Kujoni: South Africa in Malawi’s National Imaginary

Abstract

This article recovers the literary and political value of Legson Kayira’s novel Jingala (1969), dismissed by earlier critics as lightweight. I argue instead for the seriousness of its engagement with a significant aspect of Malawian life, namely the country’s historical reliance on the export of migrant labour to its mineral-rich neighbours, especially South Africa. Between 1900 and 1988, the country was the second-largest supplier of contracted labour to the South African mines. Kayira’s novel offers significant new insights into the effects of migrant labour on Malawians’ consciousness of South Africa and themselves. In the light of South Africa’s current membership of the BRICS (the economic collaboration of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as the BRICS’ claim to provide an alternative to the imperial legacy of Africa’s relationship with the west, a fresh look at Jingala will allow us to reconsider Malawi’s relationship with South Africa, that country’s historically imperialist role in the region, and the legacy of ‘kujoni’ – labour migration to Johannesburg, the city that represented South Africa’s opportunities. Using a broadly cultural materialist approach and Edward Said’s notion of imaginative geography, and a world-systems theory approach nuanced by recent work in globalisation theory, the article maps the imagined geography of South Africa represented in the novel and considers how it intervened in everyday life.

Keywords:

• Legson Kayira
• Malawian literature
• South Africa
• imaginative geography
• migrant labour
• world-system
• masculinities

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr Lyn Schumaker for persuading me to present the original paper at the JSAS conference ‘Southern Africa Beyond the West’, held in Livingstone, Zambia, in August 2015, and also for her helpful comments. My thanks go equally to Professor Dennis Walder, my editor, and the two anonymous readers, for their invaluable advice.

Notes

¹ See L. Kayira, Jingala (London, Longman, 1969). The novel’s historical setting can be deciphered from a number of clues: Kayira left Malawi for the USA in 1958, settling in Britain from 1965 until his death in 2013. Although he returned briefly to attend Malawi’s independence in 1964, he never lived in the rural area again. So the novel must be based on his experience of 1950s Malawi. For a helpful discussion of the history of migrant labour in Malawi, see W.C. Chirwa, ‘The Malawi Government and South African Labour Recruiters, 1974–92’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 34, 4 (December 1996), pp. 623–42, and J. McCracken, A History of Malawi, 1859–1966 (Woodbridge, James Currey, 2012), pp. 256–7.

² L. Mphande, ‘Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Writers Group: The (un)Making of a Cultural Tradition’, Research in African Literatures, 27, 1 (1996), pp. 80–101.

³ C. Larson, ‘Malawi’, Books Abroad, 44, 2 (1970), p. 360.

⁴ A. Roscoe, Uhuru’s Fire (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 218.

⁵ W. Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewel (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962).

⁶ C. Achebe, No Longer at Ease (London, Heinemann, 1960).

⁷ G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrena, trans. B. Massumi (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983); A. Kalitera, Why Father, Why? (Blantyre, Power Pen Books, 1982).

⁸ I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York, Academic Press, 1974).

⁹ S. Hall, ‘The Local and the Global’, in Anthony D. King (ed.). Culture, Globalization and the World System (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1991), pp. 19–40.

¹⁰ Ibid.; G.J. Stein, Rethinking World-Systems: Diasporas, Colonies and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1999); J. Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Interregional Interaction’, American Anthropologist New Series, 104, 3 (1999), pp. 903–16; D. Chanaiwa, ‘Politics and Long-Distance Trade in the Mwene Mutapa Empire during the Sixteenth Century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 5, 3 (1972), pp. 424–35.

¹¹ E. Said, Orientalism (London, Penguin, 1978), pp. 54–5.

¹² J. Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism (London, Sage, 2009).

¹³ J.T. Thompson, Touching the Heart (Pretoria, UNISA Press, 2000).

¹⁴ L.M. Sachikoye (ed.), Labour Markets and Migration Policy in Southern Africa (Harare, SAPES, 1998), p. iii.

¹⁵ Said, Orientalism, pp. 54–5.

¹⁶ It was translated into English by T.C. Young as Man of Africa (London, Religious Tract Society, 1934).

¹⁷ D. Kerr and L. White, New Writing from Malawi (Zomba, University of Malawi, 1972).

¹⁸ F.M. Chipasula, Whispers in the Wings (London, Heinemann, 1991). Wenela is the popular rendition of the WNLA – Witwatersrand Native Labour Association – the South African gold mines’ organisation for recruiting migrant workers. For some details of the incident, see ‘Does Education Alter Marriage and Childbearing Timing?’, GLMLIC Newsletter, IZA Institute of Labour Economics, October 2015. This document was but is no longer available at https://glm-lic.iza.org/file/view/events/GLMLICNewsletterOctober2015.pdf, retrieved 3 January 2017.

¹⁹ This point is provisional and deserves research.

²⁰ For a good discussion of song in relation to migrant labour, see L. Mphande, ‘Representation of Trauma: Past and Present’, in T. Banda and J. Kumwenda (eds), Reading Malawian Literature (Mzuzu, Mzuni Press, 2013), pp. 11–14.

²¹ Please note that my focus here is not on the Malawian diaspora in southern Africa as a whole – which is huge and diverse, covering South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia – but rather on the imaginative geography of South Africa among Malawians in Malawi, as captured by Kayira’s novel. I am aware of important recent work on the Malawian diaspora, especially in Zimbabwe, such as Z. Groves, ‘Urban Migrants and Religious Networks: Malawians in Colonial Salisbury, 1920 to 1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 3 (2012), pp. 491–511. See also Hall, ‘The Local and the Global’; Stein, Rethinking World-Systems; Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents’.

²² A. Irele, ‘Literary Criticism in the Nigerian Context’, in Y. Ogunbiyi (ed.), Perspectives on Nigerian Literature, 1700 to the Present, Vol. 1, (Lagos, Guardian, 1988), p. 94.

²³ R. Williams, Culture and Materialism (London, Verso, 1980), pp. 17–22.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ G. Hunts, ‘Two African Aesthetics: Soyinka vs. Amilcar Cabral’, in G.M. Gugelberger, Marxism and African Literature (London, James Currey, 1986), pp. 64–93; Emmanuel Ngara, Art and Ideology in the African Novel: A Study of the Influence of Marxism on African Writing (London, James Currey, 1985).

²⁶ J-P. Wade, ‘“Song of the City” and “Mine Boy”: The “Marxist” Novels of Peter Abrahams’, Research in African Literatures, 21, 3 (1990), pp. 89–101.

²⁷ N. Ndebele, South African Literature (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 37.

²⁸ Williams, Culture and Materialism, p. 20.

²⁹ N. Lazarus, The Postcolonial Unconscious (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011).

³⁰ J.P. Eckermann, J.W. Goethe: Conversations with Eckermann, trans. J. Oxenford (San Francisco, North Point Press, 1984 [1835]).

³¹ T.D. Hall, P.N. Kardulias and C. Chase-Dunn, ‘World-Systems Analysis and Archaeology: Continuing the Dialogue’, Journal of Archaeological Research, 19, 3 (2011), p. 236.

³² K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. S. Moore with F. Engels (Project Gutenberg, 2005 [1888]), p. 7.

³³ See F. Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, New Left Review, 1 (2000), pp. 54–68; P. Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M.B. DeBevoisen (Cambriege, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2004).

³⁴ I. Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis (Durham, Duke University Press, 2004).

³⁵ A. Badiou, Logics of the World, trans. A.Toscano (London, Continuum, 2009).

³⁶ Hall, ‘The Local and the Global’; Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents’.

³⁷ See ‘South Africa Apologises for Jacob Zuma’s Malawi Jibe’, BBC News online, 24 October 2013, available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24655240, retrieved 7 July 2017.

³⁸ I am aware that although the term ‘peasant’ is a useful classificatory term, it can also have derogatory connotations. I will replace the term in the essay with ‘tradition’, ‘traditional’ or ‘rural’ wherever possible.

³⁹ Ndebele, South African Literature, p. 37.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ By all accounts, the desire for Malawian labour appears to have been insatiable, as it rose from 7,828 in 1951 to almost 229,000 in 1966 (the latter figure includes non-miners and immigrants to Zimbabwe as well). See McCracken, A History of Malawi, pp. 256–8. On recent xenophobic attacks on migrants, see Lucy Mkandawire, ‘One Malawian Claimed Dead’, The Nation, 16 April 2015, available at https://mwnation.com/one-malawian-claimed-dead-in-south-africa/, retrieved 2 June 2017; for the changing official attitudes towards immigration, see N. Trimikliniotis, S. Gordon and B. Zondo, ‘Globalisation and Migrant Labour in a “Rainbow Nation”: A Fortress South Africa?’, Third World Quarterly, 29, 7 (2008), pp. 1323–39.

⁴² It is worth noting that the importation of Malawian labour by South African mines continued throughout the apartheid era and stopped only briefly in 1974, after the plane crash that killed all the returning workers on board; it ceased completely in 1988. For details and controversy surrounding the issue, see W.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.

⁴³ B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 1991).

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ S. Das, ‘China–Brazil Strategic Partnership? Demystifying the Relationship’, The BRICS Post, 23 January 2017, available at https://thebricspost.com/china-brazil-strategic-partnership-demystifying-the-relationship/, retrieved 7 July 2017.

⁴⁶ R. Adendorff, ‘Fanakalo – A Pidgin in South Africa’, in R. Mesthrie, Language in South Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 179–96. In Zimbabwe and Zambia, it is sometimes called ‘Chilapalapa’.

⁴⁷ Kayira, Jingala, pp. 62–3.

⁴⁸ P. Kishindo, ‘“Flogging a Dead Cow?” The Revival of Malawian Chingoni’, Nordic Journal of African Studies, 11, 2 (2002), pp. 206–23.

⁴⁹ This is supported by the new critique of world-systems theory, which highlights the need to regard formations such as those of cosmopolitanism and globalisation as trans-temporal and not confined to the contemporary but also elaborated and practised in the past, even in the ancient world: see Stein ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents’.

⁵⁰ By ‘interpellation’, Althusser means the way in which, through ideological means as opposed to force, the state transforms the individual into a subject of a particular national ideology. For an extended discussion of this concept, see L. Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in L. Althusser, Lenin, Philosophy and other essays, trans. Ben Brewster (London, New Left Books, 1971).

⁵¹ D. Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 63–4.

⁵² C. Chipeta, ‘The Money of Malawi in Historical Perspective’, African Economic History Review, 2, 2 (1975), pp. 10–15. Chipeta’s view of the tension between indigenous concepts of labour is shared by more recent studies; see, for example, A. Kaler, ‘“When They See Money, They Think It’s Life”: Money, Modernity and Morality in Two Sites in Rural Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 335–49.

⁵³ C. Chipeta, Money and Credit in an Indigenous African Context: Principles, Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications (Zomba, Imabili, 2011).

⁵⁴ G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London, Continuum, 2004).

⁵⁵ Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe, pp. 63–4.

⁵⁶ See J. Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1999); D. Potts, Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 2010).

⁵⁷ Kayira, Jingala, p. 143.

⁵⁸ See J. Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, Tavistock, 1977), pp. 1–3.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ C. Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London, Heinemann, 1958).

⁶¹ For the notion of the ‘transcendental’ used here, see Badiou, Logics, p. 101.

⁶² For the idea of ‘cultural or symbolic capital’, see P. Bourdieu, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. R. Nice (London, Sage, 1990).

⁶³ Kayira, Jingala, p. 64.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ T.B. Macaulay, ‘Minute … dated 2nd February 1835’, available at https://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html, retrieved 20 July 2015. It must be noted that, in colonial Malawi, the Macaulayan view co-existed with opposing views. For a fuller discussion of this, see J. McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi, 1875–1940 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977).

⁶⁶ Kayira, Jingala, p. 10.

⁶⁷ W.C. Chirwa, ‘Child and Youth Labour on the Nyasaland Plantations, 1890–1953’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 4 (1993), p. 667; Chipeta, ‘The Money of Malawi’.

⁶⁸ Kayira, Jingala, pp. 1–2.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 2.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 95.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 98.

⁷² Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe, pp. 63–4.

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ S. Hall, ‘Old and New Identities’, in A.D. King (ed.), Culture, Globalisation and the World System (London, Macmillan, 1991), pp. 41–68.

⁷⁵ See H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994).

⁷⁶ Kayira, Jingala, pp. 60–61.

⁷⁷ Y. Moulier Boutang, ‘Between the Hatred of all Walls and the Walls of Hate’, in M. Morris and B. de Barry (eds), ‘Race’ Panic and the Memory of Migration (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2000), pp. 8–9.

⁷⁸ M. Niemann, ‘Migration and the Lived Spaces of Southern Africa’, Alternatives, 28, 1 (2003), p. 115.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ South African Department of Trade and Industry, ‘Why Invest in South Africa’, available at https://www.thedti.gov.za/trade_investment/why_invest_insa.jsp, retrieved 8 July 2017.

⁸¹ Niemann, ‘Migration and the Lived Spaces’, p. 115; H.C. Chidoba Banda, ‘Xenophobia as a Form of Human Insecurity: The Plight of Malawian Migrants in South Africa’, Southern African Peace and Security Studies, 2, 2 (2013), pp. 31–46.

⁸² D.A. Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Public Culture, 7, 2 (1990), pp. 1–23.

⁸³ J. Buchan and D. Dovlo, International Recruitment of Health Workers to the UK: A Report for DFID, (London, DFID Health Systems Resource Centre, 2004), p. 8, available at https://www.equinetafrica.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/BUChres310108.pdf, retrieved 19 July 2017.

⁸⁴ Ibid.