IN 1929, the French colonial administration's forced recruitment
of labor for
two road construction projects designed to create more effective transportation
links between the town of Lambaréné on the Middle Ogooué
and
the colonial post at Mouila on the Upper Ngounié led to food shortages
in
several parts of southern Gabon. A disturbing pattern had developed over
the previous 15 years where colonial demands for labor led to disruptions
in
the seasonal cycle of agricultural production. Able-bodied men forced to
gather forest products or work as porters to pay the head tax, or required
to
participate in the construction of colonial infrastructure projects, or
even
willingly employed as laborers in the growing timber industry, could not
meet their traditional obligations to clear fields for women farmers during
the long dry season (generally June to September), thus leading to poor
harvests and food shortages. French officials at the end of the 1920s were
especially anxious as the Fang populations in the northern portion of the
colony had experienced severe famine several years earlier, partly due
to male
workers being recruited into the timber industry. Memories of famine
occurring between 1916 and 1918 were also quite vivid among the peoples
living along the Ngounié. Labor recruitment for the timber industry
and
colonial infrastructure projects remained a precarious enterprise at the
outset
of the 1930s. Yet by the 1940s, the most difficult segment of the
Lambaréné–Mouila road network – a 50 kilometer
stretch through hilly,
forested terrain south of Lambaréné – was completed
without resorting to
forced labor and without the threat of food shortages. The intervening
decade had witnessed the final stage of the transformation of Gabonese
labor
wrought by the French colonial presence, a transformation that broke the
pre-colonial system of labor exploitation controlled by clan leaders. At
the
outbreak of World War II, the process had advanced to the point that there
now existed a ‘labor market’ in the French Equatorial Africa
federation
integrated into the capitalist wage-earning sector and capable of accomplishing
infrastructure projects without disastrous consequences for the local
population. We argue that the predominance of the timber industry in
Gabon placed these developments on a strangely ambiguous path when
compared to the growth of capitalist wage-labor in other parts of the
continent.