Malawi | home

LIFE IN MALAWI

The huge number of Malawians leaving the country had a considerable cultural, social and economic impact upon the country. Though initial colonial reports talked of migration eroding Malawian families and tribes, ethnographic studies in the 1940s and 1950s showed that migration in many areas benefitted the local population, through increased income and consumption - if not directly then through the economic benefits of bicycles and improved fishing.

Migration however also brought numerous cultural influences to Malawi - from music and fashion to an increasing sense of nationhood and class identity. Mission education in particular created a cadre of Malawians that enjoyed a competitive advantage in the labour markets of Southern Africa, a legacy that arguably had multi-generational reprucusions.

Official numbers of identification certificates issued to male migrants leaving each district to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia respectively from the Annual Reports of the Labour Department, for the Year ending 31st December 1959

Migration from Malawi followed distinct internal patterns. In 1959 most of those going South Africa came from the centre of Malawi, and those going to Zambia originating mainly from the north. Zimbabwe was consistently the most popular destination for those leaving the state. Of those going to Zimbabwe, a disproportionate number left from Port Herald, Mlanje, Lilongwe and Dowa districts - which points to the importance of networks. In his studies from the 1950s, the ethnographer Van Velsen noted that among the lakeside Tonga local networks were crucial, with migration organised locally among young men at the level of the hamlet.

A Tonga hamlet in the 1950s, from Van Velsen, The Politics of Kinship, (Manchester, 1964).

Though women migrants migrated far less than their male counterparts, in part due to colonial policy, by 1960 there were considerable numbers of women were emigrating from Malawi, particularly from Fort Johnson district. 1146 women left here in 1960 compared to 3472 men. These women however left almost entirely to Zimbabwe - encouraged by the Southern Rhodesian government. Migration to South Africa, at least officially remained almost exclusively a male affair.

Official numbers of travel permits issued to female migrants leaving each district to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia respectively from the Annual Reports of the Labour Department, for the Year ending 31st December 1959

Coming into contact with Africans from across the sub-continent, migrants often coalesced with those from the same country, defining themselves within national groups and aware of their contrast to other nationalities. Employers, further, typically grouped migrants with diverse ethnic backgrounds; whether Cewa, Tongan or Yao, Malawian migrants were typically labelled ‘Nyasas’ or ‘Nyasalanders’. Especially within the prejudiced confines of the South African mines and urban centres such as Salisbury, ideas of nationalism, trade unionism and religion conversed and clashed, helping to define newly emerging nations. The 1938 Blendisloe Commission found that present and former Malawian migrants were already in opposition to the possibility of the Federation and in support of an embryo-nation state. By 1957 half of the total membership of the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) lived in the Rhodesias and South Africa; their financial support crucial to its success.

Personal identification however was varied and complex. Even when migrants were aware of contrasts, this did not guarantee that nationalistic identity developed; Francis Gunde in 2012 recalled that his two uncles who emigrated to Zimbabwe two sons "were more or less Zimbabweans because they had married Zimbabweans. Now they are able to own land....They were Malawians so to say because they - you know when you are a foreigner - the sense of being the Malawian was there...[but] they farmed and lived as successful Zimbabweans and that is why they were not willing to come back to Malawi."

Interviews with Francis Gunde, Blantyre, 18/08/12 and 19/08/12

Groves, ‘Urban Migrants and Religious Networks: Malawians in Colonial Salisbury, 1920 to1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, (2012).

McCracken, A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, (Oxford, 2012).

Van Velsen, The Politics of Kinship, (Manchester, 1964).

Comment