Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa. Francis Musoni

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      In what became the first major state-based attempt to stop Zimbabweans from moving to South Africa or to any other country, the BSAC administration introduced the Natives Employment Ordinance in 1899. As the president of the Legislative Council pointed out during the Second Reading of the ordinance, the objective was to “meet the representations which have been addressed to the Administration as to the necessity of controlling and regulating the employment of natives, especially in regard to those natives induced to leave Rhodesia.”²² Whereas the 1895 regulations focused on the control of African workers’ movements within the colony, this ordinance targeted those who intended to seek employment elsewhere. Given that South African mines had emerged as the major employers of migrant workers from Southern Rhodesia and other territories in the region, there is no doubt that the ordinance was meant to control cross-Limpopo mobility. It is also very likely that the “representations” that the president of the Legislative Council referred to came from white settlers who owned mines and commercial farms where demand for cheap labor rose steeply during the first decade of colonial rule.²³ Over the years, employers’ organizations became major players in the politics of migration control in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

      A key provision of this piece of legislation was that it required every person working as a labor agent in Southern Rhodesia to register and obtain a license and to provide a security deposit and keep the chief native commissioner’s office informed about his operations. While the annual cost of a license to recruit people for work within the colony was set at £1, labor agents who wanted to recruit workers for employment outside Southern Rhodesia were required to pay £50 annually. As for a security deposit, a person applying for a permit to recruit Africans for the local employers had to pay £100, and those intending to engage workers for employment outside the territory paid £250.²⁴ Just by looking at the differences between these figures, one can tell that the officials wanted to encourage the recruiting of labor for local employers while making it hard for labor agents to send workers out of the colony. The ordinance also gave the Native Affairs Department officials, especially the native commissioners, the authority to apprehend labor agents who recruited people for work in South Africa without the proper licenses. Thus, in addition to laying out the procedures and requirements for employment of Africans within the colony, the Natives Employment Ordinance discouraged the recruitment of locals for work outside Southern Rhodesia. In this way, the ordinance marked the beginning of regulatory frameworks that fueled border jumping across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border.

      Yielding to pressure from white settlers who advocated for more stringent controls of Africans’ mobility, Southern Rhodesia’s Legislative Council introduced the Natives Pass Ordinance in 1902. This legislation did not simply modify previous “native regulations” but caused an overhaul of the colony’s native administration system. During the Second Reading of this ordinance in the Legislative Assembly, the attorney general argued that the 1902 pass law was “designed not only to meet the wishes and wants of those interested in the native labour—masters and employers of all kinds, but it was also in the interests of the good governance and proper control of the natives themselves.”²⁵ This statement shows how the interests of business owners began driving Southern Rhodesia’s policies toward the local people just as the colonial state was evolving. This outcome is not surprising, given that this colony was founded and administered by a for-profit company. However, such an approach fueled the tension between the state and the local people, whose lives became more difficult following the introduction of this ordinance.

      The 1902 law required every male African aged fourteen years and older to obtain a registration certificate containing the details of his name, height, and any visible marks as well as the identities of his ethnic group, chief, headman, and district of residence. Each certificate had a unique identity number assigned to the holder. Although it was considered lawful for such people to move around the districts in which they resided without a permit, the ordinance required them to carry their registration certificates and be prepared to produce them at any given time if asked to do so by state officials.²⁶ The Natives Pass Ordinance also required African chiefs and village heads, the majority of whom had been coopted as salaried civil servants, to ensure that “all male natives of the age of fourteen years and upwards living or being within their tribal districts are properly registered.”²⁷ Furthermore, it became mandatory for male Africans to obtain traveling passes (also known as permits of removal) from pass officers in their districts every time they traveled to other areas. Section 8(1) of the Natives Pass Ordinance says, “Any native desiring to remove from the district in which he shall have been registered to any other district shall before removal obtain a travelling pass in the prescribed form which he shall produce at the proper Pass Office in such last-mentioned district, together with his certificate of registration in order that he may be properly registered in such district.”²⁸

      If the purpose of leaving one’s district of habitual residence was to look for employment, the ordinance required that he obtain “a pass to seek work, in the prescribed form which shall be of force for a period not exceeding twenty-one days. Should the Native fail to find work within the period mentioned in his pass he shall proceed to the nearest Pass Office and may obtain an extension for a period not exceeding fourteen days, which shall be noted upon the pass.”²⁹

      It was also a requirement that the pass contain the holder’s identity number, as indicated on his registration certificate. As a result, the issuing of identity documents helped with the mobilization of labor and the collection of taxes while taking away African people’s anonymity and the power and freedom that came with it. The 1895 regulations required the registration and identification of only those Africans entering designated towns and labor areas, whereas under the 1902 law, every male “adult” had to obtain a certificate of registration. In a way that speaks to “the creation of tribalism” thesis, which Terence Ranger and others have debated extensively.³⁰ Identity documents also sought to tie different groups of Africans to specific geographical areas in colonial Zimbabwe.

      The 1902 law also reflected the BSAC administration’s desire to control the mobility of migrant workers brought into Southern Rhodesia from Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, and Mozambique. Although the migrants benefited from transportation and food handouts provided by the Rhodesia Labor Bureau, which brought them into the colony, many such migrants left their jobs and the colony (often without notice) as soon as they found an opportunity to proceed to South Africa.³¹ In an attempt to stop “foreign natives” from leaving the colony willy-nilly, section 3(1) of the 1902 ordinance provided for the issuance of registration certificates as well as traveling passes and passes to seek work to “any native entering the Territory from any country in which no provision exists for the granting of passes.” It also stipulated that “on leaving the territory such native shall deliver up to the Pass Officer, who issues him a travelling pass for that purpose, his certificate of registration.”³² Regarding migrants who entered Southern Rhodesia in possession of identity documents or passes from other countries, the ordinance required such documents to be endorsed, without delay, by the magistrate or other official who would then issue traveling passes or passes to seek work to the concerned individuals. In so doing, Southern Rhodesian officials made it clear that they preferred to shut the colony’s southern border to Africans intending to move to the Transvaal while leaving the northern and eastern borders with Northern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa open to let in migrant workers.

      In further attempts to tighten the control of Africans’ mobility, the 1902 ordinance made it mandatory for employers to keep passes of their African workers for the duration of the service contract. At the expiry of employment contracts, employers had to endorse the pass by signing it before returning it to its holder. If a discharged worker wanted to look for another job, he had to take his signed-off pass to the nearest pass office and obtain a traveling pass and a pass to seek work. Failure to observe any stipulations of the pass law attracted various amounts of fines and prison terms for African workers and employers alike. In this respect, section 26(1) of the ordinance states that “any native who, while under contract of service to one employer, shall knowingly enter the service of another employer, СКАЧАТЬ