Slavery in Angola - History - Forced Labour

Forced Labour

The Portuguese Empire first established a de jure system of forced labour throughout its colonies in 1899, but the Portuguese government did not implement the system in Angola until 1911 and abolished it in 1913. Republicans overthrew King Manuel II in a coup d'état in October 1910. Workers in Moçâmedes, among other cities in Angola, campaigned for abolition and manumission. In some areas forced labourers declared strikes, hoping the economic slowdown would force political changes. Carvalhal Correia Henriques, the new governor of Moçâmedes, supported their claims and directed labor complaints his way. The Portuguese First Republic, the new state, abolished forced labour again, but the employers whose businesses depended on forced labour used their political clout to lobby the Portuguese government to fire Henriques. The Portuguese government legalized forced labour in Angola again in 1911, dismissed Henriques in January 1912, and abolished the practice again in 1913.

In 1926, the 28th May 1926 coup d'état empowered António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Later that year, Salazar reestablished forced labour, ordering colonial authorities to force nearly all adult, male, ethnic minorities in Portugal's African colonies to work. The government told workers that they would only have to work for six months of every year. In practice, this obligation was a life sentence of forced labor. Civil rights for natives, no longer treated as natural law, had to be "earned" on a case by case basis under the designation of assimilade. Less than 1% of the native population ever achieved this designation. By 1947, 40% of workers died each year with a 60% infant mortality rate.

By 1940 the white population in Angola had risen to forty thousand, 2% of the population. Most of these émigrés, illiterate and landless, took the best farming land, regardless of availability, without compensating existing landowners. The authorities expelled natives, forcing them to harvest maize, coffee, and beans. Natives could "volunteer" to work on the plantations, voluntários, or face conscription, working for $1.50 per month as contratados. This system of forced labour prompted 500,000 Angolans to flee, creating a labor shortage, which in turn created the need for more workers for the colonial economy. By 1947, 40% of the forced labourers died each year with a 60% infant mortality rate in the territory (according to The World Factbook's 2007 estimates, infant mortality rate (deaths/1,000 live births) in modern-day Angola was 184.44 - the worst result among all countries in the world). Historian Basil Davidson visited Angola in 1954 and found 30% of all adult males working in these conditions; "there was probably more coercion than ever before." Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's Minister of the Colonies, recognized the inherent flaws in the system, which he described as using natives "like pieces of equipment without any concern for their yearning, interests, or desires". Parliament held a closed session in 1947 to discuss the deteriorating situation. Henrique Galvão, Angolan deputy to the Portuguese National Assembly, read his "Report on Native Problems in the Portuguese Colonies". Galvão condemned the "shameful outrages" he had uncovered, the forced labour of "women, of children, of the sick, of decrepit old men." He concluded that in Angola, "only the dead are really exempt from forced labor." The government's control over the natives eliminated the worker-employer's incentive to keep his employees alive because, unlike in other colonial societies, the state replaced deceased workers without directly charging the employeer. The Portuguese Government refuted the report and arrested Galvão in 1952. In 1961, Galvão would be involved in the hijacking of a Portuguese luxury cruise liner.