Bomas, Missions, and Mines; The Making of Centers on the Zambian Copperbelt

Abstract

In his introduction to the 1978 Conference papers on Small Urban Centers in Rural Development in Africa, Southall (1979: 1-2) suggests that the relations between these centers and their hinterlands are largely oppressive and exploitative, and, in the absence of fundamental social transformation, unlikely to change. The Zambian rural centers studied by this author (Siegel, 1979) strayed some from this general pattern. Nearly all were relatively recent extensions of the national and provincial governmental agencies. And given Zambia's foreign exchange crisis at that time, and the consequent shortage of goods and services of every kind, the influence of these peripheral centers was far more ineffectual than exploitative. Exploitative relations did exist, but these were focused upon the continuing political, economic, and social domination by the neighboring “primate” cities of Ndola and Luanshya, both of which were colonially created administrative, commercial, and industrial centers in Zambia's historically dual and increasingly polarized economy (Baldwin, 1966: 40-57, 214-21; Barber, 1967; Southall, 1979: 14). When combined with the foreign exchange crisis, the producer's price structure then in effect had so limited rural livelihood opportunities in central Ndola Rural District that nearly half of the able-bodied males had left their homes to single women, the very old, and the very young (Siegel, 1984: 104-8). Zambians in general disparage the drudgery and poverty of “sleepy” village life, and this is especially true in the Copperbelt, where there is an 80-year-old history of derogatory stereotypes about the “backward,” “weak,” and “lazy” Lamba villagers (Siegel, 1984: 54-85, & n.d.). The notion that urban centers are oppressive and exploitative of their hinterlands has a history of its own, as reflected in the various theories concerning the origin of the state (Service 1978).