James Sadika, a Malawian herbalist, photographed in 1959 after two years working on a Bethal farm

 

 

In conjunction with urban area restrictions, the South African government's Farm Labour Scheme was resurrected over the course of the 1950s. Though dismantled in 1949, it was partly re-introduced during 1952 and fully functioning from June 1954, affecting urban Malawians in particular. James Musa Sadika, a Malawian herbalist in Johannesburg during the 1950s, was picked up by one of the South African Police 'ghost squads' in October 1958 and worked under appalling conditions in Heidelburg. When he was discovered in 1959 his conditions of work caused international outrage. Whilst some such as Gerhardt Nyirenda, who was a boss boy on Potgeitersrust farm from 1941 to 2005, thrived in such conditions, most did not. "During 1957-58 199,312 African men were sent from jails to work on farms. All 165 jails in the Union are operating this scheme". The 1955 Urban Areas amendment meant that thousands of Malawian urban workers by the end of the decade returned to Malawi in order to attain greater degree of economic independence, or fell off the records and became trapped in their places of work. Though throughout the 1950s there were 60,000 Malawians in South Africa, and numbers in rural areas decreased, there was increasingly a 'higher turnover' with more migrants leaving South Africa, or falling off the records, just as more Malawians arrived.