Engaging in the capitalist economy on their own terms, by retaining mobility and choice in their economic activity, Malawians from the 1890s worked as plantation workers, cash-crop producers, retailers, traders in colonial Nyasaland, or migrated abroad. In the north of Malawi, many were heavily influenced by Christian missions, whose prudential 'Protestant Ethic' emphasized practical skills and the 'spirit of capitalism'; and mission-educated Malawians were well-regarded across Southern Africa for their work ethic.[1] Taught English and trained as brick layers, carpenters, medical assistants, teachers and pastors in missions; "after graduation, most of these found themselves unemployed because of the few job opportunities that existed for white collar job seekers."[2] With skills-sets which made them competitive across Southern Africa, throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, arguably "the only means of advancing in economic terms was labour migration."[3] Though van Onselen puts migration down to high, exploitative taxation, taxes were not levied in Tongaland until 1897, and in northern Ngoniland until 1906, after migration had already become well established. Taxation remained erratic and easily evaded into the 1930s when there were still only 7 administrators and 70 policemen appointed in Northern Province.[4] Rather than taxation, the "interrelation between local economies and mission policies was of much more immediate importance" for migration, with heightened skills and ambitions catalysing migration to high-wage South Africa.[5] Noted as good savers in the Union,[6] on their return to Malawi, migrants reacted to expanding markets, both local and global, and often invested in independent enterprises. Whilst Malawians could work on settler estates or within the wage economy in colonial Nyasaland, from the 1920s most retained and utilised the choice of independent economic activity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] R. Boeder, Malawians Abroad, The History of Emigration from Malawi to its Neighbours, 1890 to the Present, (Michigan Univ. PhD. thesis, 1974), p.5; J. McCracken, ‘Underdevelopment in Malawi: the Missionary Contribution’, African Affairs, 76, 303, (1977).

 

[2] J. Nkosi, 'Labour Migration and its effects on Rural Life: a case study from Mzimba District, c.1930s-1950s', History Seminar Paper, No.12, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, (1982), p.2.

 

[3] Nkosi, 'Mzimba', p.12.

 

[4] McCracken, History of Malawi, p.97; McCracken, 'Underdevelopment', p.199.

 

[5] McCracken, 'Underdevelopment', p.207.

 

[6] University of Johannesburg, Special Collections and Archives (UJ) WNLA 59L/8, 'Report of the leisure activities of Nyasas and Marobi employed in the Transvaal and Orange Free State mines', 24/10/1960.