Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa

Abstract

This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities between Belgian African anti-polygamy measures and the unusual practice of taxing urban un-married women. Secondly, it interprets the 1950s rebellion against this tax in Bujumbura in light of how the colonial category of femme libre and a 1950 antipolygamy law converged in the Muslim African community of Buyenzi. Colonial categories and camouflage, name-giving and name-calling, noise and silence are central to the interpretation.Belgian African anti-polygamy attitudes and measures are first reviewed, including polygamous wife liberations in the Leopoldian period; the introduction of supplementary wife taxation in 1910; demographic anxieties from the 1920s; and post-World War II worries about ‘camouflaged polygamy’, leading to the passage of the anti-polygamy law in 1950. The published evidence of ‘camouflaged polygamy's’ noisiest critics, élite African ‘new men’ or évolués, suggests that polygamy was increasing in rural areas due to forced labour obligations, and becoming camouflaged in response to pro-natalist rewards for monogamy. A second section analyses the urban single women's tax in terms of the embarrassed silence surrounding this new form of moral taxation, which was introduced following legislation in the 1930s designed to better differentiate ‘customary’ space from urban sites of ‘evolution’. A third section draws on Buyenzi women's oral memories to reconstruct their noisy rebellion against the tax. The conclusion analyses these Muslim women's outrage in light of the contradictions of gaining municipal revenue through moral taxation, an urban surveillance process which necessitated naming the category of persons taxed. The etymology of the term femme libre demonstrates that polygamous wife and prostitute were associated categories in colonial thought from the Leopoldian period. Colonial authorities lost control over these categories in this atypical ‘extra-customary’ township super-imposed on a pre-colonial ‘customary’ community. The new African need for camouflaging plural wives, created by the strong urban expulsion powers of the 1950 anti-polygamy law, converged with the name-calling of the single women's tax, resulting in a local struggle to control the naming process. The category of women created by the tax coalesced around the sexual insult embedded in the tax's name, embarrassing colonial authorities into exemptions and inciting the men of their community into a tax rebellion.

Polygynous marriage and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: What is the evidence for harm?

“…It is difficult to untangle the impact of Christianity from its association with schooling and related aspects of economic development, which may also favor a decline in polygyny (Fenske 2015). Furthermore, while the Christian church has long been hostile to polygyny in Africa in some contexts (e.g., Ekechi 1976;Hunt 1991;Kudo 2017;Walker-Said 2015), Christianity and polygyny are readily combined in others. In one recent cross-national analysis of 26 African DHS, 56% of polygynously married mothers were recorded as Muslim and 34% as Christian (Wagner and Rieger 2014: 112).…”

“…Other cases are more intentional. Colonial forces throughout Africa adopted various anti-polygyny measures including differential taxation and active separation of polygynous family units (Ekechi 1976;Hunt 1991;Walker-Said 2015). While such policies do not characterize contemporary Africa, their legacies may be long lasting.…”

When Women Support the Patriarchal Family: The Dynamics of Marriage in a Gécamines Mining Camp (Katanga Province, DR Congo)

“…They also fought against cohabitation, polygamy, and adultery occurring in the mining communities, through various means of control. At a larger level, this policy was supported by the colonial administration, which taxed the economic activities of single women in cities and took measures to eradicate the practice of polygamy (Hunt ).…”

“…During the colonial period, the only opportunity for workers to take a second wife was to have an affair with a “ supplémentaire ” in the Centre extra‐coutumier in town (Hunt : 80–1). This “camouflaged polygamy” became more common after independence since the government ceased to tax single women in urban areas.…”

Gender without Groups: Confession, Resistance and Selfhood in the Colonial Archive

“…Based on perceived rather than actual threats, they produced social 'noise' that 'camouflaged' actual practices, particularly the frequency of white men having intimate relations with African women. 15 While 'white peril' did emerge as a regional issue during the 1920s, it experienced far quieter treatment than its 'black' counterpart. 16 But addressing it offers a useful and significant counterpoint, indicating how white male behaviour was supervised, how African women could be far more vulnerable than white women and how the more ubiquitous practice of colonial concubinage decentres the black peril phenomenon with its disjointed correspondence between incidents of reported crime and the incitement of social concern.…”