Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa. Francis Musoni

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СКАЧАТЬ leeway to expand their territorial possessions and influence as far northward as they wanted. When large-scale gold mining operations began in the Witwatersrand area in the 1880s, the Transvaal officials did not see the need to restrict the entry of migrant workers from the Zimbabwean plateau, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, and other places. However, state officials actively sought to restrict the movements of people from the Transvaal to the Cape Colony and Natal, which were under the control of British settlers. Given that the British also tried to regulate people’s movements across the borders of the Cape Colony, it is no surprise that “illegal” migration became an issue of concern in pre-1890 South Africa.¹⁰ However, such concerns did not apply to movements across the Limpopo River, which were generally unregulated.

      Colonial Conquest and the Rise of the Wage-Based Economy in Zimbabwe

      Without the British South Africa Company (BSAC)-sponsored occupation of Zimbabwe on behalf of Britain in September 1890, the history of “illegal” migration across the country’s border with South Africa would have been different. Although previous centuries had witnessed other developments that stirred things up in the Limpopo Valley—such as the rise and fall of the Venda Kingdom and the settlement of the Shangani, Ndebele, Sotho, and other groups—the conquest of Zimbabwe significantly changed the character of the region.¹¹ The greatest impact came from policies implemented by the BSAC administration that disrupted livelihood strategies on the Zimbabwean plateau and changed the meaning of cross-Limpopo mobility. The company’s labor mobilization efforts, which introduced the idea of wage-based livelihoods across the territory, were particularly disruptive. Although some people, especially those from the country’s border districts, had started working in the Transvaal mines before the 1890s, labor migration was not a major livelihood strategy for Zimbabweans then. It was only after the BSAC sponsored occupation of the territory that wage-based migrations became common among Zimbabweans.¹²

      As a profit-oriented entity, the BSAC directed the bulk of the colony’s capital resources toward the labor-intensive sectors of mining and agriculture. In that respect, most policies that the company administration implemented in the early years of colonial rule sought to create a reservoir of cheap labor. For example, the company authorities introduced a “native” taxation apparatus that required Africans to pay different kinds of taxes (e.g., hut tax, dog tax, poll tax) with cash. This requirement was intended to force Africans to look for employment in various sectors of the emerging colonial economy so they could earn the money to pay taxes. Whereas most Africans on the Zimbabwean plateau previously worked only to produce food for their subsistence, they now had to work to earn money. The BSAC-administered taxation was also “arbitrary and irregular, appearing more like the levy of a tribute than the collection of a civil tax, as marauding bands of Native Department levies despoiled villages and districts of their crops and livestock.”¹³ As a technology of governance, taxation not only raised revenue for the colonial administration but also dragged Africans into the wage-based capitalist economy on an unequal footing.

      In addition to cash taxation, the early 1890s witnessed the introduction of identity documents and travel passes in Southern Rhodesia. This process began with the BSAC administration compiling what it called the Registration of Natives Regulations in 1895. Borrowing several aspects of the pass systems that existed in the Transvaal and other parts of South Africa, the 1895 regulations stipulated that every African male who entered a township or a mining area—both of which were dominated by white settlers—must be registered and in possession of a permit (or pass) authorizing him to be in those areas. The regulations also introduced two categories of passes: one for Africans seeking employment in industrial and mining towns and the other for those taking up jobs as domestic servants in white people’s homes anywhere in the colony. Along with these requirements, the administration appointed a “registrar of natives” with the responsibility of issuing passes to Africans as they moved from one part of the colony to another.¹⁴ In most modern states, identification documents serve to distinguish between citizens and noncitizens, whereas in early colonial Zimbabwe, they were mostly used to trace the movement of Africans. As Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar argues in her study of the chaos that emanated from the partition of India in 1947, these permits were not mere documents; they were bureaucratic tools for imposing limits on the colonized people.¹⁵

      The introduction of the 1895 regulations coincided with the beginning of a territory-wide land dispossession and community restructuring process that gained momentum after the Ndebele–Shona revolts of 1896–97. As part of this process, the BSAC administration set aside large tracts of the colony’s prime lands for white settlers to use as farms and established “native reserves” mostly in areas with low rainfall and poor soils. With total disregard of preexisting community settlement patterns and ethnolinguistic boundaries, the colonists then forcibly relocated tens of thousands of Africans into the reserves. Land dispossession and forced relocations led not only to the loss of arable lands but also to overcrowding, overgrazing, and a general sense of insecurity among Africans in the reserves. It also helped to emasculate the local population to ensure their complete subjugation. More important, these policies created a pool of cheap labor for the emerging colonial economy.¹⁶ Without stable and dependable sources of livelihood, many Africans were forced to look for work on the mines, farms, and other industries in Southern Rhodesia.

      It was also common for colonial officials to inflict pain on African people’s bodies to force them to sign up for jobs in different sectors of the economy. For example, while bragging about his use of coercion in dealing with Africans in 1895, the native commissioner for Hartley District wrote, “I am forcing the natives of this district to work sorely against their will.”¹⁷ As Harry Thomson noted in 1898, this meant flogging Africans to make sure they went out to work. In this regard, Thomson wrote, “I was told that if a boy will not work, or tries to run away, the usual thing is to take him to the native commissioner, and have him given twenty-five, and I found that the word ‘twenty five’ said in English to any of the boys was sufficient to make them grin in a sickly way—they quite understood what it meant.”¹⁸

      In an attempt to supplement local supplies of labor, which kept fluctuating for the larger part of the first and second decades of colonial rule, Southern Rhodesian authorities made arrangements to import foreign workers. Like their counterparts in the Transvaal, Natal, and other parts of South Africa, colonial officials intended to import indentured workers from India and China. However, negative stereotypes of Indians, deriving mostly from the European–Indian interactions in other parts of the world, stirred an anti-Indian attitude among white settlers in Southern Rhodesia and led to the discontinuance of the arrangements.¹⁹ Another arrangement meant to facilitate the importation of Arabs, Shamis, and Somali workers from Djibouti to Southern Rhodesia was also implemented but only briefly because it failed to achieve desired results. Ultimately, Southern Rhodesia turned to its neighboring territories, particularly Nyasaland (Malawi), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and Mozambique. However, many early migrant workers from these areas did not stay long in Southern Rhodesia, which they considered a temporary stopover on their way to better-paying jobs in South Africa.²⁰

      Given that cross-Limpopo mobility had existed for centuries prior to 1890, it might appear unfair to blame the British occupation of Zimbabwe for the prevalence of border jumping across the country’s border with South Africa. However, the point I am making in this chapter and throughout the entire book is that the imposition of colonial rule in Zimbabwe changed the political, economic, and ideological context in which cross-Limpopo mobility took place. Although the Venda, Sotho, Ndebele, and other groups of people in Zimbabwe’s border districts continued to visit their relatives across the river, which had become a colonial boundary, they did so under different conditions. Because the Limpopo was no longer just another river, the act of crossing it no longer meant the same thing. In addition, the imposition of new demands on life that came with the introduction of a cash-based economy induced new forms of mobility across the Limpopo. In this respect, people used cross-Limpopo mobility in a bid to escape taxation, poverty, overcrowding, or other conditions of insecurity in the native reserves.²¹

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