CAUSES AND IMPACTS OF LABOUR MIGRATION IN COLONIAL ZAMBIA:

A CASE STUDY OF NYAMPHANCE VILLAGE.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction and Historical Background

Labour migration according to refers to the movement of wage earners from areas of subsistence

agriculture to areas of wage employment, both in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the

economy. In much of Africa this applies to the short-term, often repeated trip towards the capital

cities in order to satisfy discontinuous labour needs. Mineral mining happens to cause one of the

greatest demands for labour in Africa. Migration movements have been a feature of Africa in the

past and are one of its most important demographical features at the present day. International

migration within Southern Africa, and between the region and the rest of the continent, dates

back to time immemorial. The trans-Saharan caravan routes are among the earliest evidence of

major interaction between the rest of Africa and North Africa for trading and exchange of

scholars.1

The presence of Europeans on the West Coast from the 1400s onwards disrupted the then

existing north-south movement of people and goods. However, the contact with Europeans

created new patterns of movement, first through slave trade and later colonisation, within the

sub-region and with the rest of the world. The new dynamics that emerged continue to the

present day. 2

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Migration studies conducted in Africa in the late 1950s and 1960s attributed economic factors as

mainly responsible for labour migration. Central to labour migration in the Eastern province

were two related issues overpopulation and a limited land resource base. The economic motive

was shown to be outstanding in the reasons for migration. The Bemba tribes in northern Zambia

migrated to acquire tax-money and that young men in particular, migrated in order to purchase

material goods like clothes and shoes. 3

Central Africa is generally made up of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Before and during

colonial rule in central Africa men used to go to work on the diamond fields at Kimberly, later

on to mines in Katanga, copper belt, Lupa Gold fields as well as sisal plantations in Tanganyika.

Others went to work in the coal mines in Wankie and to Witwatersrand in South Africa this

phenomenon came to be known as labour migration. There is an ongoing academic debate on the

impacts of labour migration in central Africa, some scholars assert that labour migration had

detrimental effects in central Africa while others argue that it had positive ends, in this paper

therefore, I carefully and critically examine this debate by looking at the net effects of labour

migration both negatively and positively. The first part of this paper focuses on the negative

effects and the last part on the positive ones. 4

It is also imperative to note that labour migration was ignited by various factors and considering

the introduction of taxation as the sole cause of labour migration is to be naïve, because taxation

just speeded up the trend and brought it to wider scale than before, for example in northern

Rhodesia, labour migration began before 1890 because northern Rhodesian labourers were

already travelling to diamond fields of Kimberly in South Africa where they were known as the

Zambezi boys. 5

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STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.

The causes and impacts of labour migration in colonial Zambia has not seriously been research

by scholars. Pull factors that led to labour migration and the positive impacts of the labour

migration have been mentioned in most of the studies to underline their subservient in the social

and economic establishment through the rural concept. There is deficiency on the push factors

that led to the rural migrants to move to the urban areas as well as how these migrations

negatively impacted the rural areas in the historiography of labour migration in the colonial

Zambia. However this study bridges the gap. It demonstrates the pull and push factors of labour

migration and how they had an impact on the rural areas both positively and negatively.

OBJECTIVES

The study seeks to accomplish the following objectives

1) Assess the pull and push factors of labour migration.

2) Examine the positive and negative impacts of labour migration of the rural areas in

colonial Zambia.

3) Ascertain why labour migration kept increasing despite the negatively impacts.

RATIONALE

The motivation to undertake this study emanates from the fact that among the numerous research

done by scholars, there was still a dire lack of literature on the causes and impacts of labour

migration in the rural areas of colonial Zambia. This study with add on the already existing body

of knowledge on the causes and impacts of labour migration.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

There is a fair amount of literature on the causes and impacts of labour migration in colonial

Zambia. The literature does provide glimpses into the issues of migration as well as the impacts

associated with the same migration in colonial Zambia.

These intuitions were used as cornerstone in the process of investigation the actual causes and

impacts of labour migration associated with the people of Nyampande village. Basically, the

literature provides clues and lines on the reasons as to why people decided to embark on their

labour migrations. 6

The huge European interest in Zambia’s copper and other natural resources culminated finally in

the colonisation of the territory by the British imperial powers in the nineteenth century.

Developments later led to two marked copper rushes referred to as the “Jungle Booms”. This led

to proliferation of mining companies from Europe into Northern Rhodesia to prospect for and

mine copper in the copper-impregnated areas. One of the auriferous areas that attracted the

mining companies and later, migrants was Copperbelt. Historically, labour migration from within

the South African sub-region has played a major role in Zambia’s mining industry. Available

records suggest that before independence, the industry experienced labour migration from other

neighbouring countries. 7

Many migrants eventually engaged in various sections of the industry, and made significant

contributions to the development of the emergent post-independent Zambia as well as

communities that surfaced with mining. Internally, many indigenous people also drifted to

mining centres lured, in part, by employment, economic opportunities and services that the

industry offered. In spite of the several scholarly and policy studies undertaken over the years on

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the mining sector in the sub-region in general and Zambia in particular, certain aspects such as

labour migration has not received much attention. This research argues that apart from economic

forces that compelled people to migrate to other areas in Zambia in search of greener pastures,

there were a host of other factors that contributed to the migration of people from Of

nyamphance village of Petuake in Eastern Zambia, as well as other parts of Zambia. 8

In contemporary Africa, securing a livelihood in rural areas has become progressively more

complex over the last several decades. As a result, it is increasingly difficult to describe and

analyze accurately the state of affairs in its entirety in terms of interactions among social and

economic sectors and geographical territories. In most rural areas, agriculture has been the

primary source of livelihood for most people. However, agricultural production is often

supplemented and sometimes sustained by other social and economic activities to adapt and cope

with variable environmental conditions and social and economic changes. Increasing pressures

and opportunities resulting from recent economic liberalization and globalization have led to

diversification in securing a livelihood becoming the norm. Some researchers have noted that

non-agricultural activities typically are increasing in importance for rural livelihoods and that

rural populations are becoming less agrarian with each passing year. 9

While non-agricultural activity has markedly increased in importance as a necessary component

of rural livelihoods in recent times, labor migration has a long history in Africa, and has had a

major influence on rural societies and economies since the colonial era. In many African

countries, labor migration first arose with the recruitment of rural farmers into the mining sector

and plantations.6 In this sense, labor migration was introduced to farmers in a structural policy-

related context. Although much of this recruitment was involuntary at that time, it had a major

effect on rural societies and economies and impacted livelihoods in both positive and negative

5
ways. A large research effort has been directed toward analyzing the impact of labor migration

on the home villages that migrants leave to find work. These impacts include remittances, which

are considered a critical financial benefit of labor migration, and the effects of labor shortages on

social organization. 10

At the same time, the primary concern of most migration studies has been on the reasons

inducing people to move. The well-known framework for understanding the causes of migration

has been the ‚push-pull‛ perspective, examining factors such as increasing population pressure,

scarcity of land, and income disparity between urban and rural areas.8

The theories based on this perspective consider the migrating actor as an economically rational

individual. In the late 1980s and 1990s, an academic movement known as "New Economics of

Labor Migration (NELM)" criticized earlier migration studies for overly emphasizing the

structural and historical factors involved in migration, and producing an individualistic view.

Oded Stark stressed that most households have kept their social and economic ties with areas in

which labor is performed and remittances are sent from. Consequently, he argues that the unit of

analysis should be the family or household rather than individual, which previous thinking had

recognized as a single rational actor and decision maker in the act of migration. More recent

studies influenced by NELM have analyzed labor migration as a household strategy in a more

holistic framework. However, these studies typically attempt to understand the causes of

migration within the framework of the ‘push-pull’ perspective, and their primary focus tends to

be restricted to income differences between urban and rural areas, a shortage of land, agricultural

failure, and the absence of employment opportunities in rural areas. 11

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These previous migration studies have paid little attention to the conditions of livelihood

diversity and complexity in the areas from which migration occurs. As mentioned above, the

sources of livelihood in rural areas are extremely diverse. Since the early 1990s, a number of

studies concerned with livelihood diversification in rural Africa have emerged, in a framework

known as the ‚Livelihood Approach. One scholar defined livelihood diversification as ‚the

process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support

capabilities in their struggle for survival and to improve their standards of living. He emphasized

the importance of diversification not only in regard to income sources, but also for access to

income. A focus on access to strategies and assets related to securing income are thus important

factors in examining rural livelihoods. Some case studies have indicated that income

differentiation can be both a cause and a result of livelihood diversification and increasing non-

agricultural income opportunities.12

In situations where farmers are able to choose several ways of making a living in a given rural

area, labor migration may not necessarily be the last resort. The decision-making process

underlying labor migration may be more complex than previously believed. It is essential to

reconsider the choice to migrate for labor under conditions where other options for sustaining

their livelihoods are available, what the relationship is between other livelihood activities and

labor migration, and how labor migration is integrated into rural society.

Studies of migration and rural-urban interaction have traditionally focused on large cities. Small

and intermediate sized towns, however, have been considered as having a critical role both for

rural and urban development. Through analyzing the interactions between small towns and rural

areas, this paper will elucidate their role as the destinations of labor migration. Moreover, it will

7
provide a framework for understanding present-day rural Africa as an open system involving

extensive interactions with small urban areas.

Armour, where work was on the labour migrations in SouthernAfrica, suggested that there is a

considerable body of literature on labour migrations in sub-Saharan Africa which documents the

nature and extent of migratory movements, from ethnographic and urban studies and surveys of

migrants together with discussion derived from this causes, giving a more general account of the

cause effects and persistence of labour migration

Gulliver, in his work of causes of labour migration he points out push factors such as the

introduction of tax regime by the colonial government ( the pull tax and hut tax ): poll tax refers

to the individual while hut tax had the African pay tax for the number of huts ( the first wife was

an exception ) and this was to do away with the aspect of having plural wives or polygamy and

to make money. Furthermore, Mitchell in his book entitled factors motivating migration from

Rural Areas in present interrelations in central Africa Rural and Urban life. He gave a clue on

why labour migration kept on increasing despite negative impacts it had to the communities.

Thus this helped the research to look out for more causes of labour migration in colonial Zambia

regardless of its negative impacts to the societies in the primary data that was used. 13

On the negative end, labour migration brought about disintegration of traditional way of life, the

different taxes which were imposed on in central Africa made people to became desperate for

paid labour and forced men to look for work in mines in southern Rhodesia, Katanga and South

Africa, during the early 1900s it became hard to find able boded men in villages, only women

and children remained as young men had left either for South Africa or Rhodesias mines, this

made villages to find it difficult to defend themselves as most men had gone away on labour

8
migration therefore, there was insecurity as people no longer bound to combine together in

villages for defense in the absence of energetic and young men.14

There was also moral decadence among the labourers, women and children in towns, the squalid

living conditions were marked by immorality, juvenile delinquency and crime. Before mine

owners started permitting labourers to bring their wives from the village, prostitutes who had

chance thronged or sneaked into mine compounds found a couple of opportunities for trade,

sometimes children who were born out of these casual unions often turned to petty crimes as they

were devoid of good teaching and training, in addition labour migration caused overcrowding in

towns which promoted the spread of various disease such as small pox and in turn labourers

imported these diseases to their communities after the contracts came to an end, for instance as

observed by Gann “overcrowding in quarters with poor ventilation promoted the spread of

disease such as dysentery and pneumonia which claimed a number of lives between 1907 and

1912”.2 Among the diseases which were noticed by the returning migrants included: syphilis,

gonorrhea, tuberculosis, small pox and machecha ( swelling of thighs). In fact Chondoka

observed that “ by 1954 tuberculosis was so prevalent among the Senga of Chama District that it

was killing children annually and many adults visiting the dispensaries complained of chest

pains”. 15 This was serious in Chief Tembwe’s area.

Infidelity was another negative effect of labour migration in central Africa which was largely

responsible for the spread of foreign diseases discussed above. In accord with Boeder infidelity

increased in central African villages when men were away working, married women could

engage themselves in extra marital affairs with few remaining men and also with some men

returning from mines. 16 Labour migration also kept most men of Goba people of lower Zambezi

away from their families for long time and undoubtingly this led to a number of adultery cases,

9
in some parts of today eastern province of Zambia, labour migration was a primary factor in

increasing prostitution, for example in Petauke District women whose husbands had overstayed

in urban areas resorted to prostitution for a living. 17

Besides lowering moral standards, emigration condemned many young women to permanent

spinsterhood when the men whom they were betrothed went away to earn dowry money and

never returned. In addition, childless married women spent unhappy lives alone in villages while

the children conceived during the husband’s brief visit grew up undisciplined in fatherless

homes.

It has also been brought to light that moral decay among the migrant workers reached unbearable

levels especially by those who were lowly paid as they could engage themselves in unnatural

sexual activities such as bestiality and this was due to sexual draught and frustrations as they had

stayed away from their wives for long periods and could not afford for paid sex to prostitutes.

Mines which were located in rural areas kept livestock as either possession or as a source of meat

and it was towards these livestock which were kept in compounds that some turned to for sexual

needs however, if they were found by the authorities they could be punished for a minimum of

six months imprisonment with hard labour.

Labour migration inhibited agriculture development in rural areas where labourer came from, for

example, it is strongly held that labour migration took away able-bodied men, a situation which

inhibited rural development in terms of agriculture because the most productive part of the rural

population was siphoned into mines and plantations for paid labour, in fact this problem had

always crossed the minds of District commissioners in Northern Rhodesia where according to

their reports, as many as seventy-five percent of tax payers were away from their rural villages

10
at any time working in mines or towns. 18 Bemba land which supplied most of the men to the

copperbelt is noted to have suffered the consequences due to the absence of young men, this

amounted to the indigenous farming methods like chitemene system which depended on men

cutting down branches of trees.

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Research Methodology

Traditional libraries will be consulted for books, journals, dissertations and theses. These will

provided secondary information that will guide the direction of the research. The researcher will

also visit a number of people and interview them, specifically targeting the elderly men and men

of the Nyamphance village because they provide primary data on this topic. This research will

also be written primarily with the utilisation of primary source archival data from the Public

Records and other historical data that is widely available in publications.

Area of Study

Nyamphance village is situated in Petuake district in Eastern Province of Zambia and is home to

the Nsenga People. The province is known for his fertile soil and good cotton harvest farms, it

was primary during the first republic known for its bicycle plants and battery plants. The

province boarders Zambia with Malawi.

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 RESEARCH TIMETABLE

PERIOD ACTIVITY NUMBER OF DAYS

1st-20th JUNE Writing of proposal 20 days
-- Organizing of instruments 5 days
---- Data collection 26 days
--- Drafting of research 12 days
---- Writing of report 15 days
---- Submission of report 1

ESTIMATED BUGDET

S/N ITERMS QUANTINTY COST IN KWACHA

1 TRANSPORT K800
2 REAM OF PAPER K65
3 PRINTING/PHOTOCOPY K150
4 BINDING K30
5 REFRESHMENT K350
TOTAL K1,395

ENDNOTES

1. Boerder Robert Benson, Malawians Abroad. The History of Labour Emigration from

Malawi to its Neighbours, 1890 to Present, PhD Thesis, Michigan State University,

1978.

2. Chondoka Yizenge, Labour Migration and Rural Transformation in Chama District,

North-Eastern Zambia, 1980-1964, PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1992.

13
3. Gann L. H, A History of Northern Rhodesia: Early days to 1953, London: Chatto and

Windus, 1964.

4. Mariotti Martin , Does Labor Migration Affect Human Capital in The Long Run?

Evidence from Malawi , Sydney: Australian National University, 2014.

5. Mckenna Amy, The History of Southern Africa, New York: Britannica Educational

Publishing, 2011.

6. Mitchell J. Clyde, ‘Labour migration and the Tribe (Northern Rhodesia)’ in

Prudence Smith (ed) Africa in Transition, BBC talks on changing conditions in

Southern Africa, (London: Max Reinard, 1958),pp. 45-61.

7. Pachi B, Malawi: The History of the Nation, London: Longman Group Ltd, 1973.

8. Weinrich A.K.H, African Farmers in Rhodesia, London: Oxford University Press,

1975.

9. Wills A. J, An Introduction to the History of Central Africa, London: Oxford

University Press, 1973.

10. Mckenna Amy, The History of Southern Africa, New York: Britannica Educational

Publishing, 2011.

11. Mitchell J. Clyde, ‘Labour migration and the Tribe (Northern Rhodesia)’ in

Prudence Smith (ed) Africa in Transition, BBC talks on changing conditions in

Southern Africa, (London: Max Reinard, 1958),pp. 45-61.

12. Boerder Robert Benson, Malawians Abroad. The History of Labour Emigration from

Malawi to its Neighbours, 1890 to Present, PhD Thesis, Michigan State University,

1978.

14
13. Weinrich A.K.H, African Farmers in Rhodesia, London: Oxford University Press,

1975.

14. Chondoka Yizenge, Labour Migration and Rural Transformation in Chama District,

North-Eastern Zambia, 1980-1964, PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1992.

15. Gann L. H, A History of Northern Rhodesia: Early days to 1953, London: Chatto and

Windus, 1964.

16. Mariotti Martin , Does Labor Migration Affect Human Capital in The Long Run?

Evidence from Malawi , Sydney: Australian National University, 2014.

17. Mckenna Amy, The History of Southern Africa, New York: Britannica Educational

Publishing, 2011.

18. Mariotti Martin , Does Labor Migration Affect Human Capital in The Long Run?

Evidence from Malawi , Sydney: Australian National University, 2014.

15