upepo
Elder Lister
When economic systems are totally different, there is no common basis for competition and this means none can subdue the other. This is the same way a footballer cannot be better than, say, a volleyball player because the two games do not share common characteristics. When the British sought African labour in building the railway and running subsequent enterprises, they lacked the incentives to convince Africans to provide labour. Money was useless to the African as a container of wealth. At the same time, the things Africans considered valuable, such as livestock, the coloniser did not have. This means that the colonialist had no way of extracting African labour consensually. The first solution was to import labour that could be paid with money, British money. This was Indian labour. The second solution was to impose hut tax, which could only be paid with currency earned from waged labour in colonial enterprises. This forced individuals to abandon personal pursuits for paid labour to afford the tax. And that is how the first laborers came to being in our country. Before that, everyone was their own laborer and employer.
