Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon, 1920-45

Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon, 1920-45Author(s): Jeremy RichSource: Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol.38, No. 1 (2004), pp. 58-87Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4107268 .

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Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon, 1920-45

Jeremy Rich

Resume Les employds de bureau au Gabon occupaient une place ambigu6 dans la socidtd coloniale, entre la Premiere et la Deuxieme Guerres Mondiales. Souvent, les hommes d'affaires europeens et les fonctionnaires frangais payaient bien leurs employds pour leur r6le vital dans les domaines de la traduction culturelle et de la comptabilite. Cependant, de nombreux Europdens, conscients de leur dependance vis-a-vis des employes de bureau, les tournaient en ridicule, les traitant soit comme dangereux, soit comme risibles. Les commis de bureau manipulaient souvent leur position d'intermidiaires pour faire des gains financiers, et certains d'entre eux sont meme allis jusqu'd defier, avec succes, leurs employeurs europeens dans des conflits de travail. Leur maitrise de la correspondance bureaucratique leur a permis d'glaborer des groupes d'autorepresentation suffisamment forts pour convaincre les administrateurs et les proprid- taires de compagnies de tenir compte de leurs requetes, prenant aussi le risque d'etre emprisonnis ou renvoyes sous des pretextes futiles. Bien que les employes de bureau n'aient pas formi de partis politiques avant 1945, presque tous les leaders politiques du Gabon des annees 1950 et 1960 avaient travaille comme commis de bureau avant 1940, et devaient une grande part de leurs talents politiques et de leurs aptitudes bureaucra- tiques a leur experience dans l'administration.

Much of the research for this paper in France and Gabon in 1999-2000 was graciously funded by a Fulbright IIE grant. I would like to thank the archival and library staff at the Archives Nationales at Aix-en-Provence, the Archives Nationales du Gabon at Libreville, Colby College, Cabrini College, the Holy Ghost Fathers archives at Chevilly-Larue, Ralph Austen, Phyllis Martin, the participants of the Indiana University African Studies noontalk series, Martin Klein, and the anonymous readers of the Canadian Journal of African Studies for their commentary and support.

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Rich: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon 59

Introduction In 1930, a middle-aged Gabonese clerk named Benoit Anghiley had a score to settle in the colony's capital of Libreville (Anghiley 1930c). His former employer, a Yugoslav timber entrepreneur named Charles Schmidt, had absconded with the assets of his company. Schmidt had fled the French colony of Gabon for neigh- bouring Spanish Guinea with the money he owed to over a hundred African employees. Determined to collect his wages from his duplicitous former patron, Anghiley decided to track down Schmidt through his connections in the sparsely settled rainforest communities scattered between the Gabon Estuary and the Rio Muni River, which separated French from Spanish territory. Without Anghiley's determination to regain his lost salary, Schmidt would probably have escaped attention. Anghiley's manoeuvers illustrate clerks' ability to use their intermediary position to challenge Europeans, act on behalf of African communities, and rely on both state bureaucratic structures and their own connections in local informal networks to defend their interests.

African office workers, particularly those working for private companies, played a crucial role in the history of late colonial Gabon because they straddled colonial divisions between European institutions and local society. Their lives and actions provide a series of insights into everyday interactions between educated Africans and Europeans in French colonies, as well as into the formation of the Gabonese political elite. French residents often mocked Gabonese clerks as arrogant and corrupt men who unsuc- cessfully imitated whites; however, they were also aware that their own enterprises and projects could not function without auxiliaries. The small number of administrators and European company staff, particularly in colonial posts as unpopular as Gabon among both colons and government employees (Cohen 1971, 80-82, 123; Weinstein 1972, 82-83; Coquery-Vidrovitch 1972; Austen and Headrick 1983, 41-43; Renucci 1988, 163), made African office workers and commercial agents vital cogs in the machinery of everyday business and daily governance. Clerks, for their part, recognized that their work in producing knowledge by recording financial transactions, translating, and maintaining bureaucratic networks provided many opportunities to gain wealth, to extort other Africans, and to resist challenges from officials and settlers.



60 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

Office labour also proved to be the stepping stone of choice for mission-educated men interested in politics. Protest movements led by white collar workers in the 1920s attracted a high number of clerks determined to receive the same treatment and rights as any man or woman born in France (Ballard 1963, 109-23; Rich 2001). Although neither private nor public Gabonese office workers ever formed labour unions or associations as did some of their counter- parts in West Africa (Derrick 1983; Mason 1993), they did build informal connections that later influenced how they constructed alliances among European and African constituencies. Practically every major politician in Gabon from the 1940s onward had spent time as a white collar worker for the government or in the private sector. Leon M'Ba, the first president of Gabon and the leader of the Bloc D6mocratique Gabonais (BDG) party, began his working career as a clerk in the customs department, later managing a store for the English trading firm of John Holt. Other notable figures such as French parliamentarian Jean-Hilaire Aubame had also once laboured as clerks before becoming major performers in Gabonese political life. To comprehend the strategies taken by leaders during the era of decolonization, one needs to understand how their previous background shaped their tactics and affected their interactions with European institutions. An awareness of the daily manipulations of records and positions by clerks in the mid-twentieth century also sheds light on the corruption and bureaucratic culture in the postcolonial period.

An examination of clerks, besides exposing the role of Africans in both the machinery of foreign rule and the growth of European- run businesses in Gabon, also reveals much about the social world of educated Africans in Libreville and other towns in the colonial era. The prestige and relatively lucrative economic opportunities of office workers permitted them to take a prominent stance in urban and rural life. Clerks who worked in commerce and government formed a major segment of town society that articulated social concerns, financed and organized parties and associations, and interacted informally with Europeans as equals. From their family lives to their participation in social events, clerks created a hybrid lifestyle that drew on both indigenous and imported cultural influ- ences. A study of white collar workers thus illuminates a cosmopolitan setting where rigid divisions between Africans and



Rich: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon 6i

Europeans had difficulty taking hold. This essay is organized into four sections. The first explores the

wide context in which clerks lived and worked from the end of World War I to World War II. The expanding timber industry, an authoritarian colonial state, and the long tradition of European influence on the Gabonese coast all helped frame the decisions and choices of clerks. After this discussion, I then review and analyze the array of clerks' political negotiations outside the capital. While some white-collar employees acted to guard the interests of rural people, others tried to exert control over others on behalf of their bosses. The third section considers the charges of fraud often mounted against Gabonese clerks. African white-collar workers sometimes encountered great risks in manipulating their location as middlemen in the colonial order, but their place in society also, on occasion, allowed some wide latitude to build economic resources and to attract dependents. Finally, the case of Anghiley is reconsidered to demonstrate how clerks used their connections. With office workers' command of African and European networks, the transition from clerk to politician was a relatively easy one, as evidenced by the careers of L6on Mba and others.

Education, Urban Identity, and White-Collar Labour in Interwar Libreville The sordid realities of daily life in early twentieth-century Gabon rarely matched French imperial ambitions (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1972; Headrick and Austen 1983; Bernault 1996; Gray 2002). Occupied by various types of tropical rainforest, the colony attracted few administrators and an even smaller number of settlers until the 1920s even though France had set up the coastal town of Libreville some eighty years earlier. Poor roads and dense forests meant that, before World War II, wide territories not linked to rivers such as the Ogoou6 took many days to reach. High taxes, a brutal concessionary company regime similar to Leopold II's notorious system in the Congo, and competition between African communities for control over trade routes and dependents made much of Gabon an exceedingly violent place. World War I further devastated Gabon as the northern part of the colony became a battleground between French forces and German troops from Cameroon. Inspectors from the colonial ministry referred to Gabon



62 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

as a lost colony bereft of strong leadership (Texier 1924). A wide range of communities lived in the colony. On the coast,

groups who had acted as middlemen between interior commercial networks and Europeans profited from the slave trade and later from their access to European education. The Mpongwe of the Gabon Estuary, Galwa clans living along the Ogoou6 River in Central Gabon, and Orungu villagers on the mouth of the Ogoou6 all had incorporated European dress and manners into their daily lives (Bucher 1977; Ambourou6-Avaro 1981; Ratanga-Atoz 2000). Various scattered Fang-speaking clans held sway over much of northern and central Gabon after having migrated from Cameroon and Spanish Guinea during the nineteenth century (Fernandez 1982; Cinnamon 1998). The big men of the Fang clans in the Gabon Estuary battled one another for access to dependents and trade until the catastrophes of war and famine, as well as stronger French military power, finally forced Fang villagers to acquiesce to colonial administrators by the early 1920s. Meanwhile, a complicated and fluid set of societies based on clans inhabited the southern part of Gabon. French officials and missionaries imposed their own ethnic labels on subject peoples to govern them better; eventually, local people embraced and reshaped these categories to create new social bonds (Cinnamon 1998; Gray 2002).

Both state policies and group identities radically changed, however, in the 1920s, as a result of timber. The colonial government and a host of private entrepreneurs had established timber camps on the Gabon Estuary and the Ogoou6 River by 1920. Okoume, a giant tree found only in Gabon and in parts of Cameroon, became the main export of the colony and a windfall for the previously impoverished colonial budget.' To support the industry, officials cajoled thousands of workers from both northern and southern Gabon to work in timber camps for little pay and at great risk. Industrial accidents and severe epidemics of beriberi killed hundreds of workers. Moreover, village farmers were not able to feed the timber camps created in rural, thinly populated areas. Thus, famine and food shortages haunted the Gabon Estuary until the Great Depression. Although the economic downturn of the 1930s sent some businesses into bankruptcy, lumber exports dominated the colony's economy until well after World War II.

Timber businessmen usually had offices in Libreville. A small




urban center, with a population of no more than 10 000 people in 1940, the town was the centre of administration and missionary work for the colony (Bernault 1996, 56). The town's African population offered both benefits and challenges to European residents. For example, Mpongwe people who had been educated by mission schools since the 1840s demanded equal rights with Europeans on the grounds they were as French by culture and taste as any Parisian. Their vocal and persistent protests in the 1920s unnerved officials and settlers alike, especially when Mpongwe discontent reached Paris through letters to parliamentary deputies and left- wing human rights organizations (Rich 2002, 168-208). On the other hand, Mpongwe women, by their own choice or through family pressure, entered into sexual unions with visiting Europeans in a tradition of cohabitation that had existed before formal colonial occupation (Rich 2003). Most leading Mpongwe families had some European ancestry, and their insistence on equal rights with metropolitan-born French citizens helped make the town one of the few in colonial Africa not segregated by racial categories.

Much of Gabon experienced hardship in the early twentieth century, but African men in enclaves such as Libreville prospered as a result of their access to office work. Decades before the end of World War I, the town had developed a reputation as a source of skilled African labour for colonial governments and private enterprises in West and Central Africa. As the headquarters for both American Protestant and French Catholic missionary efforts founded in the 1840s, Libreville residents had access to the largest Western educational institutions between Duala and Luanda on the Central African Atlantic coast in the nineteenth century (Gardinier 1978, 1991, 1998). After the 1870s, coastal Mpongwe people sent most free children, boys and girls, to mission schools. Although free Mpongwe men lost their political independence and their monopoly over interior trade, they adapted to the new colonial order by filling skilled positions as commercial agents of European companies in rural areas, office workers at government and retail enterprises in the port itself, and interpreters and guides.

By the decade before 1914, many Mpongwe men from Libreville were working in state offices, stores, and mission schools from the Ivory Coast to the Belgian Congo (Communaut6 de Saint



64 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

Pierre 1909, 393; Nassau 1914, 175-76; Morel and Rohrer 1994, 31; Martin 1995, 24).2 Despite its miniscule size, until the end of the 1950s, the town remained a major source of clerks for the colony and the surrounding region. Many Libreville men I interviewed who had graduated from mission schools started their postgraduate career as office workers or store managers in their late teens and early twenties. Some, particularly those from Mpongwe families, followed in the footsteps of their fathers.3

The profession of "clerk," whether it entailed managing migrant workers at timber camps or typing documents for a state bureau, had become an indispensable part of colonial society by the 1920s. Clerks were a crucial element in the chain of communica- tion on which officials and private companies relied. In general, men seeking social or political advancement usually moved into white-collar jobs. Unlike other Africans, particularly rural people who had little access to basic European education, clerical staff from Libreville possessed a firm knowledge of Western bureaucratic correspondence. By knowing how to present requests and demands in a way immediately intelligible to French administrators and other European residents of the colony, office workers enjoyed a valuable skill that they were also able to use for their own personal benefit. Moreover, their place as interpreters of colonial authority gave them much leeway in influencing disputes among rural villagers in the Gabon Estuary, the government, and timber companies.

Clerks in Libreville Town Society Office workers in Libreville made up an influential minority of Africans living in the port. Salaried white-collar workers made up only a small fraction of the total population of Gabon as a whole (Bernault 1996, 88-90), but men taking advantage of Libreville's schools easily found employment in office and stores. The high salaries of office workers and store managers made these jobs invit- ing to mission school graduates between the wars. Experience counted a great deal in determining wages, as beginning positions were far less lucrative than the benefits received by experienced managers. Entry level clerks in the late 1920s and 1940s did not earn much more than unskilled labourers;4 however, those with at least several years' experience under their belt could earn up to 9




000 francs (FF) annually during the Great Depression, a sum that exceeded the average pay for manual labourers by ten times or more (Anghiley 1930g; D6partement Estuaire 1935a).

Clerical employees had very diverse backgrounds, a majority, however, having roots in coastal groups such as the Mpongwe or the Orungu. Some, such as L6on Mba, originated from Estuary Fang clans who had spent time in mission schools in Libreville, Donguila in the rural Gabon Estuary, or along the Ogoou6. A small, but influential, group also came from French possessions in West Africa. In addition, Senegalese workers earned their keep as clerks in Gabon, and mixed Wolof-Mpongwe families had developed in Libreville (Diop 1990). Blaise Diagne, later a deputy from Senegal, once worked as a customs officer (Johnson 1971, 149-53). Still others came from Dahomey (Marcolino 1942a).

One benefit sought out by white-collar workers regardless of their origins was political advancement. Almost all the Libreville men vying for membership in the council of notables created by the government in 1936 had worked in the offices of large timber and commercial firms. A list of candidates for a council of notables assigned to advise local officials makes this point clear (Chef D6partment Estuaire 1936). Almost all of the potential members had worked at a range of jobs, running stores and managing offices. Pierre-Marie Ak6nda, for instance, began his career as a clerk for a Brazzaville retailer, moved to managing a store for a German company in L6opoldville for almost a decade, and finally returned home to labour in the Public Works office. Mpongwe clan leader F6lix Adende worked for the governor's office, a British trading firm, and several timber camps. Other than serving in the military or becoming a master artisan, educated men had few options besides office work to make a name for themselves. Gabonese "native delegate" Frangois de Paul Vane defended mission education in a letter to the Minister of Colonies by noting how its alumni worked as clerks and managers throughout West Africa; without schools, a valuable occupation would be lost to men in Libreville (Vane 1936). Vane spoke from firsthand knowledge as he had taken positions with the French government in the Ivory Coast and Upper Volta before toiling in stores owned by French and Lebanese men (Chef D6partment Estuaire 1936).

Individuals often passed back and forth between the public and



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private sector. For example, L6on Mba became a de facto spokesper- son for Estuary Fang concerns while working as a customs agent in the early 1920s (Cadier 1923). Mba, as a young low-ranking official from Libreville stationed outside the town, represented villagers in their dealings with the colonial administration in the early 1920s (Chief Conscription Estuaire 1922ab). Officials appointed him a regional chief of Fang villages near Libreville after they learned local critics of the government in the proto-nationalist Jeunes Gabonais (JG) group had tried to recruit him (Cadier 1923; Governor General 1924). Mba's increasingly rebellious behaviour, as well as rumors of his involvement in human sacrifice and sorcery, led to his exile to Oubangui-Chari in 1932. Although his career fell victim to a European distrust of Gabonese leaders, he would eventually return to Libreville and, with some French assis- tance, become the country's leader at independence in 1960 (Bernault 1996, 216-34). When Mba returned to Libreville in 1946 after twelve years in exile, he became a political activist while supervising a store owned by the British John Holt company (Brouillet 1972, 199; Bernault 1996, 219). Undoubtedly, the financial rewards of being a clerk helped him finance his extensive activities and raise support until he was elected mayor of Libreville in 1956.

Wealthy clerks displayed their success in a variety of ways. Louis Bigmann, a clerk who later became a leading member of the Gabonese National Assembly, recalled a lively social scene that included parties featuring European music and dancing, as well as prizes for the best-dressed couple (Bigmann 1983). Suits, ties, glasses, and bicycle riding had become de rigueur among young white-collar workers by the 1920s (Briault 1927, 40). Besides adopt- ing foreign goods into their everyday practices, clerks also formed social organizations along formal and informal lines. Through work and common education, Mpongwe and Estuary Fang clerks often developed lengthy friendships.5 The short-lived Amicale Louisienne, staffed by a number of office workers, was formed in 1946 to promote the interests of the Louis neighbourhood in Libreville (Amicale Louisienne 1946). Some also served as benefac- tors of church activities; for instance, Vane and several other white- collar workers staffed the short-lived Catholic mission publication Trait Union in the late 1930s (Trait Union 1938). Finally, the riches




won by bureaucratic toil allowed some men to support multiple wives and encouraged some married women to concentrate on domestic labour in the home rather than working in fields.6

Nevertheless, such behaviour did not always please their former instructors or French-born residents. European missionaries and officials had long scorned Libreville residents for their inter- est in office work and their unwillingness to accept the sharp rifts between "European" and "African" cultures. Catholic priest Maurice Briault held Mpongwe men dressed in sharp suits in special contempt. Discussing African government workers, Briault fulminated:

From the moment the Blacks of our villages know how to write a bit, they are hypnotized by the office and the paper that they will scribble on, the white outfit they will wear, and the glasses that they judge to be the fashion. Very often, these too hand- some little workers are seen taking a trip to prison for irregular accounting or an ingenuous forgery (1945, 98).

According to other observers, Mpongwe men had become decadent and lazy from overexposure to European culture. An administrator in 1935, for one, blasted Libreville townspeople for considering themselves superior to other Africans (D6partment Estuaire 1935b). French settler Georges Trial indulged in his fondness for stereotypes of corrupt civilization and noble savages when he lamented Gabonese clerks for supposedly following the worst elements of European "vices," aping French manners and dress, and not acting like Trial's fantasy of docile and happy children (1939, 82-83).

French officials vilified clerks because of their participation in protest movements and their rejection of sharp distinctions between rulers and ruled. Libreville office workers, whether claiming membership in a Mpongwe, Fang, or other ethnic community, undermined strict colonial hierarchies of race and education through their repeated clamouring for equal legal treatment with Europeans and their adoption of Western fashions. A young French veteran observed soon after the end of World War II: "The blacks running stores had the same flavor as the whites of Libreville ... same dress, same manners, same mouth! They had conscience of their dignity" (Brouillet 1972, 52). Clerical workers were able to uphold their dignity on a regular basis. From the 1880s to the mid-



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1920s, they helped to submit petitions and lobby French human rights groups, as well as the colonial government, to demand reforms (Fr6zouls 1911; Ballard 1963, 112-27; Rich 2002). The actions of private clerks in rural areas also exposed the fluid and chaotic nature of European authority that rarely matched the ideal of a well-regulated and organized administration.

Clerks, Politics, and Rural Negotiations in the Gabon Estuary, 1920-45 Officials and entrepreneurs seeking to exploit the forests of the Gabon Estuary could accomplish little without skilled help. The few administrators willing to stay in Gabon for more than two or three years usually moved around the colony and thus had little opportunity to learn any African language well. In the 1920s, inspectors sent by the Minister of Colonies complained of a severe shortage of competent officials in Gabon and of the revolving door of men in government positions; the position of governor alone changed hands seventeen times from 1916 to 1924 (Texier 1924). This environment made auxiliaries essential for daily operations and to communicate with Africans unable to speak French.

Clerks often became embroiled in disputes, particularly in ones between villagers and timber companies. During the famine conditions that pervaded the Gabon Estuary during the 1920s, clerks rounded up scarce labour and resources needed by their employers. Thus, the Consortium, the biggest single employer of timber workers in the Estuary, hired Charles Ogoula to purchase food for workers from indigenous farmers (Bonvin 1928). A rival to the Consortium charged that Ogoula threatened recalcitrant farmers with imprisonment if they did not hand over their manioc to him (Director PROA 1928). Although it is unclear what Ogoula actually said to villagers, it is likely that individual clerks could routinely claim the power to imprison or send guards after those villagers who were unwilling to trade for food. In fact, rural people in the Gabon Estuary regularly beheld the spectacle of uniformed soldiers rounding up adult men for forced labour details in the 1920s and 1930s.7 Few timber camp owners had the linguistic and cultural knowledge to bargain with, or intimidate, Fang farmers as Ogoula did.

Some clerks from Libreville, however, acted to defend, rather




than exploit, migrants and indigenous people, albeit often in an ambiguous fashion. The case of Victor Onanga illustrates the careful ways clerks might intercede for others. Onanga, a twenty- nine-year-old, mixed-race clerk who worked for the powerful concessionary company Soci6t6 de Haut Ogoou6 (SHO), had the early misfortune of working with a settler named Vecten. A colon who owned several plantations in the Estuary region, Vecten had a terrible reputation for his unflinching racism and paranoid behaviour (Thomann 1919; Donguila Journal 1929; Vecten 1941). Onanga (1922a) wrote a district administrator a letter describing the settler's cruel attitudes towards his employees:

[We] are tired of enduring all the miseries that we face with Vecten [and] we have the honor of asking you very humbly to help us by delivering us from his oppression ... we are his slaves rather than his workers.

The clerk claimed that Vecten had commanded Onanga and five Fang plantation workers to find manioc in a canoe. The African workers followed orders and came to Libreville, but a floating log smashed their pirogue soon after they left for home. Vecten became so enraged by this that he chased his men to Libreville. They tried to find work with other Europeans, but since they remained under contract to Vecten, they could not find an employer willing to engage them. Hence, the workers returned to the settler's outpost, supposedly receiving no food once back at the plantation.

Onanga's story sparked immediate action from local authorities. One reason may have been the clerk's choice of words. Slavery, far from being extinct in the Gabon Estuary, had survived in several forms. Some Mpongwe families still owned an aging population of slaves that had come from southern Gabon during the late nineteenth century.8 Officials harped on this fact to discredit the claims of Libreville townspeople that they deserved equal treatment with Europeans (Gabon 1921, 3-4). Perhaps Onanga also meant to touch on another issue that administrators were not keen on discussing. Commandants, state-appointed chiefs, and agents hired by timber companies all used coercion to force men from rural areas to do forced labour for the government or to join timber camps for extremely low wages until 1945. Even without the potentially controversial issue of slavery, colonial officers had little fondness for Vecten as the settler had a long history of quarrels with the



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government. Vecten had already banged horns with one governor of Gabon by convincing low-ranking administrators to bring his workers food extorted from farmers during a famine (Thomann 1919). The colon defended himself by portraying Onanga as a disgruntled "anarchist" agitator who been jailed for urging workers to revolt and who had sought revenge by "malevolent insults and lies" (Vecten 1922).

Administrators interrogated the clerk in July 1922. Giving a perspective that differed from both his previous statement and Vecten's diatribe (Ley 1922), Onanga declared at first that he had no problem with his former superior and had left his post only because his contract ran out. As for the letter, he stated he had simply trans- lated the complaints of others, rather than voiced his own opinion. His posture of neutrality did not preclude Onanga from embarrass- ing Vecten. The clerk remarked that he had been jailed and fined because he had become embroiled in a quarrel with some workers over food and had whipped workers at Vecten's orders against state regulations. Far from displeased, the settler had paid Onanga's fine and kept a whip, which he hid only when administrators inspected his plantation. Finally, Vecten had tried to persuade Onanga to rent some of his fields at a high price, becoming angry when his employee turned down his offer.

The documentary trail of Onanga's battle with Vecten ends with his interrogation. Whatever the end result of the affair, the clerk acted to defend the interests of workers in a careful manner. By claiming neutrality at the same time as he portrayed his former patron as a violent and deceitful man, Onanga shaped his interactions with colonial officials in ways that criticized his foe without acting as a threat to French government interests. He crafted his message to fit colonial paternalist attitudes without incriminating himself or softening his opposition to Vecten. His ability to find another position also shows the value of clerks to foreign companies. Even Onanga, with a prison record and an extremely irate former European superior, had little apparent trouble landing another job.

Traders and clerks acted as interpreters and witnesses in other rural disputes between Africans and Europeans. The Cocobeach region on the border with Spanish Guinea went through an uproar in the early 1940s over the actions of guards who had been brought




to the region from other parts of the colony. Roughly one hundred kilometres due north of the colonial capital, the area was home to a number of Fang clans. In 1943, an anonymous writer claiming to represent the "Cocobeach population" berated the local administrator to the governor for keeping men at forced labour for months at a time, while allowing women to leave their husbands for guards from southern Gabon (Anonymous 1943). The governor ordered an investigation into the charges.

Two Libreville-born Mpongwe bureaucrats, a clerk and a customs agent, testified to an inspector on the situation (Raymonecq 1943a). They reported that local women regularly abandoned their husbands for guards and that officials in Cocobeach had jailed troops willing to sleep with married women. One even added the government had to be hard with Fang people "or else no one would obey them." These witnesses justifying harsh policies did not concur with the anonymous critic of the government. Their bias towards rural people did not mean all office workers supported such harsh policies. Ironically, officials suspected the petition originated with a clerk in Libreville. The state investigator believed that a Fang man, upset that his wife had left him for a soldier, went to Libreville to change the situation. Himself illiterate, he probably persuaded an office worker to write the letter (Raymonecq 1943b).

Some urban clerks who ran their own side ventures outside the capital also provoked administrators and African government employees. As one example, a clerk from Dahomey named Marcel do Marcolino became a thorn in the government's side in 1942 (Marcolino 1942ab; de Pompignan 1942; Saint-Alary 1942). A planter on the side, Marcolino asserted that a guard had robbed and chained one of Marcolino's employees near the small town of Kango after the guard had first asked for a bribe. Low-ranking officials claimed the clerk's associate's story was pure fiction and had Marcolino fined for libel (Chief Subdivision Kango 1942). The clerk declared that he "stoically accepted his punishment without admitting any moral culpability" (Marcolino 1942b). Governor of Gabon, Assier de Pompignan, believed that Marcolino's own worker may have told the truth or used the story to embezzle from his African employer; to make matters more confusing, de Pompignan's subordinate investigating the case distrusted



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Marcolino's story because the clerk himself had spent six months in jail for fraud in 1939. In this murky situation, Marcolino sought to use his knowledge of bureaucratic correspondence on his own behalf, but to no avail. Like Onanga, his checkered past had not closed off white-collar work, but it did limit his ability to influence government decisions.

White-collar workers who could formulate documents and narratives accepted by colonial officials had the ability to shape the contours of how administrators made political and legal decisions. It is hard to classify clerks in rural regions as either collaborators with French authorities or defiant rebels. Individuals worked to guard their reputations and defend their interests. Sometimes, they aided Estuary people, who were often voiceless in policy debates; on other occasions, they worked with the government to impose French authority. Occasionally, as well, the colonial state acted to impose its will on clerks.

Risks of the Bureau: Clerks, Criminals, and Colonial Justice The relatively high salaries and prestige surrounding clerks made office work attractive, but the profession had its own risks and drawbacks. French bureaucrats could count on pensions and social insurance by the 1920s, but most African clerks in Libreville did not receive these benefits on a regular basis until after World War II. Former office employers suffering from disabling illnesses wrote with little success to obtain government stipends in the 1940s (Pompignan 1943). Office workers also encountered problems from being in close proximity to European supervisors. Charles N'no Ndong, a young junior clerk during World War II, changed positions repeatedly as a result of strife with his co-workers and superiors.9

Perhaps the biggest danger for clerks was accusations of fraud. Officials in Libreville, from the turn of century onwards, regularly charged office workers with embezzlement. The antipathy of Europeans towards educated Africans often placed clerks in danger, especially since police officers and judges often acted on their firm prejudices, rather than on concrete sources of evidence. A Canadian missionary, writing immediately before World War I, described the trial and imprisonment of a young Mpongwe man who had been accused of robbing a safe in a government bureau. Even though the




pastor declared that no clear evidence linked the man with the crime and that many white bureaucrats had equal opportunity to pilfer the money, the African clerk was quickly jailed, later dying of tuberculosis in his cell (Milligan 1908, 310-13). Charges of embezzlement often derived solely from stereotypes of the supposedly dangerous and untrustworthy character of educated African men.

Nevertheless, a number of Libreville clerks did clearly engage in forgery and unscrupulous behaviour. As producers of documentation and knowledge that was relied on by colonial authorities and townspeople, bureaucrats and store managers had ample opportunities for profit. In the summer of 1936, a man from southern Gabon came to collect money in a savings account from a French bureaucrat at Libreville (Tribunal Indigene 1936). Michel Mondingo presented the European with two sets of account book- lets without official stamps and missing several pages. After being questioned, Mondingo stated that a clerk named Oumar Sow had given him his proof of deposit for a twenty franc fee. Sow denied the charges of forgery even though police agents alleged the handwrit- ing on the false deposit forms matched the suspect's hand. Another witness stated that Sow had given him five francs to lie about the office worker's act of fraud. The judge handed down a three-month jail sentence.

Less fortunate was Laurent Toumba, a former office worker from Cameroon arrested in the following year (Tribunal Indighne 1937). Police discovered that Toumba had on his person a certifi- cate of service with the signature of an imaginary administrator in Cameroon and a French surveyor, who had spent only a month in Libreville. After briefly staying in the state hospital where he stole food from another patient, he was put in jail. Before a French judge and several African assistants, Toumba claimed a thief had taken his papers proving that he had paid taxes and had steady employment. Instead of admitting to the charges, Toumba argued he was still working for the surveyor. The judge, after observing spelling errors in the forged papers and the fictional signature, sent Toumba to prison for ten years. The willingness of an African to usurp the identity of state authorities threatened the network of correspondence and colonial hierarchies much more than did Sow's minor act of misappropriation.

Staff at European trading houses also misused funds and made



74 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2oo4

off with their employers' goods. One case involving two young store assistants reveals the strategies of lowly cashiers in theft and in legal proceedings, the nature of daily transactions at stores in Libreville, as well as government attitudes towards educated Africans. Although the documents in the case pose as many ques- tions as they answer, the trial records are rich in detail. George Antchou& and Louis Samba, two Mpongwe men in their early twenties in 1936, worked at the Compagnie d'Exploitations Commerciales Africaines (CECA) store in the Mpongwe neighbourhood of Glass (Allys 1937; Anonymous 1938). Their French superior noted a few accounting discrepancies in daily accounts during the fall of 1936, but did not report the problem to the police.

Several months later, a Togolese bar owner living next to CECA noticed that someone had cut out a plank from one of the walls of the store; he told Antchou6, himself leaning on a board, who told the man not to worry about it. Antchou6, the store manager who collected the receipts each Monday, affirmed to police the next day that an unknown perpetrator had taken more than 15 000 French francs and some receipts. He pinned the crime on a Fang guard who Antchou6 had sent out to wash some glasses at closing time the night of the burglary (Allys 1937a; Antchou6 1937). Police did not believe the clerk as the hole in the wall was too small for anyone to enter the building, and no noise had disturbed his Togolese neigh- bour's dogs.

Law enforcement authorities then launched an inquiry. Instead of focusing on the crime itself, oddly enough, they began by inter- rogating Antchou6's friends about an elaborate New Year's Eve party. Antchou6 accompanied a mainly female entourage to the "Joyaux Palace," a nightclub known for dancing, as well as a pick- up spot for Frenchmen seeking sex with local women. There, they danced, ate expensive cake, and "emptied numerous champagne bottles," which had been paid for in part by one woman's French lover (Allys 1937b). Police also asked one woman if Antchou6 had a mixed race mistress. Why were the authorities concerned with details about the suspect's personal life, which were seemingly unrelated to the crime? The answer perhaps lies in European stereotypes of educated African men. Profligate spending and expensive tastes might have been construed as motives by investi- gators seeking to solve the mystery; the image of the hypocritical,




debauched, and wasteful Mpongwe men had long been a favorite among French residents in town.

A review of CECA accounting ledgers provoked even more scrutiny by police. One examiner declared that the account numbers had been altered and that 7 000 francs had been removed from the accounts (Messam 1937; Anonymous 1938). At some point in early 1937, the administration placed Antchou6 and his co- worker Louis Samba into custody to await trial. Samba had trouble sticking to a single explanation. He first pleaded innocence, then declaring that Antchou6 had ordered him to change the ledgers. A month later, he stated that he had corrected an error made by his French supervisor, who had promptly denied the mistake and made Samba set down the incorrect figures that Antchou6 later reviewed (Tribunal Libreville 1937; Samba 1937ab). Finally, he declared that in November 1936, he had returned from counting inventory in a rural store to Libreville. After drinking with friends, he went to the CECA store, but asked whether he could rest since he was too intoxicated to work effectively. His manager threatened to beat him unless Samba stayed on the job; thus, the African clerk made some miscalculations (Samba 1937c). Because Samba had turned in 25 000 FF from the village store he had inspected on the same day, he argued that if he were truly dishonest, he would have taken all of the proceeds.

When the case finally went to trial in February 1938, Antchou6 and Samba turned against each other (Anonymous 1938). Antchou6 blamed his colleague, who had the task of keeping daily entries in the ledgers, while Samba stated that he had only followed his African superior's orders. The court, evidently not pleased with Antchou6's lifestyle, concluded, "The theft hypothesis is inadmis- sible. Antchou6's guilt is clear. He entertained himself, visited bars in Glass and often bought champagne for many guests." Living the high life apparently was more damning in the court's view than evidence actually related to the case. Though it was unclear whether Samba and Antchou6 had each engaged in embezzlement separately or whether they had worked together, the administrator overseeing the trial found both men guilty, condemned them to eight and seven years in jail respectively, and then banished them from their home colony after they had served the first year of their sentences in Gabon (Masson 1939). Trial records from Libreville



76 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

courts in the late 1930s indicate that only murderers received harsher judgments.

The case gives different insights into the lives of Libreville clerks. Regardless of their guilt or innocence, the two men had regular access to sizable sums of money on a regular basis without constant supervision from European managers. Receipts from the night of the supposed burglary also reveal that store clients tended to put expenses on a regular account rather than pay for items in cash.'0 Clerks thus had the ability to edit inventories and accounts for their own benefit. In the same manner, they could also reshape meanings while acting as translators between European administrators and rural villagers. The skill of self-representation, just as in the case of Onanga, proved a major litmus test for office workers; if they succeeded in persuading Europeans of their honesty, they could escape harm. Finally, the court's attitude towards revelry suggests once again that clerks faced much prejudice that made exonerating themselves difficult.

Ironically, European businessmen sometimes even encouraged corruption among their employees. In the late 1920s, a self-styled, French adventurer and disaffected timber camp employee by the name of Georges Trial investigated the ledgers of a timber camp office on the Ogoou6 River, which was run by an African clerk (Trial 1939, 77-90). The manager, Gaston Oroumbangani, immediately struck Trial as a "pretentious black" since he was wearing a white suit. The clerk's fate was sealed once the Frenchman decided that his Gabonese subordinate was somehow a victim of misguided mission education and had "only succeeded in 'acting white'; this is to say, to only copy the weaknesses, vices, and turpitudes that a lamentable number of whites display under the African sun with an unbelievable cynicism" (1939, 82-83). When Oroumbangani handed over the camp's accounts to Trial, the visiting European sifted through a poorly ordered mess of papers to find Oroumbangani had handed out enormous advances of well over 10 000 francs to many African workers who had no ability to pay the company back (Trial 1939, 84-90). Furthermore, some men involved in cutting down trees for the firm claimed Oroumbangani had lied about the amount of rice and other goods he had given them. Trial thus decided to bring criminal charges against his subordinate.




What would seem to be an open-and-shut case ran into an unex- pected obstacle. The head of the company Trial worked for refused to support the investigation. After listening to Trial (1939, 92-93), the director replied that he was more than happy to see ordinary Gabonese labourers bound in debt to the company. A completely disgusted Trial protested the director's chicanery, especially when his supervisor defended his tactics, by claiming, "we do business in savage lands with savages" (1939, 94). To make matters even worse, in Trial's opinion, the director added: "[Oroumbangani] does as well in finding a good-sized lot of lumber as in digging up a pretty mulatto woman to dispel your loneliness. He was let alone too much ... Gaston is a negro ... in other words, an accessory without any importance" (1939, 91-92). Dishonest European businesses condoned dishonest African clerks, even using them to increase their power over workers. The fact Oroumbangani was willing to act as a go-between to satisfy European sexual desires probably helped his cause. Other office workers would prove equally skilled at challenging their employers and utilizing their resources to influence state policy without resorting to deception.

Clerks, Chases, and Culprits: The Case of Charles Schmidt In 1930, Benoit Anghiley was a middle-aged Mpongwe accountant with several decades of experience working for European trading firms (Raponda Walker 1993, 195). He had the misfortune of being hired by Yugoslav contractor Charles Schmidt a few months after the crash of 1929 (Anghiley 1930f). His patron, similar to other entrepreneurs in Libreville, faced ruin as a result of the sudden collapse of timber exports to Germany. By 1931, over six firms had closed their doors in the Gabonese capital and the lumber industry had collapsed (Association des Commergants 1931; Gabon 1931, 2). Some unlucky businessmen even left the colony. Schmidt, running a business that employed over seventy Africans, apparently decided that flight was preferable to bankruptcy.

The devious businessman devised a plan to escape from his creditors. After returning from a weekend hunting trip to his home on 16 March 1930, he told his Polish assistant that he would pay his workers some of the 3 500 francs he owed them the next morning, but then he drove his truck again into the bush (Zaleski 1930). Once



78 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

Anghiley caught wind of Schmidt's travels and discovered his superior's absence from Libreville on 17 March, he pleaded with the local administrator to catch the fugitive European, who was trying to evade his striking, angry workforce (Anghiley 1930a). A timber camp employee discovered a feverish Schmidt trying to push a canoe into the water in a bid to reach Spanish Guinea, where he had once lived (Anonymous 1930).11 The weakened man apparently persuaded authorities that a nervous breakdown had led him to leave town and promised once again to pay his staff. Eventually, by borrowing money from Senegalese and Mpongwe businessmen, he paid his West African carpenters some of what he owed them in late March, without reimbursing his other employees (Anghiley 1930c).

Anghiley did not accept Schmidt's story, and later events confirmed the doubts of the African clerk. On 7 April, Schmidt placed a sign on his door announcing that he would distribute wages the next day at noon (Anghiley 1930c). Nevertheless, he slipped out of town early the next morning, leaving Anghiley and his fellow workers fuming and empty-handed at his house (Anghiley 1930bc). The Mpongwe clerk then put his connections to work to ensnare his foe. He contacted the Fang chef de canton who had been appointed to govern the region between Libreville and the Spanish Guinea border, as well as the Estuary administrator, to enlist both of their aid in capturing Schmidt (Anghiley 1930de). To coordinate efforts to entrap the fleeing Schmidt, Anghiley relayed news from rural guards and village leaders about Schmidt's movements to administrators, as well as handing over his ledgers to the police (Anghiley 1930d, 1930eg). Unfortunately, no further records indicate the fate of either the shady owner or his crafty clerk.

The experience of Anghiley demonstrates the ability of clerical workers to use multiple strategies to protect their interests and assert their value. Anghiley, a well-paid assistant who earned much more than most of Schmidt's hired help (Anghiley 1930g), articulated the concerns of his subordinates and put pressure on colonial authorities to act. In addition, his ties to rural people allowed him to transmit reports and coordinate efforts to capture the European miscreant during the manhunt. Although he acted out of self-inter- est, just as Samba and Antchouey would do later on, Anghiley's high position allowed him to force the hand of officials without incurring the wrath of the colonial government. Clerks could thus




manipulate their command of bureaucracy and of personal connections without actively opposing state policies or engaging in deceit or corruption. Although it may never be known whether Anghiley was successful in obtaining his lost funds, his case shows the multifaceted skills of clerical workers.

Conclusion Clerks in the Gabon Estuary entered into disputes with officials and European residents on a regular basis. Educated Africans elicited both distrust and mockery from Frenchmen living in Gabon between the wars, but neither the colonial bureaucracy nor the expanding timber and retail industries could hope to function without indigenous help. This steady need for office labour opened the door for mission-educated male townspeople to prosper and develop capital. High wages attracted Libreville men to assume white-collar positions. Besides taking home a good salary, clerks also had signif- icant power to mould or rearrange the impact of state policies. French businessmen and administrators, in turn, relied on clerks to supply them with information and process it for European consumption in the reform of ledgers, reports, and correspondence. Laurent Toumba and Oumar Sow began by shuffling paperwork, but ended up producing their own documents in an effort to take creative control over European bureaucratic methods for their own benefit. Charles Ogoula intimidated villagers by taking on the guise of government authority. These middlemen thus tapped their imag- inative potential to alter their place in the hierarchies of authority.

Office workers' skill in slipping between the barriers between colonizers and their subjects placed clerks under the scrutiny of Europeans. Police in the Antchou6 and Samba case believed the temptations of quick cash and living well had led educated Africans to crime. Victor Onanga's unwillingness to own up fully to his own criticism of a tyrannical colon suggests that office workers and managers understood clearly that, in the case of quarrels, the deck was stacked in favour of Europeans. Few clerks seem to have wanted to affront state policies openly. However, former office workers less dependent on their supervisors often put their bureaucratic background to good use in battles with the local administration. Office workers were not rebels, but neither were they simply devoted servants enthralled with serving European superiors.



80 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

Clerks undoubtedly edited the documentary record on a far more expansive scale than the cases under review here indicate. A truly successful bureaucrat-entrepreneur is one who does not leave behind traces of his culpability. It is difficult to believe that all office workers reworking documents and correspondence were as inept as Antchou6 and Samba. Anghiley's networking skills and firm handle on procedure reveal a more experienced and savvy mind at work than that of the two guilty embezzlers. A well-ordered account of a particular dispute in the colonial archives might have been as fictional as the unconvincing stories of Samba save that their falsi- fications might have avoided detection. Even if clerks were caught or framed for crimes, they also had the chance to recover. The fact some clerks found work despite having criminal records of fraud demonstrates also that a conviction did not mean the collapse of a career.

The loose and fast procedures of colonial bureaucracies have left their mark on postcolonial politics and society in Gabon. Educated Gabonese office workers have often blurred the line between the private and public sectors, as the case of Leon Mba attests. The care- fully cultivated image of clerks seeking to display their European tastes while perusing their own agenda certainly has parallels in the behaviour of politicians after independence. L on Mba, as well as the present ruler of Gabon, Omar Bongo, both kept close ties with the French government and promoted cultural links to Gabon's former overlords, drawing at the same time, however, from local ethnic and religious idioms. Also, the creative reworking of legal documents and correspondence is an old tradition in Libreville that did not burst on the scene after independence. A cursory examination of government operations since 1960 in Gabon indicates that fraudulent documentation is commonplace (Bernault 1996; Yates 1996; Ngolet 2000). Instead of viewing corruption as a dramatic symptom of postcolonial conditions, it is more accurate that the main change from colonialism to postcolonialism is not the exis- tence of self-serving bureaucratic records, but rather the fact that the stakes of the game have risen exponentially. Clerks in Gabon now have access to wealth unimaginable to their predecessors. One can only hope that other employees will follow Anghiley's example of using bureaucracy to support those victimized by fraud rather than depending on deceit.



Rich: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon 8i

Notes 1 On the timber industry and famines in Gabon in the 1920s, see Sautter (1966), de Dravo (1979), Ayingone Eki (1984), Cinnamon (1998), Gray and Ngolet (1999), Rich (2001). 2 Many people with whom I spoke in Libreville make reference to Mpongwe workers abroad before 1914. Interview, Simone Saint Denis, 11 December 1999; Interview, Marc-Luc Ivanga, Montagne Sainte, 27 November 1999; Interview, Simone Saint-Denis, Plaine Niger, 11 December 1999; Henriette Izour6, Glass, 1 September 2000. 3 Most older men that I met in Libreville testified to this fact. Interview, Luc-Marc Ivanga, Montagne Sainte, 27 November 1999; Interview, Rahindi Ivendengani, Glass, 1 December 1999; Interview, Messany Nyanguegnona Benoit, Mbatavea, 21 January 2000; Interview, Nno Ndong Charles, Atong Abe, 8 February 2000; Interview, Evoung Ndong Pierre Celestin, Plaine Niger, 3 September 2000; Interview, Obame Jean-Marie, Lalala, 3 October 2000; Interview, Condo Wuidah Paul-Antoine, Akemondjogoni, 24 October 2000. 4 Interview, Luc-Marc Ivanga, Montagne Sainte, Libreville, 27 November 1999; Interview, N'no Ndong Charles, Atong Ab6, Libreville, 8 February 2000. s Interview, Luc-Marc Ivanga, Montagne Sainte, Libreville, 27 November 1999; Interview, Ndong Felicien and Ondo Jean, km 12, Libreville, 1 March 2000. 6 Interview, Ebare Mba Jean, Lalala, Libreville, 8 January 2000. Ebare Mba's uncle was a well-off government office worker who purchased all food rather than relying on his wife to farm. 7 Interview, Obame Mba, Lalala, Libreville, 5 February 2000; Interview, Endame Emane, Donguila, 21 March 2000; Interview, Obame Ndong Jean, Ekome Mebiame Nze Pascal, Bella Frangoise, Donguila, 23 March 2000; Interview, Ambala N'ning Nzolo, Nazamaligue, 24 March 2000; Interview, Ada Nkoghe Veronique and Ndong Essono Mathieu, Nzamaligue, 29 March 2000; Interview, Mba Beyeghe Charles, Akok, 28 October 2000. 8 No scholarly work has examined in detail the decline of domestic slavery among the Mpongwe. For a brief overview, see Rich (2002, 124-27). 9 Interview, Nno Ndong Charles, Atong Ab6, Libreville, 8 February 2000. 10 In the file on the case in the National Archives in Gabon, prosecutors placed twenty-four receipts from January and February 1937. 11 Schimdt spoke Spanish and had worked in the Spanish colony before coming to Gabon. See Anghiley (1930c).



82 CJAS / RCEA 38: I 2004

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Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon, 1920-45

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