African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on April 20, 2006
African Affairs 2006 105(420):375-397; doi:10.1093/afraf/adi128
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Informal moves, informal markets: International migrants and traders from Mzimba District, Malawi
Jens Andersson (andersson{at}malawi.net) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam.
International migration from Malawi has changed profoundly since centrally organized mine migration to South Africa ended in the 1980s. Contemporary movements are more diverse and less tied to labour, as informal trade has developed alongside. This article replaces a common ‘productivist’ perspective on migration with a decentralized approach, using ethnographic observation and anthropological case studies to understand interrelated flows of people and goods. It shows how in an emergent informal market for South African goods in Mzimba, Malawi, price information does not structure trade practices. Historical continuities in the socio-cultural organization of illegal migration, rather than liberalized market forces, shape this economic configuration, including price formation.
The research for this article was financed by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). Data were collected in Mzimba district, Lilongwe, Blantyre (Malawi), and Johannesburg (South Africa) in the period from April 2004 to March 2005.
1. Samir Amin, ‘Underdevelopment and dependence in Black Africa: historical origin’, Journal of Peace Research 9, 2 (1972), pp. 106, 115.
2. David A. McDonald, Lephophotho Mashike, and Celia Golden, ‘The lives and times of African migrants and immigrants in post-apartheid South Africa’, in David A. McDonald (ed.), On Borders: Perspectives on international migration in southern Africa (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000), pp. 168–95.
3. In the 1990s, migration to South Africa has expanded enormously, and alongside it, regional trade. See Jonathan Crush and David A. McDonald, ‘Transnationalism, African immigration, and new migrant spaces in South Africa: an introduction’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, 1 (2000), p. 2. The increase in regional trade is difficult to quantify as much of this trade is informal in nature and does not appear in official figures.
4. See, among others, Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves, and David Yudelman, South Africa’s Labor Empire: A history of black migrancy to the gold mines (Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1991).
5. Dunbar Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, mines, and migration (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994).
6. Harold Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid’, Economy and Society 1, 4 (1972), p. 433.
7. For an example of this phenomenon in another context, see Jens A. Andersson, ‘Administrators’ knowledge and state control in colonial Zimbabwe: the invention of the rural–urban divide in Buhera district, 1912–80’, Journal of African History 43, 1 (2002), pp. 119–43.
8. See the numerous interesting studies published by the Southern African Migration Project (URL: http://www.queensu.ca/samp).
9. Hopes for a re-opening of TEBA remained alive, though, and were fed by election promises in Malawi’s first multiparty elections in 1994. See among others ‘More light on TEBA; not in UDF manifesto’, Malawi News, 5–11 November 1994, p. 4. See also Wiseman C. Chirwa, ‘The Malawi government and South African labour recruiters, 1974–92’, Journal of Modern African Studies 34, 4 (1996) pp. 623–42; Wiseman C. Chirwa, ‘ "No TEBA. . . forget TEBA": the plight of Malawian ex-migrant workers to South Africa, 1988–1994’, International Migration Review 31, 3 (1997), pp. 628–54.
10. Chirwa, ‘The Malawi government’, p. 627; Jonathan Crush, ‘Migrations past: an historical overview of cross-border movement in southern Africa’, in David A. McDonald (ed.), On Borders, p. 15. Labour recruiting agencies competing for labour in (colonial) Malawi were the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA), and the (Southern) Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau (RNLB). The agencies were later renamed as The Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA) and the Rhodesian Native Labour Supply Commission, respectively.
11. F.E. Sanderson, ‘The development of labour migration from Nyasaland, 1891–1914’, Journal of African History 2, 2 (1961), pp. 259–71; G. Coleman, ‘International labour migration from Malawi, 1875–1966’, Journal of Social Science (University of Malawi) 2 (1972), pp. 31–46; Robert B. Boeder, Malawians abroad: The history of labor emigration from Malawi to its neighbors 1890 to the present (PhD thesis, Michigan State University, Ann Arbor, 1974).
12. Robert E. Christiansen and Jonathan G. Kydd, ‘The return of Malawian labour from South Africa and Zimbabwe’, Journal of Modern African Studies 21, 2 (1983), p. 311.
14. J.K. van Donge, ‘Disordering the market: the liberalisation of burley tobacco in Malawi in the 1990s’, Journal of Southern African Studies 28, 1 (2002), p. 105. This is not to say that tobacco production solely relies on migrant labour.
15. In the period 1977–1998, average annual intercensal growth rates in rural areas were highest in tobacco-producing areas such as Kasungu District (4.4 percent) in the Central Region, and Traditional Authority (TA) Mpherembe (5.3 percent) in Mzimba District in the Northern Region. Lowest growth rates were concentrated in the poor and densely populated southern districts, such as Chiradzulu (1.4), Mulanje (1.6), Phalombe (1.5), and Thyolo (1.7). See Figure 2.
16. In western Mzimba, and possibly elsewhere in the Northern region where average education levels are higher than in the rest of Malawi, people look down upon labouring in the low-paid tobacco sector. For figures on education levels, see T. Benson, J. Kaphuka, S. Kanyanda, and R. Chinula, Malawi: An atlas of social statistics (National Statistical Office of Malawi/IFPRI, Zomba/Washington, 2002), p. 51.
17. Bridget O’Laughlin, ‘Missing men? The debate over rural poverty and woman-headed households in Southern Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies 25, 2 (1998), p. 10.
18. ‘91 Malawians deported’, The Daily Times, 9 December 1994, p. 1. This is not to suggest that the South African government did not deport Malawians before 1994. See Boeder, Malawians abroad, p. 155, for an example from the 1930s.
19. Information obtained by the author from the Malawian consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, March 2005.
20. Before 1994, transport in Malawi was highly problematic as government-controlled bus services were limited. With liberalization, matola (pick-ups and lorries) greatly improved rural transport, while minibus services and foreign bus companies facilitated respectively rural–urban and international mobility. Exchanging foreign currency was equally problematic before liberalization; without a passport and proof of recent travel, banks could refuse to exchange.
21. Deanna Swaney, Mary Fitzpatrick, Paul Greenway, Andrew Stone, and Justin Vaisutis, Lonely Planet Southern Africa (Lonely Planet publications, London, 2003), p. 222.
22. Zimbabwe’s decreased popularity is also evidenced by the numerous Zimbabwe-born youths of Malawian descent waiting for the processing of a Malawian passport at the Department of Immigration in Blantyre.
23. The persistence of unequal sex distributions in the extreme north of the country is a further indication of the popularity of Tanzania as a destination for, especially, male migrants (see Figure 2).
24. Mzimba’s transport sector thus emerged before economic liberalization. In the 1980s, some South Africans started the business by investing in vehicles and using Mzimba drivers. By the early 1990s, the South Africans had left the business altogether and Malawians took their place.
25. R.R. Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, Vol. II: East-Africa (Oxford University Press, London, 1949), pp. 564–68; Leroy Vail and Landeg White, ‘Tribalism in the political history of Malawi’, in Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (James Currey, London, 1989), pp. 151–92; Leroy Vail, ‘The making of the "Dead North": a study of the Ngoni rule in northern Malawi, c. 1855–1907’, in J. B. Peires (ed.) Before and after Shaka: Papers in Nguni history (Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1978), pp. 230–67.
26. John McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi, 1875–1940 (CLAIM, Blantyre, 2000), p. 152. See also Sanderson, ‘The development of labour migration’, p. 260.
27. For instance, figures for the 1930s suggest that fewer Malawians were working in mining related jobs (recruited through WNLA) than in other sectors of the South African economy, notably domestic services and industry. See Boeder, Malawians abroad, p. 168.
28. Interview with Charles Makamo, Mzimba district, 16 July 2004. For an earlier account of Malawian migrants’ travel problems, see E.P. Makambe, ‘The Nyasaland African labour "Ulendo" to Southern Rhodesia and the problem of the "highwaymen," 1903–1923’, African Affairs 79, 317 (1980), pp. 548–66.
29. Interview with Charles Makamo, Mzimba district, 16 July 2004.
30. Records of the Employment Service Division of the MGLR suggest that entering into official labour contracts when already in South Africa was common in the early 1970s. The numerous ‘typical’ Ngoni, Tumbuka, and Tonga names (such as Jere, Makamo, Kumwenda, Chirwa) appearing on these lists further suggest that, in particular, migrants from northern Malawi were familiar with this procedure. Malawi National Archives, file: 14 ESD/SU/34, Lists of Malawians entering into contracts of employment, 1969–1975.
31. The aim of anthropological case studies — also referred to as the ‘case-study method’ — is not to present representative cases, but to illuminate wider social patterns and processes through the study of the particular. Here, the cases are used to illustrate the social processes at work in new social phenomena. See Max Gluckman, ‘Ethnographic data in British social anthropology’, The Sociological Review 9 (1961), pp. 5–17.
32. Malawians advertise their services in daily newspapers or neighbourhood weeklies, under categories such as ‘domestic workers’ or ‘gardeners’. Often they explicitly state their Malawian origin.
33. This development seems to be confirmed by population figures (see Figure 2): TA M’Mbelwa in western Mzimba was Malawi’s only TA where male absenteeism increased in the period 1987–98.
34. In 2004, all booking-offices in Mzimba district have been closed. Stories of cheating transporters who suddenly disappear with the money paid in advance have made people more cautious.
35. The term is seen locally as a reference to the brand name — Caterpillar — of big ground-work machinery used for road construction.
36. Alongside the market for South African goods thus developed an informal money-transfer market, as illegal immigrants have no access to South Africa’s banking system. Transporters carry cash remittances of migrants, while migrant businessmen have set up more sophisticated money transfer systems, operating similarly to official agencies such as Western Union (which does not operate in South Africa).
37. Lindela is a repatriation centre near Johannesburg for illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. See SAHRC, Lindela at the Crossroads for Detention and Repatriation: An assessment of the conditions of detention (South African Human Rights Commission, Johannesburg, 2000).
38. For example, an ongoing survey among international bus passengers leaving Lilongwe for Johannesburg indicates that 61 percent of the travellers originating from Mzimba district (n = 294), expects to be accommodated by a relative upon arrival.
39. Due to lack of uniformity in the products traded, reliable price comparisons between the Johannesburg and Mzimba markets are difficult to make. Common model mobile phones, such as the Nokia 3310, are an exception. In 2005, a used Nokia 3310 fetched some 300–400 rands in Johannesburg, which amounts to 5,700–7,600 Malawian kwacha. In Mzimba, these phones are usually sold for 5,000–6,000 kwacha.