Migration from Malawi to South Africa

written by Harvey C. Chidoba Banda

A Historical and Cultural Novel

Since the discovery and exploitation of minerals like gold, diamond and copper in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Malawi has played the role of a labour supplier. Malawians were attracted by the relatively higher wages obtaining in the South African mines up to the period of the decline in mine migrancy at the end of the 1980s. Following this decline, a cross-section of Malawians continued to emigrate to South Africa to seek various jobs in the burgeoning informal sector and also for trade purposes.

Migration from Malawi to South Africa sheds light on the problems that labour migrants and traders encounter as they are ‘toing’ and ‘froing’ between Malawi and South Africa in pursuit of their respective goals. It shows that migration, which initially was exclusively done for wage employment, is becoming more complex by the day. This is a result of the infusion of elements of commercial migration, smuggling and human trafficking. The book advances the argument that the numbers of migrants to South Africa increased in the post-1994 period partly as a result of mal-administration by the successive democratically-elected governments in Malawi. This development weakened Malawi’s otherwise promising economy and impoverished the rural masses. The book ‘sees’ forlorn hope in the future of labour migrants and traders, unless the Malawi Government starts to genuinely have the welfare of the populace at heart! The book is relevant and accessible to policy-makers, university and college students interested in migration studies, general readers and migrants, themselves.

Harvey C. Chidoba Banda

Harvey C. Chidoba Banda was born in August 1975 in Mzimba district in northern Malawi. He attended primary schools in Mzimba, Nkhata-Bay and Rumphi districts before being selected to Livingstonia Secondary School in 1991. Between 1996 and 2000 he obtained a Bachelor of Education (Humanities) from Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi. In 2008 he obtained a Master of Arts (African Social History) from the same institution. After working briefly at Kasungu Secondary School and Domasi College of Education, he joined Mzuzu University in 2006 as a Lecturer in African History in the Department of History, where he served as Head of Department between 2009 and 2013. Harvey is married to Jennifer Luhanga and they have one child, Owen.