Noise over Camouflaged Polygamy Colonial Morality Taxation and aWoman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa

Nancy Rose Hunt

The Journal of African History Vol 32 No 3 (1991) pp 471-494

Stable URL

httplinksjstororgsicisici=0021-853728199129323A33C4713ANOCPCM3E20CO3B2-9

The Journal of African History is currently published by Cambridge University Press

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use available athttpwwwjstororgabouttermshtml JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal non-commercial use

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work Publisher contact information may be obtained athttpwwwjstororgjournalscuphtml

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals Formore information regarding JSTOR please contact supportjstororg

httpwwwjstororgWed May 23 220108 2007

yournal o j Ajrican History 32 (199 I ) pp 47 1-494 Printed in Great Britain

N O I S E O V E R C X l L l O C F L X G E D P O L Y G A h l Y C O L O N I A L R I O R X L I T Y T A X A T I O N A N D A I V O R I A N - S X l L l I S G

C R I S I S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 1

B Y iXNCY R O S E HL-iXT

Cnicevsity of Wisconsin-Iladison

In a colonial situation name-giving tends to become name-calling

Hilda Kuper 1971

THI s essay concerns the peculiarities and contradictions of colonial morality taxation and legislation in Belgian Africa and especially highlights analytical and historical commonalities between anti-polygamy measures and the unusual Belgian practice of taxing urban unmarried -omenIore generally it is about colonialism and moral crisis historical evidence and camouflage popular memory and silence colonial name-giving and name-calling I cannot be the first to notice that where rvomen most often appear in the colonial record is where moral panic surfaced settled and festered Pros- titution polygamy adultery concubinage and infertility are the loci of such angst throughout the historical record of Belgian African colonial regimes and one sometimes feels hard pressed to find women anywhere else Yet moral crises did not alrvays emerge due to the (perceived) customs and actions of the colonized They also erupted from colonial policy and law itself from the insight (or hindsight) that colonial policy -as misconceived or bred dangerous contradictory consequences I begin in the midst of one kind of colonial noise an historically shifting crisis in Belgian Africa over plural wives and loud colonial debates over moral taxation and how best to preserve custom while eradicating polygamy This will serve as the context for considering another related though temporally and geographically more confined crisis the rebellion in the I g~ O Sof Swahili women against the single womens tax in colonial Bujumbura This local crisis also became noisy Yet here the noise erupted as volatile African outrage and its contrast betrays the embarrassed silence and muted debates among colonial authorities over the contradictions and failings of moral taxation and policing measures

This paper was originally presented at T h e Crisis over 3Iarriage in Colonial Africa ~vorkshopKuffield College Oxford 13-14 December 1988 I am grateful to Janet Bujra Betty Eggermont Steven Feierman Jonathon Glassman Jan l7ansina and especially Jean-Luc Vellut for their critical comments and suggestions on various versions of this essa~-I also gratefully acknoxvledge research support from Fulbright scholarships in 1984-j and I 988-9 and a Belgian American Educational Foundation fello~vship in I 990

H Kuper Colours categories and colonialism the Sxvazi case in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colo~lialisrn in A f r i c a 1870-1(ihr vol 3 (Cambridge 1971) 289

V n keeping ~v i th francophone colonial usage I shall use the term polygamy rather than polygyny here Colonial authors xvere fond of reminding readers that polyandr~- also existed as a danger

N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

If there as a crisis in marriage in Belgian Africa it was also a labour crisis a population crisis an infertility crisis and a moral sexual crisis of plural mives and independent nomen I t also became a naming-crisis of colonial categories and of what to quote the Belgian colonial record I shall call here camouflage Colonial camouflage embraces a range of disguised activities and impersonated names These deceptive postures would be assumed by the colonized to elaborate elude even subvert the legal and symbolic categories for persons and behaviours enunciated and deployed by colonial agents in the daily routines of administering taxing and investigating a subject population Colonial camouflage is then about the defiant play of masquerade in the face of the rigidities and indignities of colonial moral marital and tax categories

Polygamy and prostitution Lvere passionate issues in colonial discourse from as early as the trventies and condemnation began earlier in some quarters Belgian and Portuguese colonial regimes stood out in sub-Saharan Africa for their forthright opposition to polygamy and for the type of legal measures taken to discourage and eradicate it6 Catholicism played an important role in this Catholic missionaries unyielding stand against polygamy -as an old tradition in central Africa dating back to the stance of Jesuits and Capucins in seventeenth-century Kongo Among Protestant missionaries in King Leopolds Congo opposition mas not absolute hom to handle polygamy and the putting a n ay of plural ir es n e r e contested issues and practices mere highly variable Yet by the time of annexation in 1908Protestants n e r e marginalized and the Colonial Charter explicitly included a state commitment to take steps that nould lead to t h e progressive abandonment of polygamy

For t n o different approaches both d rann on here see Kuper Colours 266-309 and A Stoler Rethinking colonial categories European communities and the boundaries of rule Comp Studies S o r His t xxxr (1989) 134-61

A Vermeersch L a femme congolaise JfenagPre de blanr femme de polj~game cllretienne (Brussels 1914) Polygamy as the first subject discussed by the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes Lvhen they met for the first time in 191 I and they returned to the question in most sessions into the 19jos see L Guebels Relation complPte des trazaztx de la Commission Permanente pour la Protection des IndigPnes (Brussels n d ) esp j1-7 T h e Commissions Leopoldian counterpart founded in 1896 included forced concubinage [and] the prostitution of young Lvomen among its preoccupations ibid 2j

A Phillips XIarriage laws in Africa in Phillips (ed) S u r z e j of African Jfarriage and Fami ly Life (London 19 j3) 190-2

L Harries Christian marriage in African society in Phillips (ed) Szireey 33 5-9 For the first detailed study of Catholicism and polygamy in the Belgian Congo (unfortunately completed too recently to be consulted here) see R Eggermont Incul- turatie van het Christelijk Huwelijk in Belgisch Kongo 1 9 1 9 - ~ g j o De beleidsvorming van de RIissie-Oversten omtrent polygamie hun richtlijnen aan de missionarissen en inwerking op het beleid van de Staat (Verhandeling de geschiedenis Rijksuniversiteit Gent 1990) On how the stand of Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries Lvas integrated into the

ideology of the ruling elite of Kongo and the divergent impact on eminent and ordinary Lvomen of the Church requirement that converts first put aLvay lesser wives see A Hilton Family and kinship among the Kongo south of the Zaire River from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries J A f r His t x x ~ v(1983) 200-1

W n Protestant marginality after annexation see R Slade Reardon Catholics and Protestants in the Congo in C G BaPta (ed) Clzristianity in Tropical Afvica (London 1968) 83-100 On Protestants mixed and changing attitudes to polygamy in Africa see

T A X A N D O R A L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 473

A book published in 1914by Arthur Vermeersch a Jesuit moral theologian and influential critic of King Leopold 11s colonial regime provides an early sense of a Catholic view in a transitional period H e draws three portraits of Congolese rvomen - t h e fallen rvoman the slave and the liberated woman T h e first rvas the notorious menageve the euphemistic name for a European mans housekeeper and sexual servant T h e second was the wife of a polygamist T h e last rvas the Christian wife and mother Vermeersch Lvas posing as moral critic of the new colonial state His portraits reprove the given colonial categories during the preceding period of personal misrule I would argue that there rvas a kind of post-Leopoldian post-red rubber guilt which marked early Belgian colonial state policy towards polygamy with an eagerness to bring in a new humanitarian era introduce reforms and approach the civilizing task with earnestness and vigour A polygamous wife could no longer be presumed a slave in the Belgian Congo Ye- cultural distinctions - of cus tom and evolution - intervened

These distinctions are evident in an important local government circular of 1914 which explained how even though the servitude of Lvoman and slavery is the inevitable consequence of polygamy it would be impossible to abolish polygamy by decree Colonial agents were instructed to differ- entiate between those natives who are already mixed [me^les]into the life of whites and those living under the empire of custom T h e practice of polygamy was to be strictly forbidden to all those of the first cultural category whereas customary family organization had to be respected among the second T h e government could intervene in indemnities of bridewealth to customary polygamous husbands in select cases with the view of assisting men and women to form monogamous marr iages lq t rvas outside the cus- tomary domain at state posts and work camps that there rvas a need for

R Slade Englislz-Speaking Llfissions in the Congo Independent S t a t e i1878-roo8) (Brussels 19jg ) 216-17 H A C Cairns Prelude to Imperialism Brit ish Reactions to Central L-lfvicaz Society (London 1967)176-7 T 0 Beidelman Colonial Evangelism 1 Socio-Historical Stud of a n East -lfvican -Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington 1982)110-~4and A Copley T h e debate on widow remarriage and polygamy aspects of moral change in nineteenth-century Bengal and Yorubaland 3 I m p 8 C o m m His t I1 (1979)) 128-~48

l His criticisms of the Leopoldian regime Lvere significant in turning Belgian Catholic public opinion to~vards favouring annexation R Slade King Leopolds Congo (JVestport C T 1962)201-3 208 Vermeersch (b 18j8 d 1936) never a missionary visited the colony in 1913 see 1Charles biography in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge I V (Brussels l g j j ) ~ 0 1 s 913-18 O n mhzagires see J - L -ellut I Ia ter iaus pour une image d u blanc dans la socibte

coloniale d u Congo Belge in J Pirotte (ed) Sthriotypes nationaux et prejughs raciaux azis XIYe et X X e siirles ( I x u v e n 1982) 102-3 Circulaire rappelant aux autorites territoriales leurs obligations dans la lutte contre

polygamie zeme Direction no 81 22 June 1914 in Congo Belge Gouvernement Local Rerzteil mensue1 des ordonnances arrites rirrulaires instrzictions et ordres de service (1914) I jg-63 esp 160-1 T h e circulars ambiguity left considerable room for local interpretation I t gave

authorities the right to assist Lvomen out of polygamous marriages by aiding monogamist men in paying bridewealth indemnities to polgt-gamist husbands for previously married plural wives but stipulated that men subsequently taking extra xvives should not be able to claim indemnities for those rho might leave them Ibid 161-2

474 N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

selerit against norkers n h o became polgamists again This half of the colonial dl1 ide had to be protected from tn o dangerous t pes - trazazllez~rs vedezenz~s polygames (norkers n h o had r e~e r t ed to polygam) and femmes zagabondes (~agabond nomen) These trio sure signs of immoralit and promiscult should be sent back to the other customar side of the dir ide

Discussions of the Conseil Colonial in 1910 also disclose hon nen tax legislation as intended to break n i th the ignominy of the Leopoldian past uplift uomen and fa1 our monogam Women n h o had been subject to the scandalous fort -hour tax of goods in kind of the red-rubber period nere released from the nen tax obligations in cash It as argued that the c i ~illzing and liberating effect of this nen tax legislation nil1 a b o ~ e all touch 1omen

because o n the one h a n d she is freed f rom e l ery tax a n d o n t h e o the r h a n d the decree 1x111 cooperate to give h e r in h e r h o m e the real place tha t she alone has t h e r ight t o occupy t o the exclusion of every rival

ILlen n i th more than one nife ere obliged to pa a supplementary tax for each nife beyond the first from the second up to the thirtieth The assumption underl5ing this kind of punitiLe smbolic taxation as that it mas too risk to attempt simp11 to eradicate a deep-rooted customar practice Rather polgamy should be discouraged nhile its economic lirelihood nould be exploited This as not taxation designed merely to make colonialism pay for itself It as taxation bent on extracting a greater contribution to its costs from those mho nere assumed to h a ~ e greater nealth and nealth gained and expressed immorall in the colonial sign pol gam n ealth ( s l a ~ er p ros t i t~ t ion ) ~ The contradictions in purpose -

Ibid 160 l5 I I ight one say red rhikzcangue period to speak to womens obligations to produce

this labour-intensive highly preservable manioc bread in lieu of rubber in some regions during this period See Etat Indipendant du Congo Rzrlletin off irielzr 9-10 (190 j ) 169 173-1 O n womens labour and chikz~angzreproduction see J Vansina The Tio Kingdom of the -Middle Congo 18x0-1892 (London 1973) 148-jo I j9-62 T h e Conseil Colonial was a Brussels-based body appointed to advise on colonial legislation see B Je~vsie~vicki Belgian Africa in J D Fage and R Oliver The Cambridge History of rlfrica vol 7 (Cambridge 1986) 466

l T o n s e i l Colonial Compte retzdu analytique des seacllzces (January-April I ~ I O ) j77-61 I esp 587 Conseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) j78

Th i s kind of plural xvives tax (as opposed for instance to poll plus hut combinations) xvas also applied in Portuguese and some British colonial territories See Phillips IIarriage laws 190-4 and African Studies Branch I I e thods of direct taxation in British Tropical Africa J lfv d d m i n 11 (19 jo ) 3-1 I and I I I ( 1 9 j 1 ) 30-41

lg Cozseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) 680 I am arguing here that Europeans associated polygamy xvith xvealth and enriched this association symbolically as they interpreted it xvith ~vha t became a virtually interchangeable subtext of linked terms Europeans alone of course did not control how colonial signs were constituted and signified For an African (Christian) conceptual linking of prostitute with slave and infertile xvomen in post-colonial Zaire see B Tshibanda LVamuela Femmes libresfemmes enrhainhes ( la prostitution au Zaire) (Lubumbashi 1986) Popular songs also suggest that sterility is salient in how Zairians signify prostitution and contemporary forms of camouflaged polygamy see Tshonga-Onyumbe La societk a travers la chanson zairoise moderne in B Jexvsiexvicki and H XIoniot (eds) Dialoguer arec le leopard Pratiques saroirs et actes du peupleface aupolitique en L-lfvique noire contemporaitze (Paris 1988) I jo

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I K B E L G I A K A F R I C 4 47 5

between revenue generation and moral symbolic punishment -d id not go rvithout notice I t -as precisely here that the seemingly endless flo~ving of ink on polygamy in the Congo began Yermeersch Lvas an early critic of this bizarre supplementary tax which favoured polygamy and boasting among polygamists by decorating their identity cards with a tax medal for each extra wife His voice mocked the unanswered questions of Conseil Colonial debates Why did the supplementary tax stop with the thirtieth wife Why not the 31st rvife the 3znd and so on

T h e moral issue rvas not confined to whether it was disreputable for a man to have more than one rvife nor to whether colonial taxation of such behaviour marked a morally outrageous acceptance of a moral outrage Polygamy came to signify depopulation the moral risk of the African race being unable to reproduce itself (and the economic risk of an insufficient labour supply) Official concerns about sterility and a declining birth rate were evident as early as the 1905 Belgian report of inquiry to the king22 Yet as Vermeerschs writing on the subject indicates the relationship between polygamy and fertility -as a complex question and it -as nearly impossible to generalize about the issue for a land as large and varied as the C ~ n ~ o ~ W e had no doubt however that there were two causes of polygamy rvhich the state should rvork to eliminate One was economic wives constituted labour T h e other was sexual t h e famous prejudice which believes that conjugal relations are deadly for a suckling infant

By the rgzos labour and demographic anxieties had converged and one finds a rvelter of colonial agitation over infertility sterility a falling birth rate postpartum abstinence practices infant mortality and industrial labour requirements Colonial commentators turned on polygamy moral turpitude and prostitution as the root causes of the declining birth rate T h e solutions suggested for encouraging monogamy and births included Christian example tax incentives and expanding colonial obstetric and paediatric services I t was also felt important to strengthen the authority of husbands and fathers over w~men~espect for custom had become fashionable and the strong interventionist measures of the Leopoldian era-rvhen polygamous wives like (and as) slaves rvere known to be l iberated by missionaries and the state -rvere a source of colonial regret These

P Nimi L a polygamie et le matriarcat coutumes a combattre parce quelles vont a lencontre de la saine notion de la famille La L70is du Congolais v (1949) 417 [Hereafter cited as La Iois] Yermeersch La femme 122-3 Conseil Colonial (January-April 680I ~ I O ) See B ~ l l e t i n ojjiriel 2 1 9-10 (190j) 240 3 Yermeersch La femme 81 Ibid 120

j 5Hunt Le bebe en brousse European Tomen African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo Int J 4 f ~ Hist Studies XXI (1988) 401-32

ee the file on Puissance maritale et paternelle c 1922-6 in Fond XI (13g j ) Archives Xfricaines Brussels On missionary liberations see Xlumbanza mva Ba~vele na Nyabakombi Ensobato

Histoire des peuples riverains de lentre Zaire-Cbangi evolution sociale et economique ( c 1700-1930) (Ph D thesis Liniversite Sationale du Zaire Campus de Lubum-bashi 1980) 849-j8 On regret over state liberations see Sohier Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigtne au Congo Belge lnstitut Colonial International Compte rend^ de la AAIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels 1939) I j3-217 esp 207

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

If there as a crisis in marriage in Belgian Africa it was also a labour crisis a population crisis an infertility crisis and a moral sexual crisis of plural mives and independent nomen I t also became a naming-crisis of colonial categories and of what to quote the Belgian colonial record I shall call here camouflage Colonial camouflage embraces a range of disguised activities and impersonated names These deceptive postures would be assumed by the colonized to elaborate elude even subvert the legal and symbolic categories for persons and behaviours enunciated and deployed by colonial agents in the daily routines of administering taxing and investigating a subject population Colonial camouflage is then about the defiant play of masquerade in the face of the rigidities and indignities of colonial moral marital and tax categories

Polygamy and prostitution Lvere passionate issues in colonial discourse from as early as the trventies and condemnation began earlier in some quarters Belgian and Portuguese colonial regimes stood out in sub-Saharan Africa for their forthright opposition to polygamy and for the type of legal measures taken to discourage and eradicate it6 Catholicism played an important role in this Catholic missionaries unyielding stand against polygamy -as an old tradition in central Africa dating back to the stance of Jesuits and Capucins in seventeenth-century Kongo Among Protestant missionaries in King Leopolds Congo opposition mas not absolute hom to handle polygamy and the putting a n ay of plural ir es n e r e contested issues and practices mere highly variable Yet by the time of annexation in 1908Protestants n e r e marginalized and the Colonial Charter explicitly included a state commitment to take steps that nould lead to t h e progressive abandonment of polygamy

For t n o different approaches both d rann on here see Kuper Colours 266-309 and A Stoler Rethinking colonial categories European communities and the boundaries of rule Comp Studies S o r His t xxxr (1989) 134-61

A Vermeersch L a femme congolaise JfenagPre de blanr femme de polj~game cllretienne (Brussels 1914) Polygamy as the first subject discussed by the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes Lvhen they met for the first time in 191 I and they returned to the question in most sessions into the 19jos see L Guebels Relation complPte des trazaztx de la Commission Permanente pour la Protection des IndigPnes (Brussels n d ) esp j1-7 T h e Commissions Leopoldian counterpart founded in 1896 included forced concubinage [and] the prostitution of young Lvomen among its preoccupations ibid 2j

A Phillips XIarriage laws in Africa in Phillips (ed) S u r z e j of African Jfarriage and Fami ly Life (London 19 j3) 190-2

L Harries Christian marriage in African society in Phillips (ed) Szireey 33 5-9 For the first detailed study of Catholicism and polygamy in the Belgian Congo (unfortunately completed too recently to be consulted here) see R Eggermont Incul- turatie van het Christelijk Huwelijk in Belgisch Kongo 1 9 1 9 - ~ g j o De beleidsvorming van de RIissie-Oversten omtrent polygamie hun richtlijnen aan de missionarissen en inwerking op het beleid van de Staat (Verhandeling de geschiedenis Rijksuniversiteit Gent 1990) On how the stand of Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries Lvas integrated into the

ideology of the ruling elite of Kongo and the divergent impact on eminent and ordinary Lvomen of the Church requirement that converts first put aLvay lesser wives see A Hilton Family and kinship among the Kongo south of the Zaire River from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries J A f r His t x x ~ v(1983) 200-1

W n Protestant marginality after annexation see R Slade Reardon Catholics and Protestants in the Congo in C G BaPta (ed) Clzristianity in Tropical Afvica (London 1968) 83-100 On Protestants mixed and changing attitudes to polygamy in Africa see

T A X A N D O R A L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 473

A book published in 1914by Arthur Vermeersch a Jesuit moral theologian and influential critic of King Leopold 11s colonial regime provides an early sense of a Catholic view in a transitional period H e draws three portraits of Congolese rvomen - t h e fallen rvoman the slave and the liberated woman T h e first rvas the notorious menageve the euphemistic name for a European mans housekeeper and sexual servant T h e second was the wife of a polygamist T h e last rvas the Christian wife and mother Vermeersch Lvas posing as moral critic of the new colonial state His portraits reprove the given colonial categories during the preceding period of personal misrule I would argue that there rvas a kind of post-Leopoldian post-red rubber guilt which marked early Belgian colonial state policy towards polygamy with an eagerness to bring in a new humanitarian era introduce reforms and approach the civilizing task with earnestness and vigour A polygamous wife could no longer be presumed a slave in the Belgian Congo Ye- cultural distinctions - of cus tom and evolution - intervened

These distinctions are evident in an important local government circular of 1914 which explained how even though the servitude of Lvoman and slavery is the inevitable consequence of polygamy it would be impossible to abolish polygamy by decree Colonial agents were instructed to differ- entiate between those natives who are already mixed [me^les]into the life of whites and those living under the empire of custom T h e practice of polygamy was to be strictly forbidden to all those of the first cultural category whereas customary family organization had to be respected among the second T h e government could intervene in indemnities of bridewealth to customary polygamous husbands in select cases with the view of assisting men and women to form monogamous marr iages lq t rvas outside the cus- tomary domain at state posts and work camps that there rvas a need for

R Slade Englislz-Speaking Llfissions in the Congo Independent S t a t e i1878-roo8) (Brussels 19jg ) 216-17 H A C Cairns Prelude to Imperialism Brit ish Reactions to Central L-lfvicaz Society (London 1967)176-7 T 0 Beidelman Colonial Evangelism 1 Socio-Historical Stud of a n East -lfvican -Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington 1982)110-~4and A Copley T h e debate on widow remarriage and polygamy aspects of moral change in nineteenth-century Bengal and Yorubaland 3 I m p 8 C o m m His t I1 (1979)) 128-~48

l His criticisms of the Leopoldian regime Lvere significant in turning Belgian Catholic public opinion to~vards favouring annexation R Slade King Leopolds Congo (JVestport C T 1962)201-3 208 Vermeersch (b 18j8 d 1936) never a missionary visited the colony in 1913 see 1Charles biography in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge I V (Brussels l g j j ) ~ 0 1 s 913-18 O n mhzagires see J - L -ellut I Ia ter iaus pour une image d u blanc dans la socibte

coloniale d u Congo Belge in J Pirotte (ed) Sthriotypes nationaux et prejughs raciaux azis XIYe et X X e siirles ( I x u v e n 1982) 102-3 Circulaire rappelant aux autorites territoriales leurs obligations dans la lutte contre

polygamie zeme Direction no 81 22 June 1914 in Congo Belge Gouvernement Local Rerzteil mensue1 des ordonnances arrites rirrulaires instrzictions et ordres de service (1914) I jg-63 esp 160-1 T h e circulars ambiguity left considerable room for local interpretation I t gave

authorities the right to assist Lvomen out of polygamous marriages by aiding monogamist men in paying bridewealth indemnities to polgt-gamist husbands for previously married plural wives but stipulated that men subsequently taking extra xvives should not be able to claim indemnities for those rho might leave them Ibid 161-2

474 N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

selerit against norkers n h o became polgamists again This half of the colonial dl1 ide had to be protected from tn o dangerous t pes - trazazllez~rs vedezenz~s polygames (norkers n h o had r e~e r t ed to polygam) and femmes zagabondes (~agabond nomen) These trio sure signs of immoralit and promiscult should be sent back to the other customar side of the dir ide

Discussions of the Conseil Colonial in 1910 also disclose hon nen tax legislation as intended to break n i th the ignominy of the Leopoldian past uplift uomen and fa1 our monogam Women n h o had been subject to the scandalous fort -hour tax of goods in kind of the red-rubber period nere released from the nen tax obligations in cash It as argued that the c i ~illzing and liberating effect of this nen tax legislation nil1 a b o ~ e all touch 1omen

because o n the one h a n d she is freed f rom e l ery tax a n d o n t h e o the r h a n d the decree 1x111 cooperate to give h e r in h e r h o m e the real place tha t she alone has t h e r ight t o occupy t o the exclusion of every rival

ILlen n i th more than one nife ere obliged to pa a supplementary tax for each nife beyond the first from the second up to the thirtieth The assumption underl5ing this kind of punitiLe smbolic taxation as that it mas too risk to attempt simp11 to eradicate a deep-rooted customar practice Rather polgamy should be discouraged nhile its economic lirelihood nould be exploited This as not taxation designed merely to make colonialism pay for itself It as taxation bent on extracting a greater contribution to its costs from those mho nere assumed to h a ~ e greater nealth and nealth gained and expressed immorall in the colonial sign pol gam n ealth ( s l a ~ er p ros t i t~ t ion ) ~ The contradictions in purpose -

Ibid 160 l5 I I ight one say red rhikzcangue period to speak to womens obligations to produce

this labour-intensive highly preservable manioc bread in lieu of rubber in some regions during this period See Etat Indipendant du Congo Rzrlletin off irielzr 9-10 (190 j ) 169 173-1 O n womens labour and chikz~angzreproduction see J Vansina The Tio Kingdom of the -Middle Congo 18x0-1892 (London 1973) 148-jo I j9-62 T h e Conseil Colonial was a Brussels-based body appointed to advise on colonial legislation see B Je~vsie~vicki Belgian Africa in J D Fage and R Oliver The Cambridge History of rlfrica vol 7 (Cambridge 1986) 466

l T o n s e i l Colonial Compte retzdu analytique des seacllzces (January-April I ~ I O ) j77-61 I esp 587 Conseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) j78

Th i s kind of plural xvives tax (as opposed for instance to poll plus hut combinations) xvas also applied in Portuguese and some British colonial territories See Phillips IIarriage laws 190-4 and African Studies Branch I I e thods of direct taxation in British Tropical Africa J lfv d d m i n 11 (19 jo ) 3-1 I and I I I ( 1 9 j 1 ) 30-41

lg Cozseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) 680 I am arguing here that Europeans associated polygamy xvith xvealth and enriched this association symbolically as they interpreted it xvith ~vha t became a virtually interchangeable subtext of linked terms Europeans alone of course did not control how colonial signs were constituted and signified For an African (Christian) conceptual linking of prostitute with slave and infertile xvomen in post-colonial Zaire see B Tshibanda LVamuela Femmes libresfemmes enrhainhes ( la prostitution au Zaire) (Lubumbashi 1986) Popular songs also suggest that sterility is salient in how Zairians signify prostitution and contemporary forms of camouflaged polygamy see Tshonga-Onyumbe La societk a travers la chanson zairoise moderne in B Jexvsiexvicki and H XIoniot (eds) Dialoguer arec le leopard Pratiques saroirs et actes du peupleface aupolitique en L-lfvique noire contemporaitze (Paris 1988) I jo

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I K B E L G I A K A F R I C 4 47 5

between revenue generation and moral symbolic punishment -d id not go rvithout notice I t -as precisely here that the seemingly endless flo~ving of ink on polygamy in the Congo began Yermeersch Lvas an early critic of this bizarre supplementary tax which favoured polygamy and boasting among polygamists by decorating their identity cards with a tax medal for each extra wife His voice mocked the unanswered questions of Conseil Colonial debates Why did the supplementary tax stop with the thirtieth wife Why not the 31st rvife the 3znd and so on

T h e moral issue rvas not confined to whether it was disreputable for a man to have more than one rvife nor to whether colonial taxation of such behaviour marked a morally outrageous acceptance of a moral outrage Polygamy came to signify depopulation the moral risk of the African race being unable to reproduce itself (and the economic risk of an insufficient labour supply) Official concerns about sterility and a declining birth rate were evident as early as the 1905 Belgian report of inquiry to the king22 Yet as Vermeerschs writing on the subject indicates the relationship between polygamy and fertility -as a complex question and it -as nearly impossible to generalize about the issue for a land as large and varied as the C ~ n ~ o ~ W e had no doubt however that there were two causes of polygamy rvhich the state should rvork to eliminate One was economic wives constituted labour T h e other was sexual t h e famous prejudice which believes that conjugal relations are deadly for a suckling infant

By the rgzos labour and demographic anxieties had converged and one finds a rvelter of colonial agitation over infertility sterility a falling birth rate postpartum abstinence practices infant mortality and industrial labour requirements Colonial commentators turned on polygamy moral turpitude and prostitution as the root causes of the declining birth rate T h e solutions suggested for encouraging monogamy and births included Christian example tax incentives and expanding colonial obstetric and paediatric services I t was also felt important to strengthen the authority of husbands and fathers over w~men~espect for custom had become fashionable and the strong interventionist measures of the Leopoldian era-rvhen polygamous wives like (and as) slaves rvere known to be l iberated by missionaries and the state -rvere a source of colonial regret These

P Nimi L a polygamie et le matriarcat coutumes a combattre parce quelles vont a lencontre de la saine notion de la famille La L70is du Congolais v (1949) 417 [Hereafter cited as La Iois] Yermeersch La femme 122-3 Conseil Colonial (January-April 680I ~ I O ) See B ~ l l e t i n ojjiriel 2 1 9-10 (190j) 240 3 Yermeersch La femme 81 Ibid 120

j 5Hunt Le bebe en brousse European Tomen African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo Int J 4 f ~ Hist Studies XXI (1988) 401-32

ee the file on Puissance maritale et paternelle c 1922-6 in Fond XI (13g j ) Archives Xfricaines Brussels On missionary liberations see Xlumbanza mva Ba~vele na Nyabakombi Ensobato

Histoire des peuples riverains de lentre Zaire-Cbangi evolution sociale et economique ( c 1700-1930) (Ph D thesis Liniversite Sationale du Zaire Campus de Lubum-bashi 1980) 849-j8 On regret over state liberations see Sohier Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigtne au Congo Belge lnstitut Colonial International Compte rend^ de la AAIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels 1939) I j3-217 esp 207

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

T A X A N D O R A L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 473

A book published in 1914by Arthur Vermeersch a Jesuit moral theologian and influential critic of King Leopold 11s colonial regime provides an early sense of a Catholic view in a transitional period H e draws three portraits of Congolese rvomen - t h e fallen rvoman the slave and the liberated woman T h e first rvas the notorious menageve the euphemistic name for a European mans housekeeper and sexual servant T h e second was the wife of a polygamist T h e last rvas the Christian wife and mother Vermeersch Lvas posing as moral critic of the new colonial state His portraits reprove the given colonial categories during the preceding period of personal misrule I would argue that there rvas a kind of post-Leopoldian post-red rubber guilt which marked early Belgian colonial state policy towards polygamy with an eagerness to bring in a new humanitarian era introduce reforms and approach the civilizing task with earnestness and vigour A polygamous wife could no longer be presumed a slave in the Belgian Congo Ye- cultural distinctions - of cus tom and evolution - intervened

These distinctions are evident in an important local government circular of 1914 which explained how even though the servitude of Lvoman and slavery is the inevitable consequence of polygamy it would be impossible to abolish polygamy by decree Colonial agents were instructed to differ- entiate between those natives who are already mixed [me^les]into the life of whites and those living under the empire of custom T h e practice of polygamy was to be strictly forbidden to all those of the first cultural category whereas customary family organization had to be respected among the second T h e government could intervene in indemnities of bridewealth to customary polygamous husbands in select cases with the view of assisting men and women to form monogamous marr iages lq t rvas outside the cus- tomary domain at state posts and work camps that there rvas a need for

R Slade Englislz-Speaking Llfissions in the Congo Independent S t a t e i1878-roo8) (Brussels 19jg ) 216-17 H A C Cairns Prelude to Imperialism Brit ish Reactions to Central L-lfvicaz Society (London 1967)176-7 T 0 Beidelman Colonial Evangelism 1 Socio-Historical Stud of a n East -lfvican -Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington 1982)110-~4and A Copley T h e debate on widow remarriage and polygamy aspects of moral change in nineteenth-century Bengal and Yorubaland 3 I m p 8 C o m m His t I1 (1979)) 128-~48

l His criticisms of the Leopoldian regime Lvere significant in turning Belgian Catholic public opinion to~vards favouring annexation R Slade King Leopolds Congo (JVestport C T 1962)201-3 208 Vermeersch (b 18j8 d 1936) never a missionary visited the colony in 1913 see 1Charles biography in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge I V (Brussels l g j j ) ~ 0 1 s 913-18 O n mhzagires see J - L -ellut I Ia ter iaus pour une image d u blanc dans la socibte

coloniale d u Congo Belge in J Pirotte (ed) Sthriotypes nationaux et prejughs raciaux azis XIYe et X X e siirles ( I x u v e n 1982) 102-3 Circulaire rappelant aux autorites territoriales leurs obligations dans la lutte contre

polygamie zeme Direction no 81 22 June 1914 in Congo Belge Gouvernement Local Rerzteil mensue1 des ordonnances arrites rirrulaires instrzictions et ordres de service (1914) I jg-63 esp 160-1 T h e circulars ambiguity left considerable room for local interpretation I t gave

authorities the right to assist Lvomen out of polygamous marriages by aiding monogamist men in paying bridewealth indemnities to polgt-gamist husbands for previously married plural wives but stipulated that men subsequently taking extra xvives should not be able to claim indemnities for those rho might leave them Ibid 161-2

474 N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

selerit against norkers n h o became polgamists again This half of the colonial dl1 ide had to be protected from tn o dangerous t pes - trazazllez~rs vedezenz~s polygames (norkers n h o had r e~e r t ed to polygam) and femmes zagabondes (~agabond nomen) These trio sure signs of immoralit and promiscult should be sent back to the other customar side of the dir ide

Discussions of the Conseil Colonial in 1910 also disclose hon nen tax legislation as intended to break n i th the ignominy of the Leopoldian past uplift uomen and fa1 our monogam Women n h o had been subject to the scandalous fort -hour tax of goods in kind of the red-rubber period nere released from the nen tax obligations in cash It as argued that the c i ~illzing and liberating effect of this nen tax legislation nil1 a b o ~ e all touch 1omen

because o n the one h a n d she is freed f rom e l ery tax a n d o n t h e o the r h a n d the decree 1x111 cooperate to give h e r in h e r h o m e the real place tha t she alone has t h e r ight t o occupy t o the exclusion of every rival

ILlen n i th more than one nife ere obliged to pa a supplementary tax for each nife beyond the first from the second up to the thirtieth The assumption underl5ing this kind of punitiLe smbolic taxation as that it mas too risk to attempt simp11 to eradicate a deep-rooted customar practice Rather polgamy should be discouraged nhile its economic lirelihood nould be exploited This as not taxation designed merely to make colonialism pay for itself It as taxation bent on extracting a greater contribution to its costs from those mho nere assumed to h a ~ e greater nealth and nealth gained and expressed immorall in the colonial sign pol gam n ealth ( s l a ~ er p ros t i t~ t ion ) ~ The contradictions in purpose -

Ibid 160 l5 I I ight one say red rhikzcangue period to speak to womens obligations to produce

this labour-intensive highly preservable manioc bread in lieu of rubber in some regions during this period See Etat Indipendant du Congo Rzrlletin off irielzr 9-10 (190 j ) 169 173-1 O n womens labour and chikz~angzreproduction see J Vansina The Tio Kingdom of the -Middle Congo 18x0-1892 (London 1973) 148-jo I j9-62 T h e Conseil Colonial was a Brussels-based body appointed to advise on colonial legislation see B Je~vsie~vicki Belgian Africa in J D Fage and R Oliver The Cambridge History of rlfrica vol 7 (Cambridge 1986) 466

l T o n s e i l Colonial Compte retzdu analytique des seacllzces (January-April I ~ I O ) j77-61 I esp 587 Conseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) j78

Th i s kind of plural xvives tax (as opposed for instance to poll plus hut combinations) xvas also applied in Portuguese and some British colonial territories See Phillips IIarriage laws 190-4 and African Studies Branch I I e thods of direct taxation in British Tropical Africa J lfv d d m i n 11 (19 jo ) 3-1 I and I I I ( 1 9 j 1 ) 30-41

lg Cozseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) 680 I am arguing here that Europeans associated polygamy xvith xvealth and enriched this association symbolically as they interpreted it xvith ~vha t became a virtually interchangeable subtext of linked terms Europeans alone of course did not control how colonial signs were constituted and signified For an African (Christian) conceptual linking of prostitute with slave and infertile xvomen in post-colonial Zaire see B Tshibanda LVamuela Femmes libresfemmes enrhainhes ( la prostitution au Zaire) (Lubumbashi 1986) Popular songs also suggest that sterility is salient in how Zairians signify prostitution and contemporary forms of camouflaged polygamy see Tshonga-Onyumbe La societk a travers la chanson zairoise moderne in B Jexvsiexvicki and H XIoniot (eds) Dialoguer arec le leopard Pratiques saroirs et actes du peupleface aupolitique en L-lfvique noire contemporaitze (Paris 1988) I jo

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I K B E L G I A K A F R I C 4 47 5

between revenue generation and moral symbolic punishment -d id not go rvithout notice I t -as precisely here that the seemingly endless flo~ving of ink on polygamy in the Congo began Yermeersch Lvas an early critic of this bizarre supplementary tax which favoured polygamy and boasting among polygamists by decorating their identity cards with a tax medal for each extra wife His voice mocked the unanswered questions of Conseil Colonial debates Why did the supplementary tax stop with the thirtieth wife Why not the 31st rvife the 3znd and so on

T h e moral issue rvas not confined to whether it was disreputable for a man to have more than one rvife nor to whether colonial taxation of such behaviour marked a morally outrageous acceptance of a moral outrage Polygamy came to signify depopulation the moral risk of the African race being unable to reproduce itself (and the economic risk of an insufficient labour supply) Official concerns about sterility and a declining birth rate were evident as early as the 1905 Belgian report of inquiry to the king22 Yet as Vermeerschs writing on the subject indicates the relationship between polygamy and fertility -as a complex question and it -as nearly impossible to generalize about the issue for a land as large and varied as the C ~ n ~ o ~ W e had no doubt however that there were two causes of polygamy rvhich the state should rvork to eliminate One was economic wives constituted labour T h e other was sexual t h e famous prejudice which believes that conjugal relations are deadly for a suckling infant

By the rgzos labour and demographic anxieties had converged and one finds a rvelter of colonial agitation over infertility sterility a falling birth rate postpartum abstinence practices infant mortality and industrial labour requirements Colonial commentators turned on polygamy moral turpitude and prostitution as the root causes of the declining birth rate T h e solutions suggested for encouraging monogamy and births included Christian example tax incentives and expanding colonial obstetric and paediatric services I t was also felt important to strengthen the authority of husbands and fathers over w~men~espect for custom had become fashionable and the strong interventionist measures of the Leopoldian era-rvhen polygamous wives like (and as) slaves rvere known to be l iberated by missionaries and the state -rvere a source of colonial regret These

P Nimi L a polygamie et le matriarcat coutumes a combattre parce quelles vont a lencontre de la saine notion de la famille La L70is du Congolais v (1949) 417 [Hereafter cited as La Iois] Yermeersch La femme 122-3 Conseil Colonial (January-April 680I ~ I O ) See B ~ l l e t i n ojjiriel 2 1 9-10 (190j) 240 3 Yermeersch La femme 81 Ibid 120

j 5Hunt Le bebe en brousse European Tomen African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo Int J 4 f ~ Hist Studies XXI (1988) 401-32

ee the file on Puissance maritale et paternelle c 1922-6 in Fond XI (13g j ) Archives Xfricaines Brussels On missionary liberations see Xlumbanza mva Ba~vele na Nyabakombi Ensobato

Histoire des peuples riverains de lentre Zaire-Cbangi evolution sociale et economique ( c 1700-1930) (Ph D thesis Liniversite Sationale du Zaire Campus de Lubum-bashi 1980) 849-j8 On regret over state liberations see Sohier Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigtne au Congo Belge lnstitut Colonial International Compte rend^ de la AAIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels 1939) I j3-217 esp 207

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

474 N A N C Y R O S E HLliXT

selerit against norkers n h o became polgamists again This half of the colonial dl1 ide had to be protected from tn o dangerous t pes - trazazllez~rs vedezenz~s polygames (norkers n h o had r e~e r t ed to polygam) and femmes zagabondes (~agabond nomen) These trio sure signs of immoralit and promiscult should be sent back to the other customar side of the dir ide

Discussions of the Conseil Colonial in 1910 also disclose hon nen tax legislation as intended to break n i th the ignominy of the Leopoldian past uplift uomen and fa1 our monogam Women n h o had been subject to the scandalous fort -hour tax of goods in kind of the red-rubber period nere released from the nen tax obligations in cash It as argued that the c i ~illzing and liberating effect of this nen tax legislation nil1 a b o ~ e all touch 1omen

because o n the one h a n d she is freed f rom e l ery tax a n d o n t h e o the r h a n d the decree 1x111 cooperate to give h e r in h e r h o m e the real place tha t she alone has t h e r ight t o occupy t o the exclusion of every rival

ILlen n i th more than one nife ere obliged to pa a supplementary tax for each nife beyond the first from the second up to the thirtieth The assumption underl5ing this kind of punitiLe smbolic taxation as that it mas too risk to attempt simp11 to eradicate a deep-rooted customar practice Rather polgamy should be discouraged nhile its economic lirelihood nould be exploited This as not taxation designed merely to make colonialism pay for itself It as taxation bent on extracting a greater contribution to its costs from those mho nere assumed to h a ~ e greater nealth and nealth gained and expressed immorall in the colonial sign pol gam n ealth ( s l a ~ er p ros t i t~ t ion ) ~ The contradictions in purpose -

Ibid 160 l5 I I ight one say red rhikzcangue period to speak to womens obligations to produce

this labour-intensive highly preservable manioc bread in lieu of rubber in some regions during this period See Etat Indipendant du Congo Rzrlletin off irielzr 9-10 (190 j ) 169 173-1 O n womens labour and chikz~angzreproduction see J Vansina The Tio Kingdom of the -Middle Congo 18x0-1892 (London 1973) 148-jo I j9-62 T h e Conseil Colonial was a Brussels-based body appointed to advise on colonial legislation see B Je~vsie~vicki Belgian Africa in J D Fage and R Oliver The Cambridge History of rlfrica vol 7 (Cambridge 1986) 466

l T o n s e i l Colonial Compte retzdu analytique des seacllzces (January-April I ~ I O ) j77-61 I esp 587 Conseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) j78

Th i s kind of plural xvives tax (as opposed for instance to poll plus hut combinations) xvas also applied in Portuguese and some British colonial territories See Phillips IIarriage laws 190-4 and African Studies Branch I I e thods of direct taxation in British Tropical Africa J lfv d d m i n 11 (19 jo ) 3-1 I and I I I ( 1 9 j 1 ) 30-41

lg Cozseil Colonial (January-April I ~ I O ) 680 I am arguing here that Europeans associated polygamy xvith xvealth and enriched this association symbolically as they interpreted it xvith ~vha t became a virtually interchangeable subtext of linked terms Europeans alone of course did not control how colonial signs were constituted and signified For an African (Christian) conceptual linking of prostitute with slave and infertile xvomen in post-colonial Zaire see B Tshibanda LVamuela Femmes libresfemmes enrhainhes ( la prostitution au Zaire) (Lubumbashi 1986) Popular songs also suggest that sterility is salient in how Zairians signify prostitution and contemporary forms of camouflaged polygamy see Tshonga-Onyumbe La societk a travers la chanson zairoise moderne in B Jexvsiexvicki and H XIoniot (eds) Dialoguer arec le leopard Pratiques saroirs et actes du peupleface aupolitique en L-lfvique noire contemporaitze (Paris 1988) I jo

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I K B E L G I A K A F R I C 4 47 5

between revenue generation and moral symbolic punishment -d id not go rvithout notice I t -as precisely here that the seemingly endless flo~ving of ink on polygamy in the Congo began Yermeersch Lvas an early critic of this bizarre supplementary tax which favoured polygamy and boasting among polygamists by decorating their identity cards with a tax medal for each extra wife His voice mocked the unanswered questions of Conseil Colonial debates Why did the supplementary tax stop with the thirtieth wife Why not the 31st rvife the 3znd and so on

T h e moral issue rvas not confined to whether it was disreputable for a man to have more than one rvife nor to whether colonial taxation of such behaviour marked a morally outrageous acceptance of a moral outrage Polygamy came to signify depopulation the moral risk of the African race being unable to reproduce itself (and the economic risk of an insufficient labour supply) Official concerns about sterility and a declining birth rate were evident as early as the 1905 Belgian report of inquiry to the king22 Yet as Vermeerschs writing on the subject indicates the relationship between polygamy and fertility -as a complex question and it -as nearly impossible to generalize about the issue for a land as large and varied as the C ~ n ~ o ~ W e had no doubt however that there were two causes of polygamy rvhich the state should rvork to eliminate One was economic wives constituted labour T h e other was sexual t h e famous prejudice which believes that conjugal relations are deadly for a suckling infant

By the rgzos labour and demographic anxieties had converged and one finds a rvelter of colonial agitation over infertility sterility a falling birth rate postpartum abstinence practices infant mortality and industrial labour requirements Colonial commentators turned on polygamy moral turpitude and prostitution as the root causes of the declining birth rate T h e solutions suggested for encouraging monogamy and births included Christian example tax incentives and expanding colonial obstetric and paediatric services I t was also felt important to strengthen the authority of husbands and fathers over w~men~espect for custom had become fashionable and the strong interventionist measures of the Leopoldian era-rvhen polygamous wives like (and as) slaves rvere known to be l iberated by missionaries and the state -rvere a source of colonial regret These

P Nimi L a polygamie et le matriarcat coutumes a combattre parce quelles vont a lencontre de la saine notion de la famille La L70is du Congolais v (1949) 417 [Hereafter cited as La Iois] Yermeersch La femme 122-3 Conseil Colonial (January-April 680I ~ I O ) See B ~ l l e t i n ojjiriel 2 1 9-10 (190j) 240 3 Yermeersch La femme 81 Ibid 120

j 5Hunt Le bebe en brousse European Tomen African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo Int J 4 f ~ Hist Studies XXI (1988) 401-32

ee the file on Puissance maritale et paternelle c 1922-6 in Fond XI (13g j ) Archives Xfricaines Brussels On missionary liberations see Xlumbanza mva Ba~vele na Nyabakombi Ensobato

Histoire des peuples riverains de lentre Zaire-Cbangi evolution sociale et economique ( c 1700-1930) (Ph D thesis Liniversite Sationale du Zaire Campus de Lubum-bashi 1980) 849-j8 On regret over state liberations see Sohier Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigtne au Congo Belge lnstitut Colonial International Compte rend^ de la AAIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels 1939) I j3-217 esp 207

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I K B E L G I A K A F R I C 4 47 5

between revenue generation and moral symbolic punishment -d id not go rvithout notice I t -as precisely here that the seemingly endless flo~ving of ink on polygamy in the Congo began Yermeersch Lvas an early critic of this bizarre supplementary tax which favoured polygamy and boasting among polygamists by decorating their identity cards with a tax medal for each extra wife His voice mocked the unanswered questions of Conseil Colonial debates Why did the supplementary tax stop with the thirtieth wife Why not the 31st rvife the 3znd and so on

T h e moral issue rvas not confined to whether it was disreputable for a man to have more than one rvife nor to whether colonial taxation of such behaviour marked a morally outrageous acceptance of a moral outrage Polygamy came to signify depopulation the moral risk of the African race being unable to reproduce itself (and the economic risk of an insufficient labour supply) Official concerns about sterility and a declining birth rate were evident as early as the 1905 Belgian report of inquiry to the king22 Yet as Vermeerschs writing on the subject indicates the relationship between polygamy and fertility -as a complex question and it -as nearly impossible to generalize about the issue for a land as large and varied as the C ~ n ~ o ~ W e had no doubt however that there were two causes of polygamy rvhich the state should rvork to eliminate One was economic wives constituted labour T h e other was sexual t h e famous prejudice which believes that conjugal relations are deadly for a suckling infant

By the rgzos labour and demographic anxieties had converged and one finds a rvelter of colonial agitation over infertility sterility a falling birth rate postpartum abstinence practices infant mortality and industrial labour requirements Colonial commentators turned on polygamy moral turpitude and prostitution as the root causes of the declining birth rate T h e solutions suggested for encouraging monogamy and births included Christian example tax incentives and expanding colonial obstetric and paediatric services I t was also felt important to strengthen the authority of husbands and fathers over w~men~espect for custom had become fashionable and the strong interventionist measures of the Leopoldian era-rvhen polygamous wives like (and as) slaves rvere known to be l iberated by missionaries and the state -rvere a source of colonial regret These

P Nimi L a polygamie et le matriarcat coutumes a combattre parce quelles vont a lencontre de la saine notion de la famille La L70is du Congolais v (1949) 417 [Hereafter cited as La Iois] Yermeersch La femme 122-3 Conseil Colonial (January-April 680I ~ I O ) See B ~ l l e t i n ojjiriel 2 1 9-10 (190j) 240 3 Yermeersch La femme 81 Ibid 120

j 5Hunt Le bebe en brousse European Tomen African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo Int J 4 f ~ Hist Studies XXI (1988) 401-32

ee the file on Puissance maritale et paternelle c 1922-6 in Fond XI (13g j ) Archives Xfricaines Brussels On missionary liberations see Xlumbanza mva Ba~vele na Nyabakombi Ensobato

Histoire des peuples riverains de lentre Zaire-Cbangi evolution sociale et economique ( c 1700-1930) (Ph D thesis Liniversite Sationale du Zaire Campus de Lubum-bashi 1980) 849-j8 On regret over state liberations see Sohier Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigtne au Congo Belge lnstitut Colonial International Compte rend^ de la AAIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels 1939) I j3-217 esp 207

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

476 N A h - C Y R O S E HtrN I

liberations had been too hasty LVomen had been trenched from customary constraints mhile no other source of marital or paternal authority had occupied the vacuum the problem of thefemme libre of non-customary areas mas born As the 1914 government circular explained

Functionaries mus t use prudence and discernment in matters of liberation T h e y will not forget that the native woman is not yet prepared in most cases for a n independent life [a la cie libre] I t will serve nothing to liberate women for whom one has not assured the destiny in advance by facilitating a marriage with a monogamist T h e woman free of [femme libre de] all conjugal o r pseudoconjugal ties becomes simple food [un al iment faci le] for prostitution O u r agents will not proceed then uith liberation if they d o not have the assurance that the liberated women [la femme libirie] will be reclassified e a ~ i l y ~

Better keep women under the customary authority of polygamists so the logic vent than let them run free and misguided into towns and pros- t i t u t i o n ~ o l y g a m y would erode with time as Christian mothercraft training succeeded in altering weaning and sexual habits and men no longer needed supplementary wives for sexual s a t i s f a c t i ~ n ~ ~

By the late 1940s these attitudes were being challenged by colonial officials who noted the contradictions implicit in the supplementary tax and argued that it instilled a certain confusion in the natives mind law was passed in 1950 on these grounds forbidding the legal recognition of any subsequently contracted polygamous marriages obliging the registration of all such existing marriages and preventing any polygamously married persons from subsequently moving to centres extra-routumiers that is urban and industrial areas outside the jurisdiction of customary rule Phillips has described the complicated law ~ve l l

S o far very feu governments have ventured upon such bold and far-reaching legislation T h e most important instance is to be found in a recent Belgian decree which withholds recognition from any polygamous marriages contracted after the end of the year 19joThereafter any customary marriage contracted during the subsistence of a previous customary marriage and any agreement for such a polygamous marriage will be treated as void and of n o effect T h e only polygamous marriages which will receive recognition in the future will be those in respect of which proof was adduced in the prescribed manner before the 1st of January 19j I I n addition subject to certain safeguards in respect of existing residents polygamists and their wives are forbidden to reside in certain specified types of localities (such as u rban and other non-tribal areas) and provision is made for the future extension of these restrictions T h i s latter provision is enforceable by means of fine imprisonment expulsion order k c T h e former provision (i e that which forbids the contracting of a polygamous marriage) is subject only to the civil sanction of nullity

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists put avay their extra wives (as concubines see Copley T h e debate 140) before baptism converged on the ground ~vi th state slavery liberations is deserving of further research Circulaire rapellant Recueil mensztel (1914) I 63 Sohier Evolution 207

jU Hunt Le bebe Conseil Colozial ( I 949)) 1814 Vhi l l ips LIarriage la~vs 192 For the laxvs test see P Piron and J Devos Codes

et lois d u Congo Belge I (Brussels and Leopoldville 1960) 19j-7

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

T A X A N D M O R 4 L S IK B E L G I A K A F R I C A 477

This law follo~ved on the heels of two other related measures designed to legislate marital monogamy and fidelity into Congolese life and especially t o check the number of broken marriages in the centres extra-coz~tz~n~iers where tribal restrictions and larvs do not apply T h e anti-polygamy law rvas not passed without murmurs of surprise Antoine Sohier an influential colonial jurist who had long been advising on the living and evolving character of customary law knew custom possessed a fertile plasticity if one knows how to use it instead of thwarting i t l H e admitted ap-prehension and wondered at the wisdom of trying to modify indigenous customs by legislative means British colonial specialists looked on ~v i th astonishment and curiosity S o historian to my knowledge has tried to understand ~vha t caused this change in colonial climate - acvay from punitive symbolic taxation of polygamy towards outright legislative abolition I will limit myself here to reconstructing the logic of the reasoning used in this debate Analysing this colonial discourse does not allow us to ansrver Lucy RIairs question of how polygamy was changing locally on the ground in various Congolese communities although it does offer some quite useful insights And these clues may help us to understand why this debate was so vigorous and loud

Let us begin by looking at those who stirred up the debate Catholic missionaries were amongst the noisiest critics notably during a Catholic missionary conference in I 94j Colonial officials jurists doctors veterans and would-be ethnographers rvere also declaring their opinions on the polygamy question In this post-war period the crisis in marriage was taken up by African new men as well t h e ecolz~es of centres extra-

33 Phillips Rlarriage lavs 244 3 4 Harries Christian marriage 447 One provided for registering customary

marriages and legally validating religious marriages thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage T h e other vas an anti-adultery and anti- bigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years See Conseil Colonic11 (1913-14)j19 609-12 642-4 and GCyfer-Diderich T h e legal situation of the native Lvoman in the Belgian Congo Civilisc~tionsI (19jI) j9-68These lavs have their on long bibliographies and -ill not be discussed here see Eggermont Inculturatie ohier Evolution I 8 j I 97 4 Sohier Sotes sur levolution du mariage des Congolais Institut Royal Colonial

Belge Bulletin des SPances XXI (~gjo)857 Phillips XIarriage la~vs 192 L P Xlair African marriage and social changes in Phillips (ed) Sztrvey I 12 WVanuytven Le mariage chretien et la coutume indigene Troisieme ConfPvence

Pleniere des Ordinclires des AVIissions dzc C o n ~ o B e l ~ e ei dzc Ruanda- Lrundi (1eonoldville 1945) 83-1 10and GHaezaert L e marlage chretien et la polygam~e I I j-30 How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered A special issue of Aequaioria a Catholic Africanist journal on polygamy vas suppressed by the Church in 1945due to an article by vicar apostolic Yan Goethem that vas interpreted as an apology for polygamy see H inamp 1e Centre Aequatoria de Ramanya jo ans de recherches africanistes Zaiie-Afrique X X Y I I (1987) 87-8 On EYan Goethem as an indigenist see his bibl~ography by G Hulstaert in Biograplzie Coloniale Belge V I I C (Brussels 1989) I 83-93 See also J Van IVing Ida polygamie au Congo Belge 4frica XXVII (1947) 93-102 Y Charles La nouvelle legislation sur la polygamie au Congo Belge R ~ u edu clerge clfricain Y (1950)) 271-8 J Esser U n fleau africain la polygamie Zai ie I I I

(1949) 239-55 and PdHossche L a denatalite au Congo Recue de l9AUCAMXXII I

(1948)33-41-an LVing a Jesuit missionary vas on the Conseil Colonial vhen the law xvas discussed and approved his testimony was not uninfluential

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

478 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

cout~miers ~These lettered colonial clerks semi-professional assistants and skilled lvorkers -most of whom were Catholic-trained - had their own journal by I 945 L a Voix des Congolais and they were publishing elsen here besides These ei~olues sometimes displayed a respectful alve of colonial authority and beneficence yet their arguments were also contentious candid and ambivalent As lve lvill now see their statements are completely congruous with the language of colonial logic while also betraying a disturbing subtext within i t they disclose the tensions of hegemony at work and a range of official and ~uba1tern~orms of colonial silence and camouflage

Colonial logic retained the concerns of the 1920s about causal relationships among polygamy depopulation and infertility Colonial doctors tightened reasoning on how exclusive monogamy would improve on the demography of polygamous marriage Associated arguments were ritual in kz~oluearticles on the oft-called scourge of polygamy and its apparent counterpart p r o s t i t u t i o n 4 ~ o s t - ~ v a routcries Lvere holvever directed at a new kind of polygamy that lvas considered to be not customary T h e adage polygamy is customary it was charged had become a pretext used to vindicate this recent modern polygamy4 New forms of polygamy lvere growing in crisis proportions in customary (rural) and non-customary (urban) space T h e earlier colonial visions of lustful chiefly husbands lvith large harems of multiple wives and slave concubines - la grande polygamie - Lvere no longer ihat as e l oked as morally disturbing Polygamy as not gron ing in terms of more wires per polygamist it seemed L a petzte as increasing more

Plisnier-Ladames bibliography ~vhich shovs that Protestant missionaries spoke up too includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo almost all dated between 194 j and I 959 I 3 Lvere by et~oueauthors F Plisnier-Ladame La condition de ll-fricaine en Xfrique noire Enque^tes bibliogrc~phiques v111 (Brussels 1961)

41 For instance see R P LIujinga Les mefaits de la polygamie L a 170ix v (1949) 271-2 J-P XIutombo Levoluant et la polygamie La Iois IS (1953) 3 1 2 and h-imi La polygamie 41 7-20 On ei~olue ambivalence see R Xnstey Belgian rule in the Congo and the

aspirations of the Evolue class in L H Gann and P Duignan (eds) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1961 vol 2 (Cambridge 1970) 194-225 On La 170ix see also Eloko a Ngongo Otshudiema Les structures inconscientes de Ia Iois du Congolais (1959) Cahiers dzc CEDAF nos 2-3 (197j ) 1-81 and XI Kadima-Nzuji Ia litteratzcre zaiioise de lartgglte fran~aise (19ij-196j) (Paris 1984) M Xlerlier Ie Congo de la colonisation belge a lindependance (Paris 1962) 196 For example H Ledent l lonogan~ie polygamie et natalite chez les Kkundo

Recueil de trcltclux de sciences medicales azc Congo Belge ~v (194j) 37-44 H Ledent Regime matrimonial et indice demographique des sexes chez les Nkundo Recueil de traz3aux de sciences wlampdicc~les au Congo Belge v (1946) 252-5

j J Esser Lin fleau africain la polygamie Zaire I I I ( 1 9 4 9 ) ~239-5 j 4 R Rolamba Prostitution et polygamie Ia Ioix 111 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ~ 826-7 G

Xlandona L a denatalitk irremediable Ia Ioix 111 (1947)) 723-4 D gtIandono Quelques commentaires sur Iarticle La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux de RZonsieur E Gandu 1c1 Voiois I V (1948) 30-3 Xlujinga Les mefaits de polygamie E Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages africains I~IL70is I V (1948) 417-20 E Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 1c1 Vois I I I (194j) 808-14 J Sunlu-e Crise de marriage concubinage perpetuel Ia L70ix vr ( I 9 jo) 282-5 F IVassa Liberte de la femme noire et prostitution La Ioix I V (1948) 71-2 Ngandu L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaux 809

an Ving La polygan~ie 93

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

T 4 X A N D 3 I O R q L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 479

husbands in the face of increasingly harsh forced labour obligations l iere (mith the encouragement of iir es) taking more than one ~ i f e These obligations had indeed increased dramatically during World War I1 from sixty to 120 days a year hlost forced labour na s as the Conseil Colonial recognized culturally defined as nomen s work in the customary colonial nor ld Plural mires were needed to mork ones fields in the colonial countryside rural zones [that] gradually came to approximate labour camps j1 Only polygamous husbands seemed able to fulfill their agricultural hygienic and other cor ees with ease Those usuallq in trouble with the state for not accomplishing them ere monogamous husbands 2 hIanono spoke

UP

As long as t h e G o v e r n m e n t does n o t i m p r o v e t h e s i tuat ion of nat ive f a rmers b y p rov id ing t h e m wi th agr icul tura l mach ines I d o n o t t h i n k po lygamy can b e suppressed i n t h e cus tomary areas If t h e y d i d i t t h e y w o u l d ru in t h e Afr ican T h e y ~ v o u l d n-ear h i m o u t u n d e r t h e we igh t of t h e annoy ing corvees they impose o n him

Alongside this crisis of work and lvives was the problem of modern colonial-supported grande polygamie the monopolization of rural lvomen by polygamist chiefs These state-invested customary leaders would pay bridelvealth for most girls born in their area of jurisdiction and then either demand very high bride~vealth prices for them or practise double poly- gamy Double polygamy meant ceding them for temporary usage to poor bachelors who in return for these pseudo-wives who did their state-obliged

xvork for them returned prestations in plantation work or palm wine T h e proliferation of polygamy in customary space was also the eeolue

writers explained the reason why dangerously large numbers of bachelor men were leaving for the cities Unable to find wives at home (because older venereal-ridden men were hoarding them while polluting their bodies so the reasoning often went) unmarried men left for the cities Polygamy was also accused of pushing jvomen - polygamists overworked dissatisfied run- avay vives into the cities and into prostitution T h e long-standing

Ierlier Le Congo 84 See also Yan Ving L a polygamie 96 and B Je~vsie~vicki Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy in D Birmingham and P RIartin (eds) IIistory of Central Africa vol 2 (London and Kev York 1983)) 123 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j32-3 B Je~vsie~vicki Zaire enters the ~vor ld system its colonial incorporation as the

Belgian Congo 1885-1960 in G Gran (ed ) Zaike the Political Economy of Lnder-deeelopment (New York 1979)) 44 O n the idealization of such rural zones as countryside see XI XIbilinyi City and Countryside in colonial Tanganyika Economic (znd Political Tieekly xxrr (198 j) 88--96 XIanono Quelques commentaires 3I

Ibid 32 Tan Ving L a polygamie 96 T a n Ving No tes 186-7 Xlerlier also points out that chiefs vere vital to the

coercion of the forced agricultural system Polygamy increased their harvest revenues while they also received abundan t state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance omens productivity hIerlier Le Congo 83 I jo-I I t is here we especially need local studies -an Ving too speaks indistinctly of sex-era1 districts For a pioneering study of cumulative polygyny in colonial Africa see Jane Guyer Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston 1984) See A l XIbilinyi Runaxvay ~vives in colonial Tanganyika forced labour and forced

marriage in Rung-e District 1919-1961 Int J Sociologj ofIazc xvr (1988) 1-19 One ~vonder s if the wives of monogamists would not have been the runavavs Th i s ~vou ld

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

480 N A N C Y R O S E H L T N T

colonial logic that eroding customary constraints were not an adequate brake on womens freedom became the ecolues lament that wives Lvere escaping to the cities lvhere they led an easy and independent life of prostitution

What was one to do Was prostitution or polygamy the greater problem Many African new men said throw the prostitutes out of the cities Ngandu argued that polygamy and prostitution together were at the basis of this crisis of the corruption of morals depopulation marital instability and venereal d i ~ e a s e ~ suggestions were more concrete sendillanonos all polygamists in the cities back to the rural areas change the forced agricultural labour rules so that monogamists would be required to cultivate smaller areas and polygamists larger areas divest all polygamist customary chiefs from their positions maintain the colonial rule that exempted fathers of four children issued from a monogamous marriage from all taxation and extend it to those having only three children and take measures against clandestine polygamous marriages Ngandu was mortified illanonos recom- mendations seemed to signal a shocking disloyalty to colonial authority and Ngandu declared them inadmissable Ultimately it vas Manono who Lvas more the colonial visionary

T h e most disturbing kind of new non-customary polygamy lvas that of urban ei~olue(evo1ved) or eeoluant (evolving) men Many had invested money in extra wives for want of other investment openings during the war62 Others had married plurally for prestige and in emulation of the debauchery of some Europeans What nas most dangerous lvas the hiding the secrecy Ee~olues lvere taking extra women furtively blocking the tax they evaded they ~ o u l d refer to their concubines their wives of pseudo-marriages 63

as their supple inen ta i re~ ~~ It was this camouflaged polygamy that most disturbed these effusive ei~olues inciting them to search for nelver harsher measures than the old contradictory tax that bred confusion of the native mind 65

concur with the colonial consternation that so many Lvomen seemed to prefer polygamy G Hulstaert Le wrnriclge des Skzrndo (Brussels 1938) 366-7 an Ving La polygamie 96-

h-gandu La polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus 808-14 Xlujinga Les mefaits 27 I

Vassa Liberte 72 Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of vives they had xvorking for them at a distance in urban prostitution Xlerlier Le Congo 151 qENgandu and A $1 I Lodja L a prostitution ronge le Congo Ia V o i s I (1945)

209-10 J-E Xlupenda Prostitution et polygamie L n Iois I I I (1947)) 821 Vassa Liberte 72 h g a n d u L a polygamie et ses mefaits sociaus lanono Quelques comrnentaires 32-3 Ngandu La polygamie fian Ving La polygamie 96-7 gandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 J-P Xlutornbo Levoluant 3I These supplerrrentaires are called deuxiemes hztrenux

today (literally second offices) and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements see B -erhaegen Rluamba Ngalula and Kisangani Endanda L a marginalite le mariage et Iinstruction in B Jevsiexvicki (ed) Etat Independant du Congo Congo Belge Rep~rbliqur Dimocratique du Congo RPpuhlique du Zn i i e (Ste-Foy Quebec 1984) 133-4

j R-P Xlujinga Indemnites familiales et polygamie camouflee Icz 170ix VI

(1950)~I jz-4 T h e tendency for efoluP discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

LVhat was camouflaged polygamy It had a commercial aspect hlujinga explained It was nefarious because it disregarded the customs and nays of the Congolese It Mas common among the so-called lettered the capitas vendeurs etc who tended to be married by civil or religious ceremony and maintain[ed] one or several concubines And camouflaged polygamy was the fruit of a deviation in the mentality of certain lettered [lettres] natives T h e deviations yere usually responses to colonial state policies regulations and taxes Urban and rural Christian men for example ~ h o yere reluctant to declare inherited widows to the state or have them live on their property yere committing a form of camouflaged polygamy T h e y had them work for them clandestinely as widows or femmes libres or put them under the care of a relative who declared them to the state in exchange for the supplementary tax Pro-natalist perquisites for monogamist fathers - that is family allocations for ~ o r k e r s and head tax exemptions for fathers of four - seem to have been especially significant in the deception and the commercial aspect Many ecolz~antsalthough receiving considerable state- legislated family allocations were neglecting their wives and children T h e money Mas instead going to sz~ppleir2entaires

these beautiful courtesans ~ v h o travel on these luxurious bicycles and dress in expensive clothes Although n-e ~ v h o have acquired some notions of civil- ization instead of forcing ourselves to let go of this custom [of polygamy] lve give it another form more abominable yet because camouflaged polygamy is infinitely more nefarious than that practised in the customary areas Camou- flaged polygamy is the principal cause of the deprivation of morals divorce marital quarrels and most of the troubles that crop up in these [eroluel households P e t it is practised on a large scale in the centers and most of the time by the lettered natives n-ho are forbidden to be polygamists by Religion the Civil State and the La- of African AAuxiliariesti9

T h e printed voices of the ei~olues tell us that it lvas camouflaged polygamy that the 19jo legislation vas silent131designed to eradicate T h e Conseil Colonial publicl3~stressed the abuses of polygamist chiefs and the need to introduce a legislative measure that would slow the rural e x o d u ~ ~ Colonial authorities did not draw attention to clauses in the new law focusing on the centres extra-coutumiers There were clauses penalizing forms of camouflage (false testimonies as to marital status and rights to urban residence) making urban male residents state who their plural wives yere before a certain date or henceforth they could not declare them and giving the state enormous urban expulsion polvers for all polygamists and pol-- gamists lvives who could not justify regular urban residence

T h e law represented the latest version of a long-standing Belgian colonial dream of a Congo free of polygamy bachelors independent lvomen un- controlled urban migration and debauchery a vision of a colony peopled by

Europeans yet in harsher starker terms has been noted else~vhereby G Van Geertruyen in Sous le joug du matriarcat une campagne d evolues contre la matrilinearite au Bas-Zaire Africans gclndensic~v~ (1989) ~ o j - j g Mujinga Les mefaits 271

fii Llanono Quelques commentaires 30 See G Rianga La politique demographique au Congo Relge Population S X X I I I

(1978) 189-94 and Van Ving La polygamie 98 Iujinga Indemnites 153 Conseil Colonial (1950)) j4o

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

482 N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

monogamous couples - the men in farming and industrq and the omen tending to homes husbands and offspring T h e la as +elcorned by eeolue m riters They belie ed in the dream i hile they castigated their colleagues and counterparts for spoiling it Ngandu urged that soldiers and clerks needed such state assistance in the form of a lan suppressing all nen cases of polygamy I t nould help them perseere against temptation in monogamy Others mrote that it as the duty of an ee3olue to help the Belgian administration help ezolues ~ o r kto ards the harmony of our e l olution

This meant standing u p for monogamyJ and rebuking camouflaged polygamy

T h e la only increased the need for artifice and masquerade especially among those in threatened positions ho anted to stay in the city Concubinage and camouflaged polygamy gren T h e noise continued

the concubinage n-hich invades our people risks becoming an admitted mode of life [I]n this cohabitation ~vhere there is no engagement the parties are free The lvoman also acts as she pleases a marviage cvisis C ~ S I L C S

Silence

I t is within the broader context of colonial discourse on polygamy that ve must also situate an analysis of the unusual Belgian practice of taxing single urban women and the taxs peculiar name the tax for femmes zieant thebriquement seules (women theoretically living alone) This tax vas also enmeshed in colonial dilemmas over purpose and consequence the contra- dictions of gaining revenue through taxing immorality Yet in contrast to the controversies voiced over the moral taxation of polygamy colonial reaction to the introduction of taxation of single women was muted T h e tax vas seldom mentioned by Belgian commentators and it vas introduced without public fanfare or official debate

Its introduction vas also tied to new legislation in this case a series of laws passed in the early 1930s officially assigning the two African colonial-invented cultural lvorlds to two kinds of legal territorial space Cus tom was assigned to customary space Evolution vas assigned to extra-customary sites that is removed from the more amorphous customary lvorld These laws established the terms of administration and residence in the new urban townships called centres extra-coutumiers and of passage and passes betlveen what before Lvere more fluid interpenetrating domain^^ T h e legislation marked an early hardening in colonial attitude about the dangers of migration to the city and the need to hold people in the rural areas

l J Sumue Crise de mariage concubinage perpetuel La 170ir I (1950) 282 Kgandu La polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 289-91 Ngandu L a polygamie etait-elle la regle des mariages Xfricains 291 lutombo Levoluant 3 I See also S i m i La polygarnie 41j Xlujinga Les

mefaits 272 A Filip Pour la monogarnie Ia I h i x 111 (1947) 908 - Sumue C r i se 283-4 Emphasis added ontroversy in the early t~venties over Christian villages or as critics called them

anti-customary villages also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries betveen Lvhat Lvere then called recognized (eg customary) and conventional (eg non-customary including villages of former soldiers state workers and Christians) clzeffevies See the exchange of articles D e la legalite des villages chretiens Congo 111 (1922) 1-7 ~ O I - 3 4 612-14

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

--

and to identify those of urban townships (The anti-polygamy law discussed above marked a later rigidification) Pass l a ~ s and semi-autonomous urban census and taxing powers nere among the neu measures of the 1930s designed to control and monitor movements temporary visits and rights to residence and to keep customary people in customary space hlen and Lvomen had to pay taxes for even short visits to cities and authorizing papers lvere necessary for journeys and migration Those without the proper papers could be expelled Although European supervision and guidance were stronger than in customary territory and although chiefs lvere to be chosen foremost on the basis of civilized qualities and civic potential (rather than on customary genealogies and precedent) rule vas also indirect in- cluding an indigenous chief sub-chief and advisory council Semi-auton- omous taxing authority was partly needed to fund the chiefs sub-chiefs and policing staff required for the monitoring nork required by the law African womens rights to visit or reside in a city were to be granted on the basis of their husbands permissions or rights Single women were granted these rights reluctantly and hen they did they nere treated as ne shall see as m e n they lvere taxed This aspect vas muted in the legislation T h e laws did not stipulate exactly lvhat these new urban taxes lvould be nor explicitly mention a tax for single Lvomen They did announce the legal capacity once again to tax women directly Taxes not necessarily of a remunerative character lvere permitted and under this category of taxes the law expressly authorized taxing vomen

Vhen and here the single womens tax was first introduced remains a mystery although it became a fact of life in the principal cities of Belgian Africa - Elisabethville~eopoldville and S t an l ey~ i l l e ~ I t lvas intro-duced in Usumbura in 1942 shortly after the establishment of centres extra- coutuwziers t h e r e 8 V h o s e obliged to pay it were urban Lvomen residents

J l lagot te Ies centres extra-couiztmiers commentaire des decrets des 27 nocernhre r y j r 6 et 22 juin du 6 p i l l e t1 y 3 ~coordon7zbs par 1(1rre^te r o ~ ~ a l r y j d (Dison-1-ivriers 19381 52-79 Similarly a married Belgian nomans rights In the metropole and the colony Lvere

subject to her husbands consent See C Debroux Ida situation juridique de la femme europeenne au Congo Belge de 1 9 4 j a 1960Erzqzre^tes et doczr~nents dhistoire africaine v11 (1987)) 14-23 esp 16 C Baumer Les centres indigenes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris 1939) I 1 7

Xlagotte Les cerztres 134-5 T h e extra-customary centres taxation regulations ere not published nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels

K - 1 Malira Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise davant 1950 Likundoli 11 (1974) 63-71 It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt here it began as a measure directed at Lvhite nomen in 1918 It fell into disuse until reintroduced as a tax on African Lvomen in 1932 see the important comparative material largely excised in her published summary in K - S Xlalira 12es associations feminines de Lubumbashi (1920-19jo) (XIemoire en Histoire Universite Nationale du Zaire Campus de lubumbashi 1972) 27-8 31-8 esp 34 E Capelle L a citP indigene de Leopold~i l le (Leopoldville 19+7) j 9 and J La

Fontaine T h e free nomen of Kinshasa prostitution in a city in Zaire in J Davies (ed) Choice and Change Essays i n Honor of L u c y Ilfair (Neu Tork 1974)) 89-1 I 3 qBVerhaegen L e centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940-1945) Cahiers du

C E D A F 1111 (1981) 55-5 62 he tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time It is absent from

the first such report of 1941 Fonds R R U (138) j Territoire dlUsumbura Rapport

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

484 N4NCY R O S E H U N T

without husbands -whether divorced widowed or never married Exemp- tions from the tax due to old age illness and number of children (more than two) were eventually as we will see permitted in Usumbura

I first stumbled on evidence of the single womens tax in Usumbura territorial reports located in Brussels T h e tax absent from the reports narrative sections was listed perfunctorily among other urban taxes in budget summaries generating one might add not insignificant amounts of municipal revenue I at first found a comparable want of evidence in Bujumbura AIy first few months of interviewing in the two oldest colonial urban quarters Belge (now called Bwiza) and Buyenzi - elicited only-

passing acknowledgements that there had indeed been single Lvomen in the city and they - malagtla (prostitutes) I at first heard them named had been -

taxed A candid self-styled malagtlafor instance remembered paying the tax as a resident of Belge the predominantly Christian ecolui quarter of Usumbura much like she recalled some forced colonial gynaecological examinations she had complied with colonial requirements that was all

T h e tax in keeping with the colonial regimes regulationist approach to prostitution did mark official acceptance of single lvomen and prostitution as inevitable features of colonial urban life From 1909 in the Belgian Congo and from 1929 in Ruanda-Urundi hygiene legislation required the regis- tration of prostitutes who Lvere to be examined for venereal disease on a regular basis and quarantined when i n f e ~ t e d ~ T h e law was intended to sanitize vice while identifying and inconveniencing the women involved T h e tax also operated as a colonial investigative modality used to assemble and deploy knowledge T h e sanitary modality that is gynaecological surveillance appears to have been more episodic than routine in Usumbura and at any rate distinct from the moral taxation and surveying of single omen^^

annuel 1942 pt 2 and Fonds R R U (138) 4 Territoire d Usumbura Rapport annuel 1941Archives Africaines Brussels O n Csumbura s history see C Dickerman Economic and social change in an African city Bujumbura Burundi ( P h D thesis University of LVisconsin-XIadison 1984)

81 C Ia situation des femmes abandonnees et des femmes seules dans les centres extra- coutumiers d Usumbura Bullet in d u CEPSI no 32 (19 j6) 2j I LVidows and old omen ere exempted in Stanleyville i erhaegen L e centre 55 In 1952 the tax amounted to 1312per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-

couturniers I t as 483 per cent in 195j I j 2 1 per cent in 1g j7 I 512 per cent in 19jg and 8 j4 per cent in 1960 These calculations are derived from Usumbura Centres Extra- Coutumiers Rapports annuels 1952 1955 1c)j7 1959 and 1960 Bureau de la XIairie Bujumbura [Hereafter cited as CecRa]

he ordinance of j Sovember 1913 nh ich replaced that of 10 1 Iay 1909 was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10June 1929 See 0Lou~ver sand I Grenade Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels 1927) 1408-9 0Lou~ver s and G Touchard Recueil usuel de la legislation du Congo Belge vol I (Brussels 191 I ) 687-8 and P Leroy Legislation du R u a n d a - C r u n d i (Usumbura 1949)) I j6 B Cohn T h e anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knonledge (paper

presented to the LVenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium no 107 Tensions of empire colonial control and visions of rule Xlijas Spain 5-13 Sovember 1988) I n the case remembered above rnalaya were rounded u p folloing an incident hen

a European caught venereal disease Only 2 j yomen of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge yere registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

Not until I discovered a set of residential records for the other lbluslim so-called Swahili quarter of Buyenzi did I locate a social memory of the tax and the female social rebellion that emerged to end it These census cards list per residential compound the residents names origins parents names occupations household positions (ie head of household wife or child of which other resident co-resident etc) and dates of arrival and departure Kumerous hands added data to the cards over time making it impossible to assign dates to much of the information they contain They appear to have been used for about a ten-year period beginning around 1947 ~ Investigating single women was an integral part of the record-keeping process Usually the letters FS for femme seule (single woman) were used although sometimes the words were written out Another frequent designation was FL or the words femme libre Some women were noted to be both a FS and a FL others only one of the two Some households had several F S and a few F L Some had several F S some of whom were double-indicated as F L AAt some point someone marked a tiny L with a red pen nest to numerous womens names When I compared these 1200 womens names and addresses with the most recent census books (c 1980) I discovered about 35 that matched Once I began looking for these women I found a set of voices a female popular memoryabout the hardships of the tax and single womens struggle against it in Buyenzi I turn now to the womens memories and my reconstruction of their collective story

They were all considered to be prostitutes explained Tausi binti Sibaela Be you a malajabe you not but so long as you nere without a husband you were generally considered a malaya j g l

I t Lvas also believed that a prostitute never missed money Thatever we got it was through sweat sister A n d so [with] the little you would otherlvise buy food or clothes you paid the useless tax If you d idn t pay in prisong2

Usumbura in 1 9 4 9 CecRa 1 9 4 9 23 Severtheless the Commission pour la Protection des IndigPnes objected in 1938 to the vay the tax could join notorious prostitutes and honest nomen on one list so that both types of nomen yere subject to regular hygiene exams Sothing is more odious to honest yomen See Guebels Relation conlplete 602-3 Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 vith all single nomen paying one amount and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax hIalira Les associations 34 Census Cards c 1945-57 Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi Over 1200fenzrnes seules

andor fenlnles libres ere listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the I I 82 Buyenzi compounds in 1 9 4 9 ) CecRa 1 9 4 9 25 I vas unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumburas Belge These registers by compound ere first instituted in the Congo in 1935 see Sabakinu Kivilu Les sources de lhistoire demographique du Zaire Etudes dhistoire africaine v~ ( 1 9 7 4 ) 124

For an example of the vay in hich this popular memory has come under the effects of dominant historical discourses see the private history of RIama Sanura hose story as closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero Prince R~vagasore I do not attempt to unscramble this here see Popular History Group Popular memory theory politics method in R Johnston et al (eds) LVZaking Histories Stzrdies i n History lritirzg and Politics (RIinneapolis 1 9 8 2 ) 2 I I Tausi binti Sibaela 8 RIarch 1 9 8 5 Abiba K 7 XIarch 1 9 8 j

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

486 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

So recalled a self-called malaya ho paid the tax One widow ho lived on her harvest remembered that it was assumed that she too must be a prostitute and so she too must have money but n e got nothing until we harvested our crops 9 3 hIany women felt that they had no choice but to pay Ye poor people we are only told we are given an order Ye did not like it AIwajuma binti Lubagara remembered feeling that one could not refuse to pay the tax

I paid i t I was never remarried by any other man I just lived with m y child and that was al l If you didn t like it what could you d o Vould you refuse T h a t was a government law If everyone paid can you refuse Can you alone refuse to pay j

Besides for someone who regularly sold half of her banana and rice crops from her house and bought and pounded manioc and sold the flour the tax did not seem so high She could not imagine rebelling And were they demanding so much money That time I t was not much money You were just watching things left things as they were For those who paid the tax from the small amount of money they gained from their harvests the tax seemed e n o r m o u ~ ~ I lvas getting some money from this and tha t T h e tax lvas much I t was zoo 300 Hov much could you get in a heap of manioc Others had relatives who helped them pay Tausi binti Sibaelas brother paid the tax for her and her younger sister Both were widows IYhenever we could not afford it our brother paid for us Simple he was working and we were not so he paid it

Each woman had a special tax book and a tax receipt Lvas stapled in for each year she paid along with other tickets for payment of water and road taxes And if you did not have it they caught youO1 Colonial records indicate that at least between 1943 and 19j2 many women dodged the taxlO Women were excused from the tax only if they were responsible for more than two children or in certain cases according to age or infirmity Xgongoro binti hIpangombu paid the tax for two years and when the authorities inquired as to her children she lvas exempted from the tax because she had three Xbiba K was excused from paying the tax due to old age in 19 j8 and was about 57 years old at the time

Buyenzi women recalled that the freeing of older women from the tax was a result of a protest by the single women of Buyenzi IVe said loudly that it [the tax] was bad It Lvas like this that the whites took off the list those who were old but if you xvere still young they didnt take you off I Several

Iugeni binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 1985 -4sha binti Shabani 1 8 Xpril 1 9 8 j lIvajuma binti Lubagara 17 April 1985 Y6 Ibid -4sha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985 Fatuma binti Juma 19 Xpril 1 9 8 j Fatuma binti Juma 19 April 1985 This comment is suggestive of holy the tax may

have forced omen in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses personal communication J Bujra 21 -4pril 1989 In Lubumbashi the tax seemed to increase single yomens beer brening and soliciting activities Xlalira Ides associations 37 Tausi binti Sibaela 8 gtlarch 1985 I Zena binti Feruzi 6 XIarch 1985 Xsha binti Kamangu 17 Xpril 1985 and Abiba

K 7 gtlarch 1985 I examined Xbiba Ks tax book Nyirakemegeri 28 February 1985 V o n d s R R C (138) 6-9 and (139) 2-j Territoire d csumbura Rapports annuels

1943-52 ln3Ngonogoro binti l lpangombu 2 gtlay 1 9 8 j Xbiba K 7 l l a rch 198 j I Xsha binti Kamangu 17 -4pril 1985

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

women recalled the Buyenzi rebellion They all went to plead for mercy said hlwajuma binti Lubagara so that they stop the tax They all gathered a big group of women many I can remember it lo Xsha binti Burahim explained They demonstrated to refuse paying the tax and said we just cant manage Io6 T w o single women hlama Sanura (Hadidja Rukara) a Swahili-ized lo Burundian woman who as a woman restaurant owner in the community was rare and lbloza binti Xfande a Congolese woman were the leaders who started the noise T h e other leaders followed these and we small ones followed behind lo

hlama Sanura recalled that the Buyenzi women first protested during the Belgian kings visit to the colonial territories in hIay 1955 As the royal car passed on the avenue separating Belge and Buyenzi King Baudouin was eagerly welcomed by Africans crowding to see him with bouquets and letters in handlO Single xvomen joined the throng

Ye learned that Baudouin was going to come on a certain day lhe women got together Ye talked the same thing It s like that we wrote letters women only Ye threw them in the passing cars Baudouin read these letters He told them they had maltreated the Africans he told them the people werent animals since they said we were animals He said they had injured the people that they had scorned them

T h e city authorities in Usumbura Lvere furious

There Lvas a white person vho told us You made complaints against us OK the tax is joo francs lhey increased [the tax] and they put us in prisons So prison I I pm midnight you heard knocking at the door Yere you naked It was like that lhere are those nho learned to go to bed with their clothes on It was soldiers lvho came Zairians So they chained us and they thre~v us into a vehicle even those lvho n-ere pregnant lhey knocked everywhere Nobody had stolen and nobody escaped Ye exceeded zoo lhe prison of the police was full and that of the province also it was the prisons that angered u s If you didnt have a relative who came to pay some money you didnt leave there T h e police officers said we were going to die of heat since we nere many [lhe king] had left and this is what they did to us in telling us to call our protector so that he could get us out

T h e tax was not raised to joo francs but it Lvas raised from 200 francs (the tax amount which had been in place since at least as early as 1949) in 19 j j to 2 j 0 francs in 1 ~ j 6 l T h e women organized a tax boycott They told all the people to refuse to pay the tax said Ngongoro binti hIpangombull IYhile ninety per cent of single women taxpayers in Buyenzi paid their tax in

I l l n a j u m a binti Lubagara 17 April 198 j Fatuma binti Juma 18 April 198j

I i Buyenzi people called themselves S~vahi l i T h e y speak S~vahi l i practise Islam and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Lijiji region in the nineteenth century Burundian Lvomen ere integrated into the community during the colonial period as were n o m e n from Randa and present-day Zaire OR l l u g e n i binti Hemedi 20 -4pril 198j

O Programme detaille de la reception d u Roi Temps noueeazrv dampique 29 gtlay 19 j5 4 Reception coloree a Usumbura le voyage du Roi Temps noureaux d4friqzre 5 lay 1955 I O 1 I ama Sanura 22 April 198 j Ihid

T e c R a 1949 27 CecRa 19 j6 I 17 gonogoro binti l l p a n g o m b u 2 XIay 198 j

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

488 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

1955 only 68 per cent did in 1956 (By contrast 95 per cent of the single women from the ez~olueChristian quarter next door Belge paid each year)

In 1956 the Swahili women of Buyenzi also sent a petition to the Vice- Governor General protesting the tax and particularly its insulting name In Usumbura the taxs French label - tax for femmes cicant thebriquement seules w a s translated into Swahili as kodi jta malaja or prostitute tax

Although the urban African advisory councils of Belge and Buyenzi had in the past referred to the tax as the femmes libres tax they now with the help of Belgian officials explained that the woman living theoretically alone is not necessarily a woman of Lvrong doing [mauvaise vie] and the name kodi jta malaya used in the indigenous milieu is erroneous It was proposed that the Committee of Assistance to the Needy examine the cases of women truly in difficulty in order to exempt them from this and other taxes (road water and property)16

By I9 j7 the single womens rebellion against colonial authority had touched off a larger one by the men of the quarter Only 64 per cent of the polygamists expected to pay the supplementary tax on additional wives and only thirty per cent of the communitys fishermen expected to pay the pirogue tax did pay their 19 56 taxes On 19 RIarch 19j7 the Belgian municipal administrator spoke to the Buyenzi council T h e residents of the Buyenzi centre dont want to pay the tax what are Lve going to d o with what are we going to pay the workers H e tried to reassure them widows with dependent children and poor women were being exempted from the tax On 24 hIarch the chief of the quarter acknowledged disorder reigns in our quarter the residents of Buyenzi no longer care about the Government they sajl w12at they want

Name-giving in several senses had become name-calling

Colonial categories and colonial camouflage

T h e residential census records took me into the heart of a conflict over the colonial creation of a category of aberrant irregular women There lvere several crises all at once - an administrative crisis a language crisis a marriage crisis and a crisis of camouflage A long-standing administrative problem of colonial surveying and surveillance of defining and bounding categories and of naming women became acute in Buyenzi when the anti- polygamy law applied in the Belgian Congo in 195I reached Ruanda-Urundi the following year12

Although the census records took me to a collective memory of noisy outrage it is the contrasting silence and documentary gaps and how we read this lack of evidence which enables historical interpretation here Reading

CecRa 19j6 I 18 CecRa 195j 93 CecRa 19 j6 2 2

G l l i nu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 and l I inu te s Conseil de Buyenzi 7 November 1956 CECConsei l l file Bureau de la l l a i r i e Bujumbura CecRa 1957 I I

l I inutes Conseil de Buyenzi 19 XIarch 19j7 CECConsei l file XIinutes Conseil de Buyenzi 24 XIarch 1957 Emphasis added T h e decree of 4 -4pril 1950 (hose principal articles became effective in the Congo

on I January 1951) became la in Ruanda-Urundi on I I December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on I l I a y 1952) see Piron and Devos Codes 196-7 and Bulletin oficiel dzr Ruanda- Crzrndi (19j I ) 479-80

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

TAX A N D XIORALS I N B E L G I A N -1FRICA 489

this colonial silence as hushed debate and muted controkersq exposes the embarrassed disquiet associated u i t h this contradictor) moralit) measure hlost colonizers (itself a problematic categor) 121) thought momen theoreti-call) liring alone mere professional prostitutes X fen lapses in their silence tell us they were trying to tax debauchery by taxing jilles publiques and trying to keep women free (libre) of marital authority these presumed femmes libres or prostitutes out of the city Silence was salient because the colonial regime was perplexed over how to effect moral change troubled by its taxation of women in the post-Leopoldian period and bewildered by the kind of official s tamp the relatively high tax seemed to give to prostitution12 X missionary prone to sarcasm might quip that femmes libres gave part of their fees to the s t a t e l 2 9 e t the Belgian Congo did indeed xvant to fund the urban personnel hired to police what lvere imagined as the inevitable evils of urban life Colonial officials charged with administering this contradiction found it embarrassing12

Scholars have pointed to the economic importance of the tax It is true that in some cities the proportion of urban revenues generated by the tax lvas high (about twenty per cent for instance in StanleYville) Yet it is in locating the economic and symbolic contradictions of colonial moral taxation that the fiscal element becomes i n t e r e ~ t i n ~ ~ T h e city Lvas funding the

121 F Cooper and A Stoler Tenslons of empire colonial control and vislons of rule American Ethnologist X ~ I(1989) 609-21

Ime Yan der Kerken L e s oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge Congres Colonial Sat ional Ye session no I 5 (1940)) I 2 F Grevisse Ie centre extra- coutumier dElisabethville Bulletin du C E P S I no I 5 (195 I ) 78 and Capelle L a cite 59 I t is wonderful to see the local government find in the debauchery of whites

blacks andfilles publiques a source of revenue Van der Kerken 1es oeuvres I 2 h Ime Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigene in 1926 Fonds -41 (1394) no 2 Archives Africaines Brussels

I Despite its reserations the Commission pour la Protection des Indigenes favoured the tax in 1938 because it vas useful in obviat[ing] the harm ~vh ich an afflux of single Lvomen in the centers auld present and agreed that profligacy must be checked Guebels Relation con~plete 602 Guebels Relation complete 602

G -4s did John Vhitehead of Vayika in his t-pically acerbic style in 4nsers to questions recorded by l I r l l i dd leb rook 1946 4 in John Vhitehead Papers Baptist l l issionary Society Archives Regents Park College Oxford I n analysing Elisabethvilles dependence on vice taxation the assistant Commissaire

de District in Katanga remarked T o live and develop the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it vas created to reduce i t Grevisse L e centre 80 Yerhaegen L e centre j 6 and Malira L e s associations 37 Verhaegen Ie centre j 6 GrCvisses figure of j j per cent for Lubumbashi

combines single omen taxes ~ v i t h other vice (beer) taxes Grevisse Ie centre 78-80 O n Usumbura see note 8 j above

I T h e available evidence makes it difficult to sort out hov when the tax Lvas introduced in diflerent cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator ere linked to the timing and slveep of stabilization policies Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a policy of tolerance towards single xvomen who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single m e n Verhaegen L e centre j6 62 According to l l a l i r a a steep tax in Katanga vas intended to keep single omen in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households l l a l i r a L e s associations 33 37 Yet the trio-tiered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville ~ v i t h prostitutes paying more than honest single omen ~ v o u l d have adapted multiple intentions- to discourage single omen f rom migrating to the city and to tolerate reluctantly those ho came - to tiered social

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

49O N A N C Y R O S E H C N T

surveillance of vice through taxing single women who were also constructed as vice Colonial vulnerability lay in this contradiction and we see this vulnerability in the Buyenzi rebellion

T h e choice between indirect taxation and outright legislative abolition did not exist for prostitution as it seemed to for polygamy the moral purity path had long ago been rejected for regulation in Europe in Belgium and in the colonies Rather as we have seen polygamy and prostitution became linked terms in colonial discourse very early on In the Congo Independent State the category polygamous wife slipped easily from slave to femme libbee to femme libre to femme publique Femme publique is an idiomatic expression used for prostitute in francophone Europe ve saw it carried (as jille publique) to the colony above Femme libre does not have these metropolitan roots Judith Van Allen has suggested that the term femme libre originated as a legal classification in the Belgian Congo where femmes libres were women who qualified for residence in the African townships in their own right and later the term became a synomym for prostitute T h e etymology I have suggested is quite other rather femme libre originated from the liberation of women slaves from slave owners polygamist husbands and who knows what other variety of situations which were defined as a form of slavery at a time when there was a need for monogamous wives for the new men of Congo Independent State missions work camps and military stations T h e term became synonymous with prostitute instantly when these women could not so easily be controlled and were assumed to be publiques Polygamy and prostitution lvere still linked terms in colonial discourse of the I 950s when the attempt to legislate the former (bad men) out of existence was intended indirectly to eradicate the latter (bad women) In the intervening period the category of women theoretically living alone was created Although the name chosen for the tax may have served to mask colonial intentions its ambiguity opened up the semantic range of bad woman so wide as to include all unmarried urban women 3lIeanwhile the

realities of categories of men and n o m e n simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy For comparative evidence on tolerance see (on Nairobi) J Bujra Postscript prostitution class and the state in C Summer (ed) CrirneJzrstice and C~zderdeeeloprnent(London 1982) 115-61 esp I j 8 and G Chauncey J r T h e locus of reproduction nomen s labour in the Zambian Copperbelt 1927-10j3 J Southern -lfr Studies 111 (1981) 135-64 Van der Kerken Ides oeuvres I 2 I n official documents prostitutes tended to be

called filles publiques as in the prostitutiotl ordinance of 5 Sovember 19 I 3 Louvers and Grenade Codes 1408-9 J an Alletl XIemsahib militante femme libre political and apolitical styles of

modern African omen1 in J Jacquette (ed ) Itome~z i n Politics (Sexv York 1974)) 318 Yerhaegen states that the term femme lihre applied to all unmarried adult omen in Stanleyville vho ere subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories lerhaegetl L e centre 55 African naming ~vou ld have contributed to (and been influenced by ) this European

naming process Femme lihre is synonymous xvith n d u ~ n h ain contemporary Zaire and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single xvoman definition ndumhisme means prostitutiotl see Equipe du Projet IF-A Ineentaire des pavticularites lexicales dzi frangais en Afrique noive (C-F) (Paris 1g81) 121 and G-0 (Paris 1982) I 70 Dictionary evidence on the vord ~zdumbais suggestive delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young unmarried oman it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others) see

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

T A X A N D X I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N I F R I C A 49

equivocal name insinuated subterfuge women theoretically posing as single while actually being something else

A language problem was inherent to the processes of colonial surveillance that administration of tax collection (and related urban surveying activities) permitted T o tax women you have to name them Who would be named a femme civant thebriquement seule In 1938 the Commission pour la Pro- tection des Indigknes had complained about the taxs serious disadvantage of confusing on a single and same list perfectly honest women and the others T h e Commission was worried about those women living in legitimate situations especially widows and abandoned women old women who have lived a long time in the centers and could no longer live in their place of origin T h e Commission argued that these women were modest and honest and that they yere less adroit than the irregular women at camouflage in eluding the tax collectors by coming to an agreement with a companion and coila pass at the level of a married woman

S o t only the colonizers yere name-givers female categories were being defined and redefined refined and manipulated on the street in compound courtyards and at centre extra-coutumier offices as African census-takers and tax-collectors filled out forms counted heads interpreted replies bodies and household configurations and responded to new colonial measures T h e multiple names (femme seule and femme libre) on Buyenzi census cards represent a local playing with categories in a colonial situation where there as a slippage in meaning as the euphemistic name-giving of the colonizers became name-calling (whether in hurling insults or in shielding women) among the colonized T h e subaltern African staff of Buyenzi did not usually mince words when they filled out census cards and had council meetings They knew what a woman theoretically living alone was supposed to be in colonial eyes so they called it kodi ja malaya (prostitute tax) and in official minutes for these sessions femmes libres tax 17et the Buyenzi men also knew that in their community divorce was common and that there were independent divorced and widowed women who were not malaya136

L Bittremieux layo~~zbsclz Idioticon 11 (Gent 1 9 2 3 ) ~ 470 and G Iiulstaert Lomongo-F v a n ~ a i s k-Z (Tervuren 1957)) 1398 For a vonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and ho contemporary oman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging fromfemme libre to deusit~ne bureau see S Faik and C Faik- Szu j i La neologie comme miroir d une soci6te le cas du Zaire L e fvancais moderne XI- II (1979) 220-3 I

11 I T h e logic of the colonial tax system -as that only -omen vho -ere monogamously married yere effectively tax-free Supplementary -ives and omen theoretically living alone cost a price to somebody The re -as colonial murmuring that supplementargt- rvives paid the tax for their husbands while it as implied that yomen theoretically living alone -ere kept women -hose camouflaged husbands paid their tax see for example Van Ving L a polygamie 96 Guebels Relatiotz comnpllte 602

P Landberg lsquoVide-s and divorced -omen in S~vahi l i society in B Potash (ed) Itidoecs i n African Societies Choices and Constraitzts (Stanford 1986) 107-30 Swahili -omen of Buyenzi cannot be equated ith coastal S-ahili -omen T h e parallels and permutations need research T h e Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single yomen to concentrate in female- centred households Carol Dickermans fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabislzi (gift or t ip) payments made to -omen upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here I t vas the presumed inclusion of sex in their

492 N A N C Y R O S E H U N T

In the early 1950s when the new anti-polygamy law converged with the single womens tax many Rluslim women of Buyenzi were dishonoured by being called malaYal3 Buyenzi men of the quarters African advisory council objected to any further tax increases because they explained since the banishment of polygamy many women are abandoned no longer having any support they are obliged to manage to get along all alone t o find something to eat something to wear etc138 Colonial authorities were meanwhile concerned that ILluslim religious officiants were continuing to celebrate polygamous marriageshey said that there was a problem of camouflage in which women who had Koranic marriages lived with their husbands but were called femmes libres and their husbands paid the single womens tax for them In 1955 the year the womens protest began this camouflage alternatively termed concubinage by the authorities received special attention T h e African sub-chiefs of Buyenzi were given the mission to act as intermediaries and to search for cases of concubinage that is plural wives disguised as women theoretically living alone Each week the authorities proudly reported tens of cases were treated This campaign could only have enraged the women and men of Buyenzi

T h e kind of bonding and rebelling that occurred in Buyenzi lvas not inevitable A silence of female popular memory in post-colonial Belge (B~viza)and the absence of collective action among this townships Lvomen residents in face of the tax reveal a divergence between the citys two quarters T h e voices of Belge men betray the different kind of struggle that lvas going on in this centre extra-coutumier At the same meeting where the African advisers of Buyenzi were worried about how the abandoned women of their community could absorb an increase in the tax the African advisers of Belge denounced femmes libres as richer and better dressed than married women They argued that this category of person should be discouraged because they knew how to acquire a new expensive outfit every month and lvere responsible for township brawls and troubles among married couples 1 4 9 e l g e came into being as a colonial-created township whereas Buyenzi was first an African Rluslim community with a history and a culture predating colonial rule T h e economically more independent Swahili rice farmers traders and artisans of Buyenzi had been forced out of their

provision of domestic services that motivated the local European court administrator to stop the a~vard of these payments in 1953 labelling such payments as concubinage and prostitution C Dickerman City Yomen and the colonial regime Usumbura 1939-196z ilfricatz Urban Studies xvrrI (1984) 38 T h e vord malaya as a negative insulting term hurled among Africans in

Usumbura xvhen quarrelling and a tizalaya prostitute vas distinct from a voman entering an informal nutabishi arrangement Dickerman City xvomen 39

1Iinutes of Conseil meeting 1 2 January 1955 T e c R a 1957 16 l a O CecRa 1957 9 CecRa 1955 30 This vas probably the year 1Iama Sanura xvas jailed in the middle

of the night Administrative regulations forbid imprisoning Yomen for non-payment of taxes F Gevaerts Vade-Alfeczltiza lzlsage desfotzctiotznaires et agents territoriaur du Cotzgo B e k e (19531 81 Minutes Conseils de Belge et Buyenzi ljoint meeting] 12 January 1 9 j 5 CEC

Conseil file Colonial commentators also thought Belge men kept their clandestine xvomen in Buyenzi there apparently exists a special quarter in Buyenzi maintained by the men of Belge L a situation des femmes abandonnkes z jo - I

T A X A N D L I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 493

Usumbura homes (twice) and into a nev territorial space defined and treated as a colonial township Belge was more the location of recent migrants of Christian colonial-educated ampolue men and their homebound homeproud ~ ~ i v e s ~Different kinds of gender relations different kinds of female work different kinds of payments for different kinds of sexual services were part of the world of Belge14 Belge was a typical site of Belgian African extra- customary space I t was where Usumburas readers of L a Voix du Congolais would have lived these colonized new men who were known to pose as lettered monogamists while camouflaging their supplementary courtesans on fancy bicycles Such typologies make historical sense in this case even as far away as the Belgian Congos post-World War I territorial annex Ruanda- Urundi hllost if not all Belgian colonial cities had a Belge a zone of evolution that began as a citeindigene and became a centre extra-coz~tumier These evolving people (ampolues) and spaces (called Belgel) were con-structed as alike and interchangeable within the colony Their residents watched the same movie^^ And Clite husbands would send their wives to colonial-sponsored housekeeping and cooking lessons encourage the colonial regime to take a harsher line on polygamy and prostitution and decry the camouflaged polygamy and discreet money-based client-type prostitution practised in their midst

Buyenzi lvas then an atypical extra-customary centre and it was here the anti-polygamy law had explosive consequences Suddenly the colonial categories for woman shifted and tightened uncertainty reigned a new problem of camouflage emerged and it became difficult to tell which woman belonged to which category Being recognized as a woman theoretically living alone represented an escape clause for many plural wives when times became rough when naming (registering) plural wives before a certain date became law and as campaigns began to empty colonial cities of undesirable women T h e need for subterfuge was inverted within a struggle to control the naming process where plural wives yere disguised by husbands as single women and decamouflaged by colonial agents as concubines and sz~pp1e- mentaires T h e colonial sexual i n ~ u l t ~ of the kodi ya malaya was

H u n t Domesticity and colonialism in Belgian AAfrica Usumbura s Foyer Social 1046-1g60 Signs xv ( ~ g g o ) 447-74

I J J I n the mid-fifties 15 per cent of xvomen in Belge ere registered as theoretically living alone xvhereas in Buyenzi the proportion vas 28 per cent L a situation des femmes abandonnees 250 See also J Denis Le plzerlo~nt~ze urhain en Afrique cerltrale (Brussels 1959) 2 0 j 212 Dickermans court transcript evidence vould probably be able to deepen the contrast I conjecture here Dickerman C i ty vomen T h e name Belge is probably an example of how African name-calling (a place here

people dress like Lvhites hence Belge) was co-opted and incorporated into official European name-giving see Equipe d u Projet IFLA Zncentaire ( A - B ) (Paris 1980) 101

l a 6 Colonial film vould have played an important role in constructing this inter- changeability For the best historical analysis to date of k o lue culture in Belgian Africa and one xvhich attends to the semiotics of bicycles seing machines typevriters and the like see F Ramirez and C Rolot Histoire du cirlhna colorlial nu Zai ie nu Rwanda et au Burundi (Iervuren 1985) Shirley Ardeners treatment is the essential reference here especially since Buyenzi

omens collective action expressed in letter xvriting not skirt lifting defies the pattern of t radit ional African female militancy presented there see S Xrdener Sexual insult and female militancy I fan V I I I (1973)) 422-40

-FH 3 2 19

494 KNCY R O S E H U K T

magnified in this process where camouflage became the name of the game Yet the single womens tax had indeed created a category of women not a n amorphous g roup of runaway wives b u t an official legal and symbolic category of women Once you name a category of persons you lose control over how the name is used called given again and how the category of people and other name-givers on the scene coalesce and act T h e so-called single women of Buyenzi bonded over their name while using the sexual aspersion it contained to embarrass the colonial name-givers into exemptions and the m e n of their communi ty into an u rban tax rebellion T h e indignity as XIxvana-Harusi binti Hamis i explained began with the act of giving women a disreputable name and treating t h e m not as women b u t as m e n as tax-payers W e actually felt bad for a woman to pay any tax

This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities betlveen Belgian African anti-polygamy measures and the unusual practice of taxing urban un-married women Secondly it interprets the 1950s rebellion against this tax in Bujumbura in light of holv the colonial category of fenne libre and a 19 jo anti- polygamy law converged in the LIuslim African community of Buyenzi Colonial categories and camouflage name-giving and name-calling noise and silence are central to the interpretation

Belgian African anti-polygamy attitudes and measures are first revielved including polygamous mife liberations in the Leopoldian period the introduction of supplementary h~ife taxation in 1910 demographic anxieties from the 1920s and post-Lforld War I1 lvorries about camouflaged polygamy leading to the passage of the anti-polygamy law in 19jo T h e published evidence of camouflaged polygamys noisiest critics elite African new men or ezoiies suggests that polygamy was increasing in rural areas due to forced labour obligations and becoming camouflaged in response to pro-natalist rewards for monogamy A second section analyses the urban single womens tax in terms of the embarrassed silence surrounding this new form of moral taxation lvhich Lvas introduced following legislation in the 1930s designed to better differentiate customary space from urban sites of evolution A third section dra~vs on Buyenzi ~vomens oral memories to reconstruct their noisy rebellion against the tax T h e conclusion analyses these LIuslim lvomens outrage in light of the contradictions of gaining municipal revenue through moral taxation an urban surveillance process lvhich necessitated naming the category of persons taxed T h e etymology of the term femme libre demonstrates that polygamous ~vife and prostitute lvere associated categories in colonial thought from the Leopoldian period Colonial authorities lost control over these categories in this atypical extra-customary to~vnship super- imposed on a pre-colonial customary community The new African need for camouflaging plural wives created by the strong urban expulsion powers of the 1950 anti-polygamy law converged lvith the name-calling of the single ~vomens tax resulting in a local struggle to control the naming process T h e category of Lvomen created by the tax coalesced around the sexual insult embedded in the taxs name embarrassing colonial authorities into exemptions and inciting the men of their community into a tax rebellion

T A X A N D L I O R A L S I N B E L G I A N A F R I C A 493

Usumbura homes (twice) and into a nev territorial space defined and treated as a colonial township Belge was more the location of recent migrants of Christian colonial-educated ampolue men and their homebound homeproud ~ ~ i v e s ~Different kinds of gender relations different kinds of female work different kinds of payments for different kinds of sexual services were part of the world of Belge14 Belge was a typical site of Belgian African extra- customary space I t was where Usumburas readers of L a Voix du Congolais would have lived these colonized new men who were known to pose as lettered monogamists while camouflaging their supplementary courtesans on fancy bicycles Such typologies make historical sense in this case even as far away as the Belgian Congos post-World War I territorial annex Ruanda- Urundi hllost if not all Belgian colonial cities had a Belge a zone of evolution that began as a citeindigene and became a centre extra-coz~tumier These evolving people (ampolues) and spaces (called Belgel) were con-structed as alike and interchangeable within the colony Their residents watched the same movie^^ And Clite husbands would send their wives to colonial-sponsored housekeeping and cooking lessons encourage the colonial regime to take a harsher line on polygamy and prostitution and decry the camouflaged polygamy and discreet money-based client-type prostitution practised in their midst

Buyenzi lvas then an atypical extra-customary centre and it was here the anti-polygamy law had explosive consequences Suddenly the colonial categories for woman shifted and tightened uncertainty reigned a new problem of camouflage emerged and it became difficult to tell which woman belonged to which category Being recognized as a woman theoretically living alone represented an escape clause for many plural wives when times became rough when naming (registering) plural wives before a certain date became law and as campaigns began to empty colonial cities of undesirable women T h e need for subterfuge was inverted within a struggle to control the naming process where plural wives yere disguised by husbands as single women and decamouflaged by colonial agents as concubines and sz~pp1e- mentaires T h e colonial sexual i n ~ u l t ~ of the kodi ya malaya was

H u n t Domesticity and colonialism in Belgian AAfrica Usumbura s Foyer Social 1046-1g60 Signs xv ( ~ g g o ) 447-74

I J J I n the mid-fifties 15 per cent of xvomen in Belge ere registered as theoretically living alone xvhereas in Buyenzi the proportion vas 28 per cent L a situation des femmes abandonnees 250 See also J Denis Le plzerlo~nt~ze urhain en Afrique cerltrale (Brussels 1959) 2 0 j 212 Dickermans court transcript evidence vould probably be able to deepen the contrast I conjecture here Dickerman C i ty vomen T h e name Belge is probably an example of how African name-calling (a place here

people dress like Lvhites hence Belge) was co-opted and incorporated into official European name-giving see Equipe d u Projet IFLA Zncentaire ( A - B ) (Paris 1980) 101

l a 6 Colonial film vould have played an important role in constructing this inter- changeability For the best historical analysis to date of k o lue culture in Belgian Africa and one xvhich attends to the semiotics of bicycles seing machines typevriters and the like see F Ramirez and C Rolot Histoire du cirlhna colorlial nu Zai ie nu Rwanda et au Burundi (Iervuren 1985) Shirley Ardeners treatment is the essential reference here especially since Buyenzi

omens collective action expressed in letter xvriting not skirt lifting defies the pattern of t radit ional African female militancy presented there see S Xrdener Sexual insult and female militancy I fan V I I I (1973)) 422-40

-FH 3 2 19

494 KNCY R O S E H U K T

magnified in this process where camouflage became the name of the game Yet the single womens tax had indeed created a category of women not a n amorphous g roup of runaway wives b u t an official legal and symbolic category of women Once you name a category of persons you lose control over how the name is used called given again and how the category of people and other name-givers on the scene coalesce and act T h e so-called single women of Buyenzi bonded over their name while using the sexual aspersion it contained to embarrass the colonial name-givers into exemptions and the m e n of their communi ty into an u rban tax rebellion T h e indignity as XIxvana-Harusi binti Hamis i explained began with the act of giving women a disreputable name and treating t h e m not as women b u t as m e n as tax-payers W e actually felt bad for a woman to pay any tax

This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities betlveen Belgian African anti-polygamy measures and the unusual practice of taxing urban un-married women Secondly it interprets the 1950s rebellion against this tax in Bujumbura in light of holv the colonial category of fenne libre and a 19 jo anti- polygamy law converged in the LIuslim African community of Buyenzi Colonial categories and camouflage name-giving and name-calling noise and silence are central to the interpretation

Belgian African anti-polygamy attitudes and measures are first revielved including polygamous mife liberations in the Leopoldian period the introduction of supplementary h~ife taxation in 1910 demographic anxieties from the 1920s and post-Lforld War I1 lvorries about camouflaged polygamy leading to the passage of the anti-polygamy law in 19jo T h e published evidence of camouflaged polygamys noisiest critics elite African new men or ezoiies suggests that polygamy was increasing in rural areas due to forced labour obligations and becoming camouflaged in response to pro-natalist rewards for monogamy A second section analyses the urban single womens tax in terms of the embarrassed silence surrounding this new form of moral taxation lvhich Lvas introduced following legislation in the 1930s designed to better differentiate customary space from urban sites of evolution A third section dra~vs on Buyenzi ~vomens oral memories to reconstruct their noisy rebellion against the tax T h e conclusion analyses these LIuslim lvomens outrage in light of the contradictions of gaining municipal revenue through moral taxation an urban surveillance process lvhich necessitated naming the category of persons taxed T h e etymology of the term femme libre demonstrates that polygamous ~vife and prostitute lvere associated categories in colonial thought from the Leopoldian period Colonial authorities lost control over these categories in this atypical extra-customary to~vnship super- imposed on a pre-colonial customary community The new African need for camouflaging plural wives created by the strong urban expulsion powers of the 1950 anti-polygamy law converged lvith the name-calling of the single ~vomens tax resulting in a local struggle to control the naming process T h e category of Lvomen created by the tax coalesced around the sexual insult embedded in the taxs name embarrassing colonial authorities into exemptions and inciting the men of their community into a tax rebellion

494 KNCY R O S E H U K T

magnified in this process where camouflage became the name of the game Yet the single womens tax had indeed created a category of women not a n amorphous g roup of runaway wives b u t an official legal and symbolic category of women Once you name a category of persons you lose control over how the name is used called given again and how the category of people and other name-givers on the scene coalesce and act T h e so-called single women of Buyenzi bonded over their name while using the sexual aspersion it contained to embarrass the colonial name-givers into exemptions and the m e n of their communi ty into an u rban tax rebellion T h e indignity as XIxvana-Harusi binti Hamis i explained began with the act of giving women a disreputable name and treating t h e m not as women b u t as m e n as tax-payers W e actually felt bad for a woman to pay any tax

This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities betlveen Belgian African anti-polygamy measures and the unusual practice of taxing urban un-married women Secondly it interprets the 1950s rebellion against this tax in Bujumbura in light of holv the colonial category of fenne libre and a 19 jo anti- polygamy law converged in the LIuslim African community of Buyenzi Colonial categories and camouflage name-giving and name-calling noise and silence are central to the interpretation

Belgian African anti-polygamy attitudes and measures are first revielved including polygamous mife liberations in the Leopoldian period the introduction of supplementary h~ife taxation in 1910 demographic anxieties from the 1920s and post-Lforld War I1 lvorries about camouflaged polygamy leading to the passage of the anti-polygamy law in 19jo T h e published evidence of camouflaged polygamys noisiest critics elite African new men or ezoiies suggests that polygamy was increasing in rural areas due to forced labour obligations and becoming camouflaged in response to pro-natalist rewards for monogamy A second section analyses the urban single womens tax in terms of the embarrassed silence surrounding this new form of moral taxation lvhich Lvas introduced following legislation in the 1930s designed to better differentiate customary space from urban sites of evolution A third section dra~vs on Buyenzi ~vomens oral memories to reconstruct their noisy rebellion against the tax T h e conclusion analyses these LIuslim lvomens outrage in light of the contradictions of gaining municipal revenue through moral taxation an urban surveillance process lvhich necessitated naming the category of persons taxed T h e etymology of the term femme libre demonstrates that polygamous ~vife and prostitute lvere associated categories in colonial thought from the Leopoldian period Colonial authorities lost control over these categories in this atypical extra-customary to~vnship super- imposed on a pre-colonial customary community The new African need for camouflaging plural wives created by the strong urban expulsion powers of the 1950 anti-polygamy law converged lvith the name-calling of the single ~vomens tax resulting in a local struggle to control the naming process T h e category of Lvomen created by the tax coalesced around the sexual insult embedded in the taxs name embarrassing colonial authorities into exemptions and inciting the men of their community into a tax rebellion