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The Development of Labour Migration from Nyasaland, 1891–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

F. E. Sanderson
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Extract

Nyasaland has never been significant as a field of economic exploitation; mineral wealth is lacking and the territory's comparative inaccessibility has severely hampered agricultural development. However, she does possess an abundance of labour, the only mobile form of capital held in a subsistence economy. Today approximately one-third of the total male adult population is employed abroad; for, although Nyasaland is one of the most densely peopled areas in Southern Africa, she cannot provide regular paid employment for more than one-fifth of her male adults. An estimated 123,000 of the 169,000 migrant workers are in European employment in Southern Rhodesia where less than half that colony's requirements are obtainable from her own resources; the rest work mainly in South Africa and in Northern Rhodesia.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , July 1961 , pp. 259 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1961

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References

1 Nyasaland, , Annual Colonial Report, 1958, 26. 72,500 were estimated to be in paid employment in Nyasaland on the 31 March 1958 according to employers' returns. This figure presumably includes women, juveniles and aliens.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. The figures are for 1958.

3 Kuczynski, Vide, A Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, II, Oxford, 1949. For example, the Nyasaland Colonial Report for 1920, 9, gives an estimate of 20,000 Nyasas working abroad in that year. South African and Southern Rhodesian figures alone indicate that 60,000 would have been nearer the mark.Google Scholar

4 British Central Africa Gazette, v, no. 6, 30/4/1898; BSAC Minutes, 21/3/1900, Anx. 101.Google Scholar

5 Between 1893 and 1903 the country was officially known as ‘British Central Africa’ and included N.E. Rhodesia, administered from Zomba for the British South Africa Company.

6 British Central Africa Gazette, 1, no. 12, 26/9/1894.

7 Ibid. II, no. 10, 15/7/1895.

8 Ibid.

9 Report by Commissioner Johnston, C. 7504 of 1894, Africa, no. 6, 31. The actual number given as at March 1894 was 237.

10 Ibid. 27. Johnston claimed that Africans in the Lower Shire Valley had been accustomed to paying taxes to the Portuguese before the British took over.

11 British Central Africa Gazette, III, no. 6, 15/3/1896.

12 The Pim Report, Col. No. 145 of 1938, 126, declared that had Northern Rhodesia been assessed on its tax-paying capacity some districts would be paying as little as 6d. or Is. per annum in 1938.

13 BSAC to CO, July 1893, no. 3, Africa South 454; Milner to Chamberlain, 4/10/1901, no. 327, Africa South 694.

14 Sharpe to F.O., CA No. 19 of 1900; Africa South 656, no. 75, 25/5/1900.Google Scholar

15 British Central Africa no. 5 of 1901 in B.C.A. Gazette, III, no. 12, 31/12/1901.

16 Report of the Commission on the Native Rising, Nyasaland, 1916, 6. From 1921 a flat rate of 6s. was instituted and remained in force until the Second World War.

17 Africa South 717, no. 83, Encl. I; Duff, H. L., Nyasaland under the Foreign Office, London, 1903, 355.Google Scholar

18 F.O. to Sharpe, 6/1/1903, no. 27, Encl. in Africa South 717.

19 Duff, H. L., op. cit. 355.Google Scholar

20 In Rhodesia and Nyasaland many employers had their own stores within the African compounds and some issued tokens to encourage the taking of credit. Burden, G. N., Nyasaland Native Labour in Southern Rhodesia, Zomba, 1938, 14, 17–18, Appendix B.Google Scholar

21 ibid. III, no. 7 31/7/1900.

22 Central African Times, VI, no. 25, 21/3/1903. The Administration overcame the difficulty by collecting in the wet season when the crops needed attention.

23 Life and Work in British Central Africa, no. 170, May 1903, 4.Google Scholar

24 Van der Horst, S. T., Native Labour in South Africa, O.U.P., 1942, 164.Google Scholar

25 Ibid. 192–3 and 206. Cd. 3993 of 1908, 15, noted that one large mine paid between 3s. and 4s. a day to new recruits but gave no ration3 or ration money.

26 Cd. 1200 of 1902, 5 and 40; Cd. 3993 of 1908, op. cit. 91.

27 Africa South 717, no. 325, 17/8/1903; Cd. 3993 of 1908, op. cit. 88. Thus wages and conditions tended to be worst in the north Transvaal and in Mashonaland.

28 Regulations in force to control the methods of recruitment were chiefly aimed at Nyasaland employers, but were, of course, applicable to recruiters from neighbouring territories. Vide B.C.A. Gazette, v, no. 5, 9/4/1898.

29 Africa South 656, Encl. I in no. 49A; B.S.A.C. Minutes, 10/4/1900, Anx. I.

30 Vide Africa South 574.

31 Cd. 3993 of 1908, op. cit. 86 and 93.

32 Ibid. 28. December was the peak month of employment for alien workers; the average for the year would probably be slightly lower. P. F. Hone, op. cit. 88–9, gave the number of alien workers registered in Southern Rhodesia on 31 March 1907 as 66,972.

33 Report of the Emigrant Labour Committee, Zomba, 1935, 9.

34 Ibid. 10–13.

35 Report of the R.N.L.B., 1912, 3.

36 Southern Rhedesia, Report of the Chief Native Commissioner, 1919, 8.

37 Report of the Management and Finance Committee, R.N.L.B., 30/6/1911, 4.

38 In the first six months of 1910, a more typical year, 8,167 (including 166 women) used the ferries inward and 4,307 (92 women) used them outward. Ibid. 1910, 10.

39 During 1910 desertions, i.e. breach of Contract, from the mines reached a peak of 120.9 per mille (all workers), Report of the R.N.L.B., 1910, 19. Desertions from the farms would be at a much greater rate.Google Scholar

40 Hone, P. F., Southern Rhodesia, London, 1909, 88–9. Possibly one-fifth or, at most, one-quarter of the indigenous on the labour registers would be at work at any one time. The proportion of aliens at work would be much higher, perhaps one-half.Google Scholar

41 For example, Chamberlain to Milner, no. 20, 1897, Africa South 559; Africa South 656, no. 7, 27/12/1899; Memoranda by H. Wilson Fox, B.S.A.C., London, 1912.

42 The Bureau was not able to recruit in Portuguese territory where a monopoly was granted to the South African Government in 1901. Therefore Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were the two chief sources of supply.

43 Report on Nyasaland Natives in the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, by Abraham, J. C., Zomba, 8.Google Scholar

44 Report of the Management and Finance Committee, R.N.L.B., Dec. 1910, 9.

45 Rhodesia, Southern, Annual Report on Public Health, 1915, 32; 1919, 22; 1920, 4.Google Scholar

46 Proceedings of the Meeting of the R.N.LB., Bulawayo, 30/11/1911. 2.

47 Report of the Management and Finance Committee, R.N.L.B., 1909, 13.

48 This information was given by the Governor at the request of the Church of Scotland Mission, Nyasaland, and reproduced in Life and Work, no. 181, April 1904.

49 Cd. 3993 of 1908, op. cit. 46.

50 Ibid. 93.

51 Ibid. 46.

52 Ibid. III.

53 Van der Horst, S. T., op. cit. 196 and 216–17.Google Scholar

54 Abrahams, J. C., op. cit. 1937, 4–5.Google Scholar

55 Burden, G. N., Nyasaland Natives in the Union of South Africa, Zomba, 1940, 5;Google ScholarReport of the Emigrant Labour Committee, op. cit. 1935, 28.Google Scholar

56 Cd. 3993 of 1908, op. cit. 80 et seq. There was also some work to be had in the Sasare goldfields, 100 miles west of Fort Jameson.

57 Northern Rhodesia, Report upon Native Affairs, 1931, 25.

58 The Pim Report, op. cit. 30.

59 Report of the Management and Finance Committee, R.N.L.B., 1908, 3.

60 The Pim Report, op. cit. 30–1.

61 Report of the Emigrant Labour Committee, op. cit. 1935, 15 and 20.

62 Ibid. 15. In 1935 it was estimated that there were between 17,000 and 18,000 Nyasas employed in Tanganyika.

63 Ibid. 13 and 245.

64 Proceedings of the Legislative Council, Zomba, 2/11/1909. Governor's address.

65 Proceedings of the Legislative Council, Zomba, 5/11/1908. Deputy Governor's address.

66 Report of the Management and Finance Committee, R.N.L.B., Dec. 1910, 9.

67 Report of the Emigrant Labour Committee, op. cit. 1935, 38.

68 Cd. 2387 of 1925, 184. The high margin of error in social accounting at this time may wholly or partly explain the supposed decline.

69 Report of the Emigrant Labour Committee, op. cit. 1935, 19.

70 Typical were the comments of Life and Work, no. 167, Feb. 1903, 5, on the moral dangers involved in the long separation of the husband from his family, and of Dr Laws of Livingstonia Mission, who wrote in his journal, Aurora, April 1903, of the harmful physical effects of the journey to Salisbury and of the bitterness in the villages when reports of migrants' deaths came in.Google Scholar