African Workers & Colonial Racism

"This history of the African working class in Lourenço Marques (Mozambique) proceeds from the assumption that Mozambican labour history was not fundamentally about skills, wages or productivity - it was about racism, human dignity and contested masculinity. Ch. 1 explains the chronological framework (1877-1962) of the study and introduces key elements of the broader context within which Mozambicans developed their life strategies. Ch. 2 considers the creation of a white man's town in Lourenço Marques. Ch. 3 explores labour relations in the city on the threshold of the implementation of the 'indigenato', the legal system that defined separate and subordinate citizen status for 'people of the Negro race or descendant therefrom'. Ch. 4 explains the imposition of the various components of the 'indigenato', and ch. 5 is a case study of that process in the strategic port and railway complex. Ch. 6 and 7 consider continuity and change in labour policy and practice during the New State era after 1926. Finally, ch. 8 through 10 develop case studies in the port complex, the municipality, and domestic service to explore individual and group strategies in the context of changing economic and political conditions."