Missing women: Reflections on the experiences of Swazi migrant women on the Rand, 1920–1970

Abstract

The migration of Swazi women to the Witwatersrand in the period 1920–1970 marked an era of change in the lives of many Swazi women. Under the constraints of rural impoverishment, many women were forced onto the Swazi labour market, one which had little room for women. By the 1930s the exodus of Swazi women to the Rand had gathered so much momentum, that women quickly became objects of national concern to the British colonial government, Swazi traditional authorities and South African authorities. Their experiences as migrant workers in South Africa have largely gone unnoticed. As African women, they suffered the triple oppression of class, race and gender, and as foreign women were subject to a battery of laws designed to keep foreign Africans out of South Africa. The personal experiences of Swazi women as migrants and workers in South Africa are examined here, using life-history or personal narrative techniques which have considerable potential as a way of recovering hidden histories and reinstating the marginalised as makers of their own past.