Wage Bondage in the Cameroon Development Corporation: The Sleazy Exploitation of Female Labour at Tole, 1954 - 2002

Abstract

In 1928, the German planters introduced tea in Cameroon and subsequently, established an experimental tea farm of 66 acres at Tole. The farm gradually functioned until the Second World, War which broke out in 1939, diverted the attention of the British who managed it. Meanwhile, at the end of the war the British authorities decided to revamp and indigenize most of the former German plantations in the Southern Cameroons for meaningful development to follow. In 1947 therefore, the Commonwealth Development Corporation (later Cameroon Development Corporation – CDC) was created to fulfil this mission and the plantations were assigned to this agro-industrial consortium. The CDC steadily became interested in tea business and therefore took over and refurbished the tea estate at Tole in 1954. By 1958 the CDC authorities guided by the supposed docility of women and the need to have a stable labour force, decided to engage women on its plantations as permanent workers. The Tole Tea Estate was to set the pace for such an adventure with a predominantly female labour force. Taking women for granted, their labour became a subject of exploitation as the nature of their remunerations proved that they were trapped in the underpinnings of modern slavery.