Under colonial economic systems, many people from Malawi (then
Nyasaland) without access to land or markets migrated to other areas, including South Africa, for
contract labor. These labor migrants were typically men who worked abroad for two years under contract with recruiters such as the
Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela). Internal recruitment of Malawian labor for South African mines was suspended from 1907 to 1936 due to high illness and mortality rates, but agreements in the 1930s between the South Africa and Nyasaland governments allowed for the re-opening of a controlled migrant labor flow.
Post-colonial policy (1964–1992) The colonial structures of Malawian labour export to South African mines continued after Malawi achieved independence in 1964. Led by the then named president for Life
Hastings Banda, Malawi was the only African ruled country to maintain close relations with White-ruled South Africa until the 1994 election of
Nelson Mandela. Malawians were viewed as important workers in the South African mines due to their "skills, work discipline and lack of militancy".
Banda's apartheid-era policy Malawi was the only country in Africa to maintain diplomatic relations with South Africa during the apartheid era.
Hastings Banda was the first black President ever to visit South Africa in 1971 and the first foreign head of state to come since the United Kingdom's
King George VI's royal visit in 1947. During his visit, Banda received a 21-gun salute and an official welcome from State President
Jacobus Johannes Fouché. His position on South Africa was that "It is only contact like this [between South Africa and Malawi] that can reveal to your people that there are civilised people other than white..." By visiting South Africa, he had defied the 41-member
Organisation of African Unity (OAU). De Klerk notes that, :"The Government was always more inclined to listen to the advice of countries that maintained contact with it...the decision of Malawi to send black diplomats to Pretoria was far more effective in exposing the logical and logistical absurdities of apartheid than any number of resolutions by the United Nations." • Also See:
Hastings Banda#Relations with South Africa == Political relations ==