Insumos Estratégicos y Acciones Estratégicas

The Tole Estate is located practically at the heart of the Bakweri area. Apparently, managerial recruitment efforts among the Bakweri women initially yielded poor results. Like the men in the Bamenda Grassfields, Bakweri men tended to oppose

their wives’ violation of the African tradition (by abandoning food production) and they consider it to be humiliating when their wives earn more money than they themselves (for it tends to make them more autonomous and more disobedient) (De Vega 1971: 85). Unlike the men in the Bamenda Grassfields, Bakweri men also had some more specific reasons for resisting women’s employment on the estate. Plantation production had had some devastating effects on Bakweri society. It had caused the loss of most of its lands. From the time it was seized, the Bakweri have been protesting in various ways against this expropriation and agitating for the return of their lands (Courade 1981/82); Konings 2011a and b). Bakweri men are therefore most reluctant to sell their labour power to the expropriators of their ancestral lands or to allow their wives to work on the estate. In addition, plantation labour had caused a tremendous increase in divorce rates. Bakweri women tended to divorce their poor husbands and marry or cohabitate with the more affluent migrant workers (Ardener 1962). It is hence not hard to understand why Bakweri men tried to prevent their wives from working on the estate: a wage income would enable their wives to repay the bridewealth and lead inevitably to an increase in divorce rates!

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Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa

Bakweri women themselves, too, often demonstrated little interest in working on the estate, because they and their husbands were benefiting in one way or another from the adjacency of the estate. Some of them were letting rooms and renting out land, or selling food and drink to the estate workers. Others were illegally squatting on the estate’s uncultivated lands. And still others were pilfering tea and firewood from the estate.

Table 3.1 Tole Tea Estate labour force, 1965/66-1990/91

______________________________________________________________ YEAR NUMBER OF WORKERS

______________________________________________________________ 1965/66 790 1968/69 778 1974/75 1,129 1975/76 1,329 1976/77 1,232 1977/78 1,106 1980/81 1,415 1981/82 1,315 1884/85 1,639 1985/86 1,526 1986/87 1,546 1987/88 1,578 1988/89 1,276 1989/90 1,217 1990/91 974 ______________________________________________________________ Source: Tole Tea Estate Office.

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Chapter 3: Female workers

Table 3.2 Gender distribution of workers at the Tole Tea Estate, 1988

Source: Tole Tea Estate Office.

Bakweri women who did seek employment on the estate did so mostly on a casual basis, especially during the seasonal peaks in tea production, to obtain some cash. Table 3.3, however, shows that the number of women seeking employment on a permanent basis is rising. During my fieldwork on the estate in 1986, a Bakweri managerial staff member explained this rising trend as follows:

The Tole Tea Estate management had been able to convince the people in the neighbouring villages that it was more advantageous to work permanently on the estate than to steal the estate’s produce and firewood.2

___________________________________________________________________________ SECTION MALE FEMALE TOTAL LABOUR

WORKERS WORKERS FORCE

___________ ___________ No % No %

___________________________________________________________________________ Offi ce 14 64 8 36 22

Clinic/Chi ld Care Centre 5 30 12 70 17 Works hop/Stores 98 96 5 4 1 03 Building/ Maint enance 50 93 4 7 54 Factory 71 92 6 8 77 Fiel d 363 27 968 73 1,3 31

___________________________________________________________________________ TOTAL 601 37 1,003 63 1,6 04

___________________________________________________________________________ Mont hly Paid Workers 82 65.5 43 34.5 1 25

Daily Paid Workers 519 35 960 65 1,4 79

___________________________________________________________________________ TOTAL 601 37 1,003 63 1,6 04

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Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa

Table 3.3 Regional composition of the labour force at Tole Tea Estate, 1969 and 1986

Source: De Vega (1971); and Tole Tea Estate Annual Report 1986. This claim seems to be falsified, however, by managerial reports of a recent increase in theft by the local population. A more likely reason for the rise in female employment on the estate is that the Bakweri men have become less opposed to it during the economic crisis, as it supplements the family income. They are badly in need of cash, because the cooperatives are no longer able to pay them for the delivery of cash crops due to liquidity problems.

______________________________________________________________________________ REGION 1969 1986 ____________________ ________________ No % No % ______________________________________________________________________________ NORTH WEST PROVINCE

Menchum 215 27 415 25 Momo 170 21.8 478 29 Mezam 56 7 134 8 Donga-Mantung 39 5 80 5 Bui 2 0.2 ______________________________________________________________________________ TOTAL 482 61.0 1,107 67 ______________________________________________________________________________ SOUTH WEST PROVINCE

Fako 37 5 199 12 Ndian 69 9 134 8 Manyu 68 8.5 100 6 Meme 62 7.5 53 3 ______________________________________________________________________________ TOTAL 236 30.0 486 29 ______________________________________________________________________________ FRANCOPHONE CAMEROON 19 2 27 1 ______________________________________________________________________________ OUTSIDE CAMEROON 57 7 56 3 ______________________________________________________________________________ GRAND TOTAL 794 100 1,676 100 __________________________ _____________________________________________________ 0.2

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Chapter 3: Female workers

When first confronted with the problem of procuring an adequate supply of local female labour, the Tole Estate management was forced to recruit mainly Nigerian women. This occurred at a time when there was widespread resentment to the dominant position of Nigerians, especially the Igbo and the Ibibio, in the regional economy (Kleis 1980; Konings 2005). These strong anti-Nigerian feelings, together with the government’s subsequent implementation of a stringent Cameroonisation policy, forced the large contingent of Nigerian male workers on the CDC estates to leave. In these circumstances, the management’s ongoing employment and recruitment of Nigerian women was frequently criticised. After being charged again in 1968 with violating the government Cameroonisation policy, the management’s defence was as follows: At Tole Tea a number of Nigerian women, who formed the core of tea pluckers, have been working as casual labourers for over three years. It was then hoped to attract Cameroonian women to Tole to replace them. This hope did not materialise and a decision was taken to absorb them permanently with effect from March 1966. There is absolutely no truth whatever in the allegation of attempts by Nigerian women to prevent the employment of Cameroonians at Tole Tea Estate. This corporation is now facing a shortage of women tea pluckers at Tole. A recent drive to recruit 150 pluckers to cope with the flush period has met with little or no response.3

From the end of the sixties onwards, however, the contribution of Nigerian women to estate labour declined drastically as a result of the increasing flow of women from Anglophone Cameroon to the estate (see Table 3.3). The 3% of Nigerian female workers now remaining consists mainly of women with a long career on the estate. The present North West Province has ever since been the main supplier of female labour to the estate (see Table 3.3). In contrast to the South West Province, it has a relatively high population density, virtually lacks ‘modern sector’ employment, and can boast a long tradition of predominantly female agricultural production. The employment rate of northwestern women on the estate is therefore higher than that of southwestern women, and it has risen

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Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa

from 61% in 1969 to 67% in 1986 (see Table 3.3). The majority of northwestern female workers on the estate hail from two divisions, the Momo and Menchum Divisions. These are relatively inaccessible areas where Fulani cattle grazing and male coffee planting have threatened women’s access to land for food production and have increased their work load (Fisiy 1992).

It is noteworthy that ethnicity has never been an issue of protracted, overt conflict among female or male workers. One reason for this remarkable phenomenon, which seems to be characteristic of all CDC estates (Konings 1993), is the persistent policy of the CDC management, as well as of church and union leaders, to mobilise and organise workers on a multi-ethnic basis. This policy has evidently created a certain measure of understanding for one another’s socio-cultural background and fostered bonds of companionship and friendship. A second reason is the generalised use of Pidgin English, which helps overcome any barriers of communication. A third reason is that the workers themselves express a clear preference for ethnically mixed living and working

arrangements (see also Ardener et al. 1960; DeLancey 1973; and

Kofele-Kale 1981). During my fieldwork the majority of workers expressed the belief that frequent contact with people from other ethnic groups and cultures might broaden their horizons and enrich their lives. Some workers also claimed that there would be fewer disputes and less competition and jealousy on ethnically mixed estates than in living quarters based on ethnic affiliation, and less fear of witchcraft. The most important reason, however, would appear to be their sharing of similar living and working conditions on the estate, which is a classic example of an ‘occupational community’.

Although workers of different ethnic origins usually get on well on the estate, ethnic consciousness and organisation has by no means disappeared. Workers from the same village and region continue to maintain particularly close ties and to organise on ethnic basis for recreational and saving purposes and for mutual assistance. Mixed marriages are still rare on the estate (2%). Ethnic rivalry arises occasionally in suspicion of favouritism in hiring or promotion or in disagreements with foremen and co-workers.

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Chapter 3: Female workers

Case no. 3.1 A complaint of ethnic favouritism in employment