‘Entering the Red Sands’: The Corporality of Punishment and Imprisonment in Chimoio, Mozambique

Abstract

This article probes the understandings and experiences of punishment and imprisonment in and around Chimoio, Manica Province, Mozambique. Focusing on two cases of imprisonment under severe conditions in the provincial agricultural prison of Chimoio, the article argues that corporal punishment is part of the punitive infrastructure of both the colonial and post-colonial state. Analysing the two contrasting cases, the article probes the significance of the metaphor for prison entry – ‘entering the red sands’ – to make the argument that carceral punishment is understood in terms of entry into a state space of potential death. The article recognises the importance of grounding perspectives on imprisonment and punishment beyond assumptions of universal regimes of imprisonment and punishment regimes. In doing so, it focuses on popular understandings and experiences of such practices and supports its argument by demonstrating, firstly, the long-term trajectory of corporal punishment in Mozambique and, secondly, by showing how imprisonment is perceived as challenging key tenets of sociality.

Notes

¹ In terms of organisation, there are two types of penal establishment in Mozambique. The first type is administered under the Ministry of Justice (Ministério da Justiça) and includes provincial and district prisons as well as open prisons (centros abertos) and agricultural prisons such as the one in Chimoio. The Ministry of the Interior (Ministério do Interior) administers another set of prisons that includes maximum security facilities and the cells in police stations in provincial capitals. There are currently three agricultural prisons in Mozambique: Chimoio, Mabalane and Hanhane.

² F. Bernault, ‘The Shadow of Rule: Colonial Power and Modern Punishment in Africa’, in F. Dikötter and I. Brown (eds), Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London, Hurst and Co., 2007), p. 55.

³ See, for example, M. Harris, Portugal's African ‘Wards’: A First-Hand Report on Labour and Education in Mozambique (New York, American Committee on Africa, 1958); J. Head and A. Manghezi, ‘Interviews: Forced Labour by Those Who Lived Through it’, Mozambican Studies, 2 (1981), pp. 26–35.

⁴ M.D.D. Newitt, A History of Mozambique (London, Hurst and Co., 1995). For an early critique, see P. Anderson, ‘Portugal and the End of Ultra-colonialism’, New Left Review, 15 (1962), pp. 83–102.

⁵ These three works are key to understanding the unfolding of colonial domination in Manica province: B. Neil-Tomlinson, ‘The Mozambique Chartered Company 1892–1910’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1987); J.M. das Neves, ‘Economy, Society and Labour Migration in Central Mozambique, 1930–c. 1965: A Case Study of Manica Province’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1998); and S.C. Lubkemann, ‘Situating Wartime Migration in Central Mozambique: Gendered Social Struggle and the Transnationalization of Polygyny’ (Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, 2000).

⁶ J. Capela and E. Medeiros, O tráfico de escravos de Moçambique para as ilhas do Índico, 1702–1902 (Maputo, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 1987).

⁷ For the district of Machaze in Manica province, Stephen Lubkemann notes that for the period between 1912 and 1917 and as labour recruitment intensified, Machaze's number of inhabitants shrank from 26,677 to 17,535 as people ‘fled across the border into Rhodesia where they did not face the same demands on their labour’. Lubkemann, ‘Situating Wartime Migration’, p. 80.

⁸ See also J. Vansina, ‘Confinement in Angola's Past’, in F. Bernault (ed.), A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2003), pp. 55–68.

⁹ F. Bernault, ‘The Politics of Enclosure in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa’, in Bernault (ed.), A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa, pp. 1–53.

¹⁰ A number of works deal with physical punishment as integral to African colonial contexts beyond the Portuguese. For some examples, see D. Killingray, ‘The “Rod of Empire”: The debate over corporal punishment in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888–1946’, Journal of African History [hereafter JAH], 35, 2 (1994), pp. 201–16; S. Peté and A. Devenish, ‘Flogging, Fear and Food. Punishment and Race in Colonial Natal’, Journal of Southern African Studies [hereafter JSAS], 31, 1 (2005), pp. 3–21; A. Butchart, The Anatomy of Power: European Constructions of the African Body (London, Zed Books, 1998); or M.-B. Dembour, ‘La chicotte comme symbole du colonialisme Belge?’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26, 2 (1992), pp. 205–25.

¹¹ B. O'Laughlin, ‘Proletarianisation, Agency and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique’, JSAS, 28, 3 (2002), p. 517.

¹² D.C. Mateus, A PIDE/DGS na Guerra Colonial 1961–1974 (Lisboa, Terramar, 2004).

¹³ Mateus, A PIDE/DGS na Guerra Colonial 1961–1974, pp. 136–43.

¹⁴ B. Egerö, Mozambique: A Dream Undone: The Political Economy of Democracy, 1975–84 (Uppsala, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1990).

¹⁵ Notícias de Moçambique, ‘Com a mesma violência revolucionária: Punir bandidos, punir candongeiros’, Maputo, 17 February 1983.

¹⁶ L. Loforte, Rádio Moçambique: Memórias de um doce calvário (Maputo, CIEDIMA, 2007).

¹⁷ A. Sachs and G.H. Welch, Liberating the Law: Creating Popular Justice in Mozambique (London, Zed Books, 1990).

¹⁸ Frelimo's main reason for introducing popular justice was, of course, a widespread popular scepticism towards the colonial courts, police, law and legal system. Capturing the spirit of the early 1980s, Sachs and Welch's work on popular justice exhibits some of the rationale behind its introduction and trajectory: ‘[If] people lose respect for the legal system – the people feel that it is not protecting them, it's protecting the parasites, it's protecting the crooks and the black marketers, it's protecting the people who'd be only too happy if apartheid came to their country, then there is no legality, there is an absence of legality’. Sachs and Welch, Liberating the Law, p. 14.

¹⁹ Frelimo's main reason for introducing popular justice was, of course, a widespread popular scepticism towards the colonial courts, police, law and legal system. Capturing the spirit of the early 1980s, Sachs and Welch's work on popular justice exhibits some of the rationale behind its introduction and trajectory: ‘[If] people lose respect for the legal system – the people feel that it is not protecting them, it's protecting the parasites, it's protecting the crooks and the black marketers, it's protecting the people who'd be only too happy if apartheid came to their country, then there is no legality, there is an absence of legality’. Sachs and Welch, Liberating the Law, p. 14. While the exercise in public of popular power was directed at individuals put through a trial, the immediate post-independence regime also included the creation of a composite enemy: Xiconhoca. This enemy within was represented in cartoons and disseminated widely on posters, and so on – as well as referred to in public speeches and radio broadcasts. For details, see B. Sahlström, Political Posters in Ethiopia and Mozambique: Visual Imagery in a Revolutionary Context (Uppsala, University of Uppsala, 1990); L. Buur, ‘Xiconhoca: Mozambique's Ubiquitous Post-independence Traitor’, in S. Thiranagama and T. Kelly (eds), Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-building (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 24–47.

²⁰ For works on the civil war and its socio-cultural and political impact, see, for instance, B.E. Bertelsen, ‘Violent Becomings: State Formation and the Traditional Field in Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Bergen, 2010); C. Geffray, La cause des armes au Mozambique: Anthropologie d'une guerre civile (Paris, Karthala, 1990).

²¹ The information about the prison in Chimoio is built on my informants' accounts, especially the guards of the prison, as well as an interview made in 2007 with the ex-prison guard Mr Francisco Sabonete Mapossa by the Arquivo Património Cultural (ARPAC) in Chimoio, the transcripts of which where kindly made available to me by Mr Killian Dzinduwa at ARPAC, Chimoio. In his otherwise comprehensive and useful history of Chimoio, Artur makes no references to the prison establishments in Chimoio. See D. do Rosario Artur, Cidade de Chimoio (Chimoio, Arquivo do Património Cultural, 1999).

²² See also B.E. Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique: A Critique of Some Legal Anthropological Terms’, Social Analysis, 53, 3 (2009), pp. 123–47; J.M. Obarrio, ‘Beyond Equivalence: The Gift of Justice (Mozambique, 1986, 2004)’, Anthropological Theory, 10, 1 & 2 (2010), pp. 163–70; B. de Sousa Santos, J.C. Trindade and M.P.G. Meneses (eds), Law and Justice in a Multicultural Society: The Case of Mozambique (Dakar, CODESRIA, 2006).

²³ The latest update on the prison situation in Mozambique is accessible from MHRL's website http://www.ldh.org.mz

²⁴ The interview was conducted with representatives Estevan Azenha and Calisto Alvaro from MHRL (Liga dos Direitos Humanos) in their offices, which were at the time in Bairro Josina Machel, Chimoio.

²⁵ See Mozambique Reports and Documents, no. 151, ‘As predicted, 15 Die in Angoche Jail Cells’, issued 2 April 2010 and downloaded 1 December 2010 from http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/

²⁶ AIM News Report, no. 224, ‘Montepuez Rioters Sentenced’, 14 January 2002.

²⁷ Mozambique Reports and Documents, no. 151.

²⁸ Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique’.

²⁹ Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique’

³⁰ The reliance on media reports and MHRL material is also noteworthy for another reason: in the otherwise growing literature on ‘legal pluralism’ there is a conspicuous lack of research on prison conditions in general. For instance, one would have thought that references to and treatments of this vital aspect of law and justice would be included in a recent two-volume, 1,200 page work edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and João Carlos Trindade. See B. de Sousa Santos and J.C. Trindade (eds), Conflito e transformação social. Uma paisagem das justiças em Moçambique, volumes 1 and 2 (Porto, Afrontamento, 2003).

³¹ Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique’.

³² Police violence is widely recognised as occurring in many contexts in Mozambique. For some details on recent cases, see the Liga Moçambicana dos Direitos Humanos [LDH] report, ‘Torturas e execuções sumárias a cargo da PRM’, available at http://www.ldh.org.mz/, downloaded 21 February 2011. This short report confirms to a large degree the main findings of LDH's ground-breaking annual report of 2004, ‘Relatório 2003’ (Maputo, LDH, 2004), which includes a case of a 2004 police killing in Chimoio (pp. 47–8).

³³ See also Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique’ for details on such ritual cleansing and closing of the body and how these rituals are integral to a wider understanding of protection against the threat posed by malevolent forces inherent to sorcery and poisoning.

³⁴ The position of Mozambique as a so-called international hub for drugs has received sustained attention for a decade or so. For a recent report, see BBC News, ‘Mozambique becoming a drug-trafficking hub – Interpol’, online news item posted at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10629329 on 14 July 2010, accessed 4 December 2010.

³⁵ For an interesting study of post-release practices of ex-prisoners based on Maputo material, see also A.E. Sengulane, L.M.C. Santos and J.C. Colaço, ‘Instituição prisional-influência das práticas quotidianas na reabilitação dos reclusos: O caso da Cadeia Central do Maputo’ (Licenciatura thesis, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 2003).

³⁶ Some informants alleged that the cement in the sadza was part of a system where prison guards sought bribes in order not to kill you – in other words, giving you ‘non-cemented’ sadza if you paid. However, the vast majority of informants – ex-prisoners, residents of the area, people working within the community courts, local police officers and others – claimed that there was no such protection racket through which lives were at stake.

³⁷ A number of informants who have been imprisoned provide fairly consistent stories of seeing cement being introduced to pots of boiling water for making sadza. In some narratives, cement is exchanged for caustic soda which has more or less the same effect on the stomach, it is claimed, as cement.

³⁸ This view of the government as poisoning people is not, of course, exclusively a concern with prisons in Mozambique. Using material from coastal Nampula from 1998 and 2002, Carlos Serra has analysed the public outrage against government officers who put chlorine in wells in campaigns to stop the spread of cholera. The outrage against this perceived poisoning led to riots, halts in the campaigns, and involved the killing of several health officers. C. Serra, Cólera e catarse: Infra-estruturas sociais de um mito nas zonas costeiras de Nampula (1998/2002) (Maputo, Imprensa Universitária, 2003).

³⁹ Bengo is the chiTewe term for Cabeça do Velho and is a sacred mountain in Chimoio. For an analysis of sacred mountains within Manica Province and Manicaland in Zimbabwe, see also J. Bannerman, ‘Serra Zembe: Zimbabwe of the Kings and Queens of Tewe’ (unpublished manuscript, 2007).

⁴⁰ The colours red, white and black are, of course, core symbols in many sub-Saharan contexts, a subject of, for example, Victor Turner's classical analysis of Ndembu material where ‘whiteness = semen, milk; redness = menstrual blood, the blood of birth, blood shed by a weapon; blackness = faeces, certain products of bodily decay, and so on’. See V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1991 [1967]), p. 107. For an analysis of the colours of particular spirits based on Manyika material, which nuances Turner's distinctions, see also A. Jacobson-Widding, ‘The Fertility of Incest’, in A. Jacobson-Widding and W. van Beek (eds), The Creative Communion: African Folk Models of Fertility and the Regeneration of Life (Uppsala, Uppsala University, 1999), pp. 47–73.

⁴¹ Manica Province, including Chimoio and surrounding areas, has comparatively high levels of soil fertility depletion due to erosion and intensive farming. See E.C.R. Folmer, P.M.H. Geurts and J.R. Francisco, ‘Assessment of Soil Fertility Depletion in Mozambique’, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 71, 1–3 (1998), pp. 159–67. Generally, Mozambique belongs to the broad category of luvisols, sandy nitrogen-deficient soil, although regional and local variation make ‘any generalizations about “African soils” highly problematic’. I. Scoones, ‘Transforming Soils: The Dynamics of Soil-fertility Management in Africa’, in I. Scoones (ed.), Dynamics and Diversity: Soil Fertility and Farming Livelihoods in Africa (London, Earthscan Publications, 2001), pp. 1–44.

⁴² During research in community courts in rural as well as urban localities, in several community courts I have been shown the chamboco, the whip (now often made of a plastic tube or a stick) that is used for repeat offenders. For details on violence and lynchings, also see Bertelsen, ‘Multiple Sovereignties and Summary Justice in Mozambique’; C. Serra (ed.), Linchamentos em Moçambique I (uma desordem que apela à ordem) (Maputo, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 2008). For an analysis of police death squads, see B. Bertelsen, ‘Sorcery and Death Squads: Transformations of State, Sovereignty, and Violence in Postcolonial Mozambique’, in B. Kapferer and B.E. Bertelsen (eds), Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (New York, Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 210–40.

⁴³ Radio Mozambique news broadcast in English 27 June 1989 at 11 GMT, ‘Mozambique: Budget Increase after Prisoners Die of Starvation’. Text accessed at http://www.mozambiquehistory.net/justice/punishment/19890627_chimoio_prison_scandal.pdf on 5 December 2010.

⁴⁴ These findings are in line with national data from agricultural prisons. As the MHRL concludes in a major study of the prison situation in Mozambique, it is ironic that the agricultural prisons in Mozambique were no exception to the predominant situation of a stark lack of sufficient food. LDH, ‘Relatorio annual’, p. 65.

⁴⁵ Alexander analyses the circumstances, experiences and the (changing) imaginaries of several generations of political prisoners in Zimbabwe. She finds several cases where political prisoners and non-political prisoners developed strong bonds of affection, understanding and/or patronage – sometimes also continued after the release of the political prisoner. See J. Alexander, ‘The Political Imaginaries and Social Lives of Political Prisoners in Post-2000 Zimbabwe’, JSAS, 36, 2 (2010), pp. 483–503.

⁴⁶ Junod also points out the dangers of eating food and how the potential poison contained in it might transform itself into a destructive animal killing and consuming you. See H.A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe: Volume I: Social Life (New York, University Books, 1962 [1912]), pp. 512f.

⁴⁷ J. Carsten, After Kinship (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004).

⁴⁸ This is not to say, of course, that kin is always involved. In one case study drawn from my material, a relative of Rui was in 2005 convicted of having assaulted and raped a seven-year-old girl repeatedly. His guilt was asserted by the court and also by his family. In his case, family members and even his wife gradually visited less and less frequently and informed neighbours, friends and others that he would die there in prison. He eventually died in the middle of 2007.