TYPES OF COLONIAL LABOUR FORCE
In colonial Africa, the European exploited the native labor for their own benefits. Other African laborers worked for the family, the KULAKS and the whites. The following were the main types of labor in colonial Africa.
FAMILY LABOUR
It was a dominant labor in colonial Africa the natives worked as a family in their small farms producing food and cash crops. Father, mother and other family members worked together. The family of the rich peasants (KULAKS) reached a stage of employing their fellow Africans.
THE DIRECT FORCED LABOUR
It was a family labor obtained in different means such as using the prisoner, community jobs e.g. the preparation of roads across the village etc.
INDIRECT FORCE LABOUR
This was obtained when the natives were obliged to work unwillingly because of looking for money for paying taxes and buying food for the victims of land alienation.
PAID LABOUR
It was a kind of labor in which the natives willingly secured a job to earn money. Different types of paid labor included,
Local area laboring.
Migrant labor.
MIGRANT LABOR
A migrant laborer is a person who migrates far away from his / her motherland to be employed in a strange (a new land). In colonial Africa most of the natives migrant laborers migrated from the labor reserved areas to the production areas.
Types of migrant labor.
There were two main types of migrant labor in colonial Africa. There were the:-
Intra – territorial migrant labor.
Inter – territorial migrant labor.
Intra – territorial migrant labor
It is a type of migrant labor in which the migrant labor migrated in the same territory to be employed to take care of the plantations. Example from Kigoma to Tanga in Tanganyika.
Inter-territorial migrant labor
A type of labor migration in which the labor moves from one territory to another. E.g. From Malawi to South Africa, from Mombasa to Morogoro etc. migrant labor was mostly preferred by the owners of plantation, mining and processing industries in colonial Africa.
