Abstract
While tea plantations brought good fortunes to some parts of Southern Highlands in Tanzania such as Mufindi and Rungwe during the British mandate, its production sites became centres of ethnic contestations in relation to work discipline. The colonial and post-colonial enterprises labelled some ethnic groups as “reliable labourers” and others “unreliable”. This article, uses the tea plantations in Mufindi district, Iringa, to debate the labour question and ethnic identity in tea plantations between 1920s and 2000s. It argues that tea plantations were practical point of colonial stereotyping whose architects were anthropologists. Interviews in Mufindi tea plantations and factories, archival and secondary sources indicate that the Hehe were not preferred as migrant labour in the tea plantations in the beginning of tea plantations. Instead, the Bena and Kinga were preferred from the 1920s to the late 1980s when the Hehe were finally incorporated in all sections of tea industry. The article concludes by arguing that the late inclusion of the Hehe was not typically due to perceived laziness but from the exploitative nature of tea plantations and their ethnic attributes which inclined more to military
Recommended Citation
Kangalawe, Hezron R.
(2026)
"Labour Migrancy and Ethnic Stereotypes: Experiences from Mufindi Tea Plantation, ca. 1920s to 2000s,"
Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies: Vol. 2:
Iss.
2, Article 8.
DOI: 10.56279/ZJAHS1225
Available at:
https://commons.udsm.ac.tz/zjahs/vol2/iss2/8
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