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Abstract
Between the 1910s and 1930s, male migrants from colonial Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) contested South Africa’s internal and external barriers to free movement by asserting their rights as British subjects. On the principle that ‘fair play’ and ‘justice’ extended throughout the British empire, these men claimed an entitlement to migrate, work and live ‘unmolested’ across South Africa. This article foregrounds the early political agendas of these men, demanding a ‘liberal’ empire that sanctioned the intra-imperial migration of its black subjects. By examining a number of crises, it demonstrates how ‘loyalty’ to ‘Britishness’ was differentiated and particularist, being publicly deployed when the ostensibly ‘British’ principle of ‘free labour’ was undermined by the process of South African state formation. While radical Nyasa internationalists used British-informed lexicons of freedom to demand a more universal approach to free movement, early Nyasa nationalists invoked British colonial borders to justify a particular, restricted vision of intra-imperial migration that excluded non-British black immigrants. By exploring these differences, the article questions what we mean by ‘free movement’ and shows that ideas of imperial citizenship were not only reclaimed ‘from the bottom up’ by Nyasas but also deconstructed and instrumentalised.
Acknowledgements
I’m indebted to Diana Jeater, Emma Hunter, John McCracken, Ashley Dee and two anonymous reviewers for invaluable help with early drafts of this article.
Notes
1 South African National Archives, Pretoria (SANA) K357 Native Pass Laws Commission, ‘Statement of Case by Representatives of the Nyasaland Native National Association’. The Nyasaland Native National Congress also went by the name of the Nyasaland Native National Association and the Nyasaland Native Congress.
2 This was first theorised by G. Shepperson, ‘External Factors in the Development of African Nationalism, with Particular Reference to British Central Africa’, Phylon, 22, 3 (1961), pp. 207–25.
3 C. van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia: 1900–1933, (London, Pluto Press, 1976); H. Bradford, ‘Getting Away with Murder: “Mealie Kings”, the State and Foreigners in the Eastern Transvaal, c.1918–1950’, in P. Bonner, P. Delius and D. Posel (eds), Apartheid’s Genesis: 1935–1962 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1993), pp. 96–125; A. MacDonald, ‘Colonial Trespassers in the Making of South Africa’s International Borders, 1900 to c.1950’, (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012).
4 C. Kadalie, My Life and the ICU: The Autobiography of a Black Trade Unionist in South Africa (London, Frank Cass,1970), p. 208.
5 SANA K357 ‘Statement of the Nyasaland Native National Association’.
6 W. James, ‘A Race Outcast from an Outcast Class: Claude McKay’s Experience and Analysis of Britain’, in B. Schwarz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 71–92.
7 For contrasting approaches to D. Gorman, Imperial Citizenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging, (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006), see S. Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late Victorian Empire (Durham, Duke University Press, 2010) and E. Hunter (ed.), Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa: Dialogues between Past and Present (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2016). For South Africa, see P. Limb, ‘“No People Can Be Expected to Be Loyal Under Such Difficulties”: Ambiguities and Identities of Early African National Congress Leaders in South Africa’, Social Dynamics, 29, 1 (2003), pp. 1–26.
8 S. Howe, ‘C.L.R. James: Visions of History, Visions of Britain’, in Schwarz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals, p. 161.
9 ‘Correspondence’, East London Dispatch, East London, 8 April 1926; C. Kadalie, ‘The Aristocracy of White Labor in Africa’, The Messenger, New York, August 1924.
10 SANA GNLB 293 222/18 ‘The Nyassaland Native Council and the Nyassaland Native National Congress’, Chimbaza, Ankhoma, Chirwa and Banda to Minister of Native Affairs, 16 April 1923.
11 Van Onselen, Chibaro; B. Pachai, The Malawi Diaspora and Elements of Clements Kadalie (Salisbury, Central Africa Historical Association, 1969); R. Boeder, ‘Malawians Abroad: The History of Labour Emigration from Malawi to its Neighbours, 1890 to the Present’ (PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 1974); E.P. Makambe, ‘The African Immigrant Factor in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930’ (PhD thesis, York University, 1979); J. McCracken, A History of Malawi, 1859–1966 (Woodbridge, James Currey, 2012); F. Musoni, ‘With an Apron in the Caboose: Illegal Migration across the Zimbabwe–South Africa Border’ (PhD thesis, Emory University, 2012); Z. Groves, ‘Malawians in Colonial Salisbury: A Social History of Migration in Central Africa, c.1920s–1960s’ (PhD thesis, Keele University, 2011); A. Daimon, ‘“Mabhurandaya”: The Malawian Diaspora in Zimbabwe, 1895–2008’ (PhD thesis, University of the Free State, 2015); A. Daimon, ‘“Ringleaders and Troublemakers”: Malawian (Nyasa) Migrants and Transnational Labor Movements in Southern Africa, c.1910–1960’, Labor History, 58, 5 (2017), pp. 656–75; A. Daimon, ‘Settling in Motion: Nyasa Clandestine Migration through Southern Rhodesia into the Union of South Africa: 1920s-1950s’, WIDER Working Paper 41 (2018); H. Dee, ‘Nyasa Leaders, Christianity and African Internationalism in 1920s Johannesburg’, South African Historical Journal, 70, 2 (2018), pp. 383–406.
12 Van Onselen, Chibaro, p. 242.
13 ‘ICU Manifesto’, Ilanga lase Natal, Durban, 12 October 1923.
14 SANA NTS 2076 166/280 ‘Influx of Nyasaland Natives into the Union’, Longwe, Sileam, Phillips and Corner to Secretary for Native Affairs, 16 January 1929.
15 MacDonald, Colonial Trespassers; J. Klaaren, From Prohibited Immigrants to Citizens: The Origins of Citizenship and Nationality in South Africa (Cape Town, UCT Press, 2017); Bradford, ‘Getting Away With Murder’.
16 S. Dubow, ‘How British Was the British World? The Case of South Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37, 1 (2009), p. 14.
17 MacDonald, Colonial Trespassers; P. Harries, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910 (London, James Currey, 1994); R.T. Vinson, ‘“Sea Kaffirs”: “American Negroes” and the Gospel of Garveyism in Early Twentieth-Century Cape Town’, Journal of African History, 47, 2 (2006), pp. 281–303; R.K. Bright, Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902–10: Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). More broadly, see P. Bonner, J. Hyslop and L. van der Walt, ‘Rethinking Worlds of Labour: Southern African Labour History in International Context’, African Affairs, 66, 2–3 (2007), pp. 137–67.
18 H.K. Banda to E.C. Matako, 8 October 1938, in S. Morrow and J. McCracken, ‘Two Previously Unknown Letters from Hastings Kamuzu Banda Written from Edinburgh, 1938, Archived at the University of Cape Town’, History in Africa, 39 (2012), pp. 337–54.
19 Malawi National Archives (MNA) S43/3/2/1 ‘Memo by Charles Matinga on Visit to South Africa’.
20 McCracken, A History of Malawi, pp. 85–6. In 1907, the British Central African Protectorate was renamed Nyasaland.
21 J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist: J.T. Bain, A Scottish Rebel in Colonial South Africa (Johannesburg, Jacana, 2004), pp. 163–4.
22 SANA SNA 144 NA1573/03 ‘Mr Cooke – Forwarding Report on the Strike of the British Central African Natives at the Robinson Deep Mine’.
23 Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, pp. 163–4.
24 McCracken, A History of Malawi, pp. 86–7; E.P. Makambe, ‘The Nyasaland African Labour “Ulendos” to Southern Rhodesia and the Problem of African “Highwaymen”, 1903–1923’, African Affairs, 79, 317 (1980), pp. 548–66; F.E. Sanderson, ‘The Development of Labour Migration from Nyasaland, 1891–1914’, Journal of African History, 2, 2 (1961), pp. 259–71. For numerous 1920s testimonials of Nyasa miners, see SANA GNLB 416-417 81/21 ‘Employment of Tropical Natives on Mines: Individual Applications’.
25 R.V. Kadalie, ‘Autobiography’ (unpublished), copy in my possession.
26 Ibid.; C. Kadalie, My Life, p. 36. Robert Kadalie later wrote to Drum magazine, ‘His coming to Cape Town was because of me, and if you want more information about him you can send Mr DRUM to me’. ‘Mr Kadalie Criticises’, Drum (August 1952).
27 SANA GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyasaland Natives’, L.W. Ritch to Minister of Interior, 26 July 1918.
28 SANA BNS 1/1/377 194/74 ‘Natives from Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Portuguese East Africa, British East Africa, Nyasaland Etc Etc: Influx of’.
29 ‘Trouble at Western Native Township’, Umteteli wa Bantu, Johannesburg, 31 December 1927.
30 SANA NTS 2129 245/280 ‘Alien Natives: Part 2’.
31 Interdepartmental Committee of Inquiry in Foreign Bantu (Froneman Commission), (Pretoria, 1962); Annual Report of the Labour Department for the Year ending 31st December 1951 (Zomba, 1952).
32 UNISA Documentation Centre for African Studies (UNISA) ZKM B4 28 Z.K. Matthews, ‘The ICU’ (c.1951).
33 J. Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship: Mobility, Law and Nationality in South Africa, 1897–1937’ (PhD thesis, Yale University, 2004) p. 219.
34 Froneman Commission, pp. 15–16.
35 D. Coplan, In Township Tonight: South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre (London, University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 129; SANA BNS 1/1/378 194/74 ‘Immigrants Regulation Act of 1913: Natives from Rhodesia and Bechuanaland Protectorate North of 22 South Latitude, Portuguese East Africa, ETC. Admission of General Question’, W.A. Murray to Under-Secretary for Native Affairs, 17 February 1933.
36 Ibid.
37 J.C. Abraham, Report on Nyasaland Natives in the Union of South Africa and in Southern Rhodesia (Zomba, 1937).
38 M. Read, ‘Migrant Labour in Africa and its Effects on Tribal Life’, International Labour Review, 45 (1942), pp. 605–31.
39 SANA GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyassaland Natives’, Mpande to Secretary of Native Affairs, 1 May 1918.
40 SANA GNLB 293 222/18 ‘The Nyassaland Native Council and the Nyassaland Native National Congress’, Chimbaza to Director of Native Labour, 3 April 1923; Chimbaza, Ankhoma, Chirwa and Banda to the Minister of Native Affairs, 16 April 1923.
41 SANA GNLB 293 222/18 ‘The Nyassaland Native Council and the Nyassaland Native National Congress’, Director of Native Labour to Secretary for Native Affairs, 10 January 1921; GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyassaland Natives’, L.W. Ritch to Minister of Interior, 26 July 1918.
42 SANA GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyassaland Natives’, Interview of deputation from the NNNC by Mr E.K. Whitehead at Winchester House, Loveday Street, Johannesburg, 19 June 1919.
43 SANA GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyassaland Natives’, NNNC to the Director of Native Labour 29 July 1919.
44 Dee, ‘Nyasa Leaders’.
45 SANA JUS 916 1/18/26 ‘The African World: Police Reports RE Activities of Native Weekly Newspaper RE Meeting of Natives: Part 5’, CID report dated in 6 January 1927.
46 C. Kadalie, ‘The Black Man’s Labour Movement’, Foreign Affairs (September 1927).
47 Matthews, ‘ICU’.
48 Dee, ‘Nyasa Leaders’.
49 UCT BC 347 A5 W. Ballinger, ‘Winifred Holtby and Africa’ (c.1937). For a broader overview of searches for external leadership, see R.T. Vinson, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2012).
50 SANA BNS 1/2/46 A1787 ‘Clements Kadalie: Case Regarding’ (1920–29).
51 Kalinga, Historical Dictionary of Malawi; SANA BNS 1/2/47 A1797 ‘James Williams Alias William Johnston: Case Of’.
52 South Africa, House of Assembly Debates, vol. 4, 6 May1925.
53 Ibid., 20 July 1925.
54 Ibid., vol. 6, 5 March 1926.
55 K. Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”: The Rise and Fall of a Public Sphere on the South African Gold Mines, 1920 to 1931’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40, 1 (1998), p. 96.
56 Workers’ Herald, Johannesburg, 27 March 1926, cited in S. Neame, ‘The ICU and British Imperialism’, seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies (1970).
57 C. Kadalie, ‘The Romance of African Labour’, Workers’ Herald, 14 September 1926.
58 Ibid.
59 C. Kadalie, ‘The Growth of African Trade Unionism’, The Messenger (September 1927).
60 Limb, ‘Ambiguities and Identities’, p. 18.
61 C. Kadalie, My Life, p. 96.
62 ‘South African Labour Congress’, Workers’ Herald, 2 April 1925.
63 UCT BC 347 A5 II ‘Congress and Conference Reports’, C. Kadalie, ‘1928 Manifesto’.
64 C. Kadalie, ‘The Old and the New Africa’, Labour Monthly (October 1927).
65 ‘The Recruiting System’, The Black Man, 1, 2 (1920), Cape Town; ‘The Recruitment System’, Workers’ Herald, 21 July 1923.
66 Breckenridge, ‘Speaking for Ourselves’, p. 99.
67 Ibid., pp. 99–100.
68 Wits Historical Papers (WITS) AH646 TUCSA Cc4.3 E.J. Khaile to General Secretary, 7 March 1928; University of Cape Town (UCT) Lionel Forman Papers, BC581 B3.183 C. Kadalie to Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, 22 December 1927. See also ‘A Blot on British Justice’, Workers’ Herald, 15 July 1927; ‘British Labour Party Fight for ICU in S. Rhodesia’, 15 September 1927.
69 SANA GG 1566 50/1287 ‘Deportation of R. Sambo from Southern Rhodesia’, R. Sambo to Governor, Zomba, 10 January 1928.
70 S.M.B. Ncwana, The Activities of the ICU: An Exhaustive Enquiry into the Affairs and Policy of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (c. 1928).
71 H.S. Msimang, ‘Congress and Blantyres’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 18 February 1928. See also H.S. Msimang, ‘Organising the Bantu Workers’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 28 February 1925; H.S. Msimang, ‘Non-European Trade Unionism’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 20 March 1926; H.S. Msimang, ‘Trade Unionism and the Natives’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 28 July 1928.
72 Msimang, ‘Congress and Blantyres’.
73 Ibid.
74 Msimang, ‘Organising the Bantu Workers’.
75 Msimang, ‘Congress and Blantyres’.
76 ‘Be Free Men’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 24 January 1925.
77 ‘Union Natives Squeezed Out: Nyasaland Boys Flood Labour Market: Government Plans to Repatriate Them’, The Friend, Bloemfontein, 25 December 1928.
78 ‘Africans Versus Africans’, Abantu Batho, Johannesburg, 9 February 1928.
79 ‘Trouble at Western Native Township’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 31 December 1927.
80 ‘Africans Versus Africans’, Abantu Batho, 9 February 1928.
81 Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship’, pp. 214–15.
82 Bradford, ‘Getting Away with Murder’, p. 103.
83 SANA NTS 2076 166/280 Influx of Nyasaland Natives into the Union, letter to Secretary for Native Affairs, 7 February 1929.
84 Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship’, p. 220.
85 S. Plaatje, ‘Should the Nyandjas be Deported’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 3 March 1928.
86 R.W. Msimang, ‘Congress Supports Deportation’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 11 February 1928.
87 V. Selope Thema, ‘The Responsibility of Bantu Leadership’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 21 January 1928.
88 ‘Tropical Natives’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 1 December 1928.
89 SANA NTS 2076 166/280 ‘Influx of Nyasaland Natives into the Union’.
90 Ibid.
91 L. Witz, ‘Separation for Unity: The Garment Workers Union and the South African Clothing Workers Union, 1928–1936’, Social Dynamics, 14, 1 (1988), pp. 34–45; ‘Strike of Native Factory Hands: 250 Now Said To Be Affected: Refusal To Meet White Official’, Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg, 8 June 1928.
92 C. Kadalie, My Life, p. 222.
93 ‘Clements Kadalie Resigns Secretaryship of ICU: Objects to Policy of Servitude’, The Star, Johannesburg, 25 January 1929.
94 Western Cape Archive, 1/ELN 87 C3 ‘Native Unrest’, CID report on 13 January 1930.
95 Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship’, pp. 229–32.
96 Ibid., p. 225.
97 Ibid., p. 260.
98 Bradford, ‘Getting Away with Murder’, p. 103.
99 SANA NTS 2129 245/280 ‘Alien Natives’, Singinie to Secretary for Native Affairs, 8 November 1932; Ankhoma to Secretary for Native Affairs, 5 April 1933.
100 Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship’, p. 242.
101 Ibid., p. 243.
102 Ibid., p. 242.
103 GNLB 401 55/53 ‘The Nyasaland, East African and Rhodesian Helping Hand Society’, G. Ballenden to Director of Native Labour, 22 August 1933.
104 WITS AD843 Aa3.1.7 J.K. Mahemane to J.D. Rheinallt Jones, 25 March 1938.
105 SANA CCK 21 N1/9/3 ‘Independent Industrial and Commercial Workers Union’, Sgt Mandy to District Commandant, 14 June 1932.
106 C. Kadalie, My Life, p. 224.
107 R.R. Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire: Vol II (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1949).
108 Klaaren, ‘Migrating to Citizenship’, p. 232; SANA NTS 2129 245/280 ‘Alien Natives’, memo 25 November 1932.
109 ‘Let Me Introduce You …’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 26 August 1939.
110 Ibid.
111 ‘Johannesburg Day by Day’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 29 April 1939; ‘Nyasalanders and Rhodesians Welcome Captain Burden’, Umteteli wa Bantu, 24 June 1939.
112 G.N. Burden, Nyasaland Natives in the Union of South Africa (Zomba, Government Printer, 1940), p. 31.
113 MacDonald, Colonial Trespassers.
114 A. Mbembe, ‘Scrap the Borders that Divide Africans’, Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, 17 March 2017, available at https://mg.co.za/article/2017-03-17-00-scrap-the-borders-that-divide-africans, retrieved 10 April 2018.
115 SANA NTS 2076 166/280 ‘Influx of Nyasaland Natives into the Union’, Longwe, Sileam, Phillips and Corner to Secretary for Native Affairs, 16 January 1929.
116 SANA GNLB 294 222/18 ‘Application of Pass Laws: Nyassaland Natives’, L.W. Ritch to Minister of Interior, 26 July 1918.
117 SANA GG 50/1557 ‘Complaint regarding Nyasaland Natives in the Union’, Chirwa to Governor, 12 May 1936.
118 D. Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital, and the Incorporation of Organized Labour on the South African Gold Fields, 1902–1939 (London, Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 230.
119 SANA KJB 408 N1/14/3 ‘Re Joseph Kumalo & Thomas Kazembe’.
120 ‘New Government Bill’, Workers’ Herald, 15 October 1925.
121 Alongside organising Mozambican miners at Witbank, Kadalie was in contact with Dick Khosa and Brown Dulela in Lourenço Marques. J. Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 1994), p. 88; A. Isaacman, ‘Colonial Mozambique, an Inside View: The Life History of Raúl Honwana’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 28, 109 (1988), pp. 59–89.
122 ‘Recruiting System’, Workers Herald, 21 July 1923.
123 C. Kadalie, ‘The Old and the New Africa’.