A chronology of nostalgia: memories of former Angolan and Mozambican worker trainees to East Germany

Abstract

This article discusses the chronology of nostalgia expressed by former Angolan and Mozambican worker trainees in East Germany. By shedding light on the different forms in which nostalgia was expressed in interviews with migrants who returned to their country of origin, the article examines the migrants’ longing for working abroad prior to leaving and for their home countries while living abroad. The focus lies on the returnees’ nostalgia for aspects of their lived experiences in East Germany, a phenomenon I call Eastalgia. Struggling economically, socially, and emotionally after their return to Angola and Mozambique, many former worker trainees longed for the consumption opportunities, mobility, organization, and modernity of their East German experience. I argue that labor migrants who returned to Mozambique employ both Eastalgia and a glorification of Samora Machel’s socialist Mozambique to criticize the current government for its failure to develop the country according to the expectations shaped by their experiences in East Germany. Finally, I compare and contrast different forms of Eastalgia in Mozambique and Angola with regard to temporality, locality, individual and/or collective, public and/or private, and restorative and/or reflective longing. The former worker trainees’ voices provide new insight into the emotional dimensions of migration and teach us that memories of migrations actively continue to shape the lives of many of the former migrants.

Keywords:

• Angola
• Mozambique
• East Germany
• memory
• nostalgia
• migration
• labor

Notes

1. An early draft of this article entitled ‘Diverging Memories of Mozambican Labor Migration to the GDR: The State’s Nightmare and the Magermans' Dream,’ won the Lusophone Studies Association Graduate Paper Prize at the African Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, November 21, 2015. Herein, I define Eastalgia as the returnees’ nostalgia for aspects of their lived experiences in East Germany.

2. See Cook (2005, p. 38) for reflection on the reimagination of the Trabi in post-unification Germany.

3. This article is colored by memories about experiences in a world I cannot replicate and do not wish to validate socially, politically or otherwise. I am not invested in glorifying a socialist project in East Germany, Mozambique or Angola and neither do I set out to suggest that the East German dictatorship was virtuous.

4. For an introduction to the literature on Eastern Europe, see (Boym, 2001; Todorova & Gille, 2010; especially Ch. 6). Gille (‘Postcript,’ 2010, p. 286) rightly observes that ‘post-communist nostalgia is […] a misnomer.’ It would be wrong to assume that nostalgia for some aspects of communism speaks to a wish to reinstate a previous regime. In Angola and in Mozambique, just as in other Eastern European countries, nostalgia for a socialist past is not a binary discourse; an ambivalent attitude toward the past prevails.

5. By private memories I mean migrants’ stories that are shared within the family or within an interview, where it is clear that migrants speak for themselves as individuals. Public memories are those shared, for instance, in autobiographical writings, the press, or with groups of Madjerman in public spaces.

6. Pitcher and Askew (2006) discuss Africa’s socialist legacy. Pitcher (2006) examines Mozambican memories of socialism. Dlamini (2009) offers an important reinterpretation of nostalgia for South Africa under apartheid. The literature of African socialism and post-socialism and the literature of African nostalgia have yet to be connected in a more thorough fashion. Nothing like the scholarly attention paid to Eastern European post-communist nostalgia has emerged.

7. East Germany started an export offensive in 1977 with its three African priority partners Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia. It reached its climax with the signing of the treaties on friendship and cooperation in 1979 (See Döring, 1999, p. 10; Döring & Rüchel, 2005 for a broader examination of the relationship between Mozambique and East Germany; Madureira, 2011, for a discussion about Angola’s relationship with East Germany). Agreements regulating labor and education exchanges were also signed during Erich Honecker’s visit to Mozambique in February 1979 to sign the treaty of friendship and cooperation. (Abkommen zwischen der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik und der Regierung der Volksrepublik Moçambique über die zeitweilige Beschäftigung moçambiquanischer Werktätiger in sozialistischen Betrieben der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 24.02.1979). Subsequent protocols and directives (1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990) modified this agreement (Döring, 1999, p. 163). The Mozambican Labor Ministry estimated that approximately 17,000 workers migrated to East Germany (Armindo Mapasse, personal communication, Chefe do Departamento de Estatística, Ministério de Trabalho, Moçambique, 15.05.2015). The exact numbers of Mozambican workers who came to East Germany are most likely lost since the original documents at the Mozambican Labor Ministry are said to be destroyed. The East German bureaucracy counted every new contract, regardless of how many contracts were served by the same worker. For a description of the Mozambican workers’ lives see for instance Ulrich van der Heyden, Wolfgang Semmler, & Ralf Straßburg, 2014.

8. For discussions of workers’ experiences based on a reading of archival records, see Oppenheimer, 2004; Kuck, 2003; Gruner-Domic, 1996; Mac Con Uladh, 2005; Müggenburg, 1996.

9. The following studies make use of oral histories either with workers or with East Germans: Schüle, 2003; Schwenkel, 2013; Guerra Hernández, 2011; Kern, 2011; Lucas, 2002; Ulbrich, 2009; Marburger, 1993.

10. Vietnamese worker trainees also subscribed to the imagination of an East German socialist utopia. See Schwenkel, 2013, p. 248.

11. It is important to recognize the collected oral histories as products of a unique intersubjective, performative encounter, influenced by the personalities, genders, ages, class and educational backgrounds of the interviewees and the interviewer (Maynes, Pierece, & Laslett, 2008, pp. 98–125; Mould, 2009, p. 87). The fact that I am German thus played a role in the interviews. Some interviewees seemed concerned not to offend me, for instance downplaying racist encounters, while others took this opportunity to ‘open my eyes’ to a racist and bigoted country. While the nostalgic view of East Germany might be enhanced by my positionality, similar points of views are expressed in press statements to non-German media. Further, in the Mozambican case this particular form of longing also materializes in home décor or the role the Park of the Madjerman plays in their daily lives and in political argument.

12. In the case of post-communist Eastern Europe, citizens experienced time travel without any geographical relocation; post-communist state construction removed citizens from the state socialist regimes under which they once lived. Those who long do so for a lost time under an extinct regime – a time that might seem in retrospect less disorienting for some. The worker trainees on the other hand experience diasporic longings. They experience diasporic longing in a classic sense in that they long for the comforts of home while abroad. This form of longing for home exists alongside the joy of living abroad, having time traveled and geographically distanced themselves from the deprivations and chaos that marked life back home under civil war. The other form of diasporic longing the Angolan and Mozambican migrants expressed was the desire to go abroad. For them, longing for another geographical place was equivalent to longing for a different level on their imagined road to progress. When they long to go abroad, they long for infrastructure, employment, regular wages, health care benefits, education, and consumption possibilities they never received at home. Their ongoing disappointment stems from a feeling of having been betrayed by history and the perception of having been robbed by the state of dignity, income, and a chance for upward social mobility.

13. This cultural reference whereby an African young man living in the East likens himself to a black American might seem paradoxical when read through his references to consumer goods, but African-Americans have a tangled and complicated history with the Soviet Union and Germany. The global communist moment opened up new opportunities for people of color worldwide. Several hundred black Americans came to Russia in the 1930s answering the Soviet Union’s call for technical expertise. Fleeing from a repressive Jim Crow United States and the Great Depression, artists and experts acquired gainful employment. Importantly, they were drawn to a society that had the reputation of being less racist than the United States, ‘in search of the Soviet promise of a better society’ (Carew, 2008, p. 1). Their areas of expertise contributed to the economy of the Soviet Union. It was in the Soviet’s interest to train African-Americans as cadres in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism not only to reach the black American working class, but also blacks worldwide. The presence of African-Americans visually underscored the Soviet Union’s attempt to build a new democratic society in which people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds united to pursue the dream of freedom. Though the majority left in response to the request that they take citizenship in 1937 and to Stalin’s purges, some stayed. Many of their daughters married African students who came to Russia starting in the 1960s and returned with them to Africa to continue the mission of their fathers by aiding African development. These lofty missions often ended in separation and the return to Russia of many Afro-Russians. Many remarried Eastern-European men (Carew, 2008; Introduction and Ch. 12; Blakeley, 1986). African-American GI’s came to Germany in larger numbers during World War II and fathered a generation of mixed raced children with German woman, predominantly in the American occupation zone (Greene & Ortlepp, 2011). For a history of Afro Germans in the Third Reich, see Campt, 2004.

14. Paul Betts skillfully examines how the affective relationship between people and things in their everyday occurrence makes up the heart of nostalgically remembered history in East German personal accounts (Betts, 2003, p. 182).

15. The centrality of consumer items and the status the migrant acquired through European goods remains a historical continuity in Southern African labor migrations. The fathers and grandfathers of some of the migrants I interviewed worked in the South African mines and invested most of their earnings in goods central to their households like cloth, clothes, shoes, sowing machines, plows, bikes, tractors, and cars (First, 1983; Harries, 1994; Kreike, 2004; Moodie, 1994; Newitt, 1995, pp. 482–516). Decades later the products still consisted of what was deemed important to establish one’s own household, including not only tables, chairs, dishes, bedding, motorbikes, and cars, but also vinyl disks, stereo equipment, TVs, movies, and books.

16. Alemanha minha Pátria (Germany – my fatherland), IMG_7807.jpg poem by Regina February 2, 2007, original in Regina’s possession, photo in my possession.

17. Migration has played a well-documented role as a rite of passage in southern Africa, especially for young men migrating to the Rand (Harries, 1994) but also for women (Bozzoli & Nkotsoe, 1991). For example, Mozambican migrants worked in South African mines to earn lobola (bride price), turning returnees into fully married male members of their communities (First, 1983; Harries, 1994; Moodie, 1994). This particular form of labor migration to East Germany still served to accumulate resources, but given the war context, these were for the survival of family, friends, neighbors, and oneself rather than for the accumulation of savings toward marriage. Many workers still lack the resources to get married traditionally to their partners.

18. The literature on the Angolan and Mozambican wars is vast. See for instance Birmingham, 2016; Emerson, 2014; Finnegan, 1992; Shubin & Tokarev, 2001; Brittain, 1998. For comparative discussions, see Ciment, 1997; Birmingham, 1992.

19. There is no standardized spelling. ‘Magerman,’ ‘Madjermanes,’ ‘Madgermanes’ or ‘Magermanes’ are common. The name took hold in the early 1990s during the politicization of the workers’ reintegration process. The term often has a derogative connotation when used in the media. It is, however, also proudly employed as a label by many workers themselves and has been used by the Madjerman activist group. According to my interview partners, it means ‘those who have been to Germany’ or ‘those from Germany’ in Shangaan and other languages of the South (Klemm, 2005, p. 17; Lázaro, Maputo, personal communication August 29, 2011). Thank you to Emmanuel Kreike for pointing out that Madjerman might linguistically hint at a collective concept like ‘Germanhood’ or doing the ‘German Thing.’ Ba-would be the prefix for class ½ designating people. The Ji-ma class for things is especially used with words that are borrowed from other languages, in this case ‘Djerman’.

20. The Vietnamese laborers’ memories about East Germany set out in Alamgir and Schwenkel (in press) and Schwenkel (2013) suggest that the Angolan and Mozambican eastalgic longing is echoed in Vietnam as well. This points to a larger shared experience of people from conflict zones understanding East Germany as a consumer paradise and strategically using their stay to acquire goods that would serve them upon their return. It also points to how the dream of socialist development was similarly imagined in countries in the global South and what the experience of living under East German consumer socialism meant to people accustomed to contexts of deprivation and war.

21. The central gathering place in Maputo, replicated throughout other provincial capitals in Mozambique, is the Jardim 28 de Maio, situated in downtown Mozambique near the Labor Ministry. The park continuously draws Madjerman from all walks of life. It also serves as the bureau of the umbrella organization of returned workers in Mozambique, the Association of Mozambican Former Workers in Germany (ATMA) (Canjale, 2007).

22. For a comparative discussion on the concept of nostalgia as relational concept see Boym, 2001, p. xvi.

23. Besides informal family contact between transnational families, relations between CMA (the community of Mozambicans in Germany) and ATMA allow for a certain amount of coordination with regard to demonstrations in Berlin and Maputo.

24. For an exhibition about Mozambican-German relations, see Jens Vilela Neumann, http://vilelaneumann.com/english/?projects=the-exhibition, accessed 14.11.16. For photo books, see Wandel, 2012; Bourquin, n.d.. For a graphic novel that skilfully illustrates the Mozambican labor migration experience, see Weyhe, 2016. East-German writers also wrote about Mozambican guest workers, e.g., Scherzer, 2002.

25. For a general reflection on the role that socialism played in the Angolan art scene, see Siegert 2014, 2016.