Introduction

Once a year from 1979 to 1989, around 21,000 Mozambicans were resettled in East Germany (GDR) for a temporary labour migration policy. That program was signed by the socialist governments of Mozambique and the GDR, and the aims were to train skilled workers so that they would be able to contribute to the industrial development of the country. When the program came to an abrupt end in 1990 after German reunification, many of these people eventually came to be referred to as “madjermanes” (to replace the term “madjar” with “German”). 

The Experience in East Germany

Although the Magdeburgers were distributed from factory to factory across the GDR, they were used primarily in machine factories and textile industries. Initially the madjermanes were trained in the trades, but when the economy of East Germany lost popularity due to the economic crisis of the 1980s, many jobs were reloquenced to unskilled positions, in order to meet the immediate production needs of the industry. 

Return and the Aftermath

With Germany’s reunification in 1990, the migration agreements were cancelled, and almost all Germans were forced out of Mozambique. When they returned home, the return was all but unsatisfying: Mozambique had become part of a civil war, and the economy had been devastated. In addition, the Mozambican government would never fully pay (USD 93.000.000,00 transferred by the German government to Mozambique, and USD 4.500 for each worker, but the money never reached the pockets of the madgermanes). The wages withheld, and many of the workers did not receive any compensation for their losses. 

The Madjerman Legacy and the Historical Relevance of Compensation

Today the Madjerman constitute a very specific group in Mozambique’s society, whose experience of life in the GDR has brought it to the fore, not only with the production of an identity based on the memories of a period of relative prosperity and social organisation, but with the negative comparisons to Mozambique’s current situation, notably with the corruption and failure of the post-colonial project of modernization.  In 2023, Evelyn Zupke, parliamentary representative for victims of the single-party government of the GDR, SED, launched a campaign in which the Human Rights Committee of the German Parliament raised the issue with many MPs. All MPs agreed that the Madgermans should be compensated. It was up to the Foreign Ministry and the MPs to speed up the process.

Conclusion

The story of the Madgermans is not only about how political projects of this kind can have profound and long-lasting effects on a particular individual; indeed, while they gained skills and experience valuable for their future careers, when they returned to Mozambique, it was characterized by exclusion and frustration. They have struggled ever since to be recognised and compensated, to show that the consequences of labour migration go beyond what happened at the end of the contracts; they endure across generations. And every Wednesday, even today, the Madgermans gather in the Madgermans’ garden to demonstrate tirelessly that the same has been done for more than 25 years.