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Cattle Circulation, Beef Market Control Strategies, and African Agropastoralists in Southern Mozambique, 1900s–30s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

Bárbara Direito Open the ORCID record for Bárbara Direito [Opens in a new window]
Bárbara Direito*
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NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
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Abstract

Focusing on the first decades of the twentieth century but acknowledging longer-term patterns of circulation, this paper discusses how cattle, historically occupying important meanings and roles in the lives of African agropastoralists, was commodified and marketed in southern Mozambique just as Lourenço Marques became the new capital of Mozambique. Highlighting the relations that consolidated between the capital and surrounding cattle-rich areas in a period marked by cattle disease but also the First World War and the Great Depression, the paper looks at the role of different agents and bodies involved in the emerging beef market. Ultimately, the paper shows how African agropastoralists, the main cattle producers in the region, resisted these conditions and tried to engage with markets on their own terms, even in the face of their dwindling control over the different factors that influenced the size and quality of their herds.

Keywords

Southern AfricaMozambiqueanimal husbandrymarketstradecolonial policy
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , First View , pp. 1 - 16
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press.

While the modern history of cattle in Mozambique has not yet garnered the same scholarly attention as that of South Africa, Kenya, or Zimbabwe, important studies have shown how, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the lives and activities of African agropastoralists in cattle-rich southern Mozambique were affected by warfare, cattle raids, disease, drought, and increased human and animal circulation, alongside the penetration of capitalism and Portuguese colonialism.Footnote 1 A significant gap remains when it comes to developments occurring since the move of the capital of Mozambique from the Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island), located in the north of the territory, to Lourenço Marques (today’s Maputo), in the south, at the turn of the twentieth century. As food supply was becoming a more general concern, the supply of meat to the new capital specifically raised questions that had deep implications for the debates surrounding the economic future of southern Mozambique. But it also had significant implications for the nature of relations between colonial authorities and agents like cattle traders, butchers, and European farmers, on the one hand, and African agropastoralists — the main cattle producers — on the other, who mostly fell under the category of indígenas (natives) and had limited rights.Footnote 2

This article proposes to shed more light on the social and economic life of southern Mozambique in the first decades of twentieth century, on the relations that developed between the capital and the cattle-rich areas surrounding it and between Mozambique and other territories, as well as on official interventions in the cattle sector between the 1900s and the 1930s.Footnote 3 It argues that issues surrounding the marketing of African cattle — when, where, and how it would be sold, to who and at what price, and for what purpose — became central questions for the colonial state and points of contention between agents with different interests. Two protagonists emerge from this particular history: African agropastoralists, who other agents tried to influence and control in varying ways, and who by resisting these new conditions tried to retain a degree of autonomy over their cattle and their lives; and cattle traders, a group that was the subject of much vitriol precisely because of the impact it had on cattle marketing chains, and on cattle and beef prices, and because of the ways it eluded official control. These developments will be examined in the context of the broader political economy of southern Mozambique in the first decades of the twentieth century, especially marked by the imposition of labor and tax policies, which were significant sources of revenue for the colonial state, and by the appropriation of land in certain regions.

After characterizing longer- and shorter-term patterns of cattle circulation both within Mozambique and between Mozambique and its neighbors, the article will discuss how in the mid-1910s, when Lourenço Marques was facing the effects of a shortage of foodstuffs partly caused by the First World War, municipal and central government officers put in place steps to ensure the provisioning of cattle to the capital and to fix retail beef prices. Then, how after the war, faced with a perceived problem of cattle “surplus,” the case was made for measures to increase African cattle off-take rates in order to raise cattle prices, in the process increasing the value of non-African owned cattle. Finally, it will examine how after the Great Depression the colonial government went further in its intervention in cattle markets and the supply of cattle to the capital by granting an exclusive contract to a cattle producers’ cooperative.Footnote 4

To reconstruct these events, this paper draws on the existing official sources emanating from the colonial veterinary services, created in 1908, and from other relevant services. It also draws on official documentation from the circunscrições, relevant debates in the Conselho do Governo — an advisory body to the colonial government, African and settler newspapers, the memoirs of an administrator, and the limited statistics available for the 1900s–30s period, as well as on missionary sources.Footnote 5 Furthermore, the article builds on the historiography of Mozambique and on the vast scholarship about cattle in Africa, dealing for instance with the persistence of African cattle economies under colonial rule; with African livestock regimes and African attitudes towards cattle; and with settler livestock economies and cattle marketing strategies in Southern Africa.Footnote 6

Patterns of cattle circulation in Mozambique

Important historical and archaeological studies have shown that the southern region of what is today Mozambique, located below the Save River, was historically populated by large herds of cattle, which despite irregular rainfall and often prolonged droughts, played important social, economic, and symbolic roles in the lives of its peoples.Footnote 7 Observing local society at a time when events like the Nguni invasions and the subsequent rise of the Gaza state, followed by the Portuguese military campaigns and the mineral revolution in South Africa, had already begun to transform it in different ways, Henri-Alexandre Junod’s famous ethnography and contemporary reports by colonial officials noted the centrality of cattle in local life and the different ways in which it circulated in historically cattle-rich areas, especially in the Incomati River basin.Footnote 8 Cattle were spread unevenly and circulated in different ways in Tsonga society, in ordinary and in extraordinary circumstances, solidifying the bonds within and between clans. Vital in subsistence strategies, cattle were loaned in times of drought or famine, and to avoid cattle diseases they were distributed between different kraals.Footnote 9 Cattle were also used as gifts or in exchanges with foreign traders and ambassadors.Footnote 10 Raiding of cattle was another form of circulation, meant to subtract local sources of wealth and exert control over subject populations, as the history of the Gaza state and of Gungunhana’s strategy of accumulation of local herds demonstrates. But raids were also carried out by the Portuguese troops against African farmers during the military campaigns of the late nineteenth century.Footnote 11 Lobolo (bridewealth), a central institution in the region, was also typically paid in cattle, but this tradition adjusted to the varying circumstances, as cattle became less available in certain periods for instance due to cattle confiscation, animal disease, or drought.Footnote 12 Importantly, by the early 1910s the increasing presence of European settlers in the Incomati basin was starting to create a competition for the local grasslands and the rich nyaka soils favored by local agropastoralists.Footnote 13 In this context of competition for land and the growing migration of men to the Rand mines, Swiss missionaries stationed at Antioka, in Magude, knowing of the importance of cattle in local societies, created an agricultural scheme to help stabilize Christianized populations, where farmers could till a tract of land without fearing eviction, and borrow cattle and ploughs.Footnote 14

The African rinderpest panzootic, which not only killed an estimated 90 percent of cattle between 1888 and 1897, but also wildlife, further undermining the livelihoods of many, had considerable environmental, political, and social impacts in Southern Africa.Footnote 15 In southern Mozambique — a region which the Portuguese were still trying to incorporate through military operations when the disease hit in 1897, and which had a fledgeling colonial government — administrative, missionary, and military sources from different regions described the quick and widespread death of cattle.Footnote 16 Like Natal, after the devastation caused by rinderpest, Mozambique looked to Zanzibar and especially Madagascar, who were not affected by the panzootic, to replenish its herds. But slowly the Transvaal would partially replace them and become a key supplier of slaughter and breeding cattle to Mozambique, particularly in the south. Indeed, as Lourenço Marques grew in administrative, political, and economic importance, South Africa became Mozambique’s preferential commercial partner, shifting away attention from old networks centered on the Mozambique Channel.Footnote 17 Important commercial agreements with the colonies that in 1910 would form the Union of South Africa, mostly regarding labor migration but also regulating the trade of different commodities, solidified this alliance.Footnote 18 Trade patterns could however be reversed, albeit temporarily: during and shortly after the 1899–1902 South African War, Mozambique instead exported cheap cattle to the Transvaal.Footnote 19 Meat byproducts continued to arrive at the Lourenço Marques port from different regions in this period, and statistics also indicate short-lived imports of live cattle from Angola.Footnote 20

Internal trade flows between areas around Lourenço Marques (then known as Delagoa Bay), and areas in the interior like Tembe had also intensified since the late eighteenth century to provision whaling ships in the port.Footnote 21 Though the dimension and the political implications of this flow of foodstuffs and cattle are disputed, a recent study posits that cattle trade in the region intensified in the second decade of the nineteenth century.Footnote 22 By the early twentieth century, the change in political center from Mozambique Island to Lourenço Marques also intensified preexisting commercial relations between urban and surrounding historically cattle-rich rural areas like Magude, Sabié, and Manhiça in the Incomati River basin.Footnote 23 The dozens of shopkeepers of European and Asian origin that had scattered in those regions and opened small cantinas (shops), especially after the fall of the Gaza state, and had established connections with commercial houses in Lourenço Marques, ensured those relations.Footnote 24 Sources show that cattle transactions, mostly involving Africans but also a small number of non-African cattle owners, took place in informal markets that frequently involved itinerant cattle traders as middlemen. In some cases, traders would approach African owners directly in their homesteads, while in others the latter would come to the cantinas to try to sell their cattle in exchange for gold, like they often did to sell maize in exchange for wine and cloth.Footnote 25 The men who acted as cattle traders could be Portuguese or Indian cantineiros, but European cattle owners sometimes also traded cattle.

Importantly, sources show Africans used, and both sold and purchased cattle from and to non-Africans in different circumstances: after returning from stints in South African mines, some men were able to invest their salaries in cattle, both to pay lobolo, or simply to replenish the herds depleted by war, diseases, and drought. Some also invested in ox-ploughs.Footnote 26 In the Antioka scheme, some farmers had the opportunity to borrow both cattle and ploughs from Swiss missionaries.Footnote 27 In the 1940s, documentary and oral sources indicate that women in the Limpopo valley not only handled cattle and ploughs, activities that were traditionally reserved for men, but also purchased both cattle and ploughs with their revenues from cotton farming.Footnote 28 Cattle was typically sold in more vulnerable circumstances: during or after droughts, to pay taxes or to purchase maize in times of poor yields and famine.Footnote 29

An additional factor contributing to the flow of African cattle to the slaughterhouse was cattle disease. East Coast Fever (“ECF”), a protozoonosis of cattle transmitted by the brown ear tick, caused the death of thousands of cattle in Southern and East Africa in the first decades of the twentieth century.Footnote 30 Faced with multiple outbreaks in different circunscrições in the south, the veterinary services of Mozambique, established in 1908,Footnote 31 put in place harsh sanitary police measures to complement the relatively ineffective quarantines and the bans on cattle sales and movement in certain areas: between 1908 and 1917, Portuguese authorities reportedly culled 25,000 head of cattle during the stamping out process that followed in the vast areas considered contaminated.Footnote 32 African cattle owners, which were disproportionally targeted by the stamping out, protested the unequal treatment of African and non-African owners and the violence of these measures, and complained about the little compensation they received. The role of traders in this process, who managed to buy cattle in infected areas for very low prices or by deceiving African owners, was also much criticized.Footnote 33 In Marracuene, some owners were advised to go to the slaughterhouse in the capital to ensure they received proper compensation, instead of selling their cattle to traders, while others, suspicious of official policies, preferred killing their cattle rather than having it culled by authorities.Footnote 34

Dealing with the carestia de vida in times of war

Because of the drought that had recently hit the Sul do Save, in the early 1910s Lourenço Marques was reportedly facing a carestia de vida (shortage of food). The start of the war in Europe worsened these circumstances, namely by disrupting trade and raising foodstuff prices. But according to João Albasini, a prominent figure of the Black and mestiço urban elite who frequently criticized the government but also traders, the shortage of cattle had different origins: it was a result of the unfair stamping out policy to deal with ECF. Traders had taken advantage of African owners, tricking them into selling their cattle for low prices, and veterinary authorities were unwilling to effectively protect owners from exploitative traders. Understandably, Albasini continued, African owners were now refusing to sell their cattle for less than six or seven gold pounds. “We are thus paying today for past errors,” he lamented.Footnote 35

If Albasini’s interpretation of the facts was correct, by refusing to sell their cattle African owners were thus resisting both the practices of traders and the colonial state’s stamping out measures.Footnote 36 In September 1914, and following the example of Lisbon, Porto, and Luanda, the Câmara Municipal (Mayor’s Office) of Lourenço Marques decided to intervene in the cattle market: cattle purchased directly in the circunscrições surrounding Lourenço Marques with the help of local officials would be brought to the slaughterhouse and then a municipal “regulatory” butcher would sell beef at fixed retail prices. The câmara was admittedly trying to reduce the role of traders in the commodity chain and especially their ability to influence retail prices.Footnote 37 Traders quickly protested the measure, arguing they were being unjustly targeted, accusing the câmara of trying to become a competitor, and even threatening to close their businesses, but the câmara maintained its position.Footnote 38 The African press, in turn, lauded the opening of the municipal butcher in the name of the fight against “unbridled and greedy exploitation.”Footnote 39 It furthermore pointed a finger at a specific firm, the Companhia das Carnes Verdes (Pinho, Santos e Ca.), the main cattle trader and owner of butchers operating in the capital, who it accused of speculative practices.Footnote 40

Though the stamping out measures continued, despite the protest of African owners and local colonial officials, the veterinary services put in place policies to restock the Sul do Save. Through the zootechnical station in Umbeluzi and zootechnical posts in strategic regions, officials hoped especially African farmers, the main cattle owners, would come to improve their cattle through crossbreeding their Landim cows with sires from imported breeds. The services also promoted cattle trade through the creation of monthly cattle fairs in Magude and Moamba (Sabié), where cattle sales between owners and traders would be supervised by authorities.Footnote 41 Magude, the circunscrição with the highest cattle population in the south, had recently been connected by railway to Moamba, in turn connected to the Lourenço Marques line. And even though the main goal of the Magude station was to transport sugar from the plantations of the neighboring property owned by Incomati Estates, officials hoped it would also bring live cattle to the capital. The first fair, scheduled to take place on 19 September 1915, was not the success authorities had hoped, even though a few head were sold.Footnote 42

In the coming years, fairs eventually disappeared, only to return in the 1930s, as will be discussed below. The câmara continued to purchase cattle directly through local officials in different circunscrições, and both the câmara and the veterinary services also organized cattle auctions, announced in newspapers, to supply the municipal butcher but also military units.Footnote 43 The Sul do Save was now participating in the war economy, much like neighboring territories had done.Footnote 44 Furthermore, perhaps because of the carestia, in 1917 the câmara decided that hunting licenses would also include the possibility of selling bushmeat at fixed prices in the capital’s butchers.Footnote 45

When it comes to cattle and the provisioning of beef, then, by the late 1910s, Lourenço Marques was beginning to have a “cheap and predictable system of food supply,” as Jane Guyer has discussed for other African cities, mostly due to the direct intervention of the câmara in the market and its “regulatory butcher.”Footnote 46 Over the years, the câmara responded both to the carestia and the demand for beef coming from the growing capital, but also to the demand for beef from military units, participating in the war economy, by procuring cattle in the circunscrições and in the Transvaal. The government was also supporting this effort through the action of its veterinary services, in turn assisted by local officials in the circunscrições, who purchased the necessary cattle in the interior.Footnote 47

During this period, however, the African press continued to report that African owners had been forced to sell their cattle for silver coin (and not gold coin), that they had been forced to sell against their will and that they were still being exploited by traders, a sign that authorities had not been able to control the activities of these intermediaries.Footnote 48 By September 1917, official cattle provisioning measures seemed to have become ineffective or insufficient. According to João Albasini, who was sensitive to the predicament of both African owners in the interior and city dwellers who wanted to consume meat at reasonable prices, the shortage of beef in the capital “reeked of speculation.” Even though the Sul do Save had large herds, the population’s demand for beef could not be met. Albasini suggested different explanations for this shortage: the “firm” [Companhia das Carnes Verdes] had cattle but was reluctant to sell it for low prices; African producers had good yields that year and therefore did not feel the need to sell cattle to pay their taxes or to purchase maize; the pound was lower; and Africans only sold for gold coins. Meanwhile, the câmara had been purchasing cattle in the Transvaal for high prices and supplying much of it to the military units, losing money in the process and limiting the availability of beef for the civilian population. This situation could not continue for long, Albasini claimed, fearing an increase in retail prices.Footnote 49

The “surplus” problem and the debate on an exclusive cattle contract

With the end of the First World War, the contracts that had ensured the supply of cattle to military units, to which both the municipal butcher and regular butchers responded, also came to a halt. By then, cattle owners, African and European, were also unencumbered by ECF quarantines, and the regional cattle herd was increasing at a rate of 12 percent annually.Footnote 50 Incomplete statistics from 1918 indicate that the herd of the province of Lourenço Marques numbered around 50,000 head, most of which was owned by Africans.Footnote 51

As more cattle became available, producer prices plunged, giving a renewed urgency to the old debate regarding the future of livestock in southern Mozambique.Footnote 52 Much like elsewhere in Southern Africa, different actors had different views on this problem and varying responses to it, but two questions became central: African cattle and regional competition. Because most of the cattle was in African hands, many of the parties involved believed the future of the livestock economy of the South depended on the policy towards African cattle. Protectionist measures were also advanced to stop competition from South Africa.Footnote 53 In a letter sent to the governor of Mozambique in March 1919, a group of European farmers from the region criticized the quality of both the indigenous cattle breed, the Landim, and of the cattle imported from the Transvaal. They argued that neither could form the basis of the chilled or frozen beef industry they hoped the government would help them build.Footnote 54 According to another view, the region needed to follow the example of South Africa — where the government had avoided monopolies and white farmers had joined forces to create a central agency gathering several producer cooperatives — by forming different cooperatives to advance the interests of milk, hides, and beef producers.Footnote 55 In October 1923, during the negotiations for the new convention with South Africa, the recently formed Associação do Fomento Agrícola de Moçambique (Mozambique Farmer’s Association) pleaded with the governor to protect southern Mozambique’s livestock sector from the cheap cattle and dairy coming from the Transvaal.Footnote 56 The associação was echoing the fears already expressed a few months earlier by a group of more than fifty African farmers from Magude, who had asked the government to suspend cattle trade with South Africa so that they could sell their own cattle and pay their taxes.Footnote 57 Their request was denied because officers believed the region was always going to have a cattle surplus problem, regardless of the cattle coming from the Transvaal.Footnote 58

The cattle question was again raised during the minister of colonies’ visit to Mozambique in July 1929, at a time when the Sul do Save already had 343,948 cattle, with Africans owning nearly 79 percent.Footnote 59 The Associação do Fomento argued that the fact that owners were unable to export cattle to neighboring colonies or profitably sell them in the internal market because the government had not heard their concerns was turning cattle into an “inert fortune.” According to the associação, Portugal needed to help Mozambique by ensuring regular imports of live cattle: it was the only way the cattle sector would be able to turn the page on the crisis it had been facing for years.Footnote 60 In turn, a veterinary officer stationed in Inhambane claimed the government had to enforce the rule included in the labor regulation regarding the daily supply of beef to African worker’s rations. Investing in canned meat, he argued, was a solution that would allow the placement of half of Mozambique’s herd. After a few years, and once the profit allowed the improvement of animals, Mozambique could then consider exporting live animals.Footnote 61

Unsatisfied with their situation and perhaps inspired by the recent creation of the Meat Producers’ Exchange in South Africa, in 1926 a group of cattle traders and owners lobbied the veterinary services for the creation of a beef marketing board. They envisioned the board specifically helping them survive during the rainy season, when little cattle was available for purchase and when prices were driven up by the competition of local officials purchasing cattle.Footnote 62 But according to the veterinary services — which denied this request — the government did not have the means to procure cattle to satisfy the current demand because Africans were unwilling to sell. Instead, the services proposed to grant an exclusive contract of the supply of the Lourenço Marques slaughterhouse to a firm that would be responsible for procuring cattle, though they conceded that this strategy could hinder African owners, who would be forced to sell at a fixed price.Footnote 63

The idea of an exclusive contract continued to mature, reaching the Conselho do Governo in July 1928 in a proposal to create a meat board tabled by the representative of the Associação do Fomento, José Cardoso.Footnote 64 Though inspired by the 1926 plan, the proposal followed the lines suggested by the veterinary services, in that it would fix the price of purchase to the owner, and the emphasis was placed on the “protection” of cattle owners’ and consumers’ interests, rather than on the situation of traders and their “large profits.” In a context of lowering cattle prices and stabilizing retail prices of beef, one of the members of the conselho explained, the profits of traders had increased by 20 to 90 percent. Since the Sul do Save lacked the necessary infrastructure, owners were unable to export cattle and were therefore left at the mercy of traders, with little margin for negotiation.

Present at the meeting of the conselho, the director of veterinary services, João Botelho, agreed with the proposal at least in principle, arguing that it sufficiently protected owners from the “greed” of the traders. The project was also positive for the department itself because it included a tax; a portion of which would help set up a fund to build dipping tanks, essential in the fight against diseases transmitted by ticks. Botelho, however, feared that the price would be fixed at a value that would not appropriately compensate those who wanted to improve their herds. Ultimately, the proposal failed to convince other members of the conselho, who opposed exclusive contracts and favored laissez-faire, or considered the proposed price of cattle too low.Footnote 65

A new proposal concerning the supply of cattle would, however, return to the same conselho a few years later, in a significantly different environment. By 1934, the Great Depression had led to a slump in cattle prices. African owners in southern Mozambique had been forced to sell even more cattle than usual in exchange for maize or textiles. Some, however, preferred culling or eating animals rather than selling them to traders for extremely low prices. Many European owners, unable to maintain their herds, abandoned their farms, while others turned to milk production.Footnote 66 As a result, by the early 1930s, African farmers owned nearly 85 percent of the cattle in the region below the Save River.Footnote 67

And while the Grémio Africano was busy promoting the use of the ox-drawn plough among its members, welcoming the news that forty of them had already signed up as an indication that “the awaited native agriculture was finally starting,” Amadeu Neves — a European cattle owner, member of the Associação do Fomento, and former member of the Conselho do Governo — expressed concern about a decline of the cattle sector. He warned about the actions of traders, who he viewed as unduly profiting from the situation of both European and African owners, and stated that he was in the process of creating a cattle cooperative. Inspired by a recently created milk cooperative, it would both eliminate intermediaries and organize cattle exports to Europe.Footnote 68 In 1933, the Cooperativa dos Criadores de Gado de Lourenço Marques (the cattle producers’ cooperative) was created. Even though indígenas could not become members of the cooperativa, one of its aims was to “protect the interests of native producers, by placing their cattle in the same conditions as that of its members, supplying them with vaccines” and “lending them breeding cattle.”Footnote 69

The exclusive contract in practice

When the question of cattle supply returned to the Conselho do Governo in 1934, the proposal included awarding the new cooperative an exclusive contract. Supporters of the plan argued that the discrepancy between demand and supply of cattle was such that prices were too low, to the point that owners were not compensated for their costs, and both European and African owners were being deceived by the dealers’ tactics. Moreover, now that Europeans had come together in the cattle producers’ cooperative — which by then represented over 300 owners — to defend their interests, it was time to think about African owners: “the native needs to be defended by the government,” stated the proposal, insisting on the presence of officials in cattle transactions. The new cooperative would distribute both European and African cattle, purchased from owners at prices set by the governador geral, under the advice of a cattle owner and a butcher. Retail beef prices, in turn, would be fixed by the subsistence commission, created during the war to regulate food prices.Footnote 70 With this proposal, then, the official rhetoric now seemed to be centred around the “protection” of African owners, in spite of the fact that they had neither been consulted on the best way to defend their own interests nor were they allowed to become members of the cooperative.

The proposal was approved relatively quickly, even though not all members of the conselho agreed with it.Footnote 71 The new regulation granted the exclusive of the supply of cattle to the slaughterhouse of Lourenço Marques to the cooperative for a period of two years. The cooperative was tasked with purchasing at least 60 percent of the cattle to be supplied from African owners, who would be paid immediately, in transactions done under the watchful eye of local colonial officials, namely in fairs. Importantly, the price to be paid for the cattle would have to be agreed between the owner, the buyer, and the official, based on arrobamento — a process in which the weight of the animal was visually estimated.Footnote 72 All other forms of cattle trade between indígenas and non-indígenas were prohibited.Footnote 73

Despite the rhetoric of protection, the regulation was a clear sign that a significant number of European cattle owners, farmers, and butchers had successfully lobbied the government and bodies where Africans were not represented to attempt to control African cattle. These moves aimed to secure the value of the Europeans’ own cattle and the profitability of their businesses, mirroring interventions in other sectors of the economy. But as with other economic interventions, namely in the cotton sector, Africans resisted in different ways.Footnote 74

When it came to cattle marketing, judging from the heated discussions that ensued in the press, it became clear that different actors in Mozambican society had very strong and opposing views about the regulation, the increased power of the state in the cattle sector, and the role of the cooperative. Many of those who opposed the law viewed it as an unjustified monopoly while those in favor of market regulation through the cooperative framed the contract’s exclusivity as benign. The debate started in the pages of Notícias, the main settler newspaper, then continued in the Democracia, also aimed at settler audiences, and in O Brado Africano, the successor of O Africano, primarily aimed at Black and mestiço audiences.Footnote 75

The most vocal opponents of the regulation shared their views in the short-lived Democracia, despite the pressure the newspaper reportedly suffered not to criticize it. In a series of opinion pieces published in April and May 1934, an unidentified author criticized the government for promoting a monopoly and described how cattle fairs had not been successful thus far and had even been suspended in Magude.Footnote 76 A direct account of the fairs held in Magude in 1934 can be found in the memoirs of the local administrator of the circunscrição between 1929 and 1936. Before 1934, according to Theodorico Botte, owners in Magude only sold cattle reluctantly, when they needed money in times of hunger or to pay taxes. During the first fair of 1934, many Africans turned up, but could not agree with the prices suggested by the cooperative’s buyer, who favored the interests of his employer. During the second fair, Botte, with the discreet assistance of a mestiço arrobador, insisted on fair prices, and several head were sold. But after that, the cooperative simply stopped showing up. Botte, adamant on finding a more objective weighing system than the arrobamento, subsequently suspended the fairs until a scale could be obtained.Footnote 77

Manuel Gonçalves Caruço, a self-described “old settler” living in Magude and an experienced cattle trader, also openly criticized the regulation in several pieces published in Democracia, where he accused O Brado Africano and other newspapers of being loyal to the cooperative. The argument that followed between Caruço and the editors of O Brado illustrates agrarian relations in the cattle-rich circunscrições of southern Mozambique and the tensions surrounding the terms of the 1934 contract.

According to Caruço, he had frequently exchanged cattle for maize with African owners, but only in periods of food scarcity when maize prices increased. He also explained how prices were negotiated and how it was customary to pay a bonus to African owners, locally known as a bacela.Footnote 78 As a trader, he had purchased smaller-sized cattle from African owners, while the cooperative was only interested in larger cattle.Footnote 79 Before the Depression, he argued, when Africans wanted to sell cattle to pay their taxes, they were often advised by local officials to wait or to find a job instead. But in the early 1930s, due to locusts, unemployment in the south, and reduced demand for labor migrants in the Transvaal, many Africans had little alternative but to sell their cattle, with some living almost exclusively on this income.Footnote 80

Expelled from the cooperative as a result of what he maintained was a smear campaign, Caruço detailed how the cooperative began by only sending cattle to the slaughterhouse purchased from its preferred sellers while simultaneously informing African owners that they could no longer sell in cantinas.Footnote 81 Only the major capitalists were making profits, he argued, while everyone else in the commodity chain was losing: Africans were selling few head; the state was losing money because it sold few purchase licenses and failed to collect taxes; railways were losing because they were carrying less cattle; cantineiros were losing money because there was less purchasing power; and consumers were paying more for beef.Footnote 82

In the pages of O Brado Africano opinions were markedly different. According to “F.A.”, the “old way of doing business,” in which a bag of maize is traded for a head, “is dead.” African owners were selling cattle for the best price and then spending the money they earned in the shops. Even though all parties involved had benefited from the recent regulation, some people still continued to be sceptical about its merits, fearing the exploitation of African owners. But at least in Magude, F.A. argued, the local official would not allow that to happen.Footnote 83 In a reply to Caruço, José de Albasini, João de Albasini’s brother, corroborated the view that the regulation was having positive effects in rural areas. Citing a few cases, namely that of chief Ngubana, who had sold his cattle in a cattle fair for the price indicated by the arrobador — which in any case was much higher than what he would have been paid before the regulation — Albasini concluded “the wealth of Magude has increased.”Footnote 84

Less than two years later, in early 1936, the veterinary services contacted the administrators of the circunscrições to evaluate the situation and collect suggestions on ways to improve the work of the cooperative, as the initial term of the exclusive contract was coming to an end. In a telling response, the administrator of Manhiça argued that both African owners and the state had benefitted from the regulation. The former had been selling their cattle even when they did not need to pay their taxes, while being protected from the “greed” of traders. As a result, the state’s ability to collect taxes had improved. But there were also shortcomings: in his view, the arrobamento had to be replaced by a fairer weighing system using scales. He had in fact advised owners not to sell their cattle in situations where he feared the price proposed by the cooperative’s buyers was too low. Furthermore, he admitted there was little competition in the fairs, and he suspected licensed buyers could be forming cartels.Footnote 85

This view seemed to be in line with Botte’s descriptions of the fairs he supervised in Magude in 1934. But also, with the testimonies gathered by O Brado Africano’s editors and correspondents in the circunscrições in 1936. Fairs were taking place in distant locations and many owners had to walk dozens of kilometres only to come back empty handed, in the process weakening their herds. Ultimately, though prices were higher, fewer head were being sold, and African owners were “desperate,” longing for the time when traders came knocking on their doors to buy cattle. As such, sales between African owners and between African owners and traders, continued clandestinely.Footnote 86

In 1936, in line with other agricultural policies put in place in regard to maize and cotton, colonial authorities renewed the exclusive contract through a new regulation. While this contract continued the use of the arrobamento system and fairs, it respectively conceded the need for the gradual implementation of scales and created the Meat Trade Board — a body where African owners were once again not represented — tasked with advising the veterinary department in fixing quotas of cattle for sale in each circunscrição.Footnote 87 Over the years, the quotas for each circunscrição and for African and European cattle varied according to different criteria, with European owners lobbying for higher quotas when it was in their interest to sell more cattle, while African owners turned to clandestine markets.Footnote 88 The latter continued to resist selling when the prices fixed were too low, and on certain occasions had to be coerced into selling their cattle. In the late 1940s, colonial officials, much like in previous decades, continued to fear that the unreliability of the arrobamento system would cause African owners to opt out. If cattle prices were too high, however, officials felt Africans would have an incentive to sell their cattle, depleting the Sul do Save’s herd. Even with regular fairs, quotas, and coercion, controlling African cattle in southern Mozambique was not a foregone conclusion.Footnote 89

Conclusion

Further investigation, relying on additional written or oral sources, is necessary to complement the findings of this paper and especially to understand the changing circumstances of African agropastoralists and their cattle; a context which was complicated by the expansion of cash crop production in the Incomati basin, European settlement, land expropriation, and late colonial development policies. But, all in all, the experiences of African agropastoralists, the principle cattle owners in the region, as well as the evolution of cattle marketing policies, share many similarities with other territories in Southern and East Africa in this period. This warrants broader consideration of the case of Mozambique in the historiography of cattle in Africa.

Much as has been shown to be the case in other areas of Southern and East Africa, this paper demonstrated that the “external factors which promote or inhibit exchange and marketing” which Carole Kerven identified in her long-term study about market integration of pastoralists in Africa, were also present in different ways in southern Mozambique: drought, livestock disease, government taxes, government interventions, infrastructure, land policies, and demand and prices.Footnote 90 Focusing especially on “government interventions” like the municipal butcher and the exclusive contract granted to the cooperative in the context of cycles of expansion and contraction of markets partly caused by elements like demographic growth, the First World War, and the Great Depression, this paper also shows how the colonial state tried to capture African cattle to ensure beef supply to the capital, but also to serve the interests of European cattle owners and to guarantee African farmers paid their taxes. As authorized private agents were given a greater role in rural areas, replacing local administrative and veterinary officials and traders in the marketing chain, the state retained a supervisory role in fairs and continued to fix prices. But even as the relations between Lourenço Marques and its cattle-rich periphery were being transformed to ensure a predictable supply of cattle, African owners found ways of engaging with markets on their own terms, selling cattle in fairs when they needed to, refusing to sell when the circumstances were unfavorable, protesting the effect of cheap South African cattle in the market or traders’ tactics, or — in a sign of the ambiguous relation they had with the latter — selling clandestinely to traders when necessary. This “tactical approach” to the cattle trade, to borrow Kerven’s expression, the conditions of which undoubtedly varied according to the position African owners had in the increasingly stratified colonial society of the south and in their own communities, illustrates rich social and economic dynamics shaping Mozambique in the first decades of the twentieth century.Footnote 91

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P./MCTES through a CEEC contract (CEECIND/01948/2017) as well as through national funds (PIDDAC) UIDB/00286/2020; UIDP/00286/2020. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References

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3 State intervention in the cattle sector in the 1930s and 1940s was briefly addressed in Penvenne, Jeanne M., African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994), Google Scholar and Hedges, David, ed., História de Moçambique, 1930–1961, 2nd ed. (Maputo: UEM-Livraria Universitária, 1999), .Google Scholar

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12 On the changing methods of payment of lobolo, see Junod, Life 1, 259–62; Zimba, Mulheres Invisíveis, 52–53. On drought in Mozambique since the late 1790s and its impact, see Newitt, A History, 253–56.

13 On the emerging land tensions in the region, see Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Maputo (AHM), Fundo dos Negócios Indígenas (FNI), cota 1274, maço reservas indígenas, processo 49 – Ano de 1912, Note from the chief of Magude to the Native Affairs division, 31 May 1912, and Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6. In the oral testimony Gengenbach collected in Magude in the 1990s, women described the different soils of Magude and their preferred agricultural practices. Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6.

14 Patrick Harries examined the history of the Swiss Mission in Mozambique in Work, Culture and especially in Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007). On the origins, goals, and workings of the Antioka scheme, see a report by its founder, Frank Paillard: Archives Cantonales Vaudoises Lausanne (ACV), DM - Echange et mission, PP 1002 C 0119 0130 boite 10, dossier 120, “Rapport présenté par M. F. Paillard sur l’opportunité d’une oeuvre sociale missionaire à Antioka,” [1914]. On the evolution of the scheme, see Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6. On similar missionary schemes in colonial Africa, see, for instance, Etherington, Norman, “African Economic Experiments in Colonial Natal 1845-1880,” African Economic History 5 (1978): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 Direcção Geral do Ultramar (DGU), Annuário Estatístico dos Domínios Ultramarinos Portugueses – 1899 e 1900 (Lisboa: Direcção Geral do Ultramar, 1905), 646–47, 675–76.

21 David Hedges, “Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteen and Nineteenth Centuries” (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1978); Newitt, A History, 159–60.

22 Chewins, “The Relationship.”

23 Sources show different commodities like maize, groundnut, sorghum, and cattle were regularly exported to the capital, but also that the circunscrições traded wine and salt and cattle among themselves. Ferrão, Circunscripções, 15, 72–73, 99–100; Governo Geral de Moçambique, Reconhecimento, 9.

24 According to Covane, by 1907 Gaza alone had over 2,000 shops that sold mainly wine to Mozambican laborers returning from the mines. Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 64. On the trajectories of Asian merchants — originating from different parts of the Indian subcontinent and with different religions — in Mozambique and their presence in the Sul do Save, see Joana P. Leite, “Indo-britanniques et Indo-portugais: La Présence Marchande Dans le Sud du Mozambique au Moment de l’Implantation du Système Colonial Portugais (de la Fin du XIXe Siècle aux Années 1930),” Outre-mers 88 (2001): 330-331, 13-37.

25 Ferrão, Circumscripções, 72–78.

26 Ferrão, Circumscripções, 100–102; “C.”, “Charruas,” O Brado Africano, 14 Feb. 1931; Brock, “From Kingdom,” 202; Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 35–36; Liesegang, “Notes,” 198. Southern Mozambique suffered with droughts in 1908, 1912, 1918, and 1922; floods in 1913, 1915, 1917, 1925, 1937, and 1939; and a hurricane in 1931. Penvenne, African Workers; AHM, FGG, 1916-1948, cota 146, Capilhas “Calamidades” 1925 to 1948. Many of these crises were followed by famines, denounced in the African press. Swiss missionaries stationed in Rikatla and Antioka frequently documented the droughts, floods, and famines they witnessed in their accounts. See, for example, “Chronique mensuelle,” Bulletin de la Mission Romande 34, no.442 (Feb. 1923): 31, on the 1922 famine.

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30 R. A. I. Norval, Brian D. Perry, and A. S. Young, The Epidemiology of Theileriosis in Africa (London: Academic Press, 1992). Though the few statistics detailing the functioning of the Lourenço Marques slaughterhouse do not allow for a systematic analysis of the cattle sent there in the context of ECF measures, in Nov. 1913 a total of 249 head arrived from Magude, Sabié, Maputo, Marracuene, Namaacha, and Guijá. “Mapa dos animais importados nesta província durante o mês de novembro de 1913” and “Mapa dos bovídeos indígenas entrados no matadouro municipal desta cidade, durante o mês de novembro de 1913,” Boletim Agrícola e Pecuário 10 (Jan. 1914): 21–22. In 1914, Sabié sent 408 head to the slaughterhouse, while Marracuene exported 430 head to Lourenço Marques and 193 head to other circunscrições for restocking purposes. AHM, Fundo do Governo Geral [FGG], 1915-1925 cota 87, capilha sem identificação, Circular 146 aos governos dos distritos e administradores das circunscrições sobre produtos da província, 12 Mar. 1915.

31 Mozambique, often relying on the services of military officers during the last years of the nineteenth century, had a limited administrative structure until the 1910s, when several departments and offices were established, and even then, it was often under-resourced and short-staffed. Formed in 1908 amidst the ECF crisis and following pressure from neighboring territories for Mozambique to deal with cattle disease, the veterinary services aimed to fight current and future epizootics and stimulate cattle restocking. Portaria provincial no. 113, 5 Mar. 1908, in Boletim Oficial de Moçambique [BOM] 11 (14 Mar. 1908).

32 Paul Conacher, “Da Criação de Gado na Província,” Boletim da Repartição de Agricultura 1 (1910): 75–78; Joāo Botelho, “Estado Sanitário Atual no Distrito de Lourenço Marques (30 de maio de 1913)” Boletim da Repartição de Agricultura 5 (1913): 37. For a detailed discussion of the measures put in place to control ECF in southern Mozambique and their social impacts, see Direito, Bárbara, “Livestock and Veterinary Health in Southern Mozambique in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Case of the Fight Against East Coast Fever,” História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 28, no. 4 (2021)Google ScholarPubMed, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702021000400003.

33 Joāo Albasini, “O gado do distrito,” O Africano, 7 Apr. 1909, 2: Albasini, “O génio da destruição,” O Africano, 6 Dec. 1913, 1. On cattle traders and speculators in Natal, see MacKinnon, “The Persistence,” 116–26.

34 AHM, FNI, cota 1267, maço Processo n.º 62 – Sobre a venda do gado pertencente aos indígenas – 1909, Nota 4 from the Marracuene administration to the Negócios Indígenas services, 15 Jan. 1909.

35 Albasini, “Calmaria Podre,” O Africano, 16 Sep. 1914. Though not all cattle traders were cantineiros, sources show how African populations in the South had an ambiguous relationship with the latter. On the one hand, cantineiros bought their maize for what they felt were very low prices and sold it for high prices. On the other hand, farmers often benefitted from store credit in the cantinas in periods of famine and natural calamities. Ferrão, Circumscripções, 72–76, 100; Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 231, 259.

36 Veterinary policies to deal with cattle disease in this period, mainly aimed at defending settler livestock interests, led to different forms of protest and resistance from African owners in Southern Africa. On the political consequences of stamping out measures against African cattle in the region ruled by the British South Africa Company in the 1890s, see Sunseri, “The African Rinderpest.” On the more overt and covert forms of resistance of African populations to cattle dipping in regions of the Union and colonial Zimbabwe, see Bundy, Colin, “We Don’t Want Your Rain, We Won’t Dip: Popular Opposition, Collaboration and Social Control in the Anti-Dipping Movement, 1908-1916,” in Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa, eds. Beinart, William and Bundy, Colin (London: James Currey, 1987), Google Scholar.

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38 “Questão das carnes,” O Africano, 30 Sep. 1914; “Questão das carnes,” O Africano, 3 Oct. 1914.

39 Created by the Black and mestiço elites of Lourenço Marques, O Africano (1908–20) and O Brado Africano (1918–74) were high circulation newspapers published in Portuguese but also in Ronga, one of the main languages spoken in the South, and were mostly aimed at the non-white educated population. Until censorship was put in place in the 1930s, these newspapers were frequently critical of colonial policies, including veterinary policies. Zamparoni, Valdemir, “A Imprensa Negra em Moçambique: A Trajetória de ‘O Africano’, 1908-1920,” África 11 (1988): 73–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the trajectory of João Albasini, one of O Africano’s founders, see Penvenne, Jeanne, “João dos Santos Albasini (1876-1922): The Contradictions of Politics and Identity in Colonial Mozambique,” The Journal of African History 37, no. 3 (1996): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Somar, “Alimentação pública – História d’uma Companhia,” O Africano, 3 Oct. 1914.

41 Portaria provincial no. 777, BOM 5, 31 Jul. 1915.

42 “Feira de Magude – Um passeio agradável,” O Africano, 22 Sep. 1915.

43 In one announcement, the veterinary services were looking to purchase 2580 head of cattle. “Anuncio,” O Africano, 7 Apr. 1917. In the same year the câmara needed 200 or 300 head per month, or 50–60 per week, specifically for the municipal butcher: “Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques – Edital,” O Africano, 6 Jun. 1917.

44 John Overton, “War and Economic Underdevelopment? State Exploitation and African Response in Kenya 1914-1918,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 2 (1989): 201–21. Karin Pallaver, “Organization of War Economies (Africa),” in Daniel et al., 1914-1918 Online. On the participation of Mozambique in the war and its consequences, namely the recruitment of thousands of men to serve in the North, see Newitt, A History, 415–21.

45 Coelho, “Maphisa,” 182. Bushmeat had been regularly supplied to the capital, often illegally, which led a group of meat traders to complain to the Hunting Commission. “Caça,” O Africano, 23 Apr. 1913. On the Hunting Commission, created in 1903 to draft a hunting regulation and to control hunting activities in the south and whose members were colonial officials and hunters, see Coelho, “Maphisa,” 15 and ch. 3.

46 Guyer, Jane, “Introduction,” in Feeding African Cities: Studies in Regional Social History, ed. Guyer, Jane (London: Routledge, 1987), 30–33.Google Scholar

47 This cooperation between municipalities and the government for the provisioning of foodstuffs was similar to the system in place in Portugal during the war. Pires, “Lisboa.”

48 “A vil calúnia,” O Africano, 16 Dec. 1914; “Gado,” O Africano, 24 Jan. 1917.

49 Joāo Albasini, “Dificuldades previstas,” O Africano, 1 Aug. 1917. Albasini’s claims were rebuked a few days later by Moura, who claimed that the Companhia had sold much less cattle than the municipal butcher and denied that traders had formed a cartel. A. Moura, “Carnes verdes,” O Africano, 8 Aug. 1917.

50 Cristiano Sheppard da Cruz, “Sobre os Serviços Veterinários da Colónia,” Boletim da Agência Geral das Colónias [BAGC] 50 (1929): 156–63; Albino Fernandes, “O Problema Pecuário da Colónia,” BAGC 50 (1929): 149–55; de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1929 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1929), 86–87.Google Scholar

51 Ribeiro, Sousa, Anuário de Moçambique – 1917–1918 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1918).Google Scholar

52 On the slump in cattle prices in postwar South Africa and its consequences, see Morrell, Robert, “Farmers, Randlords and the South African State: Confrontation in the Witwatersrand Beef Markets, c. 1920-1923,” The Journal of African History 27, no. 3 (1986): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 For similar debates on the possible responses to the post-war cattle price depression, namely cattle export markets and canning factories, see Phimister, “Meat,” 401–2.

54 AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 87, Letter from the cattle owners of the southern districts, 17 Mar. 1919. On the question of cattle quality and similar negative perceptions of local cattle breeds, see Wesley Mwatwara and Sandra Swart, “‘Better breeds?’ The Colonial State, Africans and the Cattle Quality Clause in Southern Rhodesia, c.1912–1930,” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 2 (2016): 333–50. On how the argument of overstocking was used from the 1910s to limit the size of herds inside native reserves in colonial Zimbabwe, see Mwatwara and Swart, ‘“Better Breeds?’”; and Shutt, “The Settlers’ Cattle Complex.”

55 “Cooperativismo industrial e agrícola,” O Africano, 20 Sep. 1919; “Comércio e indústrias – Cooperativas,” O Africano, 24 Sep. 1919.

56 AHM, FGG, 1915–1925 cota 103, maço 1915–1924, Note from the Associação do Fomento Agrícola da Província de Moçambique, 27 Oct. 1923,. On the complaints against the effects of cattle imports into colonial Zimbabwe and state regulations on this matter, see Wesley Mwatwara, “A History of State Veterinary Services and African Livestock Regimes in Colonial Zimbabwe, c.1896-1980” (PhD dissertation, Stellenbosch University, 2014), 137. Import restrictions on Swazi cattle were also introduced in South Africa in the 1920s to avoid lowering cattle prices. Randall Packard, “Maize, Cattle and Mosquitoes: The Political Economy of Malaria Epidemics in Colonial Swaziland,” The Journal of African History 25, no. 2 (1984): 199.

57 AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 88, Telegram from the Magude district administrator, 10 Mar. 1922. In a second telegram, dated 10 Jul. 1922, Magude cattle owners asked to sell their cattle because of the drought felt in the region.

58 For the negative reply of the veterinary division to the requests made by the Magude owners, see AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 88, Informação 427, 12 Jul. 1922.

59 de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1929 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1929), 86–87.Google Scholar

60 Associação do Fomento Agrícola de Moçambique, BAGC 54 (1929): 165–66.

61 Fernandes, “O problema,” 149–55. On similar debates about the industrialization of the cattle sector in neighboring territories, see Milton, “To Make the Crooked”; Phimister, “Meat”; and Sunseri, Thaddeus, “A Political Ecology of Beef in Colonial Tanzania and the Global Periphery, 1864–1961,” Journal of Historical Geography 39, no. 1 (2013): 29–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 On the meat producers’ exchange see Morrell, “Farmers,” and Phimister, “Meat.”

63 Conselho do Governo, Actas do Conselho do Governo, 13ª sessão, 21 Jun. 1928 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1928).

64 Composed of heads of administrative services and representatives of local chambers of commerce and agriculture, the Conselho, created in 1926, was a body with deliberative and consultative functions that assisted the governor general of Mozambique. Newitt, A History, 388–89.

65 Conselho do Governo, Actas, 21 June 1928.

66 Amadeu Neves, “As Possibilidades da Indústria Pecuária na Colónia,” Boletim da Sociedade de Estudos de Moçambique 5 (1932): 116. On the similar situation of African farmers in neighboring territories in South Africa, see MacKinnon, “The Persistence.” Packard argues that during the Great Depression the Swazis were also forced to deal with traders on a barter basis, exchanging cattle for maize at a rate of one head per bag (when in the past they had sold one head for more bags). Packard, “Maize,” 199.

67 de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1934 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1935), .Google Scholar

68 C., “Charruas”; Neves, “As Possibilidades,” 115. The milk cooperative’s statutes were approved by portaria 1247 of 17 Jan. 1931: BOM 3, 17 Jan. 1931.

69 The Meat Cooperative’s statutes were approved by portaria 2044 of 29 Jul. 1933: BOM 30, 29 Jul. 1933.

70 Conselho do Governo, Actas do Conselho do Governo, 1ª sessão ordinária, 18 Jan. 1934 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1934).

71 José Nunes de Oliveira, interim governor of Mozambique in the late 1930s, was one of the members who opposed the proposal.

72 The arroba is a unit of weight still used today in Portugal and Brazil. One arroba is equal to 15 kg.

73 Diploma 404, BOM 7, 14 Feb. 1914; Portaria 2197, BOM 9, 28 Feb. 1934.

74 For a discussion of different forms of resistance to forced labour and forced cash crop production in Mozambique, see Bridget O’Laughlin, “Proletarianisation, Agency and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 511–30. A seminal work focused on northern Mozambique prominently identified different forms of resistance to forced cotton production among African peasants: Allen Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938–61 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996).

75 The Notícias was founded in Apr. 1926 by a lawyer, farmer, industrialist, and merchant. The Democracia, a “republican weekly” created in 1933, was closed in 1935, as the freedom of the press was progressively curtailed in Mozambique. O Brado Africano continued along the lines launched by O Africano as a newspaper primarily directed at urban Black and mestiço populations. Ilídio Rocha, A Imprensa de Moçambique: História e Catálogo, 1854-1975 (Lisboa: Livros do Brasil, 2000).

76 “O monopólio das carnes,” Democracia, 27 Apr. 1934, 11 May 1934, and 25 May 1934.

77 Botte, Memórias 2, 7–9.

78 Basela is Shangaan for small gift given by traders after a sale. Gengenbach, Binding Memories, glossary.

79 Manuel G. Caruço, “O monopólio das carnes – tem a palavra um comerciante de gado,” Democracia, 1 Jun. 1934.

80 Ibid., 6 Jun. 1934 and 15 Jun. 1934. For an account of the 1930 locust outbreak in Magude, see Botte, Memórias, II, 21.

81 ‘Cooperativa de Criadores de Gado de Lourenço Marques’, O Brado Africano, 28 Jun. 1934. According to the cooperative, contrary to Caruço, the regulation was already having positive effects in the region and in the cattle sector: because of Africans’ greater purchasing power, trade in general had improved, and owners were investing in the betterment of their cattle and in the improvement of infrastructure.

82 Manuel G. Caruço, “O monopólio das carnes – o Sr. Caruço fala de novo à ‘Democracia,’” Democracia, 13 Jul. 1934 and 20 Jul. 1934.

83 “F. A.”, “Feiras de gado,” O Brado Africano, 19 May 1934.

84 Joāo Albasini, “O monopólio de carnes,” O Brado Africano, 14 Jul. 1934.

85 AHM, Fundo da Administração do Concelho de Manhiça, cota 305, maço 36, Nota 148/33 of the administrator of Manhiça to the provincial director of civil administration of the Sul do Save, 26 Feb. 1936.

86 “X.”, “O Monopólio das Carnes e os Interesses dos Criadores Indígenas,” O Brado Africano, 22 Feb. 1936. On the pervasiveness of clandestine cattle trade, see Actas do Conselho de Governo, 15ª sessão, 30 Jul. 1936 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1936) and Estácio Dias, “O Gado dos Indígenas nas Feiras,” O Brado Africano, 29 Feb. 1936. On clandestine sales in wartime Kenya, see Overton, “War,” 217.

87 Diploma 520, BOM 32, 12 Aug. 1936. The members of the board were: the director of veterinary services, the director of native affairs services, the chief veterinary officer of the Lourenço Marques district, representatives of cattle producers’ cooperatives and traders’ cooperatives, and a delegate of the trade association. On the creation of the Meat Control Board and the quota policy put in place in South Africa in the 1930s, see Milton, “To Make the Crooked,” 111–12.

88 Penvenne, African Workers, 133.

89 Hedges, História, 108; AHM, FGG, 1926-1948, cota 296, maço L/7 -1926-1948 – Gado reprodutor Ofício 1707/D/13, Correspondence to the governo geral, 28 Ap. 1947,

90 Kerven, Customary, 7–11.

91 On the “tactical approach” of African pastoralists in the ways they engage with cattle markets, see Kerven, Customary, 3. See also Waller, “Pastoral Production,” 14.