ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 10, Issue 3 (8 April 2008) Language and Labor Conversations about work, language, and life transcribed, translated, and commented by Johannes Fabian University of Amsterdam e-mail: fabian@pscw.uva.nl address: Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology University of Amsterdam Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam The Netherlands   Introduction Text One Text Two   Text Three Text Four Text Five

Text Two

Recorded June 21, 1973 at the home of Kazadi (no other name on record), an assistant supervisor, also in the workers' settlement.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ This was a company-sponsored trade school.
² This passage remain unclear. My guess is that Kazadi hinted at changes in the school's curriculum that were probably related to changing demands at the factory.
³ The references to localities are elliptic. Going on preceding information "there" would be Gécamines and "here" Metalkat, his employer at the time of this conversation.
⁴ The word in Swahili is kompund (with variants such as the originally locative form komponi and kampun or kampunj). The term that shows its English origin, going back to the times when South Africans managed the work force in Katanga. I keep to a somewhat awkward translation because "compound" connotes settlement for migrants worker without their families in southern Africa. "Company town" would be preferable except that it, too, has specific historical associations, especially with nineteenth century settlements in the US. A frequent synonym for kompund the time was cité, short for cité des travailleurs, a term that could be equivocal because it also referred either to the townships (Centre extra-coutumier), the native quarters of colonial times or to the squatters' towns that emerged after Independence (see below).
⁵ The names of the two largest squatters' town near Kolwezi. "Forrest" was the founder's name of an important construction company in Katanga.
⁶ This refers to the social or community center the company maintains in workers' settlement.
⁷ Called ville, that is, the commercial and residential center of town where in colonial times mainly Europeans lived.
⁸ This section starts somewhat clumsily. Local Swahili has two terms for language: One is lugha, which I used first. It can mean language as well as speech. Kazadi understood the latter and took my prompt to mean that I wanted him to talk. I countered with kinywa (lit. the mouth), which I felt was more specific and likely to get us questions of language and multi-lingualism that were on my mind.
⁹ The original has kiKasai, "the language spoken in the Kasai." Later he calls it kiLuba and that could be confusing (though not for him) because the ki- vs. tshi- opposition has been emblematic for the ethnic, often also social and political, distinction between Katanga and the Kasai region. But we are speaking Swahili, which does not have a tshi- prefix.
¹⁰ Kazadi said ah bon, lit. ah fine, perhaps to say that he found this topic a bit exasperating.
¹¹ The question reflects what I had understood at the time; Kazadi's earlier response would indicate that he thought of Swahili as his first language.
¹² This was the current term for the graduates from Mutoshi trade school.
¹³ Part of the recorded phrase is incomprehensible and there is no obvious clue that would permit to fill the gap.
¹⁴ This exchange was caused by my failure to recognize sa as a contraction of sawa, like. It also illustrates what I meant when I said earlier that certain variants such as youth-speak are difficult to understand.
¹⁵ What Kazadi tries to tell me that local or social differences are hardly noticeable except when certain expressions are "commented on," that is, used to characterize or perhaps mock certain speakers.
¹⁶ Because of the bad quality of the recording, Transcribing this part of our conversation was very difficult. The translation is my best guess.
¹⁷ The question implies doubt that it would not be easy to find work in this specialized field
¹⁸ Before the Gécamines hired Congolese in management and engineering cadre was the highest grade
Africans could attain. It went together with higher salaries and, above all, the right to be housed outside the workers' settlement.
¹⁹ Lit. "(A colonialist) is someone who scolds all the time…." "Lack of respect" is my translation of kibengo (the verb is kubenga), with does not occur in the Standard Dictionary. This is a Luba noun (see Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:63) with a complex meaning (it can also signify the required lack of respect in a joking-relationship).
²⁰ That section, one of the most important ones in the electrolytic production of metals, was at the time headed by a Congolese engineer (Kibikiabo).
²¹ Part of this sentence is not comprehensible on the recording. My guess is that Kazadi wanted to tell his father lived close to a work of his (Kazadi's) team.
²² This is my translation for kazi ya mayi, lit. work with water, liquids. It is contrasted with kazi ya bulongo, lit. work with soil, solids.
²³ I am pointing to the electrolysis section (situated opposite the part of the plant where Kazadi worked "with liquids"). Specifically to the work of detaching the sheets of metal that get deposited on the cathodes in the process of electrolysis.
²⁴ The term is one of several that came from Fanagalo, the Nguni-based work language that was used before Swahili was introduced as work language in Katanga (see Fabian 1991).
²⁵ In the original this passage shows that I was not quite up to expressing clearly what I had in mind. The translation is a reconstruction from memory - but that is true, more or less, of all translations.
²⁶ In order to make clear what I meant I added the French gloss vie for uzima.
²⁷ This is one of many uses of "Swahili" in these text and in everyday speech indicating that the term not only signifies a certain linguistic code but also specific contents. Swahili can be what I speak and what I say.

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

[Text Three]

[Text Four]

[Text Five]

[LPCA Home Page]