Rahim Jubeki still vividly remembers the day he signed up to work on a commercial tobacco estate. To him, it looked like a definitive exit from grinding poverty: a single season of hard labour, a lump-sum payout at the end, and enough capital to return home, build a house, and secure his family’s future.
Instead, the notorious tenancy system, despite being strictly outlawed by the government, has become a modern-day corporate slavery chain that tightens around his neck with each passing year.
“I have worked as a tenant since 2019,” Jubeki says, his voice flat with an exhaustion that goes deeper than the physical toll of the fields. Hailing from Traditional Authority (T/A) Kawinga in Machinga District, he has spent years sweating on a farm in Mzimba.
He recalls gruelling seasons where he worked from dawn to dusk every single day of the year, only to be handed a measly K170 000 when the final accounting was done.
The mathematics of the estate is rigged from the start. “We agree that I will be paid a lump sum at the end of the harvest,” Jubeki explains.
“But while I am working the fields, my family still needs to eat. I need soap, medicine, and basics. So, I am forced to take food advances and cash loans from the boss, sometimes carrying informal interest rates as high as 100 percent. By the time the crop is finally auctioned and the estate owner deducts what I ‘owe’ him, I am left with almost nothing. I start the next farming cycle already buried in debt.”
Jubeki’s fall into structural poverty is a textbook pattern repeated across Malawi’s lucrative tobacco belt.
Under the outlawed tenancy framework, workers are denied regular monthly wages. They survive entirely on high-interest credit lines extended by their employers, only discovering what their labour was actually worth months later when the leaf hits the auction floors.
This systemic delay, paired with predatory deduction schemes for basic sustenance, traps vulnerable families in a loop of perpetual economic bondage.
For Jubeki, the human cost of this system was devastatingly personal. When his son passed away, he did not even have the cash to travel home to bury him; his anticipated earnings had already been entirely swallowed by his employer’s ledger.
“It took well-wishers to step in and transport my boy’s body back to Machinga,” he says, staring at the ground. “It feels like we work purely to enrich others, while we ourselves inherit nothing but the dust.”
Across the country, the voices of despair echo one another. In Njewa, Lilongwe, fellow tenant farmer Makhalidwe Mambala estimates that his accumulated food debts and cash advances have skyrocketed past K2 million, a sum far higher than any payout he can realistically expect at the end of the cycle.
“I have been doing this for three years and I have nothing to show for it,” he says. “I will quit after this season.”
The tenancy system was formally abolished in 2021, yet a 2024 National Statistical Office survey, supported by the International Labour Organisation, found that roughly 75 percent of workers in Malawi’s tobacco industry still operate as tenants.
The survey estimated the sector employs about 355 582 workers across 174 923 households, with nearly 264 661 people working under tenancy arrangements. It also found that 94.9 per cent of surveyed tenants received no salary during the season and were paid only at the end of the cycle.
Farmers continue to resist adopting the standard employment system which requires tobacco estate workers to receive monthly wages, instead preferring the abolished tenancy labour system.
But some tobacco farmers argue that economic realities have forced them to continue using the tenancy system despite its prohibition.
Happy Dube, a tobacco farmer from Enukweni in Mzimba, who employed Jubeki said he is fully aware that tenancy farming was outlawed but claims he has little choice.
Dube said the poor performance of the tobacco market made it impossible for him to place his six workers on a monthly payroll, adding that some workers prefer receiving a lump sum payment at the end of the season.
He said the tenancy arrangement is more affordable because payment is only required after tobacco has been sold.
“Tobacco farming is no longer lucrative. We grow the crop but, in the end, fail to make meaningful profits. If we were to pay our employees monthly, we would not be able to produce tobacco,” said Dube.
Tobacco Association of Malawi president Abel Kalima Banda said they have intensified campaigns to discourage the practice and promote compliance with labour laws.
“We have successfully fought this practice and we continue educating farmers about its negative effects. Many are complying, but for the few who are not, we will not stop raising awareness,” he said.
Labour expert Robert Mkwezalamba has blamed the Ministry of Labour for failing to enforce the law as it lacks adequate labour inspectors.
“We recommend that the ministry employ at least 10 labour inspectors in every district. This would allow for regular inspections of estates and help end a practice that continues to impoverish workers.” said Mkwezalamba.
Ministry of Labour commissioner Hlalerwayo Nyangulu confirmed they are aware that tenancy farming continues despite being abolished in 2021.
He said although the law was amended, there is no specific penalty attached to the continued practice of tenancy farming, leaving enforcement largely dependent on court action under the Employment Act.
“We should intensify campaigns to stop the practice. Ironically, many former tenants still prefer the system because they believe receiving a lump sum at the end of the season is more beneficial than receiving monthly wages.
“The other challenge is that farmers often do not have enough cash to pay monthly wages. As a result, they persuade workers with promises of food rations, limited cash advances during the season, and assurances of competitive tobacco prices,” said Nyangulu.
