Female Laborers in Tole Tea Plantation, Cameroon

Cameroonian Women as Wage Earners in a Cash Crop Plantation

Jun 18, 2009

Women have played the most significant role in the success of the Tole Tea Estate. They have, however, have exposed to wanton exploitation because of illiteracy.

Plantation agriculture in Cameroon is a major legacy of German colonialism. On these plantations, the Germans produced cash crops for export to Germany. This required a large pool of labor. Because male labor was insufficient for this purpose, women were dragged into the colonial money economy. This transformation greatly altered the role of the woman vis-à-vis the man. “Traditionally,” says historian Walter Rodney, “African men did the heavy labor of felling trees, clearing land, building houses, apart from conducting warfare and hunting.”

Female Laborers in Tole Tea Estate: The Colonial Period

After her defeat in the First World War, Germany lost her colony of Kamerun to Britain and France. Many Former German plantations fell into the British sector of what later came to be called Cameroon. The Tole Tea Estate was created in 1954 when British authorities started encouraging local tea production. It is situated on the fertile slopes of the Cameroon Mountain in Fako Division of the South West Province of Cameroon.

The Tole Tea Estate is the only estate of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) which employs predominantly female workers. Piet Konings in his article Plantation Labor and Economic Crisis in Cameroon explains this preference for women on “the capitalist preference for female pluckers and … the patriarchal control over female labor.” Konings stresses further that “The rationale for this preference was the managerial belief that women tended to be more productive than men in certain tasks.”

Majority of female workers in Tole are drawn from the North West province of Cameroon. Many of these workers are either illiterate or poorly educated. For them therefore, working as plantation laborers constitutes a “way to escape the control of (male) elders in their local communities and build up an autonomous existence,” says Konings. This southward migration of female workers continued even after independence.

The Situation of Female Plantation Laborers in Cameroon after Colonialism

Colonialism did little to improve on the situation of the African worker whether male or female. In Walter Rodney’s words, “The African farmer entered colonialism with a hoe and left with a hoe.” After colonialism, however, such abuses as forced labor and flogging were abolished completely. Cameroon’s new labor code offered protection to workers especially women.

However, the entrenched abuses on female laborers in capitalist plantations have been very difficult to eradicate. Many of these women who are largely illiterate and ignorant remain objects of exploitation. In his survey carried out on female workers in Tole in the 1990s Konings reveals that women between the ages of 25 – 55 constituted 90% of the labor force of the Tole Tea Estate. 9% of this number was single. 27% was widowed, 25% separated while 7.0% were of “free union.”

On their level of education, 78% was illiterate, 20.5% had primary education while only 1.5% had attained post primary education. This very high level of illiteracy makes these women very pliable and vulnerable to all forms of exploitation. These statistics therefore confirm the thesis that African women in capitalist plantations have been and remain objecst of exploitation and abuse in cash crop plantations of Africa.

Benefits of Plantation Agriculture to Cameroonian Women

To dismiss the plantation economy as a completely negative force in the lives of African (or Cameroonian) women is equal to undermining the contributions made by these women to the development of their families and societies. Thanks to the “starvation salaries” earned in plantations, many women have been able to educate their children to very high levels both at home and abroad. Also, under the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), female workers enjoyed many economic and social benefits such as free accommodation and health care.

Labor intensive plantations like the Tole Tea Estate are major attractions for female laborers because in Konings’ words, “For this category of workers, plantation labor forms one of the rare employment opportunities in the capitalist sector.” For these women therefore, Plantation agriculture has provided an opportunity to escape from the trappings of traditional society and to enter the money economy as wage earners.

Recent developments in Tole have, however, eroded all the apparent benefits of plantation agriculture to its predominantly female workforce. The devastating strike action in 2005 that followed the privatization of this once-thriving tea plantation has had dire consequences for the mothers of Tole. Since it changed hands from CDC to the Cameroon Tea Estates (CTE) in 2002, Tole has been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self, and with it, the workers, majority of them women.

.. Labor Resistance in Cameroon: Managerial Strategies and Labour Resistance in the Agro-industrial Plantations of the Cameroon development Corporation 1996.

The copyright of the article Female Laborers in Tole Tea Plantation, Cameroon in Modern African History is owned by Tongkeh Joseph Fowale. Permission to republish Female Laborers in Tole Tea Plantation, Cameroon in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.