LAMBARÉNÉ, OKOUMÉ AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LABOR ALONG THE MIDDLE OGOOUÉ (GABON), 1870–1945

Abstract

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.