² Kuper, H., ‘Colours, categories and colonialism: the Swazi case’, in Gann, L. H. and Duignan, P. (eds.), Colonialism in Africa 1870–1961, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1971), 289.Google Scholar

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.

⁴ For two different approaches, both drawn on here, see Kuper, , ‘Colours’, 266–309Google Scholar; and Stoler, A., ‘Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule’, Comp. Studies Soc. Hist., XXXI (1989), 134–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Vermeersch, A., La femme congolaise: Ménagère de blanc, femme de polygame, chrétienne (Brussels, 1914).Google Scholar Polygamy was the first subject discussed by the Commission pour la Protection des Indigènes when they met for the first time in 1911, and they returned to the question in most sessions into the 1950s; see Guebels, L., Relation complète des travaux de la Commission Permanente pour la Protection des Indigènes (Brussels, n.d.), esp. 54–7.Google Scholar The Commission's Leopoldian counterpart, founded in 1896, included ‘forced concubinage, [and] the prostitution of young women’ among its preoccupations; Ibid. 25.

⁶ Phillips, A., ‘Marriage laws in Africa’, in Phillips, A. (ed.), Survey of African Marriage and Family Life (London, 1953), 190–2.Google Scholar

⁷ Harries, L., ‘Christian marriage in African society’, in Phillips, (ed.), Survey, 335–9.Google Scholar For the first detailed study of Catholicism and polygamy in the Belgian Congo (unfortunately completed too recently to be consulted here), see Eggermont, B., ‘Inculturatie van het Christelijk Huwelijk in Belgisch Kongo, 1919–1950.Google Scholar De beleidsvorming van de Missie-Oversten omtrent polygamie: hun richtlijnen aan de missionarissen en inwerking op het beleid van de Staat’ (Verhandeling de geschiedenis, Rijksuniversiteit Gent, 1990).

⁸ On how the stand of Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries was integrated into the ideology of the ruling élite of Kongo, and the divergent impact on eminent and ordinary women of the Church requirement that converts first put away lesser wives, see Hilton, A., ‘Family and kinship among the Kongo south of the Zaire River from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIV (1983), 200–1.Google Scholar

⁹ On Protestant marginality after annexation, see Reardon, R. Slade, ‘Catholics and Protestants in the Congo’, in Baëta, C. G. (ed.), Christianity in Tropical Africa (London, 1968), 83–100.Google Scholar On Protestants’ mixed and changing attitudes to polygamy in Africa, see Slade, R., English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State (1878–1908) (Brussels, 1959), 216–17Google Scholar; Cairns, H. A. C., Prelude to Imperialism: British Reactions to Central African Society (London, 1967), 176–7Google Scholar; Beidelman, T. O., Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington, 1982), 140–4Google Scholar; and Copley, A., ‘The debate on widow remarriage and polygamy: aspects of moral change in nineteenth-century Bengal and Yorubaland’, J. Imp. & Comm. Hist., VII (1979), 128–48.Google Scholar

¹⁰ His criticisms of the Leopoldian regime were significant in turning Belgian Catholic public opinion towards favouring annexation; Slade, R., King Leopold's Congo (Westport, CT, 1962), 201–3, 208.Google Scholar Vermeersch (b. 1858; d. 1936), never a missionary, visited the colony in 1913; see Charles, V.’ biography in Biographie Coloniale Belge, IV (Brussels, 1955). cols. 913–18.Google Scholar

¹¹ On ménagères, see Vellut, J.-L., ‘Matériaux pour une image du blanc dans la société coloniale du Congo Belge’, in Pirotte, J. (ed.), Stéréotypes nationaux et préjugés raciaux aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Leuven, 1982), 102–3.Google Scholar

¹² ‘Circulaire rappelant aux autorités territoriales leurs obligations dans la lutte contre polygamie…’, 2ème Direction, no. 81, 22 June 1914 in Congo Belge, Gouvernement Local, Recueil mensuel des ordonnances, arrêtés, circulaires, instructions et ordres de service (1914). 159–63. esp. 160–1.Google Scholar

¹³ The circular's ambiguity left considerable room for local interpretation. It gave authorities the right to assist women out of polygamous marriages by aiding monogamist men in paying bridewealth indemnities to polygamist husbands for previously married plural wives, but stipulated that men subsequently taking extra wives should not be able to claim indemnities for those who might leave them. Ibid. 161–2.

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

¹⁶ Conseil Colonial, Compte rendu analytique des séances (01—04 1910), 577–611, esp. 587.Google Scholar

¹⁷ ‘Conseil Colonial (01—04 1910), 578.Google Scholar

¹⁸ This kind of plural wives tax (as opposed, for instance, to poll plus hut combinations) was also applied in Portuguese and some Brítish colonial territories. See Phillips, , ‘Marriage laws’, 190–4Google Scholar; and African Studies Branch, ‘Methods of direct taxation in British Tropical Africa’, J. Afr. Admin., II (1950), 3–11 and 111 (1951), 30–41.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Conseil Colonial (01—04 1910), 680.Google Scholar I am arguing here that Europeans associated polygamy with wealth, and enriched this association symbolically as they interpreted it with what 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 women in post-colonial Zaire, see Wamuela, B. Tshibanda, Femmes libres, femmes enchaînées (la prostitution au Zaïre) (Lubumbashi, 1986).Google Scholar Popular songs also suggest that sterility is salient in how Zaïrians signify prostitution and contemporary forms of camouflaged polygamy; see Tshonga-Onyumbe, ‘La société à travers la chanson zaïroise moderne’, in Jewsiewicki, B. and Moniot, H. (eds.), Dialoguer avec le léopard? Pratiques, savoirs et actes du peuple face au politique en Afrique noire contemporaine (Paris, 1988), 150.Google Scholar

²⁰ Nimi, P., ‘La polygamic et le matriarcat, coutumes à combattre, parce quʾelles vont à l'encontre de la saine notion de la famille’, La Voix du Congolais, V (1949), 417.Google Scholar [Hereafter, cited as La Voix.]

²¹ Vermeersch, , La femme, 122–3Google Scholar; Conseil Colonial (01—04 1910), 680.Google Scholar

²² See Bulletin officiel, 21, 9–10 (1905), 240.Google Scholar

²³ Vermeersch, , La femme, 81.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid. 120.

²⁵ Hunt, N., ‘“Le bébé en brousse”: European women, African birth spacing and colonial intervention in breast feeding in the Belgian Congo’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studies, XXI (1988), 401–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ See the file on ‘Puissance maritale et paternelle’, c. 1922–6 in Fond A.J. (1395), Archives Africaines, Brussels.

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

How mission policies (steadfast among Catholics and adopted alternately and increasingly over time by Protestants) of insisting that polygamists ‘put away’ their extra wives (as ‘concubines’, see Copley, ‘The debate’, 140) before baptism converged on the ground with state slavery liberations is deserving of further research.

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

²⁹ Sohier, , ‘Evolution’, 207.Google Scholar

³⁰ Hunt, ‘“Le bébé”’.

³¹ Conseil Colonial (1949), 1814.Google Scholar

³² Phillips, , ‘Marriage laws’, 192.Google Scholar For the law's text, see Piron, P. and Devos, J., Codes et lois du Congo Belge, 1 (Brussels and Léopoldville, 1960), 195–7.Google Scholar

³³ Phillips, , ‘Marriage laws’, 244.Google Scholar

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’.

³⁵ Sohier, , ‘Evolution’, 185, 197.Google Scholar

³⁶ Sohier, A., ‘Notes sur l'évolution du mariage des Congolais’, Institut Royal Colonial Belge, Bulletin des Séances, XXI (1950), 857.Google Scholar

³⁷ Phillips, , ‘Marriage laws’, 192.Google Scholar

³⁸ Mair, L. P., ‘African marriage and social changes’, in Phillips, (ed.), Survey, 112.Google Scholar

³⁹ Vanuytven, C., ‘Le mariage chrétien et la coutume indigène’, Troisième Conférence Plenière des Ordinaires des Missions du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (Léopoldville, 1945), 83–110Google Scholar; and Haezaert, G., ‘Le mariage chrétien et la polygamie’, 115–30.Google Scholar How Catholic missionaries spoke up mattered. A special issue of Aequatoria, a Catholic, ‘Africanist’ journal, on polygamy was suppressed by the Church in 1945 due to an article by vicar apostolic Van Goethem that was interpreted as an apology for polygamy; see Vinck, H., ‘Le Centre Aequatoria de Bamanya: 50 ans de recherches africanistes’, Zaïre—Afrique, XXVII (1987), 87–8.Google Scholar On Goethem, E. Van as an ‘indigenist’, see his bibliography by Hulstaert, G. in Biographie Coloniale Belge, VII C (Brussels, 1989), 183–93.Google Scholar See also: Wing, J. Van, ‘La polygamie au Congo Belge’, Africa, XXVII (1947), 93–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charles, V., ‘La nouvelle législation sur la polygamic au Congo Belge’, Revue du clergé africain, v (1950), 271–8Google Scholar; Esser, J., ‘Un fléau africain: la polygamie’, Zaïre, III (1949), 239–55Google Scholar; and dʾHossche, P., ‘La dénatalité au Congo’, Revue de l'AUCAM, XXIII (1948), 33–41.Google Scholar Van Wing, a Jesuit missionary, was on the Conseil Colonial when the law was discussed and approved; his testimony was not uninfluential.

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

⁴² On évolué ambivalence, see Anstey, R., ‘Belgian rule in the Congo and the aspirations of the “Evolué” class’, in Gann, L. H. and Duignan, P. (eds.), Colonialism in Africa 1870–1961, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1970), 194–225.Google Scholar On La Voix, see also Otshudiema, Eloko a Ngongo, ‘Les structures inconscientes de La Voix du Congolais (1959)’, Cahiers du CEDAF, nos. 2–3 (1975), 1–81Google Scholar; and Kadima-Nzuji, M., La littérature zaïroise de langue française (1945–1965) (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴³ Merlier, M., Le Congo, de la colonisation belge à I'indépendance (Paris, 1962), 196.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For example: Ledent, H., ‘Monogamie, polygamie et natalité chez les Nkundo’, Recueil de travaux de sciencesmédicales au Congo Belge, IV (1945), 37–44Google Scholar; Ledent, H., ‘Régime matrimonial et indice démographique des sexes chez les Nkundo’, Recueil de travaux de sciences médicales au Congo Belge, v (1946), 252–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Esser, J., ‘Un fléau africain: la polygamie’, Zaïre, III (1949), 239–55.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Bolamba, A. R., ‘Prostitution et polygamie’, La Voix, III (1947), 826–7Google Scholar; Mandona, G., ‘La dénatalité irrémédiable’, La Voix, III (1947), 723–4Google Scholar; Mandono, D., ‘Quelques commentaires sur l'article “La polygamie et ses méfaits sociaux” de Monsieur E. Gandu’, La Voix, IV (1948), 30–3Google Scholar; Mujinga, ‘Les méfaits de polygamie’; Ngandu, E., ‘La polygamie était-elle la règle des mariages africains’, La Voix, IV (1948), 417–20Google Scholar; Ngandu, E., ‘La polygamie et ses méfaits sociaux’, La Voix, III (1947), 808–14Google Scholar; Sumuwe, J., ‘Crise de marriage, concubinage perpetuel’, La Voix, VI (1950), 282–5Google Scholar; Wassa, F., ‘Liberté de la femme noire et prostitution’, La Voix, IV (1948), 71–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ngandu, , ‘La polygamie et ses méfaits sociaux’, 809.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 93.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Merlier, , Le Congo, 84.Google Scholar See also, Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 96Google Scholar; and Jewsiewicki, B., ‘Rural society and the Belgian colonial economy’, in Birmingham, D. and Martin, P. (eds.), History of Central Africa, vol. 2 (London and New York, 1983), 123.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Conseil Colonial (1950), 532–3.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Jewsiewicki, B., ‘Zaïre enters the world system: its colonial incorporation as the Belgian Congo, 1885–1960’, in Gran, G. (ed.), Zaïre: the Political Economy of Under-development (New York, 1979), 44.Google Scholar On the idealization of such rural zones as ‘countryside’, see Mbilinyi, M., ‘“City” and “Countryside” in colonial Tanganyika’, Economic and Political Weekly, XXII (1985), 88–96.Google Scholar

⁵² Manono, , ‘Quelques commentaires’, 31.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid. 32.

⁵⁴ Van Wing, , ‘La polygamie’, 96.Google Scholar

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

⁶³ Ngandu, , ‘La polygamie était-elle la règle des mariages Africains?’, 291.Google Scholar

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

⁶⁶ Mujinga, , ‘Les méfaits’, 271.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Manono, , ‘Quelques commentaires’, 30.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See Bianga, G., ‘La politique démographique au Congo Belge’, Population, XXXIII (1978), 189–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Van Wing, , ‘La polygamic’, 98.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Mujinga, , ‘Indemnités’, 153.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Conseil Colonial (1950), 540.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Sumuwe, J., ‘Crise de mariage, concubinage perpétuel’, La Voix, VI (1950), 282Google Scholar; Ngandu, , ‘La polygamic était-elle la règle des manages Africains?’, 289–91.Google Scholar

⁷² Ngandu, , ‘La polygamie était-elle la règle des mariages Africains?’, 291.Google Scholar

⁷³ Mutombo, , ‘L'évoluant’, 31. See also Nimi, ‘La polygamie’, 417Google Scholar; Mujinga, , ‘Les méfaits’, 272.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Filip, A., ‘Pour la monogamie’, La Voix, III (1947), 908.Google Scholar

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

⁷⁸ Similarly, a married Belgian woman's rights, in the metropole and the colony, were subject to her husband's consent. See Debroux, C., ‘La situation juridique de la femme européenne au Congo Belge de 1945 à 1950’, Enquêtes et documents dʾhistoire africaine, VII (1987), 14–23, esp. 16.Google Scholar

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

⁸² Verhaegen, B., ‘Le centre extra-coutumier de Stanleyville (1940–1945)’, Cahiers du CEDAF, VIII (1981), 55–7, 62.Google Scholar

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