Deconstructing the Sovereign Plantation (sorry, Protectorate)

first published 9-November-2004

DECONSTRUCTING THE SOVEREIGN PLANTATION (sorry, PROTECTORATE)

Better Life Shadow: Hey, Old Good Fellow ! How's life on your plantation nowadays.
OGF: Fine, fine. We are surviving. Which one be plantation? This na independent place o.
BLS: The plantation you live and work in. Do you not produce vegetable oil, mineral oil and cheap labour for the markets? What else do you make?
OGF: Never thought of it as a plantation before.
BLS; Do you not work all day and all night, for years on end, with very little to show for it?
OGF: Not me! I am the head of the household staff. I crack the whip on the field hands and make sure our production levels are always up.
BLS: Ah, you are the super on this plantation?
OGF: Yes ke. I am the oga patapata. Apart from god above and our investors just beneath him.
BLS: What does god do for you? What do your investors do for you?
OGF: How dare you blaspheme the name of the almighty? Can you not see this plantation is very productive?!
BLS: I see a lot of people toiling relentlessly in the fields. A lot are dying of hunger. But a lot of food is rotting.
OGF: That one is not the fault of god or the investors. The ones dying are too lazy to work. The food is for export to our investor, One Across The Water.
BLS: Chineke! Is OATW your god? What has she invested? Why waste food when people are dying?
OGF: Mind yoursef before I discipline you. OATW brought me god, the almighty who shall never die.
BLS: What capital or labour or anything tangible has OATW invested in this plantation, then?
OGF: Questions, questions. I told you already: god was her only investment here. The people you see provide all the investment we need.
BLS: (in disbelief) These people provide all the investment and they are dying of want?! Can they not use what they have to improve their own lives?
OGF: And make me look bad when next I go into the house to meet OATW? God go punish you.
BLS: (angry) Akotileta!! Who made you oga here? YOU should be careful the people do not mutiny and burn the house down and you with it.

Old good fellow thinks about this. This better life seems to make sense.

OGF: What should I do? The plantation owes OATW a lot of money. If we no pay, OATW will not buy our food and the people will starve even more.
BLS: And so what? The people are already starving. Sell them the food. Anyway, how come the plantation owes OATW a lot of money?
OGF: Even me sef, I no know. All the other plantations around here are in the same position. When OATW arrived here with god, my father's neighbours built the house for them with our own sweat and blood. OATW was very generous to our neighbours, sha.
BLS: Generous to your neighbours? How?
OGF: OATW added our land to that of the neighbours and put them in charge. She told everybody: "I will train your people in how to better manage your land, if you agree to make it a plantation for me. I will buy your everything you make, provided you agree to take my god as your own."
My father did not think this was a good arrangement, and told OATW so. She became very angry and told her soldiers to rape, maim, loot and imprison my father's chiefs in the name of her god. Many died. Many were taken across the waters, never to be seen again (sobs).
When the fighting finished, OATW said we owed her the cost of killing our people and taking our land for her plantation. She told my neighbours to appoint a good house-super and make sure the debt is paid in full.
BLS: Laakuli, otherwise what will happen?
OGF: Otherwise, she will ask the dogs of war to come back.
BLS: So you must forever keep the plantation going in order to pay this bastard debt? Why not train your own dogs of war?

Old good fellow thinks about this. This better life sure asks a lot of sensible questions.

OGF: What should I do? The plantation is very beneficial for our neighbours and very profitable to OATW. They will not allow us to train our own dogs.
BLS: Haba! Without your own dogs, you cannot burn the house or protect the people. You will be attacked by your enemies and forced forever to pay the debts that make the people poor.
OGF: No worries. I have signed agreement with OATW to not attack me. I have agreed with my neighbours to give them bits and pieces of the plantation to add to their own plantations.
We produce a lot of food and oil that OATW wants to buy. As long as the plantation delivers, no wahala.
BLS: What will happen when the soil becomes tired and the well becomes dry and the debt is not yet paid?
OGF: (Happy at his own foresight) That is not my problem anymore!
BLS: Why not? Are you not the house-super, who is responsible for the well-being of the plantation workers?
OGF: The soil is being given free to OATW's people to grow their own food. The well is already owned by OATW. Besides, we need not worry about the people by that time!
BLS: Why not? Are the plantation people not agitating against this massive theft?
OGF: NO, OATW allows those potential trouble-makers who think they have sense to go to OATW's country, where they to work as feudal wage slaves. The trouble-makers who no want go are dealt with. Most of the rest are delibrately undereducated, malnourished and allowed to die of curable diseases.
BLS: You said most of the rest. What happens to the rest of the rest, then?
OGF: They rely on my generous handouts or they believe in OATW's god. Either way, they help to keep the plantation running. We got debts to pay!!
BLS: (mutters curses)