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12 Privatisation and labour militancy in Anglophone Cameroon Introduction There is a growing body of literature on privatisation that discusses how, for various reasons, privatisation practices have had mixed results in Africa, and have often been fraught with serious problems and controversy (cf. Mkandawire 1994; Bennell 1997; Campbell White & Bhatia 1998; Tangri 1999; Van de Walle 2001; Pitcher 2002; Rakner 2003). Most authors attribute the problems of privatisation in Africa not only to numerous technical and financial constraints but also to the fact that privatisation did not present as big a break with the previous dynamics of the postcolonial state as the Bretton Woods institutions and bilateral donors had expected. Cameroon is a clear example of privatisation’s failure to free the parastatal sector from the government’s neo-patrimonial logic (see Chapter 11). Some authors have indicated that the problems of privatisation in Africa are equally due to fierce opposition by various civil-society organisations (cf. Olukoshi 1998; Beckman & Sachikonye 2001; Konings 2003a, 2003b, 2007a). Although World Bank studies have come to recommend the involvement of civil society in neo-liberal economic reforms, arguing that their participation in policy-making would ensure ownership, credibility and sustainability of the reform process (World Bank 1992, 1995; Rakner 2001), there is ample evidence that civil-society organisations tend to be excluded from the decision-making process, probably because of their expected resistance to the allegedly harmful effects of externally imposed privatisation schemes on their members. Several civil-society organisations have vehemently denounced the sale of the national and regional patrimony to both 206 CHAPTER 12 western multinationals and nationals closely connected with African regimes (Tangri 1999; Konings 2003b, 2007a). Remarkably, hardly any detailed studies have been published on the response of African workers to privatisation in West-Central Africa.1 This is all the more surprising because privatisations of large, strategic public enterprises in Cameroon and other African countries have often been followed by militant protests by workers against massive lay-offs and deteriorating conditions of service. In this chapter, I show that the privatisation of the CDC tea estates has generated not only persistent regional protest (see Chapter 11) but also protracted strikes by estate workers. I will focus on one of the three privatised tea estates, the Tole Tea Estate in the coastal area of Anglophone Cameroon, which differs from the other two in the sense that its labour force has been composed mainly of women workers since its creation in the mid-1950s. I have studied this estate in some depth during several, longer and shorter, fieldwork periods since the mid-1980s (cf. Konings 1993, 1995a, 1995b, 1998b). Various research methods have been employed. I consulted the existing primary and secondary sources in libraries and archives. I carried out a few surveys among the workers and observed their daily activities for some months. And finally, I interviewed a large number of workers, managerial staff members, trade-union leaders, government officials and other relevant informants. The chapter consists of two sections. The first section gives a brief analysis of the Tole Tea Estate’s labour force and its actions during the economic crisis that faced the CDC prior to privatisation. The second section describes the growing militancy of Tole Tea Estate workers following a dramatic deterioration in their conditions of service in the aftermath of the estate’s privatisation. This resulted in work coming to a complete standstill at the estate for a large part of 2006. The Tole Tea Estate labour force prior to privatisation The construction in 1954 of the Tole Tea Estate, which is located near Buea, the capital of the South West Province, marked a turning point in the history of the CDC. This was the first estate to produce tea and, more importantly, to recruit predominantly female labour. Upon completion of the estate, the management decided to employ women to pick the tea, the main activity in tea cultivation (Konings 1995b, 1998b). Tea picking had widely come to be identified as ‘women’s work’, with vast numbers of women having been recruited on tea estates in Asia and elsewhere on the assumption that female pickers were more productive, more docile and cheaper than their male counterparts (Elson & Pearson 1984). If women in Asia were plucking tea, why couldn’t women in Cameroon? Moreover at the time the 1 There are some more detailed studies on workers’ response to privatisation in the southern part of Africa. See, for instance, Larmer (2005, 2007), Pitcher (2002) and Zeilig...

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