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Preface

THIS BOOK WAS conceived around the 2008 outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa that left more than fifty migrants dead and thousands others displaced. My original idea was to study the historical construction of foreignness among Zimbabweans in South Africa. I hoped such a study would provide some historical context that was missing in the largely presentist discussions of the violence, which affected migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, whom South Africans collectively referred to as makwerekwere (foreigners). However, I changed my mind a year later after a few days of research at the National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare led me to a huge file labeled “Illegal Recruiting of Native Labour, 1925–1951.” In that file, which contained hundreds of documents from various units of the colonial government in Zimbabwe, were reports of the Criminal Investigation Department. One of those reports made reference to a statement dated November 8, 1941, that was ostensibly written by someone identified as “Native” Davidson. It read as follows:

It was my intention today to proceed to Mafeking. I have no Pass to Leave the Territory, nor have I any papers authorising my entry to the Union of South Africa, but I have made arrangements to travel on a goods train which is travelling to the Union this morning. Sometime ago, when I expressed an intention of going to the Union of South Africa, I was told by one of my friends, a native named Jack alias Faison, who works in the Railway Telegraph Office, Bulawayo, that he could arrange that I be taken down South by one of the Europeans employed on the Railways. He mentioned that the charge would be about £2-0-0, and that many natives had been taken down South by this particular person. On the 31st October, 1941, I paid £2-0-0 to native Jack, who said he would hand it to the European concerned. He told me that this European works on the trains which travel down South. I saw Jack alias Faison again on Wednesday 5 November, and he told me that he had handed the money to the European. I don’t know the name of the European. Jack told me to be ready on Saturday morning the 8^th November, at the station, and he would give me a note, which had been left with him, to give to me, for purposes of identification, when I joined the goods train. I was told by Jack that he would show me the train on which I was to travel, and there, an arrangement would be made with the European as to how I was to travel (ie in goods truck or compartment, or on the engine, or in the guards’ van). I was not able to go up to the station today, as I was detained by the police, on a native pass charge.¹

Although the prevalence of “illegal migration” across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border featured prominently in media and scholarly discussions of the 2008 xenophobic violence, it had never occurred to my mind that there could be a long history of this phenomenon. Not even a single one of the historical studies of migration in Southern Africa, which I had read since my undergraduate years in Zimbabwe, addressed this issue. While a few works made passing reference to work-seeking migrants who sneaked out of colonial Zimbabwe and went to South Africa, they did very little to examine how such people crossed the border between the two countries.

This book contributes to Southern African historiography and migration studies by examining the historical dynamics of cross-border movements that evaded official measures of controlling migration from colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe to South Africa. It covers the period from 1890, when the British-sponsored settlers occupied the Zimbabwean plateau and created a separate colony from the then Boer-controlled Transvaal colony on the southern side of the Limpopo River, to around 2010. Although I discuss why people left Zimbabwe at any given moment over the course of that period and why they went to South Africa, the main objective of the book is to understand why and how travelers crossed the border between the two countries without following official channels. In that respect, this book is as much a study of “illegal” migration as it is about the making of the Zimbabwe–South Africa border. It is also about statecraft and the politics of emigration and immigration control in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

In terms of methodology, the book relies on historical research at the National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare, the National Archives of South Africa in Pretoria, the British Library in London, and the University of Johannesburg’s (Doornfontein Campus) Special Collections, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in the Zimbabwe–South Africa border zone. In addition to the file referred to earlier, my research at the National Archives of Zimbabwe involved reading hundreds of official documents from the colonial period, especially those produced by the Native Affairs Department and the British South Africa Police. These two departments were at the forefront of the settler administration’s effort to mobilize a pool of cheap labor for the colony from the 1890s to the 1950s; therefore, they produced a huge corpus of documents relating to the movement of Africans within and out of Southern Rhodesia during that period.

At the National Archives of South Africa, the most relevant materials came from the Government Native Labor Bureau, particularly the office of the Director of Native Labor, who played a significant role as a link between the government and employers organizations such as the Transvaal Chamber of Mines and the Lowveld Farmers Association. As was the case in colonial Zimbabwe, the police in South Africa also produced documents regarding the movements of African foreign workers, especially after the introduction of the Immigrants Regulation Act in 1913. At the University of Johannesburg’s Doornfontein Campus, my research focused on archives of the Witwatersrand Native Labor Association, the organization that recruited migrant workers on behalf of companies affiliated with the Chamber of Mines. The bulk of the materials in these archives are in the form of circulars, minutes of management meetings, and correspondence between the association’s management and officials in various state departments. More information about the politics of migration control in South Africa came from the Union of South Africa’s parliamentary debates, which I found at the British Library in London.

While archival records in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and London provided a glimpse of migrants’ experiences of crossing the border through unofficial channels, I learned a lot from the fieldwork I conducted in the border region. This research took place in three segments: a five-month continuous stay in the area (from March to July 2010), two weeks in June 2012, and then three weeks during summer 2013. For the most part, my field research consisted of oral interviews with former migrants and residents of Zimbabwe’s border district of Beitbridge, which was simultaneously a major source of and transit zone for migrants en route to South Africa. I also collected a lot of information through focused group discussions with Zimbabwean deportees and voluntary returnees who sought temporary shelter and other kinds of assistance at the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM’s) office in Beitbridge and Musina (formerly Messina) Town on the South African side of the border.

In addition to the interviews, I learned about historical and contemporary dynamics of “clandestine” mobility between these countries from personal observations as I moved around with the IOM staff, especially the team that conducted the “Health and Safe Migration Awareness” campaigns in the border areas. I also accompanied a number of IOM Beitbridge staff members on several trips to the Refugee Reception Center in Musina. This place is where hundreds of “undocumented” migrants (mostly Zimbabweans) received various kinds of assistance, including food handouts, clothes, and blankets as well as paperwork to apply for asylum permits and other kinds of documentation to “legalize” their stay in South Africa. With the support and guidance of staff at the IOM Musina office, I was able to drive along the security patrol road adjacent the South African border fence and got to see several holes through which migrants and smugglers entered and/or left South Africa. Furthermore, my informal conversations with the IOM staff and other people I met in various settings on both sides of border yielded crucial information for this book. For example, I watched several of the 2010 FIFA World Cup soccer matches at the Beitbridge Country Club, which was a popular drinking spot for residents of Beitbridge town and for stop-by travelers to or from South Africa. Quite often, conversations at the club strayed from soccer to matters of “bread and butter,” which revolved around the border economy and its politics.

In an attempt to capture broader historical changes that shaped the development of this phenomenon, I use place and country names that were in use at different periods that I cover in different sections of the book. For example, I use Southern Rhodesia in reference to present-day Zimbabwe from the 1890s to 1965. Between 1965 and 1979, the country was officially known as Rhodesia before it was renamed Zimbabwe at the end of colonial rule in 1980. Different names have also been used in reference to the area on the southern side of the border. From the mid–nineteenth century to the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the area was part of the Transvaal colony. Although the Union of South Africa officially ended with the proclamation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961, there were no significant changes in the country’s name after 1910. In line with these changes, some sections of the book use the Transvaal, whereas others use South Africa to refer to the same area. I also use phrases such as the Transvaal–Southern Rhodesia border, the Southern Rhodesia–South Africa border, the Rhodesia–South Africa border, and the Zimbabwe–South Africa border to refer to the same boundary in different sections of the book, depending on the historical periods covered in those sections. In the same vein, I use Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa to refer to colonial Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, respectively.

Note

1. National Archives of Zimbabwe, S1226, Statement Made by “Native” Davidson at Criminal Investigation Department Office, Bulawayo, November 8, 1941.