéwé ... the government said for the mpéwé to continue to work. But their work is not to resolve the people’s problems but rather to organize the population for production. The problems remained to be resolved by the courts. And the mpéwé said, “This [arrangement] of not solving problems, we don’t want. Because if the government says for us to work with the population, then we should also continue to resolve the problems of the population.” The administrator said, “No. The task of the mpéwé is only to organize the population for production.” The régulos kept quiet. They didn’t resolve problems. They only continued to produce, working with the population in production. The administrator who put the mpéwé to work with force is this one that we have now ... When the administrator Braga arrived [in 1990], he made changes. One of them was this: he said to the mpéwé to continue to work with all of your powers, resolve problems of the population, make puaros [Europeanized plural of puaro or opwaro; the place in which disputes are settled according to “customary law”] in your regulados. 12

Struggles between judges and chiefs were distinct from those between chiefs and secretaries because, at the district level, local antagonists faced an openly divided government. The district magistrate of Namapa had clearly taken the retraditionalization of the local justice system as a blatant affront to his professional standing and personal prestige and had encouraged, if not

198 Labor, tribute and authority incited, local judges to stand their ground and contest the new juridical order. He had also taken it upon himself to apprise his provincial-level superiors about recent developments in the district. And, in 1993, in the face of the increasing marginalization of community courts, he had coordinated a “seminar” in Namapa Center for state-recognized chiefs in order to reverse this trend. The aim was to explain the unconstitutionality of chiefs’ courts and to exhort seminar participants to disband them.13

The seminar was at best a qualified success principally because only two chiefs, both of Namirôa Administrative Post, had bothered to attend. Nonetheless, local magistrates reported that both attendees had transmitted the district court’s instructions to other traditional authorities and the phenomenon of chiefs’ courts had “died down a bit.” But, at the beginning of 1994, the district administrator had issued new orientations upholding chiefs’ courts, thus rendering null and void district court directives and precipitating a reversion to the pre-seminar situation.

The first written complaints about chiefs’ courts from community court judges on record date from the end of 1992. Such missives, which were submitted to the district court, gain in frequency and urgency over a two-year period. In them, chiefs are variously charged with corruption, violating legal norms and obstructing justice. The December 1992 report from the community court of Alua Administrative Post, for instance, alleges that, in the eyes of the population, disputes heard in chiefs’ courts are “resolved badly.” It adds that the “régulos and cabos” were making the population suffer by charging “speculative prices” in their courts.14 According to another communiqué, a cabo “ate money” of the sum of 15,000 meticais owed by a defendant to a local court in the vicinity of the district seat.15 In Muanona Locality, the Napala community court alleged that the local “régulo” had prohibited people whose pigs were accused of damaging their neighbors’ food crops from appearing in court, “ripp[ing] up” the court’s summonses in the process. The court had responded by sending a report documenting such transgressions to the chefe do posto of Namirôa but had yet to receive a “satisfactory response.”16 Subsequent communiqués from the locality indicate that, from the perspective of local magistrates, it was downhill from there.17

If some chiefs opted for open displays of defiance, others reportedly deployed a strategy of subterfuge so as to safeguard their recently recovered judicial prerogatives. Deftly exploiting “regional contradictions,” Chief Intalia had, the Muanona community court wrote, completely “remodeled” the court, replacing the elected members with his own relatives.18 Such a strategy would have allowed any chief who pursued it to feign compliance with district court directives, while ensuring that local judges would not contest his or her own monopolization of judicial authority.

The lay judges with whom I spoke reiterated these charges, taking pains to emphasize that the rehabilitation of chiefs’ courts was fueling chiefly corruption and leading to the diversion of public monies on a regular basis. Two mahumu who served as local magistrates in Namirôa Administrative

Labor, tribute and authority 199 Post and Namapa Administrative Post, respectively, took the lead here.19 While both men were, in principle, in favor of a return to indirect rule, they adamantly opposed the reassertion of chiefly juridical power. This was because chiefs’ blind pursuit of material gain in the judicial arena had, the mahumu held, hopelessly colored their otherwise sound judgment. It was such considerations which, in their view, accounted for the obstinate refusal of chiefs to accept, let alone solicit, the advice of mahumu in their capacity as judges even though such counsel continued to be welcomed on extra-legal matters. Referring to his own chief, one humu explained,

He doesn’t want the advice of judges. Because he knows that when he fines someone, that money is for the mapéwé to eat, it’s for ... his pocket. And he knows that when we impose a fine in the courts, it is for the coffers of the state. So he doesn’t want that advice because he thinks if we give advice, it is for him to leave this money for the state.

The other humu concurred, highlighting ways in which chiefs sought to maximize litigation-related earnings. While community courts, he alleged, did their utmost to render speedy trials and verdicts, chiefs’ courts were notorious for foot-dragging:

in the régulo [in the régulo’s court], a case takes two, three, four, five days ... Why does it take days? It takes days because he wants the person to reflect on his problem and to grab a goat or a chicken to go give to the régulo in order for his problem to end or for that offender also to grab hold of some kind of tribute to go give the régulo in order for the régulo to find him in the right when he isn’t – or to extinguish that problem.20

The accusations leveled by local magistrates did not go unchallenged. Back in Nampula City, the provincial magistrate curtly dismissed the protests and arguments coming from the base. Many courts never functioned from the outset and, during the war, many others had ceased functioning, he pointed out. Moreover, the courts in Namapa had never generated any appreciable revenue for the state, he maintained, so the reappearance of chiefs’ courts could hardly have had an adverse effect on state coffers. Districts whose courts had in the past produced receipts, such as Nacala Port and Ilha de Moçambique, were continuing to do so. The judges in question, he implied, were simply hankering after a lost income for themselves.21

To be sure, the presence of community courts was often more notional than real. Even in pre-war Namapa, only a small fraction of local conflicts made its way to either the courts or the party. According to an early study by Geffray and Pedersen, the preferred method of dispute settlement, at least when it came to questions of land access and control, was “always feitiçaria,” or sorcery.22 Second, base-level courts had always struggled, often in vain, to defend their designated jurisdiction against encroachment by

200 Labor, tribute and authority Frelimo secretaries.23 And, as judges themselves conceded, in certain areas, chiefs had been exercising juridical functions long before the district administration sanctioned them to do so.

Furthermore, like all grassroots institutions, base-level courts had, from their inception, suffered from a dearth of financial and material resources. Since the formation of a local judicial network in 1978, lay judges in Namapa, as throughout Mozambique, had had to contend with a lack of writing materials and transport.24 Closer to the present, lack of remuneration had become a new and salient lament. Many local judges had, since 1992, ceased to discharge their juridical duties because, as one put it, “They don’t have clothing and they don’t receive.” A judge in Napala had reportedly “abandoned the job” in order to work as a capataz for SODAN.25 Finally, destabilization and civil war had further debilitated the local justice system.26

Despite multiple, often severe, handicaps, local courts were not stillborn.27 Nor were all of them completely defunct. The court of Alua Center reported that, in 1992, it had heard forty-seven common lawsuits, including cases involving theft, “expropriation of wives,” expropriation of land, adultery, “aggression” and a run-away slash-and-burn.28 The Muanona court, in its turn, reported that during June–July 1994, it had heard six cases: one robbery, one “aggression,” one “abandonment of the home,” one involving livestock-induced crop damage (domestic pigs, here as elsewhere, being the major culprit) and two involving “lack of consideration.”29 With the growing improvement of the overall military situation from mid-1991 onwards, even long moribund courts had begun to show some signs of life, however faint and episodic, and however much their turf was contested by both “régulos and secretaries,” as one report put it.30

The public was not of one mind on the subject of chiefs’ courts and popular assessments of the resurrection of these courts were often mixed. Allegations against the corruption of chiefs, both within and beyond the judicial arena, were common in Namapa and Alua, where struggles for power were most overt. In the latter case, these charges extended to chiefs in Renamo’s zone in the southeastern corner of the district. The reactivation of chiefs’ courts in Alua had also revived the much detested colonial practice of forcing litigants to undress either before, during or after formal deliberations. Such practices transcended political affiliations or leanings, as well as distinctions between “legitimate” and imposed chiefly officeholders.31

On the other hand, chiefs’ courts were not all without their advantages. One chefe do posto contended that legal proceedings were, if anything, reputed among the local populace to be more drawn out in community courts because they “have to record problems.”32 The fact that chiefs’ courts were perceived as enjoying a greater degree of autonomy from the state’s law enforcement apparatus also clearly worked in their favor. As the registrar for the district court admitted, “As a rule, certain people feel more at ease taking a problem to the régulo ... because he doesn’t have a jail.”33 Similarly,

Labor, tribute and authority 201 a cousin of Chief Comala, who candidly acknowledged chiefly abuses with respect to both legal and extra-legal matters, nonetheless maintained that, in general, higher “fines” or indemnities were to be found in community courts rather than elsewhere. An added benefit of chiefly arbitration, in his view, was the greater likelihood of receiving clemency and “at times there exists ... reconciliation.”34

Despite the conflicting nature of the evidence, four broad conclusions can be drawn. First, there was a marked tendency in both oral testimony and written accounts to depict local conflicts over juridical authority as, first and foremost, a bread-and-butter issue. Second, chiefs’ courts only became a generalized phenomenon in the district following their official authorization by the local administration in April 1992. Third, in the early postindependence period the Frelimo state had succeeded in creating new claims to authority and power if not necessarily the locally-rooted institutional bases to undergird them. Fourth, the claims of Frelimo-appointed judicial authority were alive, despite the multiplicity of constraints on, and growing challenges to, their effective exercise. What distinguished the post-1991 period was the fact that these claims themselves faced imminent extinction. This new, wholly unprecedented, danger, local judges insisted, had arisen from the district administration’s two-year-old alliance with chiefs.

The apparently district-specific nature of the rehabilitation of chiefs’ courts fired judges’ collective sense of injury and injustice and fueled hopes that, however unenviable their present predicament, recent changes were not set in stone. As one put it:

This order about the mpéwé, we are doubting. Because if it were a general order, we would hear that the courts have now died. Because we are seeing in other places, in Cabo Delgado, the courts are working, and even here [e.g. in this province] in other places, the courts are working. This thing of the courts not resolving problems, we are only seeing here. That’s why we are in doubt.

Another concluded, “It is an order. Let’s comply. But we’re not very clear.” Nonetheless, as their testimony suggests, compliance on their part was selective, just as it was on the part of some secretaries.35

In the meantime, initiation rites continued to constitute another site of struggle over access to, and control over, local tribute. Since 1991, chiefs had been vested with authority by the district administration to preside over these rites. However, at least in some areas, Frelimo party and OMM members, who had assumed this function in the 1986–1987 period,36 had refused to surrender their prerogatives in this regard. At the same time, all claimants on cash and food payments levied on the occasion of such ceremonies faced a fresh challenge on this front from a formidable and wholly unexpected quarter. Since the early 1990s, the Catholic missionaries in the district had begun to convene initiation rites under the church’s own

202 Labor, tribute and authority auspices with a view to Christianizing them,37 thus jeopardizing an important source of revenue for rural political and juridical authorities of all stripes. Given that the fees charged for such rites had, by the early 1990s, become unaffordable to many local residents, the church’s initiative seemed likely to meet with a receptive audience, especially among poorer sections of the population.

Succession struggles and territorial disputes

In Namapa, the retraditionalization of local administration roiled a host of long-simmering succession, territorial and political disputes. Because such conflicts abounded, I limit my discussion to those which illustrate generalized trends within the district.

The regedoria of Taibo, which encompasses the town of Namapa, neatly exemplifies struggles arising from overlapping and proliferating claims to power. It also illustrates three popular notions about the genesis of these claims: (1) that the monetization of the economy had, as early as the 1930s, led to the commodification of chieftaincy, enabling Africans with privileged access to cash to purchase Portuguese-defined traditional identities; (2) that African “auxiliaries” of the colonial state were, by the 1930s, strategically positioned to market such identities; and (3) that the role of white officialdom in driving such transactions and imposing illegitimate chiefly authority was often peripheral.38 In addition, the regedoria is emblematic of the ways in which the introduction of partisan politics and the attendant politicization of chieftaincy contributed to, and further confused, the imbroglio.

In 1994, there were no less than four families claiming the right to stewardship of this populous, strategically located administrative unit. The first group was led by Vaquina, whose uncle had served as the first régulo under the Portuguese. This first Vaquina was himself a new transplant in Namapa, then a recently created military post, having migrated from the present-day Odinepa area (Niphuku) where he had been the “deputy” of Chief Nametaramo. Upon his death in the 1930s, his designated heir, the contemporary Vaquina, was deemed too young to be nominated as régulo. 39 At this juncture, the interpreter of the colonial administration and son of neighboring Chief Namiquela, Mario Mateus, pronounced himself chief of the area. As Chiefs Alua and Comala described it, “As the son of a régulo, he wanted to be régulo” but, given prevailing matrilineal principles, was barred from acceding to Namiquela’s regedoria. 40 Thus began a period in which Mateus served both as interpreter and chief. Informants emphasized the futility of protest in the face of these developments. As Cabo Cumar put it,

At the time, everything that the interpreter said was accepted by the administrator ... The population tried to react but it didn’t have any clout. The protests of the populations were considered invalid. Because each one, when he had a problem, had to speak to the interpreter.41

Labor, tribute and authority 203 At the time, Taibo was working in Namapa as a capataz on a “collective machamba” set up by the district administrator. Here the local population forcibly cultivated cotton and other cash crops in order to meet newly imposed tax obligations.42 Taibo himself was also new to the area having migrated to Namapa in 1932 from Memba where, by some accounts, he had been the cabo of Chief Napruma. He was said to owe his position as capataz to the fact that the then administrator of the district knew him from the days when he had served as a chefe do posto in Memba. Some informants claimed that Taibo acted as deputy régulo to Mateus during this period in addition to working as a capataz.

43

According to local testimony, Mateus wore two hats until the arrival of a new administrator in 1938 who refused to countenance an interpreter who doubled as régulo. Here oral accounts begin to diverge. According to a former colonial interpreter, the new administrator appointed Taibo to be régulo. His decision was endorsed by the local population because, as capataz, “he didn’t bother anyone.”44 According to Chiefs Alua and Comala, Mateus handpicked Taibo to succeed him on the condition that Taibo share his income with him.45 According to Cabo Cumar, Taibo simply bribed the interpreter with wages he had earned as a capataz to exert influence over the administrator’s appointment.46 When Taibo died in 1964, one of his nephews, also a capataz, succeeded him,47 serving as régulo of Namapa Center until independence.

When the district administration began working with chiefs as agents of the state in April 1992, it initially bypassed both Taibo and Vaquina in favor of Cassimo, a close relative of Comala, leader of what is widely reputed to be the most powerful chieftaincy in the district. According to several informants, Cassimo’s forebears had served as cabos under Vaquina and, subsequently, under Taibo. 48 Cassimo, Comala and Alua claimed, however, that the relation had been the reverse: Vaquina, they insisted, had “always” served as Cassimo’s cabo and it was Cassimo, as opposed to Vaquina, who had been usurped by Mateus.49 Such allegations seemed to be only the latest in a series of longstanding ploys by the Comala chieftaincy to gain control over the politically central regedoria of Namapa Center.50

Taibo protested and, a few months later, was awarded control over his old regedoria. I can only speculate about the reasons for this shift. Taibo was an experienced capataz and régulo and Cassimo, at age twenty-three, had little leadership or work experience. Taibo’s stint as state-recognized chief was, however, just as short-lived. As he explained it, after the signing of the peace accord, the administrator held a meeting in the town and explained:

Now there are many parties. There is the party of Renamo, of Frelimo, of UNAMO, plus others. Whoever wants can join. Renamo arrived and called a meeting and I joined. From then on it was said that I couldn’t be régulo. 51

204 Labor, tribute and authority Thereupon, the administration had recruited a cousin of Taibo’s – officially known as Taibo but disparagingly referred to by his detractors by his nonroyal name, Carlos Máquina – to stand in as régulo. A former colonial police officer and soldier, Máquina had worked as a lorry driver in Nampula and Zambézia between 1979 and 1992. Between 1990 and 1992, he transported sisal and cotton for JFS at the company’s plantation in Geba on the coast.52 The widespread view in Namapa was that this Taibo, who reportedly had joined the Frelimo Party at the time of his appointment in 1992, owed his current status to the fact that he had, as one aspirant chief put it, “given a little something to the administrator” or to one of his subordinates.

Significantly, no bids were advanced on the basis of precolonial claims. As we have seen, Vaquina himself had arrived after Namapa post had already been established. None of the contenders was considered a mapéwé. Clan was clearly a factor in the dispute: the colonial Taibo was Male, whereas Vaquina was Lapone. Nonetheless, intra-clan and intra-familial conflicts were at least as important: Cassimo and Vaquina belonged to the same clan, as did the two Taibos.

A related but distinct set of conflicts in Namapa Administrative Post bore testimony to the legacy of the colonial state’s first attempts to reverse its early strategy, pursued in the immediate aftermath of conquest, to fragment or otherwise undermine larger, more powerful, chieftaincies. Starting from the early 1940s, the number of regedorias was reduced and new powers and prerogatives attributed to those chiefs who survived the cull.53 The implementation of this new policy in Namapa led to the expansion of Taibo’s regedoria to impressive, even unwieldy, proportions.54 (The fact that Taibo had been the beneficiary of this policy over the many other candidates is ironic given the new policy’s stress on the importance of investing members of the historically dominant lineage in any given area as régulo.

55) In the process, eight neighboring régulos deemed to have too few subjects had been downgraded to cabos, a status they had maintained throughout the rest of the colonial period. Once again, the spectacular rise in Taibo’s political fortunes was attributed to foul play. In 1992, the district administration had chosen to restore the régulos-turned-cabos back to chiefly status. However, for reasons that remain obscure, it subsequently changed tack, reinstituting the late colonial configuration of power. As one of the shortchanged chiefs put it, “The population and I ... have reached the conclusion that there exists a deal between the Régulo Taibo who is Máquina and the government.”56

In Namirôa Administrative Postthere was another face-off between former cabos and régulos but, in this instance, it was the latter party that felt wronged by recent interventions of the local state. The local chefe do posto, charged with overseeing the largest and most remote of the district’s three administrative posts,57 evinced a pronounced predilection for partitioning Portuguese-inherited regedorias. In the regedorias of Tubruto and Intalia, the principal impetus for division had come from former cabos claiming either

Labor, tribute and authority 205 precolonial or early colonial chiefly status. In both cases, attempted secession had met with virulent opposition from the incumbents, with chiefs and their former cabos refusing to recognize the other’s authority in the area in question. As a result, the chefe do posto had referred the two cases to the district government for review. Some two years later, he was still waiting for word from his superiors on how to manage the two standoffs.58

Further to the west, a dispute over chiefly office in Muanona Locality testified to the legacy of war-induced flight. There the return of a long-absent traditional leader had sparked a bitter intra-familial feud. Mejua, a former cabo of Chief Uantera, had fled to Cabo Delgado during the war. His younger brother stayed behind, overseeing local funeral ceremonies in his absence. When Mejua returned in the wake of the peace accord to resume his former functions, his brother, now acting in the capacity of cabo, refused to stand down. Thereupon, Mejua had returned to Cabo Delgado, leaving one of his wives behind. A few months later his wife died. Mejua and the local population accused the younger brother of having poisoned her.59 Even the regedoria of Comala faced a credible challenge, a noteworthy development in view of the chieftaincy’s depiction as a pillar of stability and the impressive religious and political powers attributed to Comala IV, powers which, it has been suggested, derived from the purity of his pedigree.60

Contending royals and the centrality of the state

The widespread view in Namapa was that the emerging configuration of local power had been over-determined by the state itself. In accordance with provincial government orientations issued in the early 1990s, the district administration had conducted a survey of local traditional authorities with an eye to identifying, or at least obtaining some sort of rough consensus on, legitimate successors of precolonial chiefs. However, although the inquiry’s findings revealed a significant number of divergences between contemporary state-recognized chiefs and allegedly legitimate ones,61 they did not, in the main, perturb the pattern of newly crystallizing alliances between traditional and official authority.

Several informants complained, or simply observed matter-of-factly, that the survey did not involve popular consultation. In Cassimo’s words, “In 1992, the government said choose your régulos. The public was then presented with an already chosen régulo.”62 Such objections were by no means confined to Namapa, nor were they exclusively voiced by the political opposition. The charge, for instance, was made in the national daily newspaper Notícias by one of the paper’s local correspondents following a visit he made to his home in Lalaua District in mid-1992.63 At that stage, the then Director of DPAC apparently felt that clarification of government intentions and guidelines was in order. In a proposed circular, he observed, “we find that in some areas the administrative structures do not heed the traditional principle in which the choice of traditional chief is up to the population.”

206 Labor, tribute and authority Such a principle, he reasoned, should be upheld, “seeing that it is [the population] that knows who were its true representatives.”64

Government officials made no secret of their marked preference for reverting to the late colonial status quo. In 1992, a MAE consultant who held discussions with district administrators and other members of the provincial government on such matters found that most respondents placed a high priority, if not a premium, on job experience acquired under Portuguese rule. Thus, while local officials insisted on drawing a sharp distinction between precolonial chiefly offices and those created under the Portuguese, they left little doubt that it was the latter set that best suited their requirements in their daily dealings with the rural populace:

The figure of the régulo as a connecting link between the Public Administration at the level, above all, of the administrative post and the population in the locality, continues to be necessary today, according to the observations of the interviewees.65

In Namapa, local responses to state unilateralism, or state involvement in chieftaincy politics, varied. While younger advocates of the return to indirect rule tended to think there was no place for government in chiefly succession decisions or dispute settlement,66 those who had actually taken part in, or observed at close range, both processes during the colonial period considered administrative intervention an integral, even indispensable, part of them. After much discussion, Vaquina and his counselors, for instance, came down in favor of public involvement in the nominating process but in a manner which, on the face of it, exhibited all of the hallmarks of a government-sponsored referendum. In their view, the question that should have been put to the population was “‘Who was régulo first here?’ If it had been like this,” they added, “there would be no problem today.” They explicitly rejected the suggestion that the population be asked to choose the person that they thought best represented them.67

Similarly, state interventionism in succession disputes in the past was not necessarily recalled with rancor. If Portuguese authority was seen as a coconspirator of, or an accomplice to, Africans making illicit bids for power, it could also serve as a formidable frontline defense against such bids. Chief Mucarara, for instance, recounted that his own ascension to the helm of the chieftaincy had been greatly facilitated by the “whites” who had ruled in his favor when, upon the death of his uncle, the deputy régulo, a non-family member, had tried to wrest control of the regulado.

68

In Namapa in 1994, almost all aspirants to state-recognized traditional offices and incumbents facing mutinous and mutually rivalrous subordinates limited their protests to personally petitioning the district administration. To my knowledge, the only instance of a popular mobilization on behalf of a chief seeking state recognition in the 1992–1994 period took place in Alua Center just ahead of the country’s first multiparty poll. When, in October

Labor, tribute and authority 207 1994, the district administrator made a campaign stop in Alua on Frelimo’s behalf, local residents greeted him by staging a rally of their own. The objective of the demonstration was to protest the rule of the local staterecognized chief, a former régulo who was widely criticized for his reliance on strong-arm tactics, and to present an alternative, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the regedoria. The administrator responded by declaring that he was there in his capacity as First Party Secretary, rather than as the head of the district, and thus was not in a position to address their concerns. It was unclear who had organized the event.69

The vast majority of claimants on chiefly office who were seeking to fend off or displace rivals eschewed large-scale, organized action. Most seemed to think their political fortunes would rise or fall in accordance with state dictates and caprices, and, thus, were largely out of their own hands. Cabo Cumar, for instance, plaintively asked, “When will I receive my powers?”70 Vaquina was even more shrill: “Will we lose power forever?” he queried.71

Actively asserted, overlapping claims did not in all cases automatically manifest themselves in competing appeals to the state. Word had it, for instance, that Chief Muhula had agreed to let the regulado revert back to the descendants of Momola, the chief of the area at the time of conquest, upon his own death. Muhula’s father had been Momola’s cabo. In the wake of World War I, Momola had fled to Cabo Delgado in order to escape retaliation by Portuguese troops seeking to avenge suspected chiefly collaboration with the Germans during the conflict. At that stage, Muhula’s father had assumed control of the regedoria. Henceforth, Momola’s heir and, subsequently, his descendants had served as cabos in the regedoria, which remained in the hands of Muhula’s family. Unfortunately, the possible handover of the regedoria in the 1990s seemed likely to create as many problems as it solved: the move was expected to be opposed by the maternal relatives of Muhula’s father, out of whose hands the regulado passed by virtue of the father having chosen his son as heir.72

Chiefs, the state and capital

Perhaps the most dramatic mark of chiefs’ relative lack of political clout visà-vis the state was the striking facility with which several of them had, once again and often unwillingly, been turned into accessories to a compulsory cotton regime. I briefly review allegations of forced labor practices, which came from virtually all points of the district, before considering the positioning of chiefs in relation to them.

Allusions to the ongoing coercive character of cotton cultivation were often made in the course of discussion about changes in production relations during late colonial rule. Asked if cotton remained a compulsory crop even after the formal abolition of forced labor in the colony in 1961, more than one group of informants replied, “Until independence ... until now,” a spontaneous extrapolation typically accompanied by resigned laughter.73 In

208 Labor, tribute and authority like fashion, Chief Vaquina gave to understand that coercion was embedded in the very structure of production. The crop, he explained, “was always forced.” Then, as if stating the obvious, he added, “That’s why there are capatazes for cotton but not for peanuts.”74

Struggles over cotton were more manifest and peasants more outspoken about them in the environs of the district’s three Catholic missions: Namapa Center, Alua Center and Mirrote in Namirôa Administrative Post. The geography of grassroots resistance in good measure bore testimony to the Catholic Church’s leading role, both in Namapa District and in the province as a whole, in criticizing and organizing against forced labor practices in post-independence Mozambique. Several informants attributed declines in cotton production since 1991 in certain localities of Namapa to the combined impact of church interventions, on the one hand, and peasant resistance and political activism, on the other, in the face of state and company-inflicted violence.75 The organizing efforts of local catechists and parishioners had prompted district authorities to accuse them of prohibiting people from growing cotton.76

In Alua, the fall in cotton production had been especially sharp.77 The drop was due to demands by smallholders that the local administration grant them “at least a year” reprieve from cotton production. The initiative was spearheaded by “animators (animadores),” local leaders of the Catholic Church, emboldened by human rights courses offered by the local mission which, as one activist put it, “show us that the constitution of the Republic has an article that says each citizen has the right to choose his own profession. But,” he continued, “the responsáveis [pl. of responsável] of cotton are not observing this law. So we sent letters to the government, to the chefe do posto of Alua. That’s why this year the government is leaving us to rest in peace.”

By their own account, the initiative involved non-Catholic participants and transcended religious identifications: “We wrote as Mozambican citizens ... because all of us suffered. Because we were beaten ... It was enough if we delayed, we were beaten by capatazes, troops, Naparamas, régulos. There was the administrator who went around with his soldiers.” The animadores reported that, in Namapa, both secretaries and chiefs were exempt from forced crop cultivation. Others could only gain an exemption by giving chiefs “chickens or money.” Chiefs, the animadores emphasized, were only the latest addition to an already formidable battery of repressive agents acting on behalf of the state and SODAN. They expressed anxiety about their fates during the then upcoming 1994–1995 agricultural campaign and claimed that elsewhere in the district coercive mechanisms remained in place.78

Forced labor practices were further detailed in local parish reports. According to one, written by the Alua parish at the end of 1992, “On November 23, the Naparama captured twenty-four people. They took them with their arms tied with ropes and they stayed like that, in a hut until daybreak, to then be taken to the cotton machambas.”79 A 1990 report from the parish lists the names of capatazes who had whipped people, the names of

Labor, tribute and authority 209 their victims, and the places where these abuses had taken place.80 A 1993 communiqué from the Namapa parish, in its turn, reported:

We register many abuses because of the production of cotton. The enquadradores [capatazes] of JFS have used coercion and moral violence with a view to compelling the population to grow cotton. We know that the technicians [company field agents] tell the enquadradores that to produce cotton it is necessary to whip. The reasons the population is not always content with this [crop] are known. There are also abuses on the part of traditional power which formerly was exploited, and now begins to exploit and oppress the people.81

Several residents of the environs of Namapa Center alleged that the local régulo and his militiamen intimidated and beat those who refused to grow cotton; the only way to forestall such punishment was through bribery.82 With the growing assertiveness of the local population in the face of state and company demands, at least some local SODAN employees had opted to apply more subtle forms of pressure to meet production quotas. The opportunity to do so had been enabled by the issuance of voter registration cards in advance of the October poll. Parishioners from one of the outlying bairros reported that three company capatazes had asked the local cabo “to call all of the people who had registered to vote because the registration had been badly done.” When the people had assembled on the appointed day, it quickly became apparent what the capatazes’ real objective was: to use the names of registered voters to expand their lists of smallholders committed to cotton production for the 1994–1995 agricultural campaign. Having exposed the ruse, “Some gave name [sic] and many went home.”83

Forced labor practices were an ongoing feature of life in Odinepa Locality, according to a former capataz. During his entire tenure with both EEAN and SODAN between 1981 and 1993, he maintained that, in the area, “the norm was for a capataz to beat people ... the way of working was that you have to slap the population.” In 1992, he himself had been severely beaten by two armed SODAN militiamen, with “two bosses of João Ferreira dos Santos” looking on, for his refusal to adhere to company “norms.” At that time, forced crop cultivation was a “general hardship at the district level,” he claimed. The president of the locality was indifferent in the face of local complaints about these beatings, which, he maintained, were ongoing.84

I encountered much the same story in Mirrote. According to a missionary stationed there, the local SODAN field agent regularly beat peasants. When confronted, he had insisted that he was only following company orders.85 The employee in question maintained that “Today, we need to have a peaceful policy” but nonetheless admitted, “from my point of view, with this crop, there is war.” This was because peasants didn’t follow the prescribed agricultural calendar or comply with technical instructions. During the 1993–1994 agricultural campaign, they had only sown in December and

210 Labor, tribute and authority January when, ideally, planting should be completed by mid-November. They also regularly cut corners weeding. Despite such irregularities, he still had to stake out the machambas according to company guidelines. Other infringements were more serious still. Smallholders routinely tried to plant maize and millet in the middle of cotton blocks. Some of those who had been caught and, as a result, forbidden to take part in block schemes in the future, had stolen company seeds, planting them in dispersed machambas in the mountains. He concluded, “I may beat this one, insult that one, grab that one. But, in the end, João Ferreira dos Santos and the administrator will judge me when it comes time for marketing and I have delivered a lot of cotton.”86

Further west, evidence of reliance on force was much more thin. Whereas in other localities in the district the actual area devoted to cotton production fell well below official targets during the 1993–1994 agricultural campaign, in Muanona and Namirôa the area under cotton cultivation actually exceeded the expectations of the plan.87 In these areas, residents tended to stress cotton’s ongoing importance as a vital source of cash earnings.88 This, many maintained, was particularly the case at their end of the district in view of the dearth of other income-earning opportunities, aside from peanut production.

Nonetheless, even in this region allegations of forced labor were not entirely absent. Asked if there was popular resistance to cotton cultivation in the colonial period, one chief from Namirôa Administrative Post replied, “Even now there is resistance. Only now some have decided to cultivate of their own free will because they make a lot of profit. The people who don’t want to cultivate are forced.” Two days later, he sought me out with the express intent of retracting his testimony on this score. Elders in the seat of the administrative post simply – and rather impassively – maintained that, due to rising producer prices in recent years, “many produce voluntarily.”89

Elsewhere, chiefs were willing to go on record that cotton was indeed a forced crop. In Alua, four state-recognized “régulos”, two of whom had served as capatazes until company lay-offs in 1992, admitted that “No one produces voluntarily” but were tightlipped about their own attempts to meet production targets in the face of smallholder intransigence.90 In a follow-up interview, one of the chiefs, Comala, was more forthcoming about chiefs’ recourse to force and the reasons for doing so. The pay of capatazes was docked if less than ten hectares of cotton were planted or weeded per week in their designated work areas, he explained. While he had always managed to meet the required minimum, other capatazes had come up short and, accordingly, had paid the price. Closer to Alua Center, company foremen had been particularly hard-pressed “[b]ecause in the area, there are people who don’t want to produce cotton, in addition to which the terrain doesn’t produce a lot of cotton.”91

Repeated attempts to impress upon the administrator the depth of peasant dissatisfaction had fallen on deaf ears, he alleged:

Labor, tribute and authority 211 In our meetings, we have always said that many people don’t want compulsory measures [e.g. in the 1990s, as in the colonial period, one hectare for households headed by able-bodied males] for producing cotton. The administrator always tells us to mobilize the population to produce cotton because he says if they ... don’t produce cotton, they will not have clothing or money.

His mistreatment of the population, then, reflected in part his manifest inability to influence local cotton policy and, by extension, his own terms of service. And, as he himself was quick to point out, neither he nor the other chiefs had sought out such service in the first place: “We didn’t ask to be capatazes. It was the company which asked us.”

The retrenchment of chiefs as company employees in 1992 did not signal the end of their involvement as key mobilizers for cotton production, nor their sense that they might be penalized in the event they failed to deliver satisfactory results. The former capataz from Odinepa explained why: “Because the régulos are threatened. They are not beaten but it is the same as being beaten because the word of the administrator who orders is that all of the people have to have a cotton machamba.” He stressed the futility of seeking redress at the district level: “Because the administrator of the district has a car of João Ferreira dos Santos. That’s why all the places have to produce cotton.”92

A visit to Odinepa Locality corroborated his testimony and vividly demonstrated the inability of chiefs to act as protective intermediaries for their constituents even if they were so inclined. At the same time, however, it revealed a rather different – and, as it turned out, more commonly held –conception of the relationship between state and capital. In one settlement, I struck up a conversation with a group of smallholders who contended a bit too insistently, and without having been solicited, that they produced cotton voluntarily even though, in their own estimation, cereals had been more profitable during the previous agricultural campaign and cotton was in part responsible for local malnutrition. It was the chief, hitherto silent, who broke the vow of silence. Rounding on the main speaker, he reprimanded, “You made a mistake in the beginning when you said cotton was not compulsory.” Others immediately took up his cue: “It is not our will. We are being forced. If we refuse, we are beaten. The company doesn’t come here directly but it gives orders. The capatazes beat those who don’t grow cotton.”

They were emphatic that the state was not a potential source of succor in the face of company exactions: “Who are we going to inform? The administrator is in this group that beats. How can we complain to him?” The chief elaborated, “Who forces us is the government. The government talks to the company. I receive orders from the government and I force others. The cultivation of cotton has been compulsory from the beginning until today.” He maintained that he was powerless to intercede on behalf of his wards: “I can’t protest. I am ordered. If I stop forcing the population, the population

212 Labor, tribute and authority won’t do anything. And the government will settle accounts with us.” Another member of the group piped up, “They would ask what he is doing. They would blame him.” Thus, while local government officials were seen as being beholden to the company, which commanded and dispensed greater material resources, the company was nonetheless regarded as acting at the state’s bidding. In serving capital, chiefs, both on and off the concessionary payroll, were effectively serving the state itself.93

The political fragility of chiefs vis-à-vis the district administration was also glaringly apparent in their self-confessed lack of wage-earning power. Most chiefs and their allies felt that, as newly christened representatives of the state, traditional authorities should receive a salary. As one UNAMO representative put the case, “We want régulos to have salaries because they work a lot. There’s no work for which one doesn’t receive. This was only [the case] with the government with its secretaries because they agreed that the population would pay.”94 However, the chiefs with whom I had the opportunity to speak did not feel that they could realistically expect better treatment than secretaries had received. A visibly exasperated Chief Intalia, for instance, quipped, “We saw that the secretaries don’t receive and we’re going to say that we want to receive?”95 The response of traditional authorities in Odinepa had a similar thrust. As one put it, “No one receives ... even the secretaries don’t receive.”96

In the main, chiefs were self-deprecating about their economic vulnerability and, hence, easy cooptability. In the more densely populated areas of the district, some chiefs had received a one- and, in some cases, a two-time gratuity for assisting with tax collection, netting anywhere between 10,000–50,000 meticais (approximately US$1.75–8.77 at then prevailing real exchange rates).97 Such derisory sums had, it seems, only served to highlight the state’s low esteem for the value of their labor. Referring to the 1993 tax collection campaign, Chief Comala explained, “When Alua and I passed the target for tax [receipts], we received ten contos [laughter]. Ten contos isn’t enough for anything. It’s not money.” Asked why they were working for the government without pay if that is what they thought was their due, Chief Saíde replied, “We are helping the government. Our land is here. We have nowhere to go.”98

The country’s first multiparty poll laid bare the impotence of chiefs vis-àvis the two main electoral contenders – at least in the eyes of some of their putative charges. Here I rely on public commentary in Vida Nova, a popular monthly published by the Catholic mission in Anchilo, just outside of Nampula City, and one of the few publications then circulating in the rural areas. One contributor described the behavior of chiefs in the face of electoral political pressures as follows: “They are like reeds: they arrive at the administrative post and say, ‘yes, yes’; they come to the Renamo delegation and say, ‘yes, yes’. They feel closed in on both sides and don’t really know who they should choose.” Another wrote: “They are deceived by the politics of both sides. They think they will continue to rule as in the past.”99

Labor, tribute and authority 213

Chiefs and the populace

The obverse side of chiefs’ precarious position with respect to official authority was their uncertain standing and sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis the population. As we have seen, in Chief Muhula’s eyes, this ambiguity flowed from the indeterminacy of state-devolved powers. In certain areas, chiefs had been left wide open to challenge by both their principal political rivals and would-be subject populations as a result.

By all accounts, secretaries could be as effective at disrupting the progress of state-assigned tasks and demobilizing the population as some disaffected chiefs reputedly had been during the exclusive official reign of secretaries.100 Chiefs Alua, Comala, Saíde and Nametemula contended that their work performance was hampered because

The secretaries hold us in contempt. They don’t want us. There is confusion ... For example, the executive council here [e.g. Alua Center] sends us to go do a job. When the secretaries find us doing this work, they disorganize, saying, ‘These are nothing. They are only capatazes of cotton’ ... They were told that they work for the party, that they can’t resolve problems [e.g. social conflicts]. They continue to resolve problems.101

The chiefs clearly felt at a loss to prevent such blatant affronts and transgressions single-handedly. Similar dynamics were reportedly in play elsewhere in the district.102

By the same token, and despite state-applied pressure on chiefs to maximize smallholder cotton yields, the district administration had evinced a marked reticence to throw its full weight behind its newly chosen local agents in order to facilitate delivery in this regard. This reticence had paved the way for violence by chiefs to be met with popular reprisals. Chief Alua, for instance, had been roughed up twice by smallholders resisting cotton production, once in Namige and a second time in Mutahano. On the first occasion he had reportedly gone to the police but, according to one informant, “he was told that he himself was guilty and so he went home.” On the second occasion, he did not bother to seek redress through official channels, opting instead to transfer his political loyalty from Frelimo to UNAMO.

In the absence of beefed-up state backing, chiefs found themselves illequipped to move against two interrelated social pathologies which their own reinstatement was widely expected to curb: lawlessness and idleness. In Chief Tubruto’s view, for instance, the principal difference between his colonial and contemporary tenure was the growing preponderance of people who would only work if they were “dragged” to the site of production and who, in the absence of such pressure, gravitated towards a life of crime. Asked to account for the expanding ranks of the idle and delinquent, he replied, “They are saying that now they are free, now they can’t be ordered, and now

214 Labor, tribute and authority no one orders anyone else.”103 I return to this theme in the following chapter. Suffice it to say here that, on this account, one that enjoyed wide currency, blame for contemporary social ills was fixed on the legacy of Frelimo’s early radical egalitarianism – that is, its commitment to the leveling of hierarchy per se – rather than on the substitution of one hierarchy (indigenous and legitimate) by another (alien and imposed).

A former colonial interpreter recalled nostalgically the days of colonial indirect rule when “there were only four thieves at the district level” and expressed confidence that, given half a chance, chiefs could restore law and order. Asked to account for the conspicuous failure of traditional authorities to make any perceptible headway against law-breakers in the years since their semi-official return to power – a period which had, if anything, witnessed fresh surges in crime – he replied,

The régulos still don’t have force. Because up until now, this is running as it ran for a long time. I’m not afraid to say this. The difference [from the colonial period] is that the régulos are afraid. The difference: the chefe de povoação picks up a thief robbing in his povoação. When he arrests him, he takes him to the police. The police say, “Come tomorrow, it’s already late today. This prisoner will stay here until tomorrow.” The thief pays something. When you arrive the next day, he has escaped. The government doesn’t pay any notice. The thief takes vengeance. You are not protected ... because the force of the régulo, the cabo, the chefe de povoação comes from the government. 104

In relating this testimony, my primary concern is not to highlight the link between criminality and official corruption. Rather, it is to call attention to the fact that arguments that begin with expansive claims for the powers of chieftaincy, seemingly as a freestanding institution, are, on closer inspection, claims for this institution’s articulation with the colonial state and, indeed, for the entire grid of colonial discipline and control of which chieftaincy was but a single coordinate.

Chiefs’ anxieties about falling casualty to the rising tide of lawlessness extended beyond their concerns that jail-breakers would be free to settle accounts with those responsible for their incarceration. Chiefs in Namapa went to considerable lengths to conceal the fact that they were on the local concessionary’s payroll for fear that, if they didn’t, their personal security and hard-earned wages would be placed at risk.105

Elsewhere in the province, the outlook for an easy, uncontested, transition to chiefly rule was just as bleak. In Angoche, the prospect of chiefs winning popular respect seemed distant at best. In a meeting with district officials shortly after resuming state-assigned duties, “régulos” stressed the fact that they were making “a great sacrifice, [and needed to have] courage and dedication given that they are held in contempt by some youth and political [e.g. local Frelimo party] structures in the course of their work at the base.”

Labor, tribute and authority 215 It is in this light that the significance of their request, made on the same occasion, for uniforms and the restitution of colonial residences becomes intelligible. Far from serving as an official seal on an uncontested monopoly on rural allegiances, the trappings of power were, in chiefs’ own estimation, the first indispensable step in the arduous, even perilous, road to such a monopoly’s possible future achievement.106 In at least one instance, chiefs firmly declined to run interference for the state precisely because of the perceived risks this would entail. According to the administrator of Nacarôa, chiefs balked when sounded out for their willingness to preside over rural tax collection, citing their fear of falling prey to “bandits” once their involvement in such undertakings became public knowledge.107

Back in Namapa, locally-based SODAN personnel left little doubt that, in hiring chiefs as capatazes, the company had grossly over-estimated their mobilizational and enforcement capacities. Asked about the work performance of traditional authorities in the sphere of cotton production, one representative replied, “Do you want to hear the official line or the truth?”108 A company engineer underscored what was in his view the purely conjunctural character of widespread popular support for traditional authority. Asked to explain why SODAN had laid off chiefs, he replied, “The reason is simple: they weren’t profitable.”109 He conceded that, in hiring chiefs, the company had “expected very good results in a very short space of time.” The engineer nonetheless defended the company’s hiring policy of the late 1980s: “You have to realize that, at the time, they were the only ones around with any credibility.” As he saw it, in the intervening years, chiefs had shed, or had been shorn of, their singularity in this respect: “Now, I would say, there is a crisis of authority at all levels.”110

Conclusion

Four themes of the foregoing three chapters merit elaboration by way of conclusion. First, the retraditionalization of rural administration altered the terms of, but in no way resolved, longstanding local conflicts over access to, and control over, territory, tribute and labor. If anything, a bevy of fresh claims to rights in resources and authority over persons was created in the process, intensifying and complicating local disputes. The anointment of three new “regedorias” in Muanona Locality attests to this trend. So, too, does the local administration’s decision to unseat an openly Renamo-aligned chief and to place his avowedly Frelimo-friendly cousin in his stead, as was the case of the Taibos of Namapa Center. At the same time, apparently moribund claims, such as Vaquina’s and Cumar’s, were reinvigorated. Wartime displacement of Portuguese-recognized traditional authorities added another layer of complexity to rural power struggles,111 as the case of the head-on collision between the two Mejuas in Muanona illustrates. The standoff between the district court magistrate and the district administrator produced similar consequences.112

216 Labor, tribute and authority

Under the circumstances, in many areas “disorder” was the order of the day. Political analysts have recently used this term as a way of characterizing the intended effect of politico-military strategies deployed by incumbents in Africa that aim to undermine and/or discipline their most threatening domestic political rivals.113 In the case of Nampula, several dynamics contributed to this state of affairs, not least those arising from the colonial legacy. To the extent that the government’s own strategic interventions contributed to the production of disorder, this was in good measure an unintended consequence of the incumbent regime’s attempt to cultivate as many local pretenders as possible – or at least to keep them guessing – in a situation in which the provincial authorities had apparently determined that the government could ill-afford to align itself unambiguously with one constituency at the expense of another.

Second, if the tenure and legacy of dynamizing groups and party cells were conditioned by the agrarian policies, political practices and counterinsurgency strategies of the Frelimo state it was their duty to defend and enforce, so, too, was the semi-official return to chiefly rule profoundly marked by the global context in which it occurred. Economic and political liberalization were prominent features of this context. Market reforms not only spelled rising living costs, the elimination of state subsidies for many basic goods, and declining terms of trade for rural producers. They also heralded the demise of official circuits of state-distributed commodities and, thus, of an important source of state patronage in post-independence Mozambique. Economic austerity further constricted never bountiful and fast-shrinking rural pork-barrels in most localities.

The convergence of these developments, combined with the provincial government’s decidedly equivocal stance on the question of local political authority, further eroded state legitimacy in many rural areas both in the eyes of rival claimants on state patronage and their actual or would-be constituencies. The apparent duplication of state authority at the local level engendered distrust of the state’s long-term intentions among leading contenders for local power. At the same time, the stringencies of economic reform were such that access to, and control over, local tribute took on added importance.114 Struggles between contending royals and among staterecognized traditional authorities, Frelimo party secretaries and local judges often took the form of conflicting claims on already seriously depleted and highly precarious sources of rural tribute (e.g. in dispute resolution, on the occasion of initiation rites, as exemption from cotton cultivation). To the extent that they did, the retraditionalization of local administration and theunstable power-sharing arrangements that ensued compounded the crisis of authority at the grassroots. The fact that the return to chiefly rule occurred at a time when corruption was “taking on an abominable legitimacy,” could have only deepened this crisis still further.115

Another aspect of economic change, the trend towards privatization, alsoshaped the post-independence rehabilitation of chiefs qua chiefs. The

Labor, tribute and authority 217 handover of EEAN management to JFS and the subsequent formation of SODAN, combined with the transition from civil war to peace, appear to have heightened state and company expectations about what the smallholder sector could deliver in terms of cotton yields and the resolve to try to ensure that such expectations were met. In Namapa, some chiefs fell casualty to intensified pressure on smallholders to increase agricultural output. Those that did not – and here the courageous chief in Odinepa stands as a case in point – appeared to be unable (or believed themselves to be unable) to shield their constituents from that pressure or to change local labor practices.

A third theme has been the centrality of the state in producing the postwar balance of power at least in the short term. This centrality was best exemplified by officialdom’s openly stated desire to revert to the late colonial status quo and its ability, at least in the short-run, to impose its will even when such a reversion met with local criticism and resistance – and in one case (that of Alua) left a former régulo open to popular retribution. The two instances where the local administration opted to depart from the configuration of power bequeathed by the Portuguese were in the regedoria of the district capital, where the colonial régulo was an open Renamo supporter, and in Namirôa Administrative Post, where the chefe do posto viewed the division of colonial-inherited chieftaincies as a precondition for ensuring the state’s presence in all corners of his sprawling jurisdiction. Both frustrated aspirants to state-recognized traditional office and incumbents facing obstreperous subordinates were counting on the state, rather than the populace, to defend and/or to further their interests. In both cases, this orientation testified at once to the balance of power between the state and traditional authorities and to the nebulous nature of chiefs’ standing in relation to the populace.

The last theme has been only implicit. While my primary focus in this chapter has been on the power struggles attendant upon the retraditionalization of rural administration, this emphasis should not obscure another, less visible but no less significant, trend: one exemplified by the career moves of Bernardo Mussa and José de Almeida, as detailed in Chapter 5, and of the judge of the Napala community court mentioned above. All three individuals had, by the early 1990s, opted out of the heat of the political arena in favor of pursuits that held out the promise of greater financial rewards. In the case of Almeida, this meant foregoing his position as Secretary of the Circle and President of Muanona Locality for a job at the Rural Water Department. For Mussa, it meant giving up his newly attained positions as “cabo” and deputy chief in order to try his luck as a small-scale agricultural entrepreneur. For the judge in Napala, it meant leaving the bench for a position as a capataz. For all three men, the perquisites of traditional and/or party office were inferior to the economic opportunities offered by wage employment or credit-subsidized, own-account farming. At the same time, the structure of local economic opportunities, combined with the heavy demands of public office, made it difficult, if not impossible, for most

218 Labor, tribute and authority Namapan residents to fully exploit such opportunities while simultaneously representing the state or party. One notable exception was Chief Namiquela who doubled as a capataz, a position he had held in the colonial period.

Carlos Máquina stands as another counter-factual case, if for different reasons. In the early 1990s, he crossed from the private sector into the public sphere, becoming the “régulo” of the town of Namapa and its environs. His apparently singular trajectory can be accounted for by the unparalleled perquisites and opportunities for personal accumulation the office of chief offered in the heavily populated, politically pivotal district seat. The job choices of Namiquela and Máquina, no less than those of Mussa, Almeida and the one-time judge of Napala, indicate that patterns of struggle over local power and authority, as well as the socio-economic profiles of the people who engage in such struggles, are only intelligible when situated within the wider frame of the distribution of economic and educational opportunities in Mozambique.116