A companhia do Buzi em transição: uma abordagem sobre as transformações no recrutamento de mão de obra e na estrutura de produção agrícola da empresa, 1961-1991

Abstract

The exploitation of large plantations requires large amounts of skilled and unskilled labour. With the founding, in April 1898, of the Buzi Company, a Portuguese company with interests in the agro-industry of sugar and cotton, livestock farming, lime production and other areas, thousands of adult and underage African peasants from central, southern and northern Mozambique were forcibly recruited by the Colonial State and forced to work periodically for the company, in return for payment by the latter of a fee for each worker recruited. Because of the cost of maintaining these workers, from 1927 the Buzi Company began to transfer its land and the responsibility for producing sugar cane to Portuguese farmers it subsidised. From 1941, the company began to buy cotton from African peasants in Buzi, who were forced to cultivate it by the Colonial State. The evolution of the internal and external political situation, that is to say, the accentuation of the critical voices to colonialism, forced the Portuguese Colonial State to make retreats in its policy. Among these setbacks, the banning of forced labour and forced crops in 1961 and the placing of restrictions on the employment of minors in 1962 are worth mentioning. Faced with the new situation, the Buzi Company almost divested itself of its responsibility for sugarcane production, especially by tripling the number of farmers with whom it cooperated in 1966. The reforms decreed by the Colonial State did not curb the internal anti-colonial struggle, which culminated with the overthrow of the Colonial State in 1975. After the fall of the Colonial State, the labour recruitment structure of Companhia do Buzi underwent a process of continuous change. The recruitment of workers from Nampoula and Tete was ended and replaced by others recruited in the neighbouring districts of Buzi. The employment of minors came to an end and the employment of women began. It also saw the beginning of the hasty departure of the sugarcane farmers and the end of algadon production.

On 20 November 1978, the State intervened in the Company, whose management was accused of carrying out 'economic sabotage'. In the same year, the Company started producing various fruit and vegetables. From 1980, the Buzi district and the Company began to be affected by armed conflict, whose impact worsened from 1982. In response, the Company militarized its workforce, intensified the "voluntary workdays" and admitted, with the help of the state, forced workers recruited through "Operation Production". These solutions, which aimed, on the one hand, to maintain the flow of labour and, on the other, to avoid reducing the extent of land exploited by the Company, had no effect, as the company was forced to operate on an increasingly narrow fringe of territory. As a result, the Company began to be inefficient and the state closed the sugar factory in 1991. Meanwhile since 1990 the company had been trying to relaunch agricultural production through a timid return to the old colonial agricultural production structure. (TRADUÇAO NOSSA)