“….kumene bambo ake, pansi pa mgodi, anali kuswa miyala ndi msana waonso,” goes the last line of the first stanza of a Chichewa poem in a Standard 3 book of the 1960s and 1970s. The book’s title was Liwiro. The poem was about a boy called Kandulo who was born to migrant Malawians in South Africa. Kandulo’s father was working in a mine. The line given above says the father was breaking stones in the mine, in the process breaking his back too.
Kandulo, who later acquired the South African name, Gumede, may have been a fictitious character, as were the other members of his family but many Malawians have worked in South African mines under conditions not dissimilar to those described above. The workers were recruited by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA), which was popularly known as Wenela. The name has stuck in some parts of Malawi. Wenela is a well-known place in Blantyre. It is close to Blantyre Mission (known as HHI to many people). A place by the same name also exists at Dowa Boma, on the way to Robert Blake Secondary School. It may be that Wenela centres existed in other districts, besides Blantyre and Dowa.
Working in the South African mines was not for the fainthearted. The work itself was tough, the living conditions poor, the pay low and the environment dangerous. Johannesburg has been described as the most dangerous city in the world, outside a war zone.
The poor conditions notwithstanding, thousands flocked to Wenela centres to be recruited. My own cousin once got recruited and served a period in the mines. He came back speaking a hybrid language called fanagalo or chilapalapa. Listening to him speak the language, you could tell that he was not quite adept at it, but he proudly spoke it nonetheless. Many ex-Wenela workers brought back clothes, blankets and music equipment but nothing more. Within a year of coming back they would have depleted everything, and they felt urged to go back to refill.
At Nkhoma Mission my father employed a gardener who spoke broken fanagalo. He had never been to South Africa but harboured the ambition to get recruited by Wenela to work in the South African mines. That is how popular Wenela was in some circles of our society. A University of Malawi drop out enrolled for Wenela and joined the last batch of able bodied young men that left for South Africa to work in the mines. While there, he found himself a place in one of the South African universities. He studied for his first degree then moved on to acquire a sMasters’ degree and eventually a PhD.
Exporting labour is anything but new to Malawi. In comparison to Wenela, the young people going to Israel are in good jobs. Yes, they will have to adapt to a very strict work ethic but the remuneration more than makes up for the vast effort they have to put in. Not even graduates would start at a salary equivalent to $1,500 in Malawi. If their living conditions in Israel were close to what my cousin and thousands of other Malawians experienced in South Africa, it would probably not be worth it.
Working to a strict schedule is not tantamount to slavery, as some would have us believe. It is unfortunate that we have gotten used to very loose working conditions in Malawi. I was shocked when I briefly worked in the civil service on contract. On my first day of work, I got to the office just after the official starting time, but was the only soul in office. People started arriving piecemeal 40 or so minutes later. In the afternoon, they started leaving the office at 3, a good two hours before the official knocking off time.
Driving from Lumbadzi, I once picked up a person who turned out to be a civil servant. He had been called to his office to sort out an emergency and reluctantly obliged. He was otherwise not going to work that day. No, he was not on leave but simply decided to stay away so that he could attend to other things at home. These young people cannot do that in Israel. They must account for every hour of every day. This is not slavery; it is the way things should be. Slavery is what unfortunate Malawian workers have experienced places like Oman. Once they get to the homes where they should become domestic workers, their employers demand their travel documents. They have no chance of terminating their employment and travelling back home. Those in Israel can travel back if conditions become unbearable.