Malawian Migration to Zimbabwe, 1900–1965: Tracing Machona

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Zoe Groves highlights the importance of Malawian migration in southern Africa and raises questions about the legacies of colonial-era migration and the history of African diasporas within the continent.

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Institution: University of Leicester

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This video video outlines a project focused on the migration experiences of ordinary people from Malawi, emphasizing the significance of migration in shaping the nation's history and its often overlooked role in African labor migrations. The author aims to produce a book that highlights how Malawian migrants have influenced cultures and societies beyond their country's borders, particularly during the colonial and post-colonial periods.

The research incorporates both colonial archival studies and oral history interviews with returned migrants, capturing their personal stories and the broader socio-economic dynamics at play. The author notes that most historical accounts of migration highlight movements to South Africa, whereas migrations to Zimbabwe have been more common among Malawians.

The discussion spans multiple aspects, including the historical context of Malawi as a British colony, the nature of labor migration, and the challenges and opportunities faced by Malawian migrants. It also addresses how migrants maintained connections to their home communities, the pressures this created, and the economic contributions they made through remittances.

Women’s migration is also highlighted, detailing how many women sought better opportunities away from rural constraints. This video video emphasizes the need to understand the historical continuities in migration patterns in Africa and the resulting socio-political impacts, as well as the evolving challenges faced by diasporic communities, particularly in relation to citizenship rights in post-colonial contexts.

Overall, the author calls for a nuanced understanding of migration as a longstanding feature of Malawian life and its broader implications across the region.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I wanted to write a book about

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ordinary people's experiences of migration.

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And Malawi is a country that has very much been shaped

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by its history of migration, but it's often overlooked

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and, has been

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somewhat neglected in the historical scholarship on labor

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migrations in southern Africa.

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And so I wanted to produce a book

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that focused on these experiences of migration

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that really kind of, emphasized

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and showed the extent

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to which people from Malawi have had an influence far beyond

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the, the, the relatively small country of Malawi itself,

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but also the way in which migration has really shaped the

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culture and politics of the Malawian nation, both,

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as a British colony, but also in, in the post-colonial era.

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I was also very keen to produce a history of migration

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that's focused on migration within the African continent.

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Um, that that tends to have been a,

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a real focus on migration.

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Um, outside of Africa, we tend

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to know much more about African diasporas,

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and African migrations,

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people leaving the African continent when actually,

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historically there's always been far more migration within

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the continent itself.

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And, and yet we know,

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we know much less about those histories.

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The book is based on colonial archival research

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or research in, in colonial archives, in Malawi,

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in Zimbabwe, and in the uk.

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And within those archives, I was,

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looking at colonial records related

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to labor migration from labor departments,

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district commissioner files, also, the,

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the writings of colonial era anthropologists,

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who were very concerned with the effects

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of labor migration on rural dynamics, the way

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that villages were changing and people's lives,

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and cultures

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and practices were changing as a consequence

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of the new experiences that they were having, outside

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of their homes, or home communities.

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Um, but alongside those, colonial archives,

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I was also really keen to, to,

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to do some oral history research

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with former migrants themselves,

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and to, to really sort of bring those life history accounts,

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their own memories

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and stories of, of migration into this, process of,

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of knowledge production, on, you know, producing this,

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this new history of, of Malawi and migration.

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So I conducted around 50, oral history interviews with

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returned migrants in different parts of Malawi,

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So in different regions, in the north, south

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and central regions,

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but also with people who originated from Malawi,

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but have, established new lives and,

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and settled on a more permanent basis.

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Uh, in, in Hari, in, in Zimbabwe, the Ana,

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the Ana is a term which is literally translates

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as the lost ones.

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It's a UA or ger term.

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So that's the, the main, the primary language spoken,

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not just in Malawi,

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but also in other parts of, of the region where people

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of c chia, and ger ethnicity reside.

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Um, but it's a term that's used more broadly

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to describe migrants who, people who left Malawi

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and who, failed to return,

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or those who who never came home,

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or it's used to describe people who somehow lost contact,

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with the, with the home communities.

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So it's a term that gives us a sense of the, the scale

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of which people were leaving Malawi.

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Um, so many people were leaving

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and seen to be becoming lost to, to these communities,

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which created pressures on those who were left behind.

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Um, but it also tells us something about the,

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pressure on migrants to,

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to maintain connections, with home.

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To say a bit more about the,

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the historical context then within which these migrations

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were taking place.

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Malawi was a,

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a British colony was established in the 1890s known

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as Niland.

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Um, and it's, as I mentioned,

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a relatively small country,

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but it, it's always had quite a dense population,

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quite a large population for its size.

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And, for that reason, perhaps, one of the sort

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of main exports from Malawi has, has been migration,

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been people, the people were migrating

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to many different parts of the Southern African region.

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They were pulled there looking for better paid jobs,

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new opportunities.

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Uh, it wasn't always necessarily economic reasons

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behind the migrations.

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There's a wide range of different reasons why people looked

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to, to leave Malawi, looking

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for better opportunities, different experiences,

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and, and my book focuses in particular migrations

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to Zimbabwe.

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Now, Zimbabwe was a different type of colony.

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It was what we generally refer to

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as a settler colony governed by white, settlers,

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not all of whom were from Britain,

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but other parts of Southern Africa

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and other European countries.

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Um, and so people from Malawi,

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African migrants from Malawi had quite a different

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experience of life in colonial Zimbabwe

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because of its settler, colony status.

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In other words, they experienced, different forms

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of racial discrimination, in, in ways

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that perhaps they might not have been confronted

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with in their, in their home communities.

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Um, despite that, large numbers

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of people from Malawi migrated to Zimbabwe

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and actually settled them on a, on a permanent basis.

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Most literature, most historical writing on,

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labor migrations in, in Southern Africa,

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and particularly Malawi migration,

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has focused on movements to South Africa.

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Um, South Africa really dominates

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that regional scholarship in part

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because, it was also a major, migrant attracting,

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or migrant destination.

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Um, but also because of the size of the,

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the economy in South Africa

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with the mining industry really kind of dominating.

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Um, but what's, it dominates the scholarship

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to the point where we, we know much less about other kinds

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of migrations that were actually more common.

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So it was more common for somebody from Malawi to, to go to

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Zimbabwe than it was to South Africa.

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Uh, yet we know much less about those, those stories, partly

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because there were so many people from Malawi in Harare,

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the colonial, capital known as Salisbury.

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Um, up until the, at the time

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the city was really dominated by migrants

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who spoke a different language to Africans

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outside of Salisbury.

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So the, the main language of the city was cja,

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a form of chia, the main language in Malawi,

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as opposed to Ana, the, the main language spoken in,

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that part of, of Zimbabwe migrants also brought

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with them particular cultural practices,

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religious groups, new churches, mosques,

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that they, established in the city sometimes

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for the first time,

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and that weren't exclusively set up for Malawians.

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Um, so people, these different,

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RA also became a space

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where migrants from different communities, different parts

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of the region were meeting together and,

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and mixing with people from different ethnic groups,

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different territorial origins,

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and exchanging different ideas, cultural, social,

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political, ideas.

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And this is also a time of enormous change

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and transformation.

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Um, so during the 1940s, fifties, sixties,

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the, the city of Salisbury today that we know

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as Hara really expands, the population grows,

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enormously, and you start

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to see a lot more people moving into the city, that,

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that creates all kinds of, new kind

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of new dynamics within the city as well.

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Um, you see people, people are experiencing new,

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new kinds of leisure activities.

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People are entering a, a sort of busy city

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for the first time in their lives.

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Um, and this was quite a, a, an exciting,

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time for, for people.

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Um, not to mention the, the kind of changes

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that were taking place in terms of the growth

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of nationalist politics, new trade union movements,

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labor movements, that were really important

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to migrant workers as well as to,

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to workers from within those countries themselves.

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Some people, who migrated will have been able to

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secure much better paid jobs than they had,

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would've had access to back in Malawi.

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Um, there's, there's often a kind of misconception that,

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that there were few job opportunities at home,

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and that's, that's the reason why people migrate,

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but it's, it's not necessarily the case in,

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in colonial Malawi, there were plantations in the south

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of the country, where there were,

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actually labor shortages.

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Uh, and, and this is one of the sort of anxieties

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that the colonial state has in trying to contain

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and prevent migration.

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Um, but,

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but people are still, still able to, to move outside

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of the colony to, to look for better paid opportunities

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so people, would be able to access, particularly those

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who had already had, access

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to a certain degree of education.

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Um, there were a number of, due to the,

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the sort of quite early history

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of Christian missionary contact in Malawi, Malawi,

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migrants were known for their advanced education.

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And so again, this allowed them

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to secure better paid job opportunities

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outside of the, the country.

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Um, it might have been something just along the lines

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of factory work, or they might have been able to use the,

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the, the kind of education to get workers,

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a clock in, in an office.

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Um, some people would've ended up working as teachers,

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many people just working in domestic service as well.

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Uh, but through that, those jobs, they were often able

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to save up money that they would be sending back home,

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via remittances.

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And those, wages could really transform,

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their families and wider communities back home.

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Um, they would be able to perhaps send, afford

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to send their children to school to pay school fees.

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They would, be able to purchase things such as bicycles,

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sewing machines, things

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that would really change people's, livelihoods on return

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to those rural communities,

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and allow 'em to sort

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of transform their, their class status.

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So, so migrants were often aspirational

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and not necessarily the, the poorest members in, in,

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in their communities.

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Some people did return,

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after many decades, perhaps, or, or

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after a few years away, or after retirement.

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And some people found certain challenges in reintegrating

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into their communities on return,

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and so would move to, a new location,

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perhaps a more urban location.

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Once they returned to Malawi, other people wanted to return,

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and perhaps the, the, the opportunity never came about.

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And they, they later, sort of many people

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that I interviewed talked about their kind of regrets

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and wishing that they had gone home earlier.

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Um, because it, it become increasingly hard to return,

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particularly as, particularly

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as the economy in Zimbabwe started to decline, and,

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and people felt the pressure

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that they could only return if they had something

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to be taking back with them.

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So they wanted to, to be a successful migrant.

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Importantly, it wasn't just men who migrated.

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Many women from Malawi also left home in search

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of better opportunities, sometimes

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to escape the constraints of rural life, and,

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and patriarchal control in in the villages perhaps.

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Um, and cities in particular were seen as a place of,

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new opportunities and freedom,

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although they were also constrained.

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And it was often, more challenging due to the greater,

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controls around women's mobility.

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Um, during, during the, the colonial era in particular.

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So some women migrated as wives,

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and it was possible to, to mi, to migrate

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with their husbands, if, if their marriage was,

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was formally recognized,

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but other women would migrate in larger, in groups with,

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with other single women.

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Um, and in the 1940s and fifties, we see this happening.

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Um, we see more

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and more women migrating, as single women

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as there are more formal employment opportunities opening up

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for, for women in the city.

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Some women also went in search of their husbands

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who had left, many years ago and failed to return.

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Um, and so they went in search

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of their husbands not necessarily looking

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to save the marriage perhaps, but,

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but perhaps for, for the economic support that,

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that they had, missed out on.

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It's really important that we historicize the migrations

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that we see in Africa today

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and in different parts of,

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of the continent in central and southern Africa.

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A migration continues to be

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A major feature of people's lives,

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but this isn't a new phenomenon.

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Um, at the same time,

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the reasons why people migrate has changed.

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Um, the, the constraints

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and the challenges that people face through migration,

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have, have changed in some cases,

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but there are also important continuities.

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Um, so with the case of, the example of,

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of Malawians in Zimbabwe, we know that,

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there have been people

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of Malawian origin living in this country for,

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for at least the past 100 years.

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And that these people not only worked in, in the,

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the sort of the cities and the mining towns and,

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and on commercial farms in Zimbabwe,

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but that they also really kind of contributed to,

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building and developing, developing the cities to,

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and also to shaping the, the politics and the culture

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and the societies in which they settled.

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What's also really important

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to mention when thinking about the legacies

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of colonial era labor migration

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is the way in which many migrants in,

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or people of, foreign origin

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and descent, not just in Zimbabwe, but in South Africa or,

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and in other countries across the, the continent, and in

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and indeed beyond, have often found themselves struggling

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to gain full access to citizenship rights,

16:17.705 --> 16:20.245
in the post-colonial era as, as sort

16:20.245 --> 16:23.765
of far more exclusive narrow ideas around nationalism

16:23.905 --> 16:27.525
and who has the right to belong to, to the nation as,

16:27.625 --> 16:29.805
as these kinds of dynamics have emerged.

16:30.105 --> 16:32.525
So I think it's really important to see that these aren't,

16:32.535 --> 16:36.085
these diaspora communities are, are not new.

16:36.115 --> 16:39.165
They're ones that have very strong roots in many

16:39.165 --> 16:40.285
of these, these places.

16:40.705 --> 16:41.725
Um, and they're,

16:41.865 --> 16:45.365
and they're often people who don't have, an entitlement

16:45.365 --> 16:47.045
to citizenship anywhere else.

16:47.865 --> 16:51.565
Um, so we've also seen examples of people facing kind

16:51.565 --> 16:55.725
of statelessness if their, rights

16:55.725 --> 16:57.685
to citizenship are not fully recognized,

16:57.745 --> 16:58.805
in, in Zimbabwe.

16:59.545 --> 17:01.405
Um, so really important to kind

17:01.405 --> 17:04.525
of historicize these post-colonial migrations in

17:04.525 --> 17:06.725
that context of xenophobia

17:06.985 --> 17:09.525
and the, the politics of belonging.

Unveiling Malawian Migration Experiences and Influences

00:00:00 - I wanted to write a book about ordinary people's experiences of migration. And Malawi is a country that has very much been shaped by its history of migration, but it's often overlooked and, has been somewhat neglected in the historical scholarship on labor migrations in southern Africa. And so I wanted to produce a book that focused on these experiences of migration
00:00:35 - and showed the extent to which people from Malawi have had an influence far beyond the, the, the relatively small country of Malawi itself, but also the way in which migration has really shaped the culture and politics of the Malawian nation, both, as a British colony, but also in, in the post-colonial era. I was also very keen to produce a history of migration
00:01:07 - that that tends to have been a, a real focus on migration. outside of Africa, we tend to know much more about African diasporas, and African migrations, people leaving the African continent when actually, historically there's always been far more migration within the continent itself. And, and yet we know, we know much less about those histories. The book is based on colonial archival research
00:01:38 - in Zimbabwe, and in the uk. And within those archives, I was, looking at colonial records related to labor migration from labor departments, district commissioner files, also, the, the writings of colonial era anthropologists, who were very concerned with the effects of labor migration on rural dynamics, the way
00:02:09 - and cultures and practices were changing as a consequence of the new experiences that they were having, outside of their homes, or home communities. but alongside those, colonial archives, I was also really keen to, to, to do some oral history research with former migrants themselves, and to, to really sort of bring those life history accounts,
00:02:38 - and stories of, of migration into this, process of, of knowledge production, on, you know, producing this, this new history of, of Malawi and migration. So I conducted around 50, oral history interviews with returned migrants in different parts of Malawi, So in different regions, in the north, south and central regions, but also with people who originated from Malawi,

Migration: The Lost Ones of Malawi

00:03:11 - and settled on a more permanent basis. in, in Hari, in, in Zimbabwe, the Ana, the Ana is a term which is literally translates as the lost ones. It's a UA or ger term. So that's the, the main, the primary language spoken, not just in Malawi, but also in other parts of, of the region where people of c chia, and ger ethnicity reside. but it's a term that's used more broadly
00:03:43 - and who, failed to return, or those who who never came home, or it's used to describe people who somehow lost contact, with the, with the home communities. So it's a term that gives us a sense of the, the scale of which people were leaving Malawi. so many people were leaving and seen to be becoming lost to, to these communities, which created pressures on those who were left behind.
00:04:18 - pressure on migrants to, to maintain connections, with home. To say a bit more about the, the historical context then within which these migrations were taking place. Malawi was a, a British colony was established in the 1890s known as Niland. and it's, as I mentioned, a relatively small country, but it, it's always had quite a dense population,
00:04:49 - And, for that reason, perhaps, one of the sort of main exports from Malawi has, has been migration, been people, the people were migrating to many different parts of the Southern African region. They were pulled there looking for better paid jobs, new opportunities. it wasn't always necessarily economic reasons behind the migrations. There's a wide range of different reasons why people looked
00:05:21 - for better opportunities, different experiences, and, and my book focuses in particular migrations to Zimbabwe. Now, Zimbabwe was a different type of colony. It was what we generally refer to as a settler colony governed by white, settlers, not all of whom were from Britain, but other parts of Southern Africa and other European countries.
00:05:52 - African migrants from Malawi had quite a different experience of life in colonial Zimbabwe because of its settler, colony status. In other words, they experienced, different forms of racial discrimination, in, in ways that perhaps they might not have been confronted with in their, in their home communities. despite that, large numbers of people from Malawi migrated to Zimbabwe

Migration Patterns: Malawi to Zimbabwe

00:06:25 - Most literature, most historical writing on, labor migrations in, in Southern Africa, and particularly Malawi migration, has focused on movements to South Africa. South Africa really dominates that regional scholarship in part because, it was also a major, migrant attracting, or migrant destination. but also because of the size of the, the economy in South Africa
00:06:55 - but what's, it dominates the scholarship to the point where we, we know much less about other kinds of migrations that were actually more common. So it was more common for somebody from Malawi to, to go to Zimbabwe than it was to South Africa. yet we know much less about those, those stories, partly because there were so many people from Malawi in Harare, the colonial, capital known as Salisbury.
00:07:30 - the city was really dominated by migrants who spoke a different language to Africans outside of Salisbury. So the, the main language of the city was cja, a form of chia, the main language in Malawi, as opposed to Ana, the, the main language spoken in, that part of, of Zimbabwe migrants also brought
00:07:59 - religious groups, new churches, mosques, that they, established in the city sometimes for the first time, and that weren't exclusively set up for Malawians. so people, these different, RA also became a space where migrants from different communities, different parts of the region were meeting together and, and mixing with people from different ethnic groups,
00:08:31 - and exchanging different ideas, cultural, social, political, ideas. And this is also a time of enormous change and transformation. so during the 1940s, fifties, sixties, the, the city of Salisbury today that we know as Hara really expands, the population grows, enormously, and you start to see a lot more people moving into the city, that,
00:09:03 - of new dynamics within the city as well. you see people, people are experiencing new, new kinds of leisure activities. People are entering a, a sort of busy city for the first time in their lives. and this was quite a, a, an exciting, time for, for people. not to mention the, the kind of changes that were taking place in terms of the growth of nationalist politics, new trade union movements,

Migration and Economic Opportunities in Malawi

00:09:36 - to migrant workers as well as to, to workers from within those countries themselves. Some people, who migrated will have been able to secure much better paid jobs than they had, would've had access to back in Malawi. there's, there's often a kind of misconception that, that there were few job opportunities at home, and that's, that's the reason why people migrate,
00:10:06 - in colonial Malawi, there were plantations in the south of the country, where there were, actually labor shortages. and, and this is one of the sort of anxieties that the colonial state has in trying to contain and prevent migration. but, but people are still, still able to, to move outside of the colony to, to look for better paid opportunities so people, would be able to access, particularly those
00:10:36 - to a certain degree of education. there were a number of, due to the, the sort of quite early history of Christian missionary contact in Malawi, Malawi, migrants were known for their advanced education. And so again, this allowed them to secure better paid job opportunities outside of the, the country. it might have been something just along the lines of factory work, or they might have been able to use the,
00:11:08 - a clock in, in an office. some people would've ended up working as teachers, many people just working in domestic service as well. but through that, those jobs, they were often able to save up money that they would be sending back home, via remittances. And those, wages could really transform, their families and wider communities back home. they would be able to perhaps send, afford
00:11:40 - They would, be able to purchase things such as bicycles, sewing machines, things that would really change people's, livelihoods on return to those rural communities, and allow 'em to sort of transform their, their class status. So, so migrants were often aspirational and not necessarily the, the poorest members in, in, in their communities. Some people did return, after many decades, perhaps, or, or
00:12:15 - And some people found certain challenges in reintegrating into their communities on return, and so would move to, a new location, perhaps a more urban location. Once they returned to Malawi, other people wanted to return, and perhaps the, the, the opportunity never came about. And they, they later, sort of many people that I interviewed talked about their kind of regrets

Struggles and Opportunities in Migration

00:12:46 - because it, it become increasingly hard to return, particularly as, particularly as the economy in Zimbabwe started to decline, and, and people felt the pressure that they could only return if they had something to be taking back with them. So they wanted to, to be a successful migrant. Importantly, it wasn't just men who migrated. Many women from Malawi also left home in search of better opportunities, sometimes
00:13:20 - and patriarchal control in in the villages perhaps. and cities in particular were seen as a place of, new opportunities and freedom, although they were also constrained. And it was often, more challenging due to the greater, controls around women's mobility. during, during the, the colonial era in particular.
00:13:50 - and it was possible to, to mi, to migrate with their husbands, if, if their marriage was, was formally recognized, but other women would migrate in larger, in groups with, with other single women. and in the 1940s and fifties, we see this happening. we see more and more women migrating, as single women as there are more formal employment opportunities opening up for, for women in the city.
00:14:20 - who had left, many years ago and failed to return. and so they went in search of their husbands not necessarily looking to save the marriage perhaps, but, but perhaps for, for the economic support that, that they had, missed out on. It's really important that we historicize the migrations that we see in Africa today and in different parts of, of the continent in central and southern Africa.
00:14:50 - A major feature of people's lives, but this isn't a new phenomenon. at the same time, the reasons why people migrate has changed. the, the constraints and the challenges that people face through migration, have, have changed in some cases, but there are also important continuities. so with the case of, the example of, of Malawians in Zimbabwe, we know that, there have been people of Malawian origin living in this country for,
00:15:24 - And that these people not only worked in, in the, the sort of the cities and the mining towns and, and on commercial farms in Zimbabwe, but that they also really kind of contributed to, building and developing, developing the cities to, and also to shaping the, the politics and the culture and the societies in which they settled. What's also really important to mention when thinking about the legacies

Struggles for Citizenship in Post-Colonial Contexts

00:15:57 - is the way in which many migrants in, or people of, foreign origin and descent, not just in Zimbabwe, but in South Africa or, and in other countries across the, the continent, and in and indeed beyond, have often found themselves struggling to gain full access to citizenship rights, in the post-colonial era as, as sort of far more exclusive narrow ideas around nationalism and who has the right to belong to, to the nation as,
00:16:30 - So I think it's really important to see that these aren't, these diaspora communities are, are not new. They're ones that have very strong roots in many of these, these places. and they're, and they're often people who don't have, an entitlement to citizenship anywhere else. so we've also seen examples of people facing kind of statelessness if their, rights to citizenship are not fully recognized,
00:17:06 - so really important to kind of historicize these post-colonial migrations in that context of xenophobia and the, the politics of belonging.

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