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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Noise over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Mortality Taxation and A Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Congo
Author:Hunt, Nancy R.ISNI
Year:1991
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:32
Issue:3
Pages:471-494
Language:English
Geographic terms:Burundi
Belgium
Subjects:colonialism
fiscal policy
polygamy
women
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Women's Issues
History and Exploration
Economics and Trade
Historical/Biographical
Cultural Roles
Marital Relations and Nuptiality
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/182664
Abstract:This paper highlights analytical and historical commonalities between Belgian African antipolygamy measures and the unusual Belgian practice of taxing urban unmarried women. Secondly, it interprets the 1950s rebellion against this tax in Bujumbura (Burundi) in light of how the colonial category of 'femme libre' and a 1950 antipolygamy law converged in the Muslim African community of Buyenzi. Belgian African antipolygamy attitudes and measures are first reviewed, including post-World War II worries about 'camouflaged polygamy', leading to the passage of the antipolygamy law in 1950. 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 Swahili 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. Notes, ref.
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