The Labour Exchanges System in the Tembo

Abstract

The author describes and analyzes the labor exchange system of the Tembo, an agricultural people in eastern Zaire. The system consists of three basic rules: (1) one-day work should be exchanged with one-day work, and a monetary system is of no effect in the labor exchange system, (2) labor is exchanged between the same sex, and (3) labor is exchanged by a dynamic contract between two individuals. But these three rules alone are practically impossible, unless every member in the society has equal capacity of labor. The Tembo, therefore, have three modified systems of labor exchange to resolve some incongruity between the principles of labor exchange and inequality existing in the society:(1) "lukoo" system of offering labor as a gift; (2) "kwanza" system of paying back a feast instead of labor; (3) a system which works beyond the limitation of sex enabling deficient families to participate the labor exchange group. These three subsystems make the labor exchange system prevalent in the Tembo society.