How Colonial Officials Dealt With the Problem of Labour in Colonial Tanganyika and Zanzibar | HI 360
Tanganyika and Zanzibar
was colonized during the late of the 19th century. The next was the
establishment of colonial economy, so as to exploit both colonies. The
Cambridge dictionary define labour as a practical work, especially when it
involves hard physical effort: Colonial exploitation required economic
development. Economic development required the exploitation of African labour.
The problem was how to extract the necessary labour from those who possesed it
and how to make them available to the colonialists. All economic activities,
whole colonial development, depended on African labour. ‘To colonize Africa
means to make the negro work.’[1]
Labour question become the field where the most vital interests of the
colonizers and the colonized confronted one another and where the great
struggle between the intruding Europeans and accomodating Africans was daily re
enacted in a myriad silent everyday forms. The following were the solution
provided by the colonial officialls to solve the problem of labour in colonial
Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Introduction of
colonial education. The limit of African wants and desires was seen extremely
low even in areas where efforts had been made to raise it by supplying of trade
goods. This was explained that, nature had not driven African to demand more
than they had. Wrote Burton, ‘In these temperate and abundant lands nature has
cursed mankind with the abudance of her gifts, his wants still await creation
and he is contended with such necessaries as roots and herbs, game and few
handfuls of grain, consequently, improvement has no hold upon him.’[2] If
Africans did not wish or know how to work, they must be educated for work.
Example, education for work become the key concept of German colonial ideology.
Many schools built in production centers. For the first time Africans were
educated for plantation work. District agricultural officers gave instruction
on planting different crops.
The use of slaves.
German colonialists abolished only slave trade, not slavery itself. As late as
1901 Gotzen implied that slave production was so important to the colonial
economy that he could not agree to abolition. Colonialists supported slavery
for economic reasons. The number of slaves in the colony was counted in
hundreds of thousands, the great majority living on the southern coast and
around Tabora. Europeans hired slaves to their masters as workers. The European
employer made a deal directly with the slaveowner or more commonly with an
Indian recruiter for delivery of certain number of slaves for a period agreed
beforehand, ussually for a few months. A considerable part ussually half of the
wage was pocketed by the owner and the recruiter; the rest, together with posho went to the slave labourer him or
herself. Before 1903 the practice was still going on in Tanga, Pangani and
Kilwa. But in 1903 the acting governor Stuhlmann in his report, make clear that
hiring of slaves produced a great deal of problems which made it unsuitable
means of obtaining labour. The root cause for the failure to transform slaves
into wage labourers lay in the discrepancy between the work organization in the
pre colonial slave economy and that in the new colonial economy.
Forced labour. Those
Africans who did not wish to work for Europeans could be forced into it. The
governor who advocated the use of force was Liebert. Example, the annual report
of DOAPG related from their Lewa plantation that if the chief did not send
workers, he was taken from his village and kept as a hostange until his people
come to work. In west Usambara forced labourers were first obtained through the
commands of Kilindi chiefs. Each farm was alloted certain nearby African
villages which had to provide them with a labourers. Whoever could not pay or
had nothing to sell was obligated to work: a month of work for the government.
In this way there were tens, hundreds of thousands to be employed.
Taxation. A more and
effective means available to the colonial state to influence the volume and
direction of labour flows was intensifying the collection of tax and
manipulating it according to labour demands. Where tax had been collected it had
driven people to work in two ways: directly as tax labourers who paid their
taxes in work instead of cash or produce, and indirectly by creating a need to
procure money to pay tax. As time went on more and more tax was collected in
cash and the labour role of taxation as an indirect push to work was
strengthened. Taxation become an increasingly selective measure being used for
different purposes in different areas. For example, in Tanganyika; hut tax and
head tax were introduced. A migrant worker could earn up to 15 rupees a month.
To push the African living in these areas to work or more, tax rates there
should be raised substantially, whereas elsewhere they could stay lower.
Labour card systems. A
popular solution to labour availability was a labour cards (kipande). Its
pioneer was West Usambara, known as Wilhelmstal. Every Shambaa man except for
Jumbes and some who worked for the colonial administration, had to obtain an
official labour card. It contained 30 squires which were filled according to
the number of days worked by the holder for European employers, missionaries
included. A card had to be filled in four months, otherwise the holder could be
sent to public works which were paid less or not at all. This system for
officials it saved a great deal of time and trouble as they were no longer
needed to obtain and dispatch batches of individual workers to certain farms.
Kipande system applied in Usambara, Tanga, Kilimanjaro and Morogoro. All in all
labour card system were sometimes called unofficial because they were adopted
to local conditions without formal legislation or explicit instruction from Dar
es salaam, and outside West Usambara labour cards were issued by employers not
by authorities. But what was called unoficial had very official sanction, and
labour card system were ultimately based on the colonial states repressive.
Creation of labour
reserves zone. The colonial officials divided the colony into two major parts,
the labour reserved areas and the productive areas. Labourers were recruited from
areas like Kigoma, Tabora, Rukwa, and Ruvuma to be taken to sisal plantantions
in Tanga and Morogoro. Also they were taken to the coffee plantations in
Kilimanjaro and Kagera and also in cloves plantations in Zanzibar. Therefore
the system of creating labour reserve areas helped the colonialist to have a
constant supply of labourers in their productive areas.
The coolie experiment. This
was an emergency option to import workers from abroad. In June 1892 the first Asians
worker arrived at Tanga, they came from Singapore. Another batch of East Asians
arrived in 1894, they included Javanese and Malayans. According to surviving
document, the number of coolies was 700-800. The result of this experiment was
embarracing. Coolie labour was expensive also many Coolies could not stand the
harsh treatment they received at the hand of Germany plantation managers. It’s
a fact that the Coolie failed to tolerate the East African coast climate, many
were often sick. The Javanese at Derema become notorious for plundering the
crops of nearby African cultivators. So the Coolies were prevented to be
supplied to plantations.
Establishment of labour
depertment. During the rule of British the depertment was established, the head
of depertment was J. Orde Brown. The major work of Labour depertment was to
solve the problem of labour in Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Example Orde Brown as
the head of the depertment came out with the following solution to labour
problems; provision of treatment to diseases which faced Africans and establishment
of camps.
“we have already started one camp, and we hope that we
shall have other government camps on the main roads where travelling natives
will be able to get good advices… this will keep some sort of supervision over
the migration of labourers.”[3]
In the same article Orde Brown ask the difficult question, ‘why the Maasai
never produces coffee or cotton?’ Orde as a head of depertment had not seen any
employers recruiting labour amongst the Maasai.
The whole East Africa
faced the problem of labour. The supply of labour was not equal to demand.
Africans were not ready to work for Europeans because of harsh treatment,
exploitation and diseases like sleeping sickness which has captured the popular
fancy. The solution applied by colonial officials to deal with labour
availability had negative effects to the Africans and made their life worse.
Written by;
MAKOBA
DAUD
|
NGATA
VIOLET
|
KITALULA
ABUBAKARI
|
REFERENCES:
Juhani Koponeni – Development for Exploitation, chapter 6
J. O. Browne – “The
Native Labour in Tanganyika”, Journal of
the Royal African Society, vol. 26, No. 102 (Jan 1927). Oxford University
Press.
dictionary.cambridge.org/
