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Liz Weidler and Ana Raquel Masoio, 2024

In the 1960s, the GDR began recruiting contract workers from so-called socialist brother states such as Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Angola, Poland, Bulgaria, and Mozambique to meet an increasing demand for labor. In 1979, a treaty with Mozambique created the conditions for employing around 20,000 Mozambicans in various GDR companies, mostly in production.

“Real existing socialism” was primarily concerned with labor: supposedly unproductive bodies could be obliged to return to their home countries. People who were unable to work due to mental illness, serious injury, or pregnancy were expelled. This not only corresponded to a capitalist logic in which bodies only acquire value through their productivity but also presented itself as a colonial and patriarchal relationship in which the bodies of racialized people, especially those of racialized women, were subjected to ruthless measures to enforce productivity.

The following tour is about their story. It is based on extracts from various conversations and interviews with Mozambican activists Ana Raquel Masoio, Ana Manganhela, Julia Simbine, Leia, Augusta José Macandua and Judite Armando, from the Associação das Mulheres Feministas Mocambicanas Regressadas da Alemanha (AMFMRA - Association of feminist Mozambican women returning from Germany). They show how patriarchal-racist structures in Mozambique and the GDR still determine the lives of these women today - and how they are fighting back.

Stationen

Expectations and medical testing

Arrival and accommodation

Sexist house rules

Medical examinations

Pregnancy and deportation

Racism and white patriarchy

Back in Mozambique

Single parent due to deportation

Keep fighting!

Start