Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa

Francis Musoni

Description

With the end of apartheid rule in South Africa and the ongoing economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the border between these Southern African countries has become one of the busiest inland ports of entry in the world. As border crossers wait for clearance, crime, violence, and illegal entries have become rampant. Francis Musoni observes that border jumping has become a way of life for many of those who live on both sides of the Limpopo River and he explores the reasons for this, including searches for better paying jobs and access to food and clothing at affordable prices. Musoni sets these actions into a framework of illegality. He considers how countries have failed to secure their borders, why passports are denied to travelers, and how border jumping has become a phenomenon with a long history, especially in Africa. Musoni emphasizes cross-border travelers' active participation in the making of this history and how clandestine mobility has presented opportunity and creative possibilities for those who are willing to take the risk.

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

Introduction: A Site of Contestations: The Zimbabwe-South Africa Border and Illegal[ized] Movements Across it

1. Colonial Statecraft and the Rise of Border Jumping

2. Promoting Illegality: South Africa's Ban on "Tropical Natives"

3. Border Jumping and the Politics of Labor

4. Apartheid, African Liberation Struggles and the Securitization of Cross-Limpopo Mobility

5. Crossing the Boundary Fence: The Zimbabwe Crisis and the Surge in Border Jumping

Conclusion: The Past in the Present: Border Jumping as a Legacy of the European Partition of Africa

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• Human Geography
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Zimbabue
• Sudáfrica
• África
• South Africa
• Regional geography
• Southern Africa
• General officer
• South
• History of Africa
• General
• Africa
• Migration
• Zimbabwe
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 07 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253047168
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

BORDER JUMPING AND MIGRATION CONTROL IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
BORDER JUMPING AND MIGRATION CONTROL IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Francis Musoni
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2020 by Francis Musoni
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Musoni, Francis, author.
Title: Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa/Francis Musoni.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019980962 (print) | LCCN 2019021140 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253047144 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253047151 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253047175 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Zimbabwe-Emigration and immigration-History-20th century. | South Africa-Emigration and immigration-History-20th century. | Zimbabwe-Boundaries. | South Africa-Boundaries. | Border crossing-Zimbabwe. | Border crossing-South Africa. | Zimbabweans-South Africa-Social conditions.
Classification: LCC JV9006.15 .M87 2020 (ebook) | LCC JV9006.15 (print) | DDC 325.68-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980962
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In loving memory of my father-a former migrant, educator, and community leader.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Colonial Statecraft and the Rise of Border Jumping
2 Promoting Illegality: South Africa s Ban on Tropical Natives
3 Border Jumping and the Politics of Labor
4 Apartheid, African Liberation Struggles, and the Securitization of Cross-Limpopo Mobility
5 Crossing the Boundary Fence: The Zimbabwe Crisis and the Surge in Border Jumping
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Preface
T HIS 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)