The energy to grow tobacco for this season stems from Muheriwa’s 100 bales bought at a good price of between $1.90 and $2.15 per Kg during 2010 as compared to 2009 sales season.

Just four years ago, after the tobacco sales season, Muheriwa was stuck in bad debts after incurring huge losses in tobacco business because all his sales income were lower than production costs due to low tobacco prices offered by buyers on the market.

But at the opening of tobacco markets in Malawi (Africa’s biggest burley tobacco producer) tobacco prices last year were tagged at an average of 20 percent more than government set prices according to Tobacco Control Commission (TCC).

The leaf sold for $2.40 per kilogram at Limbe Auction Floors against government’s set $2.
“I am impressed with the quality of the leaf and the buyers should be commended for offering above government set prices,” TCC Chairman Bruce Munthali said adding, “We hope this trend will go on.”

Painful poverty

While Muheriwa is however, enjoying from tobacco benefits, Ganizani Benjala and his other 10 family members are licking painful wounds of poverty mud in Mitundu outside Lilongwe City.

Benjala is unable to remember his own age but recalls that he has spent 50 years growing tobacco during the day and working as a watchman at night at Zanzi Estate in Mitundu.

“I have been growing tobacco and working as a watchman at Zanzi for 49 years. But people don’t believe me when I tell them that the only thing I have after working for such a long time is that rusty bicycle I bought over 12 years ago,” he said while pointing at the two wheeled contraption.

Benjala, married with seven children and four grandchildren said whatever he has been getting since he started working as tobacco tenant and watchman went from his hand into their mouths for their survival.

“Tobacco is Malawi’s green gold. However, while I have seen estate owners getting richer and opening more estates, as a tenant I and my family have been sailing in hardships,” he said as he wiped sweat on his forehead with a back of his hand while stepping closer to pose for a photograph with a herd of 87 cattle he guards daily.

Benjala, from Jailosi Village, T/A Kasumbu in Dedza over 90 Km from Lilongwe disclosed that during this year’s tobacco sales season he earned about K40,000 ( about $270) after selling his tobacco to his employer (landlord).

He disclosed that after producing tobacco each season his landlord buys it at low prices around K80 (around 50 cents) per Kg.

“It’s the landlord benefitting from tobacco growing because after buying it at a very low price from us, sells it at a higher price at the auction floors,” he said.

Benjala added that he gets K3, 000 (around $20) per month from his watchman job. “I have now lost hope of ever reaping fruits from growing tobacco because the money I get from the tenant and watchman jobs is too little to buy food and other needs for a family of 11,” he said.


The tobacco grower disclosed his benefits during every tobacco season are also eroded by hefty deductions by his employer. However, Benjala’s Manager Naphtali Banda said his estate could not produce more high quality tobacco if it provided poor, inadequate welfare such as food and medical care to the tenants.

Welfare of workers

“That’s impossible, in fact Zanzi Estate is owned by a prominent economist who has worked in Malawi and abroad, a man of great integrity hence this estate is one of the few in Lilongwe which puts the welfare of workers at heart,” Banda explained.

Apart from Benjala, 26-year-old tenant Annette Makombe at an estate in Mzimba in the north had her own story to tell. She said she left her home in Zomba in the southern region in the company of her brother, Jonathan after their parents died of HIV and AIDS related complications to work at the estate in Mzimba in search for a better life.

“But while our employer swims in huge sums of money at the end of the season we survive on debts as the biggest chunk of our benefits from tobacco goes to the employer after hefty deductions,” she said.

Makombe disclosed that women and children’s lives are difficult in tobacco estates.
“We are treated more like sub-humans because while estate owners always expect us to work hard our welfare is never taken care of,” she said.

Makombe further said tobacco tenants and their families are not entitled to any benefits.
“When we fall ill, we are neither entitled to a sick leave nor provided with transport to go to the hospital. We are also not entitled to annual or maternity leave, transport facilities, medical scheme, death gratuity, and other entitlements,” she said.

Makombe said although women and men equally contribute to tobacco production, landlords do not reward them equally.

“If you are a woman you are also mostly subjected to mental, sexual and physical abuses like rape and sexual harassment from a landlord and even a husband.”
Makombe added that the situation is even worse for tenants with large families because when food allocation runs out in the house landlords tell them they have no responsibility over tenants’ children.

Recently, President Bingu wa Mutharika during a political campaign said he will invite tobacco buyers and some local growers to meet the cigarette manufacturer’s executive to appreciate how growers are suffering while buyers enjoying on the same leaf.

Mutharika has vowed that he will not tolerate tobacco buyers reaping on the expense of tobacco growers through offering low tobacco prices. He said his government is aware that some buyers purchase Malawian tobacco at very low prices and sell it at very good profit in other markets abroad.

“I sent my officials to one of the leading global tobacco producers Brazil to check on tobacco prices and we discovered that what buyers pay us here are peanuts,” Mutharika charged.

The President said he deliberately dating from 2007 started setting minimum prices for the various grades of tobacco, after accusing buyers of putting growers out of business by offering lower prices.

“I will not allow colonialists to exploit our tobacco growers by offering them low prices; no, I will chase them away,” Mutharika warned.

Suiting his words to actions the President deported four officials at three tobacco-buying companies, accusing them of sabotaging his economic agenda.

Exploitation

A veteran tobacco farmer Henry Ntaba concurred with Mutharika saying Malawian tobacco growers work hard and produce quality leaf. However, he complained that tobacco buyers exploit growers by offering low prices even less than the cost of producing the tobacco.

“These low prices are discouraging growers from producing more tobacco,” Ntaba said.

However, the Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama) also said some tobacco growers provoke buyers to offer low prices by bringing poor quality tobacco including inserting Non-Tobacco Related Materials (NTRMs) in their bales.


Some economic commentators on their part attributed Malawi’s low tobacco prices on the market on tobacco’s negative publicity by the World Health Organization (WHO)’s anti-tobacco global campaign with support from rich developed countries such as Canada aimed at saving over eight people dying per minute due to tobacco related illnesses worldwide.

The Tobacco Tenants and Allied Workers Union of Malawi (TOTAWUM) fighting for rights of tobacco growers said while locally, estate owners and international tobacco buying giants and manufacturers such as Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco (BAT) and their subsidiaries Limbe Leaf, Stancom, Dimon and Alliance One [who purchase over 95 percent of Malawi’s tobacco] are making huge profits and living in comfort, actual tobacco growers like Benjala and Makombe are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

TOTAWUM Secretary General Raphael Sandram said most Malawian tobacco tenants are complaining that they are not benefiting from growing tobacco.

“The tobacco growers say their benefits are too little or eroded by hefty deductions by estate owners,” said Sandram whose organization has over 20,000 members adding that most tenants suffer in silence.

“The growers are afraid that they will lose their jobs if they voice out their concerns. Most of these people are illiterate hence don’t even know that they have rights at work,” he added.

The Center for Social Concern (CSC) at Kanengo in Lilongwe said a research in tobacco estates in Malawi reveals that tobacco prices have been declining. “Tobacco workers in estates live in extreme poverty and are subjected to high exploitation. The situation has become more serious since the advent of market liberalization,” CSC Executive Director Jos Kuppens said. He disclosed that over 500, 000 Malawians live under dehumanising conditions in tobacco estates.

He cited tobacco growers and their families in estates of Lilongwe, Mchinji and Mzimba as some of the tenants experiencing such poor living conditions despite Ministries of Justice and Labour including Civil Society Organizations’ calls to create better working conditions for the tobacco workers.

“As a signatory to various human rights treaties and conventions, like the Convention of the Rights of Children (CRC), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Malawi is obliged to enforce conditions that ensure that all its citizens, including tobacco workers and their families, enjoy their rights and entitlements,” said Kuppens.

Malawi, with a population of over 13 million, the 2009 UN Human Development Report ranks as one of Least Developed Countries worldwide, as 60 per 100 people cannot afford to spend a $1 per day.

According to Price Water House Coopers Malawi’s tobacco dependency is imminent saying the leaf’s versatile industry accounts for 70 per cent of export earnings.

Local economists also claim tobacco remains Malawi’s key player in the economy, employing over 70 per 100 working people and contributing over 60 percent of the country’s National Budget. No wonder that despite not benefitting many, tobacco growers continue to grow the crop though just toil for nothing!