‘It was a state job’: malaria workers in Mozambique in the transition from colonialism to independence, c. 1960-1980

Abstract

Recent literature on African colonial state employees has stressed the important role they played in the making of colonial Africa. This literature has contributed to moving African history beyond the colonizer/colonized and collaborator/resistor dichotomies. Yet, by focusing mainly on interpreters and clerks, undoubtedly the best-paid African colonial state employees, this literature fails to discuss the roles of lower level state employees and of how they transitioned into the independent period. By examining the work trajectories of a small group of ‘low-level’ state employees who worked on anti-malaria campaigns in Mozambique, this paper seeks to begin to unpack the term intermediary. Specifically, this paper will explore the advantages and limitations of being a state employee in both the late colonial and early postcolonial periods (c.1960-1980). By doing so, this paper will address some of the continuities and ruptures that independence brought about for workers in Mozambique.