Hail The Migrant Workers: Namibia’s Hardworking Generation

THE migrant worker generation of the colonial contract labour system is dying out.

This would be my father’s (may his soul rest in peace) generation. Born in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, these people were the backbone of the colonial workforce under the South West African Native Labour Association (SWANLA).

SWANLA, and its predecessors, the Southern Labour Organisation (SLO) and the Northern Labour Organisation (NLO) disrupted Namibian families when it served as the primary source of exploitation and provided cheap labour for the colonial administration in Namibia, then South West Africa. According to this apartheid contract labour system; indigenous Namibians who were consigned to tribal lands, required passes for movement. They got six months, one-year, 18 months and two-year contracts to work in mines, farms and municipalities across Namibia and South Africa. They were not allowed to migrate with families – mainly women, children, and the elderly – who were thus left behind. The men travelled hundreds of miles to get to their workplaces where they were housed in wired compounds for the duration of their contracts and their movements tightly monitored.

They should not be mistaken with the “now is our turn to eat” groups who were also born at the same time – great generation too, but fundamentally flawed. Some of the “our turn to eat” were migrant workers themselves, politically savvy, who heroically mobilised and organised Namibians to resist colonialism till the final victory. However, after independence, that record would be tainted by an apparent indifference towards the poor, lack of a clear vision, and a self-enrichment agenda by some.

The old generation of migrant workers can also be contrasted with the current youth – the “instant gratification” or Yolo (you only live once) generation – who are educated, and have better social and economic opportunities. Yet this generation only seems to be interested in shortcuts instead of life learning experiences. They aspire for higher positions and social status (even without the necessary experience, qualifications or skills) and are more interested in the end result of life rather than the means to an end.

The migrant workers were not an educated workforce (in the traditional sense of the modern education) but very resourceful, physically tough, resilient, and adaptable.

To say that the contract workers laboured under very repressive conditions is an understatement. They had no rights or protection. They had neither vacation, nor the right to terminate their contracts. Their employers could end their contracts at any time. Their pay was almost worthless.

To survive under those harsh working conditions, the migrant workers had to teach themselves life skills: They mastered workplace languages such as Afrikaans, German and Fanakalo (the language of the South African mining industry). They also assimilated and learned one another’s languages and cultures. This migrant labour experience would play a decisive role in shaping the workers’ discontent with the oppressive contract system and the colonial regime in general.

The migrant labour system was fraught with danger, especially the mines of South Africa referred to as “Djwaine” in the Kavango languages. So revered that the men of my village compared working in the South African mines to God, that “tulambela Mafeking Mzilikazi Kalunga or Kudjwaine ukanyonga,” which roughly translates that you were lucky if not sent to work in the South African mines because there you will die. Some migrant workers came back in coffins. Others never returned, to which the vaKavango people had a saying that ‘they were swallowed by the cities’.

Of course independence finally ended the de jure migration system, but a de facto migrant labour system still remains in a free and independent Namibia. You may call it a modern migrant system, which is sending thousands of the rural population to Namibia’s urban towns in search of job opportunities and a better life. Partly, this phenomenon can be blamed on post-independence Namibia’s economic development agenda that is biased towards the rural areas.

In contrast, however, to the previous migrant worker generation, the modern migrants are backed by Namibia’s constitutional protection. Yet 23 years after Namibia’s independence the conditions (especially in the coal industry and farms) in terms of wage compensation, housing and poor quality of life haven’t changed that much.

But probably the major difference between the old labour migration of the colonial era and that of the modern migrant workers in an independent Namibia is that the old migrants would engage in labour contract work for the purpose of earning cash and return home to their permanent habitats in rural areas. The latter, however, migrates with their families and relatives to settle in urban areas, posing serious challenges in terms of social services such as housing, health care, and education.

This is where public policy should step in to ensure that constitutional workers’ rights are enforced.



*Ndumba J Kamwanyah is a public policy consultant and an Africa blogger for the Foreign Policy Association. ndumba.kamwanyah@umb.edu; Twitter@ndumbakamwanyah