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Defunct labour reserve?: Mambwe villages in the post-migration economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Johan Pottier
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Extract

During the first few months of 1978, at the height of the rainy season, mourning lamentations hardly ever ceased at the mortuary of Mbala General Hospital. Infants and children were dying. Inadequate food intake, malabsorption of nutrients and malarial infection were the main causes of death.

Those who survived the ‘hunger months’ of 1978 lived in overcrowded quarters and were fed a diet consisting mainly of diluted maize meal (‘mealie meal’) porridge. They suffered from poor dietary variation and an unprecedented shortage of basic foodstuffs. The small and isolated township of Mbala could not provide for itself; it relied on maize flour imports from the Copper belt and from Lusaka. The arrival of a truckload of flour–the road to Kasama had not yet been tarred– was sufficient to bring the town community to its feet and cause long queues of despairing people.

Résumé

Réserve de main d'oeuvre révolue? Villages Mambwe dans l'économie postérieure aux migrations.

L'article explore certains des effets à long-terme du travail réamunéré dans une réserve de main-d'oeuvre industrielle de la Zambie du Nord. La réserve Mambwe, un exemple classique d'intégration soit-disant harmonieuse dans le systéme monétaire, est réexaminée à la base de données anthropologiques recueillies récemment sur le terrain. Le mode actuel des migrations Mambwe semble indiquer une tranformation totale du système de la réserve.

Etant donné d'une part la stabilité residentielle accrue dans les centres urbains et d'autre part la réduction des possibilités d'emploi dans la période ayant suivi l'indépendance, la réserve éloignée pourrait en théorie courir le risque d'être vouée à un isolement socio-économique grandissant.

Forcée, pendant la crise économique nationale de la fin des années soixante-dix, de trouver d'autres moyens de participer à l'économie monétaire, la réserve de main-d'oeuvre Mambwe s'est transformée peu à peu en un réseau ‘volontaire’ de redistribution d'articles de première nécessité et de denrées alimentaires locales. L'article se termine par l'examen du coût qu'a exigé cette transformation, compte tenu de la nécessité pour la région d'assurer en premier lieu sa sécurité alimentaire.

Bien que les données présentées reconnaissent l'existence d'un ralentissement de la migration circulaire, il n'existe pas d'indices laissant supposer l'effondrement des liens socio-économiques entre la campagne et la ville. Au contraire, le danger de l'inertie rurale a été écarté par une combinaison de facteurs tels que l'introduction de cultures industrielles, l'apparition à la périphérie de Mbala, chef-lieu du district, d'une zône résidentielle spontanée (‘squatter-settlement') et la perspective d'une contrebande lucrative avec la Tanzanie.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 2 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1983

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