Native tax and forced labour system in the colony of Angola

Native tax and forced labour system in the colony of Angola

The change or shift from slave-based economies was a complex process that extended far beyond formal abolition. The cost of military operations to secure economically strategic points led in 1856 to the imposition of imposto cubata (hut tax) on all Africans, which for the first time had to be paid with currency or trade goods rather than with slaves. By 1861 the Portuguese lacked the resources for continued military expansion or economic development, and most of the interior remained in the control of African traders and warriors. In 1906 the Portuguese introduced a systematic taxation of all Africans in the colony of Angola, and in 1919 the colonial government replaced the hut tax with the imposto indígena (native tax). After abolishing slavery, Portugal still needed a supply of labour. The primary mechanism used to achieve this was the imposto indígena (native tax), a head tax requiring payment in Portuguese currency. This effectively compelled many African men to work for colonial employers at low wages to earn the necessary specie. As a result of this taxation system, many Africans either refused to pay or fled from areas controlled by the Portuguese.

The 20th-century Portuguese colonial administration in Angola maintained its power through the systemic exploitation of its "native" population. This system relied heavily on a combination of forced labour and heavy taxation. The forced labour system in the Portuguese colony of Angola was formalized after the enactment of the Native Labour Code (Código do Trabalho dos Indígenas) in 1899 to compel Africans into labour for settler farms and businesses.

The enforcement of this forced labour system relied on a brutal network of colonial administrators and African policemen (cipaes). The system was pervasive, compelling both men and women (who were often responsible for building and maintaining the road system) to work under harsh conditions far from their homes.

Daniel Musole a Luchazi elder interviewed by Professor Gerhard Kubik during the Luchazi Historical Symposium in 1971 said "The forced labour system required Africans from the age of ten to seventy to work on roads, rails, bridge construction, on the settlers' farms, in mining and industrial undertakings, at various establishments along the Atlantic coastal towns and administration posts, under conditions so terrible and dehumanising that they defy description". Families, village leaders and chiefs were required to provide healthy men and women for forced labour. And if the family or chief decided not to deliver any healthy men, or if nobody wanted to go for the forced labour, the whole village would flee during the night as a collective act of solidarity and survival. In kueve area, the occupants of the following lineage-villages left the colony of Angola for Northern Rhodesia: Nkulunga village, Kasamba village, Katuva village and Cininga village.

In 1924, the League of Nations sent the American sociologist Edward Ross to the Portuguese colony of Angola to investigate and document how forced labour system operated. He spent several weeks traveling through the interior of Angola. He was performing this journey as a representative of the Temporary Slavery Commission of the League of Nations.

Edward Ross collected information on the chronic abuses perpetrated by the Portuguese in the interior of Angola. These abuses included withholding pay and sexual assaults. One woman interviewee said, "Sometimes after the men are taken from the village, they take some of the women [to work on road maintenance]. Some men were taken to Catete on the railroad to work in the cotton fields. They may have to stay two or three years as contracted labourers. Some of them have been sent to work on sugar plantations for a six month's term, but under various pretexts the time may be prolonged to seven or eight months. The planter told them that he had 'bought' them from the Government, that they were his slaves and that he did not have to pay them anything. They got only their food and a receipt for their head tax".

Portuguese colonial labour law stipulated that employers were required to remit approximately three-fourths (75%) of a worker's wages to a designated local administrator (chefe de pasta) in the worker's home area. The worker was meant to collect these wages upon completion of their contract locally called cipalo; however, reports indicate that workers rarely, if ever, received the funds from these administrators. The workers who went to the chefe de pasta were threatened with the calaboose (jail).

Females were systematically raped and sexually abused. "In fact, it was not only whites who sexually assaulted women, but also black cipaios, who regularly chose concubines from among roadwork crews and in villages. In fact, this sexual abuse is documented as far back as 1924 in Edward Ross's Report on Employment of Native Labour in Portuguese Africa: 'in the village where the cipaio sleeps for the night, he takes whatever woman he fancies and no one dares say him nay'. Similar practices continued up through the end of forced labour in the late 1950. Justina Kalumbo remembers: 'The women considered beautiful to the eyes of men served the cipaios, and some of exceptional beauty were reserved for the capatazes... it was not important if she was married or no'. When asked if women ever initiated sex in exchange for exemption from hard labour, all but one of the interviewees said no. They insisted that women were chosen and that they could not say no because it would mean severe reprisals, including beatings and increased work burden. As one interviewee explained: 'lf you did not consent you would be beaten as if you were an animal, or any other instrument to be used. The women were used with tears and with pain [on their faces], with violence, it was an act without equal, when you arrived home you looked at your husband with tears and sobs, ashamed at the same time'.

One interviewee said that she knew of women who offered sex in exchange for exemption from forced labour, and explained that women who did so ran the risk of receiving a beating: "if the cipaio was not interested, you ran the risk of receiving chicotadas [whippings], because each one of us was so dirty to be unrecognizable". Women forced into sex generally received support from their communities, including their husbands, because as Bernarda Kabyndo explains: "though she [a woman raped during road work] arrived [back in the village] timid with her husband, and full of shame, she was not discriminated against by the community because in that time it was not only women who were violated, but also our husbands. When the whites said to do something, even if it was to parade around naked in a public street, you did it. It was not only women who had to comply'."

In his findings, Edward Ross condemns the Portuguese colonial practice of forced labour and describes the forced labour system as 'virtually state serfdom' that does not allow Africans adequate time to produce their food. Workers rarely received the bulk of their pay, which was embezzled by colonial officials. Africans had no recourse to colonial law for protection. The hut tax and obligatory labour for public works caused a heavy burden. Women, with only rudimentary tools and no pay, were forced to build roads, causing them to abandon their fields, and thus impacting negatively on food production.

Beginning in the 1940s, the system of forced labour came under renewed criticism. One particularly outspoken critic, Captain Henrique Galvão, who had served for more than two decades in an official capacity in Angola, chronicled abuses committed against the African population in 1947. Galvão identified forced labour and poor working conditions as undermining Portugal's long-term goals to develop Angola and he concluded that the system was crueler than pure slavery. Mortality rates as high as thirty-five percent for forced labourers reflected the poor conditions under which they lived and worked. The Portuguese government in Lisbon responded by arresting Galvão for treason and banning his report. Despite the introduction of some labour reforms from the late 1940s through the late 1950s, forced labour continued. The continuation of forced labour and other labour abuses led to an intensification of racial conflict.

In 1959 Portugal ratified the 1930 forced labour convention. On 25 February, 1961, Ghana filed a complaint against the government of Portugal for alleged violations of the forced labour convention at the International Labour Organization (ILO). On 2 May, 1961, the forced labour system was officially abolished and in 1962 all native Angolans were given the right of citizenship without passing the "examination of civilization".