1 Beyond Paternalism: Pluralising Copperbelt Histories

In contrast, this chapter looks at both the limitations and problems in assuming that mining paternalism was necessarily all encompassing or fundamental to the functioning of Copperbelt communities. Highlighting the diversity of people’s responses to paternalism, this chapter explores not only how Copperbelt residents acted within mining’s paternalistic framework, but also how they challenged and/or opposed it and how they reacted to its demise in the 1990s. Crucially, paternalism did not affect all Copperbelt residents equally. What can we learn about Copperbelt social dynamics by examining the experience of charcoal burners, market vendors and seamstresses, alongside mineworkers? Based on 100 oral history interviews conducted in Likasi (DR Congo) and Mufulira (Zambia), this chapter focuses on the daily lives of diverse urbanites on both sides of the border. In doing so, it challenges assumptions about the relationship between mining and Copperbelt communities. The persistent image of the Copperbelt as a node of urban ‘modernity’ has tended to marginalise scholarship on for example female farmers or radio programmes recounting rural marital traditions. Yet this diversity, it is argued, was an integral element of Copperbelt communities. This chapter thus pluralises and challenges notions of what being a ‘copper society’ entailed.6 Timothy J. LeCain, The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

This chapter also makes several contributions to existing literature. First, it jointly examines the Zambian and the Congolese Copperbelt, which the historiography has predominantly treated as separate entities.7 Enid Guene, Copper, Borders and Nation-Building: The Katangese Factor in Zambian Political and Economic History (Leiden: African Studies Collection, 2017). Second, it provides a history of everyday experiences among a broad segment of Copperbelt communities. Third, it uses oral history as a lens to write a social history not dominated by the institutional views of governments, mining companies or trade unions.8 Patience Mususa, ‘Mining, Welfare and Urbanisation: The Wavering Urban Character of Zambia’s Copperbelt’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30, 4 (2012), pp. 571–87; Iva Peša, ‘From Life Histories to Social History: Narrating Social Change through Multiple Biographies’ in Klaas van Walraven (ed.), The Individual in African History: The Importance of Biography in African Historical Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 89–113. Taken together, these approaches challenge assumptions about the role of mining and paternalism in Copperbelt social history by exploring leisure activities and social relationships beyond the workplace.9 Dibwe dia Mwembu, Bana Shaba. After a brief historiographical background, which situates the case studies of Mufulira and Likasi and explains the methodology, the chapter is organised in thematic sections on mining and work ethic; leisure and culture; non-mining occupations; and gender on the Copperbelt.

Correspondingly in then Northern Rhodesia, Mufulira town, the ‘place of abundance’, was established in 1937 following the discovery of copper deposits in 1923. Mufulira mine has consistently been one of the largest copper producers in the Zambian industry.5 Miles Larmer, Mineworkers in Zambia: Labour and Political Change in Post-Colonial Africa (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006). The town’s 1967 development report attributed ‘its origins, expansion and viability to the copper mine’.6 National Archives of Zambia, Mufulira Review of Development Plan, 1967, p. 3. The report noted that 50% of those employed in Mufulira worked for the mine or ancillary services, or depended on commerce with the mining population.7 Ibid., p. 16. Mufulira relied on mining not only for economic activities, but also for its administrative, social and cultural life, as mine taxes funded local government services and the mines sponsored sports teams. The town struggled after the 1970 disaster, a massive tailings inrush that caused temporary mine closure and 89 deaths. Mufulira only recovered from the protracted economic crisis with the development of deep-level mining in the 1980s, which boosted production.8 See: Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines archives (hereafter ZCCM-IH), 15.3.7D, ‘The Mufulira Mine Disaster’, 1970; ZCCM-IH, 18.7.4C, ‘An Interim Report of Mining at Depth, Mufulira’, 1987. The choice of Likasi and Mufulira, both secondary towns built around the mining industry, provides a cross-border perspective on Copperbelt social dynamics. This chapter considers the Copperbelt as ‘a single region, officially divided by a colonial/postcolonial border, across which flowed minerals and peoples’, creating striking differences and commonalities.9 Larmer, ‘At the Crossroads’; Rubbers, ‘Mining Towns, Enclaves and Spaces’.

Copperbelt historiography has hitherto focused on mineral production, mineworkers and politics. The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (RLI) in Northern Rhodesia and the Centre d’Études des Problèmes Sociaux Indigènes (CEPSI) in the Belgian Congo set the scene with studies of urban social life, kinship and political organisation.10 Lyn Schumaker, Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Benjamin Rubbers and Marc Poncelet, ‘Sociologie coloniale au Congo Belge: Les études sur le Katanga industriel et urbain à la veille de l’Indépendance’, Genèses 2, 99 (2015), pp. 93–112. These institutes aimed to identify and help solve the ‘issues’ arising from the ‘modernisation’ of Copperbelt urban communities. Authors such as J. Clyde Mitchell and Ferdinand Grévisse in the 1950s assumed a clear rural-urban dichotomy, asserting that ‘towns and cities everywhere stand out as distinct social phenomena.’11 J. Clyde Mitchell, ‘Theoretical Orientations in African Urban Studies’ in Michael Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 37; Ferdinand Grévisse, Le centre extra-coutumier d’Élisabethville: Quelques aspects de la politique indigène du Haut-Katanga industriel (Brussels: CEPSI, 1951). Although these researchers did pay attention to the socio-cultural life of mineworkers and their families, notably in Hortense Powdermaker’s Copper Town, they rarely focused on non-mineworkers.12 Hortense Powdermaker, Copper Town: Changing Africa – The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). In the 1970s and 1980s John Higginson, Bruce Fetter, Charles Perrings, Jane Parpart and George Chauncey produced detailed Copperbelt studies.13 John Higginson, A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907–1951 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Bruce Fetter, Colonial Rule and Regional Imbalance in Central Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa: Industrial Strategies and the Evolution of an African Proletariat in the Copperbelt, 1911–41 (New York: Africana Publishing, 1979); Jane L. Parpart, Labor and Capital on the African Copperbelt (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983); George Chauncey Jr., ‘The Locus of Reproduction: Women’s Labour in the Zambian Copperbelt’, 1927–1953’, Journal of Southern African Studies 7, 2 (1981), pp. 135–64. In this same period, the University of Lubumbashi became a source of knowledge production on Katanga’s colonial and contemporary social fabric. Researchers such as Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Johannes Fabian and Augustin Mwabila Malela studied the socio-economic and political dynamics, and leisure practices of mining communities.14 Augustin Mwabila Malela, Travail et travailleurs au Zaïre: Essai sur la conscience ouvrière du proletariat urbain de Lubumbashi (Kinshasa: Presses universitaires du Zaïre, 1979); Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Collective Memory and Its Image: Popular Urban Painting in Zaire – A Source of “Present Past”’, History and Anthropology 2, 2 (1986), pp. 389–400; Johannes Fabian, History from Below: The ‘Vocabulary of Elisabethville’ by André Yav. Text, Translations, and Interpretive Essay (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1990). To them, the study of the Copperbelt highlighted that industrial communities across the world were subject to comparable structures and faced similar challenges. Although scholars paid some attention to women or manual labourers, they still centred their analysis on mineworkers, framing Copperbelt communities as part of the global dynamics of class struggle.15 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Anthropologie marxiste et recherche empirique’, Cahiers d’études africaines 26, 101/102 (1986), pp. 265–9. The 1990s saw a new wave of scholarship by Ferguson and Dibwe dia Mwembu, who studied social change on the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt in a context of decline.16 Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity; Dibwe dia Mwembu, Bana Shaba. Such works clearly showed awareness of non-mineworkers and broader social dynamics. Recent studies by Rubbers, Mususa and Miles Larmer have further highlighted the precariousness of mining and the resilience of Copperbelt communities.17 Rubbers, Paternalisme en question; Mususa, ‘Mining, Welfare and Urbanisation’; Miles Larmer, ‘Permanent Precarity: Capital and Labour in the Central African Copperbelt’, Labor History 58, 2 (2017), pp. 170–84. This chapter contributes to this reframing of the historical study of the Copperbelt, by pursuing a bottom-up approach to the social history of these dynamic communities. It foregrounds the experiences of those urbanites that did not directly depend on mining. Always a numerically significant group, their role became all the more important in the wake of the mining industry’s economic decline from the mid-1970s onward.

By drawing on oral history with a more diverse range of Copperbelt residents than previous research, we challenge the established historiographical focus on mining companies and political and economic change on the Copperbelt. Oral sources can provide a more diverse picture of Copperbelt historical trajectories, especially as mining and government archives are so rarely concerned with individuals not employed by the mines. Oral sources ‘help us to understand relationships between structure and agency, revealing how individual lives, social processes, institutions, and contexts affect one another’.18 Lisa A. Lindsay, ‘Biography in African History’, History in Africa 44 (2017), p. 23. However, previous oral history research in the region has tended to reinforce the emphasis on mineworkers and to a lesser extent their wives. We therefore include more varied and contrasting individual stories, while asking how these ‘fit into, challenge or alter dominant theories of social change.’19 Peša, ‘From Life Histories to Social History’, p. 89. This chapter argues that mineworkers should not be understood as a separate group, different from the rest of Copperbelt urban society, as the experiences of both mineworkers and non-mineworkers were influenced but not determined by mining. All our informants were long-term residents of the Copperbelt, having lived there since at least the 1970s. (We interviewed 50 people in Likasi and 50 in Mufulira; 30 people had an in-depth follow-up interview.) To reflect population diversity in Likasi and Mufulira, we sought a range of informants in terms of occupation (mineworkers, council employees, farmers, traders, teachers, artists and ‘housewives’), gender (we interviewed 34 women and 66 men) and residential area (mine townships, city council areas and informal settlements). An open-ended questionnaire served as a guideline to these interviews, covering topics such as education and upbringing, work life and marriage, as well as leisure activities and religion. Most of these interviews took place in people’s residential homes, though some preferred to be interviewed in their workplace.20 Interviews were conducted between May and August 2018. Special thanks go to Pierrot Monzi Kalonga in Likasi and Grant Chisapa in Mufulira. They proved indispensable in contacting interviewees, facilitation and translation of interviews. The next sections draw extensively on this interview material.

The promotion of a work ethic among mining communities started in schools, as personnel managers from the mines would visit schoolchildren to recruit potential workers.4 Higginson, A Working Class in the Making. By various means, including apprenticeships, mine companies sought to direct the modes of thought and behaviour of their prospective and existing workforce. Senior ZCCM employee Patson Katwisi therefore remembers the mines as ‘very disciplined’.5 Interview, Patson Katwisi, Mufulira, 1 August 2018. Not only in the workplace, but also at home, employees and their families were subject to the control of the mining company.6 Marcelo J. Borges and Susana B. Torres (eds), Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations across Time and Continents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Gécamines officials, for instance, represented the town of Likasi as an embodiment of modernity, an aesthetic which was proudly internalised by certain workers. Jacques Magenda, a Gécamines chemist, asserted: ‘We had a good house in those days, it was ‘modernised’ … Likasi was called Congo’s prettiest town.’7 Interview, Jacques Magenda, Likasi, 7 June 2018. Yet these ideals of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘beauty’ were maintained through pervasive social control. Valérienne Ngoye, a welfare worker, recalls how until the 1970s, ‘inspectors would come to sensitise us about cleanliness. If we did not keep our house clean, we would be sanctioned. They would confiscate our ration tickets. … It was a good system.’8 Interview, Valérienne Ngoye Mudimbi, Likasi, 9 June 2018. Although some welcomed this control as contributing to order, Euphrasie Joa, married to a mineworker, grudgingly recounted that ‘agents would perform unannounced visits to check if the houses were clean’.9 Interview, Euphrasie Joa, Likasi, 14 June 2018. This attempt to police public space also becomes evident in the account of Jérôme Kipili, who was councillor (chef de cité) of a Gécamines neighbourhood in Likasi in the 1970s: ‘Gécamines was very rigorous … I had to know every family personally, to help bereaved families, to take charge of the relatives of Gécamines workers.’10 Interview, Jérôme Kipili Mulunga, Likasi, 4 June 2018. A further expression of Gécamines’ ubiquitous social control of Likasi was Trabesha, a peripheral neighbourhood where ‘deviant’ workers and their families were relegated. Councillor Jacques Kibombo explained that ‘if you behaved badly, they would move you to Trabesha, the neighbourhood of the unruly (la cité des indisciplinés)’.11 Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. Through such measures, Gécamines discouraged drunkenness, quarrelling, theft and violence and encouraged punctuality, cleanliness, discipline and order. Though seemingly hegemonic, interviews evidence that mining communities could evade and subvert these measures of social control, as the following examples will show.

In Mufulira, many mineworkers and their families fondly remember the welfare provisions that mining companies provided until the 1980s. Tamarizika Nguni, a mineworker’s wife, praised the mine as ‘a source of livelihood’, claiming that ‘when you were working for the mine, you would enjoy, as you would get free electricity, water and housing’.12 Interview, Tamarizika Nguni, Mufulira, 3 July 2018. Yet paternalistic policies were never universally accepted as beneficial. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, some members of mining communities critiqued social welfare provision for generating overdependence on the mines, referring to it as ‘spoon-feeding.’13 Interview, William Bwalya Chinda, Mufulira, 8 August 2018. Mine nurse Gertrude Dhaka explains:

Likasi’s residents similarly resented the city’s dependence on Gécamines’ paternalism. When comparing Likasi to Lubumbashi, ‘a big city with a lot of opportunities’, trade unionist Ilunga wa Kumanza lamented Likasi’s reliance on Gécamines which ‘did not make our lives any better’.17 Interview, Ilunga wa Kumanza, Likasi, 8 June 2018. Critiques also revolved around the inability to maintain the city’s beauty after Gécamines’ economic collapse. Kibombo regrets: ‘everything changed in 1990 … nobody cared for the roads or public lighting anymore … Likasi was built by Gécamines. When Gécamines experienced hardship, so did Likasi.’18 Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. Still, the ubiquity and numbing effects of mining paternalism, especially between the 1940s and the 1970s, undermined the extent of nostalgia for a belle époque. In the 1990s, when the disappearance of social welfare services left many members of mining communities feeling unprepared for a life outside of the mines, such criticism of Gécamines and ZCCM paternalism endured.

Existing scholarship has tended to reinforce the idea that an all-encompassing mining sub-culture, accompanied by benevolent paternalism, characterised the Copperbelt’s historical experience until the 1980s.19 Fetter, ‘L’Union Minière’. This section has nuanced such claims by demonstrating that, even if residents of Mufulira and Likasi welcomed the wealth, jobs and urban development industry had brought, they remained critical of the more negative effects of mining on social life. The memories of mining communities across the Copperbelt recorded here bring out striking similarities. On both sides of the border, Gécamines and ZCCM’s ‘cradle-to-grave’ policies evoked a mix of nostalgia and resentment. Whereas pervasive social control had perhaps brought certainty to everyday life, it left mining communities unable to fend for themselves once companies collapsed. The next section demonstrates that a vibrant social life took place outside of the orbit of mining companies.

In Mufulira the mines and the municipality organised a range of social clubs. These included sports (tennis, football, golf and draughts), theatre and cinema, as well as women’s clubs for tailoring, cooking and housekeeping. Teacher Fridah Mwale explained how these provided complementary forms of knowledge, necessary to cope with urban life: ‘At the club, we learnt how to sew and cook, at school we learnt how to write and read, and from the radio I learnt what was happening.’5 Interview, Fridah Mwale, Mufulira, 6 July 2018. Mufulira’s workers generally praised the mine’s social facilities as a form of ‘caring’ for employees. Samson Chama, councillor for Zambia’s ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the 1970s and 1980s, attested that ‘clubs were very popular; nearly everybody wanted to go there to pass time’.6 Interview, Samson Chama, Mufulira, 27 July 2018. Simon Bwalya, a ZCCM employee, explains how ‘Chawama Hall was a socialising place and it provided recreation for miners. After going home, we would go there and … discuss work. It kept miners busy and relaxed.’ Even non-mineworkers could attend, Bwalya describes: ‘we would offer a bottle of beer and share ideas’.7 Interview, Simon Bwalya, Mufulira, 1 August 2018. Although the mines utilised leisure activities as a form of social control, individuals commonly circumvented this. Mineworker Nathan Mwamba patronised an independent beer hall, rather than the mine beer hall.8 Interview, Nathan Mwamba, Mufulira, 6 July 2018. Not only were closing times more flexible there, but mineworkers could also enjoy a drink outside the purview of their fellow workmates and supervisors. Occupational and class boundaries prevented certain forms of socialisation. Mine captain Kathbert Nchema recalled: ‘I was never mixing carelessly. I chose whom to go about with, who to speak to, what sort of issues I could talk about.’ He added, ‘as we were getting higher in the ranks, we were advised [by management] not to drink with our subordinates’.9 Interview, Kathbert Nchema, Mufulira, 7 July 2018. Personnel manager Katwisi concurred: ‘the mines knew that somehow we would not mix. For example, you would not find a sweeper with a manager drinking in the same place.’10 Interview, Patson Katwisi, Mufulira, 3 July 2018.

Mining companies thus used recreation as a means of control, to discipline and segregate the workforce. Katwisi recognised that the mines had leisure activities

Apart from mine company leisure provisions, Likasi’s residents highlighted other social networks, independent from or only loosely connected to Gécamines. Faith and ethnicity-based associations were particularly important in making Haut-Katanga’s urban culture. The Catholic Church, a pillar of the Belgian colonial order, continued to play a central role in the everyday life of Katangese residents after independence.15 Reuben Loffman, Church, State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1890–1962 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Jacques Magenda alludes to the support the church provided him: ‘it stabilised me, it made me more responsible … the church adopts you, it supported me spiritually during the Gécamines crisis’.16 Interview, Jacques Magenda, Likasi, 7 June 2018. Catholicism helped councillor Kibombo integrate when he first moved to Likasi in the 1970s, providing social support: ‘I was a member of a liturgical group. The members advised me about the people and places I should avoid.’17 Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. Sculptor and painter Ferdinand Kakompe underlined the role the church played in his artistic training: ‘Everything I learned came from the church.’18 Interview, Ferdinand Kakompe, Likasi, 19 June 2018. Social activities, thus, did not merely centre on mine welfare provision. Independent leisure activities and alternative social networks were just as important in defining Copperbelt urbanism.

Art and media were, for instance, means through which the Copperbelt population discussed and redefined the boundaries between rural and urban spheres. Radio programmes such as ‘Kabusha’, a question and answer call-in show in Zambia aired between 1964 and 1990, proved extremely popular.19 ‘Kabusha Takolelwe Bowa’ (‘the one who asks questions never goes wrong’), presented by David Yumba; Debra Spitulnik, ‘The Language of the City: Town Bemba as Urban Hybridity’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8, 1 (1999), pp. 42–5. According to Bobby Kabamba, Kabusha was very educational because it ‘gave you wide experience of how to live and cope with different problems’, including workplace issues and those specific to urban life.20 Interview, Bobby Jackson Kabamba, Mufulira, 10 July 2018. Mineworker Henry Longwane explains how through ‘Kabusha we used to learn about customs, traditions and ways of life, about how people should be living’. Importantly, such cultural expressions were in no way determined by the mining company. Longwane continued:

Likewise, Likasi residents enjoyed adorning their walls with paintings of village scenes.22 Interview, Jacques Magenda, Likasi, 7 June 2018; Interview, Valérienne Ngoye, Likasi, 9 June 2018; Interview, Thérèse Kyola, Likasi, 7 June 2018; Jewsiewicki, ‘Collective Memory and its Images’. For Kibombo, such paintings were informative: ‘I enjoy looking at how our ancestors lived. I have always lived in town and I do not know much about village life.’23 Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. Far from the rural-urban dichotomy suggested in much Copperbelt research, connections to rural areas remained important even among ‘permanent urbanites’. Rather than being either ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘localist’, the Copperbelt urban population tapped into various social networks.24 Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity. In Mufulira, Tamarizika Nguni was member of a Nsenga social group, ‘so that if there was any problem, suffering or death then all the Nsenga people would come together and assist.’25 Interview, Tamarizika Nguni, Mufulira, 3 July 2018. Similar forms of identity-based solidarity (socio-cultural associations) prevailed in Likasi.26 Sandrine Vinckel, ‘La violence et le silence: Politiques de réconciliation, relations interpersonnelles et pratiques sociales de coexistence au Katanga, RDC’, PhD Thesis, Université Paris I, 2016, pp. 68–79. Solidarity networks complemented and provided alternatives to mine welfare provision. After the collapse of Gécamines, these associations played an increasing role in their members’ lives. Former councillor Kipili underlined how members of his association ‘facilitated the recruitment [to Gécamines] of the children of their … brothers.’27 Interview, Jérôme Kipili, Likasi, 4 June 2018. For councillor Kibombo these associations provided a safety net in times of hardship: ‘we help each other at funerals, in case of illness, or when somebody is looking for a job’.28 Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. Paradoxically, identity-based associations fed into ethnic conflicts between ‘Katangese’ and ‘Kasaïens’ in Haut-Katanga in the 1990s, causing hundreds of casualties in Likasi.29 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘L’épuration ethnique au Katanga et l’éthique du redressement des torts du passé’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 33, 2/3 (1999), pp. 483–99. More generally however, such associations provided the Copperbelt population with a social network independent from mining companies.

By paying attention to art, leisure and socialisation, it becomes evident that mining companies on the Copperbelt influenced the social lives of mining communities in multiple ways. In Likasi and Mufulira, mineworkers and their wives, children and friends attended mine-sponsored dancing, football matches and household classes. Yet these social facilities did not serve as simple instruments of control. Copperbelt communities appropriated the classes offered at welfare centres for their own purposes, to earn an income or to expand social networks. Moreover, numerous forms of leisure took place beyond the grasp of mining companies.30 See: Parpart, ‘“Where Is Your Mother?”’; Dibwe dia Mwembu, Bana Shaba. Identity-based associations or rural connections informed urbanism on the Copperbelt, just as much as beer halls and guitar music did.

The historiographical neglect of non-mining occupations has caused a skewed image of Copperbelt communities as wholly or largely focused on formal mine employment. A more balanced view of Copperbelt social life needs to consider other livelihood activities. It was not only those labelled ‘squatters’ who engaged in informal employment; even senior mine employees often had subsidiary businesses to earn extra income.4 B. A. Kasongo and A. G. Tipple, ‘An Analysis of Policy towards Squatters in Kitwe, Zambia’, Third World Planning Review 12, 2 (1990), pp. 147–65. Moreover, the importance of non-mining occupations changed over time. As opportunities for formal employment contracted in the 1980s and 1990s, informal economic activities became an even more central element of Copperbelt urbanism.

Agricultural production has always been a very common economic activity on the Copperbelt.5 Iva Peša, ‘Crops and Copper: Agriculture and Urbanism on the Central African Copperbelt, 1950–2000’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 69:3 (2020), pp. 527–45. Mineworker Dennis Tembo and his wife Iness Zulu in Mufulira explained: ‘We grew up as farmers. If you do not cultivate, what is it that you can eat?’6 Interview, Dennis Tembo and Iness Zulu, Mufulira, 6 July 2018. Beyond being a rural practice transmitted to the urban Copperbelt, agricultural production could stabilise and/or supplement urban wages. Victoria Mwewa grew crops to earn extra income, to cope with her husband’s erratic salary.7 Interview, Victoria Mwewa, Mufulira, 17 July 2018. In Likasi, Valérienne Ngoye’s family had a small field to complement the food ration provided by Gécamines: ‘we were well served, but we still needed fresh vegetables’.8 Interview, Valérienne Ngoye Mudimbi, Likasi, 9 June 2018. To some, Foster Kunda explains, farming symbolised the economic downturn since the 1990s: ‘Way back there was nothing like farming in town, we relied on jobs, but now here in town we are also farming.’9 Interview, Foster Chimfutumba Kunda, Mufulira, 20 July 2018. Yet in fact, agriculture on the Copperbelt long predated economic decline and was a distinct adaptation to urban life. To senior ZCCM employee Levi Chushi, farming was a ‘training ground’ for his children and wife who had grown up in town.10 Interview, Levi Aaron Chushi, Mufulira, 11 July 2018. Even if some wage earners had comfortable salaries, Elizabeth Malokotela explained: ‘When it comes to expenditure, you cannot be buying everything. So the garden reduces some expenses.’11 Interview, Elizabeth Malokotela, Mufulira, 2 August 2018. In Likasi in the 1970s, councillor Kipili’s wife cultivated crops and had a few chickens: ‘she did not do it out of necessity, but it provided something to eat and it allowed us to save some money’.12 Interview, Jérôme Kipili Mulunga, Likasi, 4 June 2018. These accounts make it clear that urban agriculture on the Copperbelt had many functions and was not merely an activity driven by economic necessity. Instead, farming stabilised urban residence and diversified income sources, among the wealthy and among the poor. There were, however, many other ways to earn additional income.

Respondents’ reasons to engage in piecework or trade were manifold. Trader Tamarizika Nguni explained: ‘I did not want to be admiring things from other people and I wanted my children to live and feed well.’13 Interview, Tamarizika Nguni, Mufulira, 3 July 2018. When he first arrived in Mufulira in the 1950s, Nathan Mwamba joined a club, which gave him access to piecework. He would line up in the morning to see which jobs were available and work until the contract was finished.14 Interview, Nathan Mwamba, Mufulira, 6 July 2018. After he finished school in 1969, Chrispin Chani worked for various private companies and in civil service. He explained that ‘the differences in salary scales made me move from one job to another’. The conditions of service in government attracted him: ‘There was no strict schedule, you could even come to work late.’15 Interview, Chrispin Chani, Mufulira, 16 July 2018. To improve food security, people engaged in all kinds of activities. While working for Gécamines in Likasi in the 1970s, Gaston Mutiti set up a small business, buying salt in a neighbouring village to resell it in town: ‘It went very well, but maintaining the truck cost a lot of money. You earn a bit of cash, but then you have to use everything to replace broken parts.’16 Interview, Gaston Mutiti, Likasi, 4 June 2018. Boston Mwenya, ZCCM employee, bought fishing nets to take to Luapula Province, repurposing rural ties to engage in urban business.17 Interview, Boston Mwenya, Mufulira, 10 July 2018. Many women sold clothes, shoes or foodstuffs in the market to supplement household incomes. In order to sustain her family in Likasi in the 1980s and 1990s, Pauline Kingombe sold doughnuts, opened a beer parlour and traded second-hand clothes from Tanzania.18 Interview, Pauline Kingombe, Likasi, 12 June 2018. Through sewing skills acquired in a Gécamines welfare centre, Euphrasie Joa boosted her household income: ‘when I could not make ends meet, my sewing activities would put some money on the table’.19 Interview, Euphrasie Joa, Likasi, 14 June 2018. William Chinda started trading from a young age, selling mangoes to contribute to his school fees. Later, he acquired a wheelbarrow to deliver maize flour to households. Chinda attributed such ‘entrepreneurship’ to economic downturn and the discontinuation of paternalistic welfare policies in the 1990s:

Such depictions romanticise a golden age that probably never existed. Trade, tailoring and agriculture were in reality part of Copperbelt life and urban identity from the very beginning. Furthermore, such activities, rather than being supplementary, were often central to household budgets.21 Patience Mususa, ‘“Getting By”: Life on the Copperbelt after the Privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines’, Social Dynamics 36, 2 (2010), pp. 380–94; Alex Nyumbaiza Tambwe, Kasongo Nkulu, Kitaba Kya Ghoanys, Kunkuzya Mwanachilongwe, Kaimbi Mpyana and Kayiba Bukasa (eds), Le développement du Katanga méridional (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015).

Even senior mineworkers and civil servants engaged in activities to earn additional income. In Mufulira, Patson Katwisi explained:

Historical accounts assume that men were primarily attracted to the Copperbelt because of employment opportunities. In Mufulira, mineworker John Mule recalls: ‘There was no job for young men in the village, so we came to the Copperbelt looking for employment.’5 Interview, John Mule, Mufulira, 12 July 2018. Unsurprisingly, in oral histories men tend to assert an idealised image of ‘masculinity’, promoted through education, formal employment and social activities. Council employee Chinda explains that young men were ‘trained to be strong and find solutions’.6 Interview, William Bwalya Chinda, Mufulira, 8 August 2018.

Some accounts suggest a clear-cut gender division of labour in the household, whereby a male breadwinner would cater for his wife and educate and discipline his children. In Mufulira, mineworker Nathan Mwamba attested that ‘in those days women were not working’.7 Interview, Nathan Mwamba, Mufulira, 7 July 2018. Yet what being a ‘housewife’ involved depended on definitions of work. Indeed, few women were formally employed, yet many earned a considerable income through trade or agriculture. Boston Mwenya declared that ‘my wife was just a housewife’, but went on to explain that ‘she used to sell items at the market such as vegetables and other things’.8 Interview, Boston Mwenya, Mufulira, 10 July 2018. Boniface Lupale’s wife worked as a tailor and social welfare instructor for mineworkers’ wives. Mine management encouraged the attendance of women at welfare clubs and in doing so inculcated specific gender norms and expectations.9 Interview, Boniface Lupale, Mufulira, 12 July 2018. Simon Bwalya recalls that ‘women were supposed to keep the home together, they watched over the household’.10 Interview, Simon Bwalya, Mufulira, 1 August 2018. Yet trader Annie Lukwasa attested that stereotypical gender roles were far from universal. She recalls drinking beer with friends in front of her house, an activity which her husband condoned and to which the mine company turned a blind eye.11 Interview, Annie Lukwasa, Mufulira, 18 July 2018. Emeria Mweupe sold vegetables, fish and groundnuts in the market. Together with other female traders, she would go to distant cities, such as Lusaka or even Johannesburg, to order goods.12 Interview, Emeria Mweupe, Mufulira, 19 July 2018. Such examples show that some Copperbelt women have long enjoyed considerable physical and social mobility.

The economic recession of the 1980s and 1990s further challenged and sometimes reversed gender roles. Bobby Kabamba, an engineer with ZCCM, explained: ‘Women are looking after men now. They are paying for schoolchildren through their businesses and marketing.’13 Interview, Bobby Jackson Kabamba, Mufulira, 10 July 2018. In practice however, gender roles on the Copperbelt probably always deviated from the male breadwinner model.14 Francesca Pugliese, ‘Mining Companies and Gender(ed) Policies: The Women of the Congolese Copperbelt, Past and Present’, Extractive Industries and Society (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.08.006.

In Likasi, Gécamines provided significant professional opportunities for women, occasionally even in management positions. Although she did not graduate from secondary school, Sarah Léontine Bulanda enrolled in typist training in a company school. Upon completion in 1968, she became a Gécamines secretary and eventually a mess manager.15 Interview, Sarah Léontine Bulanda, Likasi, 6 June 2018. Valérienne Ngoye took courses in a UMHK household school, where she received instruction in sewing, cleaning and cooking. She became instructor (monitrice) in a Gécamines welfare centre, where she taught workers’ daughters and wives household skills. Ngoye acquired further responsibilities and started advising the wives of managers, crossing class lines: ‘They were under my care … I visited them at home … We sat together at the table and taught the children how to behave.’16 Interview, Valérienne Ngoye Mudimbi, Likasi, 9 June 2018. Beyond her advisory role, Ngoye could act on behalf of women with marital problems and sanction male workers:

Stéphanie Mumba was the manager of Likasi’s mine hospital launderette, supervising fifteen employees, including men demoted from higher positions. She recalls: ‘Despite their age, they obeyed me. … I learnt what it meant to be a manager: not being pushed around by employees, having authority, how to talk to a subordinate, how to give orders, punish the rebels.’18 Interview, Stéphanie Mumba, Likasi, 6 June 2018. Gécamines thus offered these women employment opportunities that put them on par with – or even in charge of – men. This further challenged the position of men as household heads.

Gender relations were a continuous topic of debate within households and among groups of women. Spouses discussed or argued about the sharing of household income and economic responsibilities. Numerous people recalled a play by Likasi’s popular theatre group Mufwankolo (see Dibwe dia Mwembu, Chapter 11).19 Johannes Fabian, Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). The play depicts a greedy husband, who hides his income from his wife and always keeps his money in his pocket.20 Interview, Valérienne Ngoye Mudimbi, Likasi, 9 June 2018; Interview, Pauline Kibombe, Likasi, 12 June 2018; Interview, Jacques Kibombo, Likasi, 11 June 2018. One day he drops an entire monthly salary into the toilet. Ngoye recalled: ‘The message is that a husband should not keep the money to himself, but share it with his wife.’21 Interview, Valérienne Ngoye Mudimbi, Likasi, 9 June 2018. Theatre thus offered an effective way to discuss and reconfigure gender roles. Yet households approached the pooling of resources in different ways. Bulanda testified that ‘my husband allowed me to manage the household budget’.22 Interview, Sarah Léontine Bulanda, Likasi, 6 June 2018. On the other hand, Euphrasie Joa’s husband never showed her his payslip: ‘I did not know how much he earned, he just came home with an amount of money that I had to manage, he kept a share to himself, to enjoy himself.’23 Interview, Euphrasie Joa, Likasi, 14 June 2018. Yet the different income patterns of men and women were often symbiotic. In Mufulira, William Chinda’s wife was a trader. He would give her some money from his salary and she would order goods and prepare beer for sale.24 Interview, William Bwalya Chinda, Mufulira, 8 August 2018. Even if men were historically more often wage earners, this does not mean that women simply followed their lead.

The changing nature of life on the Copperbelt continually challenged and redefined gender relationships. Although government and mine company officials, through employment, schooling, church and social work, asserted certain ideals of masculinity and femininity, these rarely went undisputed. Men’s salaries were too precarious and seldom sufficient to uphold a ‘housewife’ and the idealised family, particularly after the 1980s. Women earned an income and had much freedom to socialise and drink with neighbours while their husbands were at work. Nonetheless, some women voluntarily asserted an image of ‘propriety’, especially through church involvement or household classes. By upholding an idealised image of an elder male mineworker as household head, Copperbelt historiography has glossed over its changing gender dynamics.25 Arnold L. Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship: The Domestic Domain on the Copperbelt of Zambia, 1950–1956 (London: Academic Press, 1981). Female-headed households are no exception on the Copperbelt today and children rarely grow up in a nuclear family. Acknowledging such diversity is crucial to understanding historical and contemporary Copperbelt communities.

While the Copperbelt has been depicted as the spearhead of urban-industrial ‘modernity’ in Central Africa, oral history accounts suggest a more complex understanding of what ‘modernity’ meant in daily life.2 See the Introduction to this volume; Jennifer Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (London: Routledge, 2006); Garth Myers, African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London: Zed Books, 2011). Rather than revolving solely around mining, agriculture, either as a subsistence activity or as a means of entrepreneurship, was omnipresent on the Copperbelt. Radio shows and popular paintings brought depictions of village ‘tradition’ into urban living rooms. ‘Ethnic’ identities – connecting urban dwellers to their ‘ancestral’ roots – supported people when the state and mining companies collapsed, but could also be the cause of conflict. Most importantly, oral histories suggest that mining paternalism – though irrefutably important – did not dominate Copperbelt social life. Even when Gécamines and ZCCM provided schooling, food rations, housing and leisure to their employees, the mining companies never controlled Copperbelt communities. In order to understand Copperbelt social history, equal attention needs to be paid to independent bars as to mine-run beer halls and to petty tomato vending in addition to underground mining.

When analysed from a cross-border perspective, Copperbelt residents’ historical experiences are characterised by striking similarities. Although divided by a political border, Copperbelt oral histories bring out comparable challenges and opportunities. Accounts highlight how, on both sides, boundaries between formal and informal activities, gender roles, urban and rural, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ or past security and present uncertainty were and remain fundamentally blurred. The oral history approach thus shows that Copperbelt social life was even more vibrant and creative than has hitherto been assumed.