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Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Nancy Rose Hunt
Nancy Rose Hunt
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities between 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 how the colonial category of femme libre and a 1950 antipolygamy law converged in the Muslim 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 reviewed, including polygamous wife liberations in the Leopoldian period; the introduction of supplementary wife taxation in 1910; demographic anxieties from the 1920s; and post-World War II worries about ‘camouflaged polygamy’, leading to the passage of the anti-polygamy law in 1950. The published evidence of ‘camouflaged polygamy's’ noisiest critics, élite African ‘new men’ or évolués, 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 women's tax in terms of the embarrassed silence surrounding this new form of moral taxation, which was introduced following legislation in the 1930s designed to better differentiate ‘customary’ space from urban sites of ‘evolution’. A third section draws on Buyenzi women's oral memories to reconstruct their noisy rebellion against the tax. The conclusion analyses these Muslim women's outrage in light of the contradictions of gaining municipal revenue through moral taxation, an urban surveillance process which necessitated naming the category of persons taxed. The etymology of the term femme libre demonstrates that polygamous wife and prostitute were associated categories in colonial thought from the Leopoldian period. Colonial authorities lost control over these categories in this atypical ‘extra-customary’ township 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 with the name-calling of the single women's tax, resulting in a local struggle to control the naming process. The category of women created by the tax coalesced around the sexual insult embedded in the tax's name, embarrassing colonial authorities into exemptions and inciting the men of their community into a tax rebellion.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , November 1991 , pp. 471 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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3 In keeping with francophone colonial usage, I shall use the term polygamy rather than polygyny here. Colonial authors were fond of reminding readers that polyandry also existed as a danger.

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14 Ibid. 160.

15 Might one say ‘red chikwangue period’ to speak to women's obligations to produce this labour-intensive, highly preservable, manioc bread in lieu of rubber in some regions during this period? See Congo, Etat Indépendant du, Bulletin officiel 21, 9–10 (1905), 169, 173–4.Google Scholar On women's labour and chikwangue production, see Vansina, J., The Tio Kingdom of the Middle Congo: 1880–1892 (London, 1973), 148–50, 159–62.Google Scholar The Conseil Colonial was a Brussels-based body appointed to advise on colonial legislation; see Jewsiewicki, B., ‘Belgian Africa’, in Fage, J. D. and Oliver, R., The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 7 (Cambridge, 1986), 466.Google Scholar

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27 On missionary liberations, see Ensobato, Mumbanza mwa Bawele na Nyabakombi, ‘Histoire des peuples riverains de l'entre Zaire-Ubangi: évolution sociale et économique (c. 1700–1930)’ (Ph.D. thesis, Université N'ationale du Zaïre, Campus de Lubumbashi, 1980), 849–58.Google Scholar On regret over state liberations, see Sohier, A., ‘Evolution de la condition juridique de la femme indigène au Congo Belge’, Instítut Coloníal International, Compte Rendu de la XXIVe Session tenue a Rome (Brussels, 1939), 153–217, esp. 207.Google Scholar

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28 ‘Circulaire rapellant’, Recueil mensuel (1914), 163.Google Scholar

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31 Conseil Colonial (1949), 1814.Google Scholar

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34 Harries, , ‘Christian marriage’, 447.Google Scholar One provided for registering customary marriages and legally validating religious marriages, thereby creating a new form of legally enforceable monogamous marriage. The other was an anti-adultery and antibigamy decree for Civil Code marriages which the Conseil Colonial had been working on for 35 years. See Conseil Colonial (1913–1914), 519, 609–12, 642–4;Google Scholar and Cyfer-Diderich, G., ‘The legal situation of the native woman in the Belgian Congo’, Civilisations, 1 (1951), 59–68.Google Scholar These laws have their own long bibliographies, and will not be discussed here; see Eggermont, ‘Inculturatie’.

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40 Plisnier-Ladame's bibliography, which shows that Protestant missionaries spoke up too, includes 69 citations relating to polygamy in the Belgian Congo, almost all dated between 1945 and 1959; 13 were by évolué authors. Plisnier-Ladame, F., ‘La condition de l'Africaine en Afrique noire’, Enquêtes bibliographiques, VIII (Brussels, 1961).Google Scholar

41 For instance, see, Mujinga, R. P., ‘Les méfaits de la polygamie’, La Voix, V (1949), 271–2Google Scholar; Mutombo, J.-P., ‘L'évoluant et la polygamie’, La Voix, IX (1953), 31–2Google Scholar; and Nimi, , ‘La polygamie’, 417–20.Google Scholar

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53 Ibid. 32.

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55 Van Wing, , ‘Notes’, 186–7.Google Scholar Merlier also points out that chiefs were vital to the coercion of the forced agricultural system. Polygamy increased their harvest revenues, while they also received ‘abundant’ state propaganda and incentives in kind to help enhance women's productivity: Merlier, , Le Congo, 83, 150–1.Google Scholar It is here we especially need local studies. Van Wing, too, speaks indistinctly of several districts. For a pioneering study of ‘cumulative polygyny’ in colonial Africa, see Guyer, Jane, Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston, 1984).Google Scholar

56 See Mbilinyi, M., ‘Runaway wives in colonial Tanganyika: forced labour and forced marriage in Rungwe District 1919–1961’, Int. J. Sociology of Law, XVI (1988), 1–19.Google Scholar One wonders if the wives of monogamists would not have been the ‘runaways’. This would concur with the colonial consternation that so many women seemed to prefer polygamy; Hulstaert, G., Le mariage des Nkundo (Brussels, 1938), 366–7Google Scholar; Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 96.Google Scholar

57 Ngandu, , ‘La polygamie et ses méfaits sociaux’, 808–14Google Scholar; Mujinga, , ‘Les méfaits’, 271.Google Scholar

58 Wassa, , ‘Liberté’, 72.Google Scholar Polygamist chiefs may also have been controlling the labour of ‘wives’ they had working for them at a distance in urban prostitution; Merlier, , Le Congo, 151Google Scholar

59 Ngandu, E. and Lodja, A. M. I., ‘La prostitution ronge le Congo’, La Voix, I (1945), 209–10Google Scholar; Mupenda, J.-E., ‘Prostitution et polygamie’, La Voix, III (1947), 821Google Scholar; Wassa, , ‘Liberté’, 72.Google Scholar

60 Ngandu, ‘La polygamie et ses méfaits sociaux’.

61 Manono, , ‘Quelques commentaires’, 32–3Google Scholar; Ngandu, ‘La polygamie’.

62 Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 96–7.Google Scholar

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64 Mutombo, J.-P., ‘L'évoluant’, 31.Google Scholar These supplémentaires are called deuxièmes bureaux today (literally, second offices), and there is often a camouflaged commercial element to the arrangements; see Verhaegen, B., Ngalula, Muamba and Endanda, Kisangani, ‘La marginalíté, le mariage et l'instruction’, in Jewsiewicki, B. (ed.), Etat Indépendant du Congo, Congo Belge, République Démocratique du Congo, République du Zaïre? (Ste-Foy, Quebec, 1984), 133–4.Google Scholar

65 Mujinga, R.-P., ‘Indemnites familiales et…polygamie camouflée’, La Voix, VI (1950), 152–4.Google Scholar The tendency for évolué discourse to resemble the colonial discourse of Europeans, yet in harsher, starker terms, has been noted elsewhere by Geertruyen, G. Van in ‘“Sous le joug du matriarcat”: une campagne d’“évolués” contre la matrilinéarité au Bas-Zaï’re’, Africana gandensia, VI (1989), 105–55.Google Scholar

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70 Conseil Colonial (1950), 540.Google Scholar

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75 Sumuwe, , ‘Crise’, 283–4.Google Scholar Emphasis added.

76 Controversy in the early ʾtwenties over ‘Christian villages’, or as critics called them, ‘anti-customary villages’, also concerned the need to define better the legal differences and boundaries between what were then called ‘recognized’ (e.g. customary) and ‘conventional’ (e.g. non-customary, including villages of former soldiers, state workers and Christians) chefferies. See the exchange of articles, ‘De la légalité des villages Chrétiens’, Congo, III (1922), 1–7, 501–34, 612–14.Google Scholar

77 Magotte, J., Les centres extra-coutumiers: commentaire des décrets des 23 novembre 1931, 6 et 22 juin 1934 coordonnés par I'arrâté royal du 6 juillet 1934 (Dison-Vivriers, 1938), 52–79.Google Scholar

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79 Baumer, G., Les centres indigènes extra-coutumiers au Congo Belge (Paris, 1939), 117Google Scholar; Magotte, , Les centres, 134–5.Google Scholar The extra-customary centres'; taxation regulations were not published, nor have I been able to locate them in archives in Bujumbura or Brussels.

80 Malira, K.-N., ‘Regard sur la situation sociale de la citoyenne luchoise dʾavant 1950’ Likundoli, II (1974), 63–71.Google Scholar It was probably first introduced on the Copperbelt, where it began as a measure directed at white women in 1918. It fell into disuse, until reintroduced as a tax on African women in 1932; see the important comparative material, largely excised in her published summary in Malira, K.-N., ‘Les associations féminines de Lubumbashi (1920–1950)’ (Mémoire en Histoire, Université Nationale du Zaï're, Campus de Lubumbashi, 1972), 27–8, 31–8, esp. 34.Google Scholar

81 Capelle, E., La cité indigène de Léopoldville (Léopoldville, 1947), 59Google Scholar; and La Fontaine, J., ‘The free women of Kinshasa: prostitution in a city in Zaïre’, in Davies, J. (ed.), Choice and Change: Essays in Honor of Lucy Mair (New York, 1974), 89–113.Google Scholar

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83 The tax is mentioned in the 1942 territorial report for the first time. It is absent from the first such report of 1941. Fonds R/RU (138) 5, Territoire dʾUsumbura, Rapport annuel, 1942, pt. 2; and Fonds R/RU (138) 4, Territoire dʾUsumbura, Rapport annuel, 1941, Archives Africaines, Brussels. On Usumbura's history, see Dickerman, C., ‘Economic and social change in an African city: Bujumbura, Burundi’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1984).Google Scholar

84 ‘La situation des femmes abandonnées et des femmes seules dans les centres extra-coutumiers dʾUsumbura’, Bulletin du CEPSI, no. 32 (1956), 251.Google Scholar Widows and old women were exempted in Stanleyville; Verhaegen, ‘Le centre’, 55.

85 In 1952, the tax amounted to 1312 per cent of the revenues of the centres extra-coutumiers. It was 4.83 per cent in 1955, 15.21 per cent in 1957, 15.12 per cent in 1959, and 8.54 per cent in 1960. These calculations are derived from Usumbura, Centres Extra-Coutumiers, Rapports annuels, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1959 and 1960, Bureau de la Mairie, Bujumbura. [Hereafter, cited as Cec Ra.]

86 The ordinance of 5 November 1913, which replaced that of 10 May 1909, was applied to Ruanda-Urundi by a decree of 10 June 1929. See Louwers, O. and Grenade, I., Codes et lois du Congo Belge (Brussels, 1927), 1408–9Google Scholar; Louwers, O. and Touchard, G., Recueil usuel de la législation du Congo Belge, vol. VI (Brussels, 1911), 687–8Google Scholar; and Leroy, P., Législation du Ruanda-Urundi (Usumbura, 1949), 156.Google Scholar

87 Cohn, B., ‘The anthropology of a colonial state and its forms of knowledge’ (paper presented to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Symposium no. 107Google Scholar, ‘Tensions of empire: colonial control and visions of rule’, Mijas, Spain, 5–13 November 1988).

88 In the case remembered above, malaya were rounded up following an incident when a European caught venereal disease. Only 25 women of Buyenzi and 97 of Belge were registered for regular medical exams after the promulgation of hygiene requirements in Usumbura in 1949; CecRa, 1949, 23. Nevertheless, the Commission pour la Protection des Indigènes objected in 1938 to the way the tax could join ‘notorious prostitutes and honest women’ on one list so that both types of women were subject to regular hygiene exams: ‘Nothing is more odious to honest women.’ See Guebels, , Relation complète, 602–3.Google Scholar Elisabethville authorities created a dual tax system in 1937 with all single women paying one amount, and those subject to the hygiene law for prostitutes paying an additional tax; Malira, , ‘Les associations’, 34.Google Scholar

89 Census Cards, c. 1947–57, Bureau de la Zone de Buyenzi. Over 1,200 femmes seules and/or femmes libres were listed on 585 (or 55 per cent) of the 1, 056 cards (representing about 90 per cent of the 1,182 Buyenzi compounds in 1949); CecRa, 1949, 25. I was unable to locate the same set of cards for Usumbura's Belge. These registers by compound were first instituted in the Congo in 1935; see Kivilu, Sabakinu, ‘Les sources de l'histoire démographique du Zaïre’, Etudes dʾhistoire africaine, VI (1974), 124.Google Scholar

90 For an example of the way in which this popular memory has come under ‘the effects of dominant historical discourses’, see the ‘private history’ of Mama Sanura, whose story was closely linked to the rise of nationalist hero, Prince Rwagasore. I do not attempt to ‘unscramble’ this here: see Popular History Group, ‘Popular memory: theory, politics, method’, in Johnston, R. et al. (eds.), Making Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics (Minneapolis, 1982), 211.Google Scholar

91 Tausi binti Sibaela, 8 March 1985.

92 Abiba K., 7 March 1985.

93 Mugeni binti Hemedi, 20 April 1985.

94 Asha binti Shabani, 18 April 1985.

95 Mwajuma binti Lubagara, 17 April 1985.

96 Ibid.

97 Asha binti Kamangu, 17 April 1985; Fatuma binti Juma, 19 April 1985.

98 Fatuma binti Juma, 19 April 1985. This comment is suggestive of how the tax may have forced women in Usumbura to increase their marketed surpluses; personal communication, J. Bujra, 21 April 1989. In Lubumbashi, the tax seemed to increase single women's beer brewing and soliciting activities; Malira, , ‘Les associations’, 37.Google Scholar

99 Tausi binti Sibaela, 8 March 1985.

100 Zena binti Feruzi, 6 March 1985; Asha binti Kamangu, 17 April 1985; and Abiba K., 7 March 1985. I examined Abiba K's tax book.

101 Nyirakemegeri, 28 February 1985.

102 Fonds R/RU (138) 6–9 and (139) 2–5, Territoire dʾUsumbura, Rapports annuels, 1943–52.

103 Ngonogoro binti Mpangombu, 2 May 1985; Abiba K., 7 March 1985.

104 Asha binti Kamangu, 17 April 1985.

105 Mwajuma binti Lubagara, 17 April 1985.

106 Fatuma binti Juma, 18 April 1985.

107 Buyenzi people called themselves Swahili. They speak Swahili, practise Islam, and their community dates from the penetration of Zanzibari ivory and slave traders into the Ujiji region in the nineteenth century. Burundian women were integrated into the community during the colonial period as were women from Rwanda and present-day Zaïre.

108 Mugeni binti Hemedi, 20 April 1985.

109 ‘Programme détaillé de la réception du Roi’, Temps nouveaux dʾAfrique, 29 05 1955, 4Google Scholar; ‘Réception colorée à Usumbura, le voyage du Roi’, Temps nouveaux dʾAfrique, 5 05 1955, 1.Google Scholar

110 Mama Sanura, 22 April 1985.

111 Ibid.

112 CecRa, 1949, 27; CecRa, 1956, 117.

113 Xgonogoro binti Mpangombu, 2 May 1985.

114 CecRa, 1956, 118; CecRa, 1955, 93.

115 CecRa, 1956, 22.

116 Minutes, Conseil de Buyenzi, 7 November 1956, and Minutes, Conseil de Buyenzi, 7 November 1956, ‘CEC/Conseil’ file, Bureau de la Mairie, Bujumbura.

117 CecRa, 1957, 11.

118 Minutes, Conseil de Buyenzi, 19 March 1957, ‘CEC/Conseil’ file.

119 Minutes, Conseil de Buyenzi, 24 March 1957. Emphasis added.

120 The decree of 4 April 1950 (whose principal articles became effective in the Congo on 1 January 1951) became law in Ruanda-Urundi on 11 December 1951 (and the respective articles became effective on 1 May 1952); see Piron, and Devos, , Codes, 196–7Google Scholar; and Bulletin officiel du Ruanda-Urundi (1951), 479–80.Google Scholar

121 Cooper, F. and Stoler, A., ‘Tensions of empire: colonial control and visions of rule’, American Ethnologist, XVI (1989), 609–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

122 Kerken, Mme Van der, ‘Les oeuvres sociales et humanitaires au Congo Belge’, Congrès Colonial National, Ve session, no. 15 (1940), 12Google Scholar; Grévisse, F., ‘Le centre extra-coutumierdʾElisabethvillé’, Bulletin du CEPSI, no. 15 (1951), 78Google Scholar; and Capelle, , La cité, 59.Google Scholar

123 ‘It is wonderful to see the local government …find, in the debauchery of whites, blacks and filles publiques, a source of revenue’: Van der Kerken, , ‘Les oeuvres’, 12.Google Scholar Mme Van der Kerken founded the Oeuvre pour la Protection de la Femme Indigène in 1926; Fonds A.I. (1394) no. 2, Archives Africaines, Brussels.

124 Despite its reservations, the Commission pour la Protection des Indigènes favoured the tax in 1938 because it was useful in ‘obviat[ing] the harm which an afflux of single women in the centers would present’ and agreed that ‘profligacy must be checked’ Guebels, Relation complète, 602.Google Scholar

125 Guebels, , Relation complete, 602.Google Scholar

126 As did John Whitehead of Wayika in his typically acerbic style in ‘Answers to questions recorded by Mr. Middlebrook’, 1946, 4 in John Whitehead Papers, Baptist Missionary Society Archives, Regent's Park College, Oxford.

127 In analysing Elisabethville's dependence on vice taxation, the assistant Commissaire de District in Katanga remarked: ‘To live and develop, the centre must almost organize vice [malaise sociale] even though it was created to reduce it’, Grévisse, ‘Le centre’, 80.

128 Verhaegen, , ‘Le centre’, 56Google Scholar; and Malira, , ‘Les associations’, 37.Google Scholar

129 Verhaegen, , ‘Le centre’, 56.Google Scholar Grévisse's figure of 55 per cent for Lubumbashi combines single women taxes with other vice (beer) taxes; Grévisse,‘Le centre’, 78–80. On Usumbura, see note 85 above.

130 The available evidence makes it difficult to sort out how when the tax was introduced in different cities and its relative importance as a revenue generator were linked to the timing and sweep of stabilization policies. Verhaegen argues that in Stanleyville the tax represented a ‘policy of tolerance’ towards single women who helped reproduce the temporary labour of single men; Verhaegen, , ‘Le centre’, 56, 62.Google Scholar According to Malira, a steep tax in Katanga was intended to keep single women in rural areas and protect stabilized urban households; Malira, ‘Les associations’, 33, 37. Yet the two-tíered tax payment system that evolved in Elisabethville, with prostitutes paying more than ‘honest’ single women, would have adapted multiple intentions — to discourage single women from migrating to the city, and to tolerate reluctantly those who came — to tiered social realities of categories of men and women, simultaneously embracing sanitary agendas and a mixed stabilization policy. For comparative evidence on tolerance, see (on Nairobi) Bujra, J., ‘Postscript: prostitution, class and the state’, in Summer, C. (ed.), Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment (London, 1982), 145–61, esp. 158Google Scholar, and Chauncey, G. Jr ‘The locus of reproduction: women's labour in the Zambian Copperbelt, 1927–1953‘, J. Southern Afr. Studies, VII (1981), 135–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

131 Van der Kerken, , ‘Les oeuvres’, 12.Google Scholar In official documents, prostitutes tended to be called filles publiques, as in the prostitution ordinance of 5 November 1913; Louwers, and Grenade, , Codes, 1408–9.Google Scholar

132 Allen, J. Van, ‘Memsahib, militante, femme libre: political and apolitical styles of modern African women’, in Jacquette, J. (ed.), Women in Politics (New York, 1974), 318.Google Scholar Verhaegen states that the term femme libre applied to all unmarried adult women in Stanleyville, who were subdivided into taxed and exempted sub-categories; Verhaegen, , ‘Le centre’, 55.Google Scholar

133 African naming would have contributed to (and been influenced by ?) this European naming process. Femme libre is synonymous with ndumba in contemporary Zaïre, and neither term leaves much room for the legalistic single woman definition: ndumbisme means prostitution; see Equipe du Projet IFA, Inventaire des particularités lexicales du français en Afrique noire, (C—F), (Paris, 1981), 121Google Scholar; and G—O (Paris, 1982), 170.Google Scholar Dictionary evidence on the word ndumba is suggestive: delimited in 1923 (in some areas) to young, unmarried woman, it carried the connotation prostitute by 1957 (in others); see Bittremieux, L., Mayombsch Idioticon, II (Gent, 1923), 470Google Scholar; and Hulstaert, G., Lomongo-Français, K—Z (Tervuren, 1957), 1398.Google Scholar For a wonderful discussion of the proliferation of sexual slang and how contemporary woman-naming is semantically organized on a hierarchical scale ranging from femme libre to deuxième bureau, see Faïk, S. and Faïk-Nzuji, C., ‘La néologie comme miroir dʾune société: le cas du Zaïre’, he français moderne, XLVII (1979), 220–31.Google Scholar

134 The logic of the colonial tax system was that only women who were monogamously married were effectively tax-free. Supplementary wives and women ‘theoretically living alone’ cost a price, to somebody. There was colonial murmuring that supplementary wives paid the tax for their husbands, while it was implied that women ‘theoretically living alone’ were kept women whose camouflaged ‘husbands’ paid their tax; see, for example, Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 96.Google Scholar

135 Guebels, , Relation complète, 602.Google Scholar

136 Landberg, P., ‘Widows and divorced women in Swahili society’, in Potash, B. (ed.), Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints (Stanford, 1986), 107–30.Google Scholar ‘Swahili’ women of Buyenzi cannot he equated with coastal Swahili women. The parallels and permutations need research. The Buyenzi census cards indicate an important parallel in the high level of divorce and the tendency of single women to concentrate in female-centred households. Carol Dickerman's fascinating discussion of court-ordered matabishi (gift or tip) payments made to women upon leaving short-term living arrangements with men in colonial Bujumbura is relevant here. It was the presumed inclusion of sex in their provision of domestic services that motivated the local European court administrator to stop the award of these payments in 1953, ‘labelling such payments as concubinage and prostitution’. Dickerman, C., ‘City women and the colonial regime: Usumbura, 1939–1962’, African Urban Studies, XVIII (1984), 38.Google Scholar

137 The word malaya was a negative, insulting term hurled among Africans in Usumbura when quarrelling; and a malaya prostitute was distinct from a woman entering an informal matabishi arrangement. Dickerman, , ‘City women’, 39.Google Scholar

138 Minutes of Conseil meeting, 12 January 1955.

139 CecRa, 1957, 16.

140 CecRa, 1957, 9.

141 CecRa, 1955, 30. This was probably the year Mama Sanura was jailed in the middle of the night. Administrative regulations forbid imprisoning women for non–payment of taxes: Gevaerts, F., Vade-Mécum à l'usage des fonctionnaires et agents territoriaux du Congo Belge (1953), 84.Google Scholar

142 Minutes, Conseils de Belge et Buyenzi [joint meeting], 12 January 1955, ‘CEC/ Conseil file’. Colonial commentators also thought Belge men kept their clandestine women in Buyenzi: ‘there apparently exists a special quarter in Buyenzi maintained by the men of Belge’: ‘La situation des femmes abandonnées’, 250–1.

143 Hunt, N., ‘Domesticity and colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura's Foyer Social, 1946–1960’, Signs, XV (1990), 447–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

144 In the mid-fifties, 15 per cent of women in Belge were registered as ‘theoretically living alone’, whereas in Buyenzi the proportion was 28 per cent. ‘La situation des femmes abandonnées’, 250. See also Denis, J., Le phénomène urbain en Afrique centrale (Brussels, 1959), 205, 212.Google Scholar Dickerman's court transcript evidence would probably be able to deepen the contrast I conjecture here: Dickerman, ‘City women’.

145 The name Belge is probably an example of how African name-calling (a place where people dress like whites, hence Belge) was co-opted and incorporated into official European name-giving; see Equipe du Projet IFA, Inventaire, (A–B) (Paris, 1980), 101.Google Scholar

146 Colonial film would have played an important role in constructing this interchangeability. For the best historical analysis to date of évolué culture in Belgian Africa, and one which attends to the semiotics of bicycles, sewing machines, typewriters and the like, see Ramirez, F. and Rolot, C., Histoire du cinéma colonial au Zaïre, au Rwanda, et au Burundi (Tervuren, 1985).Google Scholar

147 Shirley Ardener's treatment is the essential reference here, especially since Buyenzi women's collective action, expressed in letter writing not skirt lifting, defies the pattern of ‘traditional’ African female militancy presented there; see Ardener, S., ‘Sexual insult and female militancy’, Man, VIII (1973), 422–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar