Inside the clashes between locals and large-scale producers in Kenya’s tea industry

It started on a low key from mid-2022 with local residents in the tea growing belt that covers Kericho, Bomet and Nandi counties, illegally plucking tea from the region’s big multinational tea estates and factories, and selling it to the smaller ones.

The illegal pluckers, emboldened by their claim of losses of jobs, have their places taken over by machines that now litter the green landscape that not too long ago was populated with human labour.

But the assault on the estates escalated from the green leaves and a bud to the hand held and human-operated tractors that now roam the tea fields, quickly harvesting the tea leaves.

At the peak of the attacks, a near full-blown confrontation between the local residents, now rendered jobless and the multinationals keen to cut costs and improve productivity.

By the time the fires were put out, the damage had been done; tea plucking machines, four of them lay torched, in the fields and by the roadside; the rage against the machines extending into the tea estates’ future; thousands of tea seedlings vandalized; greenhouses destroyed in one of the worst attacks on the big tea estates in the county.

The fields here are slowly recovering from the devastating effect of the just past drought and the green that Kericho is famed for is once again manifesting one green leaf at a time, weaving into a tapestry of well-trimmed carpet of shrubs, whose produce has for years fed, clothed and educated thousands of families here and beyond.

Indeed, since the first tea bush was planted in Kenya in 1903, and commercial tea planting started in 1924, tea has remained a mainstay for the tea-growing highlands of (MAP) Nakuru, Narok, Kericho, Bomet, Nyamira, Kisii, Kakamega, Bungoma, Vihiga, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet, Trans-Nzoia, Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Embu, Tharaka-Nithi, and Meru.

The tea industry is responsible for earning Kenya 120 billion shillings every year in export earnings, and a further 22 billion shillings on local sales, garnered from the 450 million kilograms of tea produced yearly.

The industry also supports about 5.0 million people directly and indirectly while an estimated 650,000 tea growers depend on tea making the industry one of the leading sources of livelihood in the country.

This has been the situation for residents of Kericho for over sixty years, residents have turned up to work in the tea plantation and in return, the tea estates have sustained their livelihoods

This symbiotic relationship has been responsible for the growth of towns and village centres built around tea estates and factories. But things have been changing as the globe embraces evolving technological advances.

In places where men and women broke their backs plucking tea for hours on end.

Machines sweep through rows of bushes in record time. The labour cost and time spent collecting the produce have reduced by more than 70%, but so has the source of livelihood, and the economic landscape of the now redundant labour force...now these violent run ins are becoming more common

“Hii mambo haikuanza juzi vile inasemakana, ilianxa vile watu wa estate waliambia watu waende retire mapema, watu wengine walioachiliwa hawana makwao, wakaanza kuiba chai pole pole... ikafika wakati vijana wanajitokeza kutafuta kazi wachache wanachukuliwa, wengine wanaachiliwa, wakanza kuungana na wale wakwanza pole pole, si unaona kikundi inapanuka,” Richard Mawere, a resident of Kimulot, says.

At Kimulot Village, a trading centre on the fringes of Chemasingi Tea Estate is a former shadow of it’s former self.

Not too long ago, businesses thrived fueled by the earnings of the residents who were employed at the tea estate…Now, padlocked doors and nearly deserted alleys greet a visitor here.

“Vile watu wengi walifutwa kazi maduka mengi yalifungwa, biashara vilifungwa,” says Andrew Ronoh.

Benard Ronoh adds: “Asubuhi tulikuwa tunaondoka tunapeleka workers kwa multinatioanls, jioni tunarudisha wao, wakipata yao pia sisi tulikuwa tunapatak riziki.”

The state of affairs here is attributed to what has been happening in the tea estates for close to two decades now.

Multinational tea estates’ introduction of tea plucking machines has changed the dynamics of life here. Where an individual tea picker would pluck at most 45 kilos of tea leaves a day, the machines are doing nearly 9 times that amount.

The tea growers say this has been beneficial to their businesses.

“The reason why we went for mechanization, on the cost of production on an estate, and this is an estate that has several hundreds of acres of tea bushes, they used to be highly labour intensive those days we would employ altogether the large scale to the tune of 40 to fifty thousand workers but over time the cost of labour especially has continued to go up,” Apollo Kiarie of the Kenya Tea Growers Association (KTGA) says.

While the tea estate reaps significant benefits from the machines, residents and unionists decry its crippling impact on the way.

David Sang, the Secretary General of KTGA says “The machines take over has undoubtedly upset the cart, but it isn’t something that happened yesterday…indeed, the back and forth between the tea estates and the locals over the machines have been the subject of a now concluded court battle that saw the estates get the green light to mechanise…however, the recent violent confrontations are also rooted in a more hidden agenda.”

While the attacks on the multinationals in the recent spate of violence has been blamed on unemployment as a result of the takeover of jobs by machines, it has not been lost on the population that the politic of the elections of 2022 and the continual fanning of the same by politicians has also played a part.

Apolo Kiarie, the KTGA CEO, notes that “our political class when they were campaigning did so on the platform that they will get the land back from the large scale people and that they would get machines out and get them back. But nobody is asking the reasons why we went that way.”

Kericho County Governor Eric Mutai says “When we had our Kenya Kwanza economic charter in Kericho which was led by the deputy president Rigathi Gachagua, (National Assembly) Speaker Moses Wetangula, we all sat in Kericho and it was an economic charter, people expressed themselves, they said they wanted the government to look into ways of helping them to remove the machines and have them pluck tea, so it isn't the governor, it’s a thing that went beyond to become a Kenya Kwanza charter want the machines, they wanted to pluck tea.”

Governor Mutai elected on the promise to wrestle back the lost jobs from the machines now says the current prevailing situation is not just about the machines and what they have taken from the locals, but also more deep-seated problems that traces its roots back to the colonial times.

“This is tied to the historical injustices, the community feel like they own the land and with this land that they own, it doesn’t seem to benefit them, that is the multinationals do not seem to benefit them. , there's a deep feeling within the community that comes out of a lack of sense of identity, they no longer identify with the investor,” he says.

His claims are supported by the Kipsigis community clans organization, who are also demanding that the community land tea-picking jobs revert back to the community unconditionally.

The multinationals however say the grievances raised and the community’s ways of seeking redress have come at a great cost to the large-scale tea producers and the entire tea industry at large.

“We are talking about the loss of assets, started in October, machines were burnt, houses and buildings have been brought down, we are talking about 100 million in terms of tea plucked at nine, we are talking about 200 million, we are not talking about when we shut down operations, we have to redo, level the table again,” Apollo says.

The conflict between the locals and the multinationals saw the establishment of a task force by the county government to look into among other things, the historical land injustices, the labour conflict, mechanisation and land rates and rents, as well as the relationship between the multinationals and the local business community.

The findings of the task force released in January included the recommendation on the balance between mechanisation and the deployment of human labour.

“I believe that in the interest of sustainability so that the host community feels embraced and they benefit from these jobs, I believe that it is time that the investor cedes ground and accepts that Africa is a developing continent and as a developing country there is a need for unskilled labour, we still have a huge pool of unskilled labour that if they are given a chance, they can pluck, but while at the same time we are listening to the investor and strike a balance, it will be an issue of percentages, so that the investor doesn't also feel like they are losing,” says Governor Mutai.

The task force also recommended that the land on which the tea estates sit be reverted to the community without any charge. The community leaders agree.

Says Kimetto: “This thing will go to the future generations, and these old men when we are fighting for this thing, we are not fighting for ourselves, we are correcting a mistake, when the British left, they transferred that mistake to the Kenya government for leasing out our ancestral land, there is no Kipsigis who knows about the leases, no Kipsigis was consulted, so how does the government lease out Kipsigis land.

Apollo adds: “They are legal ways to go about this, they are asking the wrong people.”