Witwatersrand Native Labour Association
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The Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA), more popularly Wenela, was set up by the gold mines in
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as a recruiting agency for migrant workers. Eventually, it comprised a large organisation with its own depots, buses and aeroplanes spread over the whole of
Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...
:
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
,
Basutoland Basutoland was a British Crown colony that existed from 1884 to 1966 in present-day Lesotho, bordered with the Cape Colony, Natal Colony and Orange River Colony until 1910 and completely surrounded by South Africa from 1910. Though the Basot ...
,
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,
South West Africa South West Africa was a territory under Union of South Africa, South African administration from 1915 to 1990. Renamed ''Namibia'' by the United Nations in 1968, Independence of Namibia, it became independent under this name on 21 March 1990. ...
, Bechuanaland,
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,
Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British Crown colony in Southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally known as South ...
,
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, extending into the
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and Tanganyika. Each depot had administrative and medical staff and a "barracks" to house recruits both before departure and on their return. Some had clinics and even schools, where the recruits were taught Fanagalo, the
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
of Southern Africa (fifteen hours of tuition was enough to be useful) and then the rudiments of mining. Tours were usually six months, but many men spent their entire working lives as migrant workers. This author is writing of the North West then part of Northern Rhodesia: "The Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) recruited systematically in the 1940s and 1950s, using permanent local agents, a system of barges which penetrated all of the major rivers of the region, and out-stations where workers were housed until they could be brought into the Boma for transportation. At the Boma WNLA maintained its own gardens and cattle herds as well as substantial hostels. In Northern Rhodesia, the government had a hut tax of quite a small amount, payable annually for each hut. It was a form of "tribal initiation" for every young man to go down to the mines for at least one tour to bring back enough money to pay the hut tax for the entire village.


See also

* South West African Native Labour Association


References


Sources

* *http://www.queensu.ca/samp/Treaties/Wenela.htm *http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001831/Migrant_labour_Kanyenze_March2004.pdf * {{Greater Johannesburg, hist History of mining in South Africa Employment agencies of South Africa