Tensions and transformation in a tea enterprise: Transkei, South Africa

This paper examines problems-and prospects on two tea estates in Transkei, one of South Africa's former homelands. It firstly focuses on outgrower and wage labour issues in the context of current debates about contract farming in Africa. Additionally, the research considers the specific national and international context of Transkeian tea production and highlights issues which are emerging in the new South Africa. The tea enterprise displays, in microcosm, many of the tensions which must inevitably arise as disparate groups attempt to restructure, or resist restructuring, and at the same time, external forces begin to interpose their own trajectories on a previously separate, protected market.