THE LABOUR SHORTAGE IN 1930s KILIMANJARO AND THE SUBi- SEQUENT EMPLOYMENT OF CHILD LABOUR Bonaventure Swai+ The colonial state in British Tanganyika seems to have been faced with a perennial dilemma: the dilemma of proletarianization versus peasantization. The establishment of the mining and plantation sector in colonial Tanganyika was a pointer to the proletarianization of rural life. Yet the weakness of this sector coupled with the status of Tanganyika as a trusteeship territory under the ultimate tutelage of the League of Nations and subsequently the United Nations Organization, it has been alleged, acted as a boom to peasant agriculture. Indirect rule, it seems, was encouraged in not only the political spheres but also the economic arena. But if plantation and peasant agriculture forced the colonial state into a quandary over the question of labour, it also needs to be emphasized that, the state was an employer of labour. The competition for labour was therefore not merely between settler and peasant agriculture, a situation which might have forced the state to acquire the role of an empire, but also between these and the state. This was particularly true in the public 2 works department. The peasantry might have refused to part with their labour because they were 'sons of the soil1 . But the rise of the rich peasantry also entailed the employment of the poor peasants, a fact which precluded them from working in other areas of the economy, for example the plantation system. This condition called forth the intervention of the state, but it too partook a share of this labour. In Kilimanjaro where plantation system existed side by side with peasant agriculture, a situation of this kind arose. This crisis was eventually solved by resorting to the employment of child labour. This essay is intended to discuss the conditions which led into the decision. It starts with a theoretical discussion only because it is becoming the more necessary to reveal the polemics within which intellectual discussions are conducted and so offer a theoretical explanation to the 'empirical matter' being marshalled in support of a debate or otherwise. + Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Dar es Salaam. Ill 1~ CHILDLA~UR AS A FORM OF DEPRESSING WAGES. Since pr9d9cers in precapitalist social formations controUed their own means of production, -the queption of economic coercion emanating frcnft the ownership of means of production placed a special premium on humanlabour.- In the absence of dominantrelations of exchange, to control this labour entailed coercion or the threat of it, a condition which was mediated by all kinds of paternalistic ideas. Here then parasitism ruled and the expropriator had neither the urge to control nor invest in the means of production for, short of usi~g violence, he was assured of his share of the next harvest, or calf, as the represent- ative of god on earth, or as the greatest magician of them all. 4 Parcellization of production coupled with segmentation of appropria- _ti~ and political power were some of the main features dominant in these kinds of social formations. Here the unit of production whose reproduction was ensured by the kinship system "las the family house- hold. 5 Each household, however socially depressed, had some right to land which was guaranteed by tradition. To the early Rtomans land: ••• was one of a number of items which made up the family or clan under the authority of the pater familias. The family was sovereign, later a subsovereignity - defined in socio-political terms; that is interactions of its members with members of other families occurred through _the agency of the pater fam:i1ias,these interactions frequehtly involved decisions to use or augumP.I1t power. Such made land all aspect of rulership, and hence the dictum "Land is to rule". 6 Production was mainly for consumption rather than exchange. Where there was exchange, it was largely for the purpose of consumption. E~changeof goods to obtain luxuries was reserved to the aristocracy. 7 The self-sufficiency of pre-modern households which was also to be found at the level of a whole economic system was reinforced by the unity of agriculture and crafts. 8 What was said about European manu- factures by one Chinese Emperor during the initial stages of capitalist penetration of the celestial empire was true of many other precapitalist social formations. Strange and costly objects (he said) do not interest me. As your ambassador can see 112 for himself we possess all thirigs. 1 set no value on strange objects and ingenious and ~ have no use for your country's manufactures* Capital had to divorce agriculture from manufacture and dispossess producers of their means.-of production before it could fatten on their surplus labour by forcing them to seltth^ir labour power. This process which started in Europe, and^more specifically in Britain, found its way into the rest 01 the world. In the latter case the process was in some areis-parttalr4D others somewhat complete, and in yet other places dis^tstF^Sus, SJtteh was the manifestation of the law of uneven and combined development. Globalisation of capital realized simultaneously with its concentration, primitive accumulation with capital accumulation, and so forth. In England the prehistory of capitalism began wtfltthe enclosure system, when sheep began to enrich men. Such was the "expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of sub- sistence and from the means of labour". Deprived of their means of subsistence, even the right to hunt rabbits in the estates of the gentry, the poor resorted to robbery, theft and murder, or drifted into towns 12 where the process was escalated. Initially, employment in towns was hard to come by, and conditions harsh. Working for wages yas avoided, and so workhouses were 13 established. As for those who escaped this kind of noose which was being tightened around their necks, there was the "bloody legislation against the expropriated" which began under Henry VII and continued by his successor. . . . during his reign, hanged 30,000 mendicants, who had no means of livelihood. The most repressive laws have been employed against beggars throughout history, without any results. According to an English law of 1531, any person found be;gging without a licence was whipped. As this brutal law had little effect in reducing the number of beggars, the law was made more strict in 1549, and a person found wandering \^ithout employment was branded with the letter "V" for vagabond, and compelled to be a slave to his captor for two years. For a further offence of wandering, he was branded with "S" for slave; and was enslaved for life. If he attempted to ^ escape, he was liable to be punished with death. Notwithstanding the many treatise which have been written about 113 devel0J:'llent from Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations, to Gunnar Myresof their parents, whether they live in rural areas or are urbanites. Some of these children are primary schoolleavers, bIt . there are others who have never had the chance of formal educationat all. This, moreover, is only the tip of the iceberg, for 80S weUas these kinds of jobs which are performed by children, numyhouseholds. in urban areas employ children as domestic servants. 23 But child labour is not restricted to towns. In 1977 the attention Qf the Tanzanian party and government machinery was drawn to the plight of children in the country's 5outhern Highlands. This was the more embarrassing as Tanzania had then declared the intention to intro- duce Universal Primary Education for all children of school age. In September of that year, the Daily News published a number of articles ShOwingthat rather than attending school, manychildren from Njombe district were le~ving their homes to work in tobacco plantations in lringa. This being the case, on 24 September 1977it was reported taat "the hiring of child labour on capitalist plantations in Iringa" had been "entered on the agenda of the first CCMRegiona1Executive Committee meeting" for discussion the followingday.24 Bythen "morE than 250 under-age children labouring in capitalist-owned tobacco estat~s" and arrangement~ were "being made to return the children to their homes" in Njombe.25 115 Whether the campaign to repatriate the "child labourers" to their homes succeeded is another matter. However, the Commissioner for labour, Ndugu Saidi Makutika, was forced to spell out the law governing child labour. "Hiring children below fifteen", he said "is a criminal offence in Tanzania punishable by fine or imprisonment or b o t h " ^ 6 He explained that only children aged between fifteen and eighteen were allowed to work. These, however, must be hited on a daily basis. These children, he said, must return to their parents or guardians at the end of the working day. Such children, when working on farms, must be paid 9/- a day. According to Section 4 of Act No. 5 of 1969, designed to check the recruitment of minors, any employer or his agent hiring child labour can be prosecuted. When convicted, the offender can be sentenced to a fine not exceeding 5,000/-* 27 • "'" or jailed up to one year or both. Such is the attempt to prevent the disease, cosmetic or otherwise, "One... indicator, and a particularly important one", observed Lenin on the question of child labour, "is the extent which child labour is employed. The more child labour is exploited", he went onto say, "the worse, undoubtedly, is the position of the worker, 28 and'the harder his life". The problem of child labour in the case of the industrialization of Britain was dealt with admirably by • " 29 Engels, amongst other contemporary observers. Then children were usdd to pull down wages of adult seprkers since they were paid so little. Now the use of minority groups from backward capitalist economies has been found more appropriate. The usefulness of keeping down wages by eitfpfoying child labour was foujad lucrative not merely during, the initial stages of capitalist industrialization^ ;its use in the interest of securing superprofits by qapital is still fashionable. Nor is this restricted to the modern period in backward capitalist social formations either. Rather it was very much in use with the commencement of the institutionalization 116 bi productive capital in colonial social formation like Tanganyika. This wilibe illustrated with the aid of the Kilimanjaro agricultural industry, particularlv settler agriculture, 2. THE KILIMANJARO AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY AND THE QUESTION OF LABOUR. Two types of commercial agriculture were in competition in colonial Tanganyika: peasant and settler. Such competition, however, has its history. Initially Germans who were the first European colonizers of Tanganyika encouraged settler agriculture. The very fact that Germans wanted to make Tanganyika the brightest jewel in their imperial system was accompanied by a lot of capital investment. Plantation agriculture was largely concentrated in the North Eastern circuit, along the Central Railway Linje, and around Kilwa. The Maji Maji Rebellion of 1905, however, checked the overemphasis in settler agriculture. Following the Dernburg reforms, peasant agriculture 32 was encouraged in various areas of German Tanganyika. Among areas where settler agriculture continued to be influential, though, were Eastern Usambara and Kilimanjaro. In both areas, coffee was the main plantation crop. In "Kilimanjaro settler agriculture was largely concentrated in what came to be called the Hai Division, especially in Uru, Kibosho, Machame and Kibpng'oto. The end of the First World War saw the demise of German administration in Tanganyika and tke insitution of British colonial rule under the auspices of the League of Nations, and subsequently the United Nations. Many settler estates in Kilimanjaro were labelled enemy property since they belonged to German nationals. They were placed under the Gover- nor who was charged with the responsibility of overseeing their being auctioned to interested parties or their distribution to the local populace where overcrowding seemed a threat efif>e«tially in Uru, Kibosho and Marangu. It Mas be«n said that the British in Tanganyika, especially Governors like Byatt were very much *gariftst Ute permanent estab- lishment of a settlerdom in the territciiy. Indeed, subjectively, Byatt was against settlers. Buttftis attitude was engendered by the fact that as a Mandate Territory, British Tanganyika had to make her doors open to settlers of all kiilds o# European nationalities, includ- U7 ing Ge~'ans who were the arch-enemies of John Bull. 33 Thus to e:n- . sure that Germans were denied this chance, the influx of settlers into Tanganyika was discour~ged. Nevertheless, especially in the 1930s, Germans tried very hard to regain the colonies they lost during the First World War, particUlarly Tanganyika. 34 However, as has already been stated, alienation of Land to settler communitiesin Kilimanjaro was started by Germans. This process was carried out "without regard for the future needs of the local tribes ••• as early as 1885-1894".35 Warnings were sounded and local resistances staged, but they "went unheeded and an 'iron ring' of ali:enatedland was hanged round the native lands on the mountain. This was the position ..... hen Britil;lhadministration became established after ••• 1916". Although:it soon became apparent that "native reserves" were being,congested,and that outlets would not be found, and despite the apparent British gOVl\!I'li:tnent ho~y towards settler establishments in Tanganyika, Bn0.:tker"iron ring" :YnlS haRged upon Kilimanjaro.36 Meanwhilepeas-antcommercial .agriculture was also encouraged. Althoughsettlers under their organization which was called the Kilimanjaro Plan,ters ASSOciationprotested against this, Dundas is said to have told them that the "price of coffee is not determined by colour". 37 The friction between settlers and Kilimanjaro peasants over Com- m~rcial cultivation of coffee eventually errupted into the so-called "Moshi incinent" of the late 1920s. 38 This incident was exacerbated by the ''joseph Merinyo case" in which the President of the Kilimanjaro Native Planters Association was accused of embezzlement and imprisoned.39 The settler communityseized upon this as. the occasiOn to break KNPAand to abolish peasant commercial agriculture. While the colonial admiIl-istrationagreed to the first idea, they resisted th~ s.econd.4O KNPAwas abolished in 1931. Although there were rumours that it should be replaced by an European mercantile company which,it was hoped, would have acted more responsibly in the purchase and sale of "Kilimanjaro Native Coffee" than KNPA, the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union was formed in its place. This began the first exampleof new types of the cooperative movement which was sub- sequently to dominatethe purchase of crops for the overseas market 118 in Tanganyika and which were charged with the duty to collect produce . .fromthe peasant comm~nities in the territory more effectively. 41 At stake in the competition between settler and peasant commercial agriculture in Kilimanjaro was the question of labour. The creation of the plantation system in Kilimanjaro presupposed the existence of a migrant labour force to work in the coffee estates. The encouragement of Chagga peasant agriculture meant that not muchof this force was to be available from peasant households in Kilimanjaro. Peasants would rather work in their own plots of land than submit to the humiliationof being treated as Manamba by Europeans in their estates. 'thia ..u particularly so with the divisions of Hai and Vunjowhere peasant commercial agriculture was introduced fairly early. Moreover working on estates was rigorous employment,the payment a mere pittance, and interference with leisure time im.mense.42The few Chagga migrants who worked on the settler estates came from Eastern Kilimanjaro, now Rombodistrict, where commercial agriculture was introduced rather lately. But even this area was not to be a labeur reserve of Kilimanjaro for long. The h!lIlliliatinglife of.Msamba. forced the Warombo to seek work as domestic s'ervants in Mo.hi and Mombasa 'as opposed to working on the coffee estates of Kilimanjaro. 43 Chagga labour which was required to work on settler plstatUm.' was getting scarce. But at the very time that this vas happening, settler s decided to reduce wages to what was considered a. ~ ridicul- ously low level. "To obtain labour in Moshi" sd subsquently An.ha, was becoming" exceedingly difficult". Labour, the Moshi Chamber of Commerce complained in February 1928, was becomingscarce, and while "a short while ago casuall'aoour could be obtained for 1/- per day, now the rate" has increased, and at the present tUnethi. clu. of labour demands 4/ - per boy/truck". The seriousneu of the matter aiM' lay in the fact that it took three hours to load a truck. The demand for labour in Kilimanjaro came from four sources: the plantations, the rich peasantry, Moshi town, and the government. In Moshi town itself labour was needed in not only the domestic;service, but also by the town council "to do such tasks ~s road repairs, grass cutting, wood cutting, repairs on p~lice and prison staff huts and 119 public utility work'~. 44 But':r\ot many people were prepared to work for the Public Work~ Department if they could be offered an alternative. This was so because the labourers were forced to live in filthy "little huts of most primitive design, so sma}l that they could only be - entered by-crawling, quite inadequate to keep out raIn, and unsuitable e'Venfor brief occupation". Thus by the end of the 1920s, a farge porti.on- of the Chagga who worked in suc~ conditions had ceased to do so. Labour had to be drawn in from other districts. Thus many Of those who worked on the estates and in the public works soon turne€i . .. , - " , otrtto' be the Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma, Wapare and Wanyiramba. Tfi.;e" M~onde came in later. 45 Settlers in M<'l'shi"sent Headmen along the ~oshi-Arusha- Babati road to recruit labour coming down". 46 Even, 'so t~;-comp~ition for labour did not cease. S'ettlers tried to turn .to the Cllagga again in the 1930s, but in the whole of 1931 only eleven i4lbOu~ers w~re recruited. 47 The situation looked desperate; the J!ror-eso since, as the District Commissioner of Moshi was to write to his superior, the Provincial Commissioner in Arusha, in 1939: "I have been informed by several coffee estate owners that as much as they would like to absorb labour (from other districts), it is arriving at a time of the year when activities on estates are almost negligible. " 'fhtls while there was no labour which was forthcoming from Kili- manjaro itself, then one which arrived from other districts came at a time when it could not be utilized. It seems that the settlers had to turn to Kilimanjaro agam for an alternative source of labour. In 1934 it was reported that there was a general shortage of labour for coffee and maize plantations in Moshi. Not only was labour not forthcoming from the Chagga,4B but that the emerging Chagga Kulaks were competing with European planter s for labour from other ethnic communities like the Wanyiramba and Wapare. Their terms too looked better. In 1933 the District Commissioner of Moshi wrote to the Senior Provincial Cmnmissioner thus: "As I have stated repeatedly no-government labour is being paid at the rate of 1/50 with posho and additional inducements. The Chagga themselves pay 1/50 with posho and up to two shillings without posho for casual labour on their shambas. The Moshi Native Coffee Board 120 and the KNCU have found it necessary to pay a wage in keeping with local conditions and ,Q demands by Government continues to lag behind". If the government was lagging behind in this venture, it was even more so with the settler community. Thus the Kilimanjaro Planters Association urged the Tanganyika colonial government to enact a law that would oblige labourers "to work so many months out of the year" on estates irrespective of what they were paid. The government seemed to be in agreement with this suggestion for it was.remarked: "In localities in which the native cannot grow economic crops owing to lack of transport facilities, Administrative Officers can best serve the state by exhorting the natives, through their chiefs, to adopt some form of active work, pointing out that situated as they are they can only do so profitably by engaging to work for the Government or on the farms which were seeking their labour".(51) But this was intended to be a long term measure. In the meantime the settler community found a solution in the employment of child labour. Hence the provincial commissioner on 8 March 1930 wrote to the Chief Secretary in Dar es Salaam that child labour was becoming dominant in coffee plantations, especially during the picking season. "This (he said) is a noteworthy feature of Wachagga throughout the district, and there is no doubt that these Chagga children do good and thorough work. One reliable planter (Major Bellair) has informed me that he prefers these children to full grown men for many types of work".(52) lndeed.it js&dld not have been otherwise since the children were paid very low wages, and the settlers did not have to worry about their accommodation or rations as they returned to their parents in the evening and ate bananas and the like for their lunch from the estates during the day. The children who submitted to this kind of labour largely came from the poor families. One important feature of poor families, it should be underlined, is the failure to reproduce themselves. This is particularly so with the poor peasantry. One important feature of the peasant today, as Engels observed with regard to the German and 121 "French Peasantries, is that he has lost much of his productive capllcity. "Formerly he and his family produce9-, from raw material he had made himself, the greater part of the industrial products that he needed; the rest of what he required was supplied by village neighbours who plied a trade in addition to farming and were paid mostly in articles of exchange or in reciprocal services". The family, and even more so the village, as has already been indicated was self-sufficient, and "produced almost everything it needed". It was what has been termed a natural econ-omy "almost unalloyed; almost no money was necessary". Capitalist penetration put a stop ,a,t this. But if, as in the case 9f Kilimanjaro, Barents had chosen to go to w0rk in towns, the children were forced to work near home and so, help their mothers with some of the domestic chores as well. Employment of ch~ldren on estates became fashionable in 1930s Kilimanjaro because it was cheap, and the labour easier to control. That it was a pronounced form of labour was shown by the number of complaints by primary school teachers of children who played truant. The demand of this kind of labour was not merely restricted to estates. Rather soon rich peasants also entered the market. Out of this arose a great deal of friction between this type of peasantry and the settlers, particularly in Western Kilimanjaro. However to encourage children to come to work in the estates rather than to sell their labour to rich peasants, the settlers bribed their parents by allowing them "to collect wood from and graze on their estates". The elders of Machame and their Chief, Shangali, were enticed to acquiese in this, and initially they agreed. But it soon transpired to the settler community that the Chief of Machame "appears to us to endeavour to secure for his men a privilege in our estates, by us:ing the weapon of the strike, which has proved elsewhere to be very harmful to both employers and workmen". He also "ordered his people not to come to work", and "out of over 150 labourers under Kipande with us, not one has come to work". 53 This was so because the Chief was also under pressure from the kulak community of his Chiefdom who were equally interested in this kind of labour. Thus while the settler community tried to look for new sources of labour, the emerging kulak class in Kilimanjaro, which also employed labour, soon caught up with them. This made labour a perennial problem 122 in Kilimanjaro. Labourers were more attracted to working in farms owned by kulaks because the treatment was better. In most cases casual labourers returned to their own homes in the evening. Where this was not so they were lodged, possibly in the same house with their employ- ers and ate the same kind of food. Exploitation of labour was not all that crude among the kulaks. As for the settler community though this was differnt. The situation was also exacerbated by the regimentation of labour employed on the estates, especially the Mnyapara system. As with African government employees, plantation labourers were lodged in hovels. Such conditions kept many labourers out of plantation employment and made the scarcity of labour on the estates a perennial problem. 3* THE BROADER CONTEXT OF THE PROBLEM OF CHILD LABOUR This essay has attempted' in a very brief outline t© examine the question of child labour in Tanzania. Within this broader framework has been situated the issue of child labour in 1930s Kilimanjaro. With the rise of the clarion call for Universal Primary Education though, the question of child labour has come into a head-on collision with the issue of education for the children of school age. Parents a.ve required by law to send their children to schools for the required period of education which lasts for seven years. During this time children are required to complete their primary education which is supposed to prepare them for their future life as adults of the Tanzanian post- colonial society. Should children play truant during this period, their parents may be penalized by the law. If they look for employment during the years they are required to attend classes, their employers and their parents might be punished if the long arm of the law catches up with them. Yet why should children seek employment at a time when they are required to go to school? Who is responsible for this? Normally it is assumed that the child is not responsible for him- self since he is not yet an adult. Employers of child labour and parents are considered responsible for the child's welfare. But to end the debate at this juncture is to subjectify the whole issue. A search for the material conditions which have given rise to this situation seems a more plausible course to adopt. 123 It was pointed out at the very outset that precolonial economies were self-sufficient in many respects. Production was largely for local consumption, and exchange of goods was intended to supplement this. For this reason exchange was peripheral. This phenomenon was reflected at the level of the household. Division of labour was restricted to this unit, and normally followed the criteria of age and sex. Colonial rule which heralded the intensification of capital penetration changed this situation. Local economies were disartic- ulated and simultaneously articulated under imperialist hegemony. Taxes, penetration of market forces, coercion, and the like, were intended to fulfil this aim. The peasant household was brought under greater control of capital and made increasingly dependent on it for the reproduction of the hous ehold. 56 While capital sought to extract the surplus labour of colonial peasantries and workers, it did not enter into the actual labour proc~ss. Here then occurred the formal subsumption of labour power by capital by which capital established its control by accepting the existing process of production as was found extant. The colonial :tate has had a big role to play in a situation of this kind, given the peculiar condition which capital assumed. In the plantation system, notwithstanding the apparent control of the labour process by capital, the position of labourers was not any better. 57 The search for super- profits seemed the dominant enterprise. 58 Thus it has been remarked: "In the workings of colonial e?Cploitation, i. e. each time a capitalist state dominates other populations, the process that Marx described as the primitive accumulation of capital. This is achieved by running an economy of despoliation, on the one hand exhausting the soil and/or other raw materials, and on the other over-exploiting of the rural population". 59 Colonial profits "stem from a transfer of labour value to capitalism through the maintenance of self-sustaining domestic agriculture". 60 It is also within this sector that the "production and reproduction of colonial labour power takes place". H,ere the work of women in particular becomes of seminal importance as they, more than men, are involved in the cultivation and preparation of food, coupled with -general domestic work.61 Preservation of domestic or subsistence agriculture was stressed time and again during the colonial era. The 124 sale of land was prohibited. In Kilimanjaro colonial officials are reported to have said that they were not interested in creating a capitalist class out of the peasantry. Such a class, nevertheless, emerged. There comes a time though that the subsistence economy also enters the sphere of capitalist production. As soon as this happens, this sector "reveals its low productivity and collapses into bankruptcy". Thus emerged landless labourers whose constitution, maintenance and reproduction depend solely on the sale of their labour power. In this situation not only the labour of the husband and wife is drawn to the market, but also that of the children. Where the possibility of selling their labour is dim, the landless labourers migrate to towns and become beggars. This process though is a gradual one. In Kilimanjaro it was engendered by the alienation of land to missionaries and European settlers, and the creation of forest reserves. The emergence of a class of kulaks following the institution of peasant commercial agriculture touched off land-grabbing by this class. Common land where all had enjoyed usufruct, land where middle and poor peasantries had grazed their cattle, fetched timber, firewood, turf, and the like, disappeared. The common land had been of particular importance to children for here is where they grazed cattle. Thus children got occupied in that way and did something useful to their families. With its disappearance cattle could no longer be kept, or if at all they had to be stall-fed. This work though devolved to women. The children, especially boys were now free to sell their labour to settlers and rich peasants and thus helped the poor peasant household^ reproduce themselves. The school system seems to have displaced this with a view to making labour ultimately more lucrative for capitalist exploit- ation. 6 5 Two forces at play in this process are worth mentioning: the impoverishment of peasant households which lay the conditions for the availability of child labour, and abundance job opportunities on estates and towns. The emergence of"child labour under capitalist exploitation in 1930s Kilimanjaro was not a peculiarity of that area. It was merely the beginning of a phenomenon which has gained momentum 125 over time. 66 Such then are the origins of those children we see in the streets of Dar es Salaam selling ice-cream, groundnuts, coffee, news- papers and so forth. It is not that they refused to go to school, and thus make history of having come up in the hard way. Historical conditions proved otherwise. 67 Men make history but not under conditions of their own choice. 68 4. CONCLUSION: This essay has attempted to offer a broad context within which to view th e question of child labour in general, and its origins in Kilimanjaro in particular. The life of the labourer, R. Samuel has observed in the context of English social history, is not very well known.69 We do not know whether the labourer was a man, a woman or a child. We neither know where he lived or what he worked as during the different seasons. 70 The same observation could be made with regard to plantation labour in Kilimanjaro. We are given to thinking that only adults submitted to the rigour of plantation labour. Yet historical forces determined otherwise. If this paper has given undue emphasis to these forces at the expense of the child who laboured on the coffee ~states of Kilimanjaro, it is only with a view to showing that the topic has been neglected too much and that the. dress rehearsal had to be undertaken by someone. FOOTNOTES: 1. F.J. Kaijage, 'Proletarianization versus peasantization in Tanganyika: a colonial dilemma in rural transformation, Dar es Salaam, 1978 mimeo. A. B. Lyall 'Land Law and Policy in Tanganyi- ka, 1919-1932', LLM Dar es Salaam 1973. E. Kisanga, 'The colonial mode of articulation in Mwika chiefdom 1900-1961', B.A. dissertation, Dar es Salaam 1976. 2. J. Depelchin, 'The beggar problem in 1930s Dar es Salaam', Dar es Salaam 1978 mimeo. A.J. Green, 'A Socio- Economic History of Moshi Town: A case study of Urbanization', MA Dar es Salaam 1979. 3. Kaijage, 'Proletarianization versus peasantization in Tanganyika', C. E • F. Beer and G • Williams, 126 'The politics of the Ibadan peasantry, Mrican Review, 5,1975. A.J. Temuand Bonaventure Swai, Historians and Africantst History, London: Zed Press, forthcoming. 4. B. Davey, The Economic Development of Ind1a~.r0tt1ng- ham 1975. A Shorter, "Nyungu-ya- awe and the. empire of the ruga +uga", Journal of African History, IX 1968. T .0. Ranger and l.N. Kimambo, eds. The Historical Studt; of African Reli~ions, London 1972. M. Godel ar, "I he pro b em of determination", New Left Review, 112, 1978. 5. R.G. Fox, Clan, Raja and Rule, and Kil!J Berkeley ~971. R. E. Frykenberg, "Traditional process of power in South India: an historical analysis of local inRuence" , ID.dianEconomic and Social Review 1. 1973. A. Southall, "A critique of the typology of states and political system", M. Banton, ed. Political Systems and the Distribution ot Power, London 19b1:S.P. Anderson, Lmea~s Oltlie' Absolutist state, London 1974. H. AlaVi, "india and the colonial mode of prpduction", Socialist Re~istar 1975. Bona- venture Swai, "Notes on t e colonial state with reference to 18th and 19th century Malabar", Social Scientist 6 1978. t. Chft'e, "Rural Political economy in Africa", P. C. W. 'Gutkind and 1. Wallerstein, eds, Political Economy of Contemporary Africa, London, 1976. 6. W. C. Neale, "Land is to rule", R. E. Fryicenberg, ed. Land Control in Indian Histor;r, Madison 19b9. See also J:R. Commons, Legal Foundations of Capitalism, Me.dison 1957. M. Naciri, "Authority, rural space and modernization in.Morocco", African Environment, II, 1976. 7.. D. Bryceson, "Peasant food production and fooa supply in relation to historical development of commodityproduction in pre-colonial and colonial Tanganyika", Dar es Salaam 197& mimeo. K. Marx, Capital lIt, Moscow 1974. pp. 329-338. 8. D.D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Stut of Indian Historl, tlombay 197~. R. ukherjee, The R1se and Fall of the East Indian Company, Be:I.'Un1957. C. S. 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Low, Lion Rampant, London 1974. A . S . Bujra, 128 "Codesria and social sciences in Africa", Africa Development HI 1978. S. Amin, C. Atta-Miils, A. Bujra, G. Hamid and T. Mkandawire, "Social science and the develop- ment crisis in Africa: problems and prospects " , ibid. 16. This statement is deliberate. A. Roy, Economics and Politics of Garibi Hatao, Calcutta iy73. 17. Ibid. p. 4. 18. J. Depelchin, "The beggar problem in Dar es Salaam", Dar es Salaam 1978 mimeo. 19. J. Depelchin, "The coming of age of political economy in African Studies", International Journal of African Historical Studies XI 1978. Bona- venture Swai "Imperialproconsuls and the marketing of colonial produce: the origins of coop- eratives in Tanganyika", Dar es Salaam 19 1979 mimeo. 20. "Beggars to be imprisoned", Daily News, 2 October 1978. "Round- ing -up"~oTtoTterers: peasants, workers are exploited", ibid. 27 December 1977. "Do not hesitate: PM tells leaders", ibid. 6 January 1978. 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Harlow and E.H. Chilver, eds. History of E. Africa, vol. II,. Oxford 1965. - 34. M. Wright, "The GermanatteIIlpt to recolonize. Tanganyika", Dar es Salaam 1973 mimeo. 35. Tanganyika Territory, Report of Arusha-Moshi Lands C..QlUmission, Dar es Salaam 1~47. p. ltf. 31). Ibid. p. 17. 37. A.C. Ofunguo, "Kilimanjaro Chagga Citizens Union 1946- 1964", BA Dissertation 1974. S.G. Rogers, "The Search for Political Focus on Kili- manjaro: A History of Chagga Polttics", PhD University of Dar es Salaam 1972. 38. A.B. Lyall, "Land Law and Policy in Tanganyika 1919- 1932", LLM University of Dar es Salaam 1973. 39. Bonaventure Swai, "The Joseph Merinyo Case and.the demise of the KNPA", Taamuli VIII 1978. 40. P .C. Arusha to Chief Secretary; 20 June 1931, Tanzania National Archives 26038. 41. Bonaventure Swai, "Imperial proconsuls and thE"Marketing of Colonial produce: the origins of Coop- eratives in Tanganyika", Dar es Salaam 1979. 42. 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