This book also greatly benefited from the comments I received from Tim Scarnecchia, Blair Rutherford, and Martin Murray, who read earlier versions of the entire manuscript, and from Luise White, Loren Landau, Eliakim Sibanda, Tapiwa Mucherera, JoAnn McGregor, Diana Jeater, Munya Munochiveyi, Anna Hüncke, Nedson Pophiwa, Olivia Klimm, Andrea Arrington, Husseina Dinnani, Kara Moskovitz, Alois Mlambo, Lea Kalaora, Zoe Groves, Maxim Bolt, and Wendy Urban-Mead, who read parts of the book as draft chapters or conference papers. The feedback I got from participants at several meetings of the African Studies Association, where I presented drafts of chapters in this book, was very helpful. I am also grateful to the British Zimbabwe Society, the Southern African Historical Society, the North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa, the African Borderlands Research Network, the Southeastern Regional Seminar in African Studies, and the Association of Borderlands Studies for the feedback I received at the conferences they organized. I also owe special thanks to the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria and the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida for opportunities to present chapters of the book and receive helpful feedback. Researchers at the African Center for Migration and Society (formerly the Forced Migration Studies Program) at the University of the Witwatersrand, which I have called my academic home in South Africa since 2006, have also been supportive of my work on this book and other projects.
Without the materials I accessed 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, it would have been impossible to write this book. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the staffs at these very important institutions. Many thanks to Natasha Erlank and Dunbar Moodie, who provided the information and connections that helped me to access the rich archives of the Witwatersrand Native Labor Association and its successor, called the Employment Bureau of Southern Africa, in the Special Collections of the University of Johannesburg’s (Doornfontein Campus) Library. Victor Maronga and Boniface Hlabano, along with their families, opened their homes to me on several occasions when I visited Johannesburg and Pretoria to conduct research for this book or attend conferences, and Irene Staunton and Murray McCartney always made their cottage available to me whenever I was in Harare. I am so grateful for their hospitality. I am also thankful for the research assistance provided by David Siyasongwe, Busani Mhlanga, Anusa Daimon, and Nicholas Nyachega and for the moral and intellectual support I received from numerous friends, especially Gerald Mazarire, Awet Weldemichael, Mhoze Chikowero, Terence Mashingaidze, Clement Masakure, Douglas Mpondi, Enocent Msindo, Joseph Mujere, and Ivan Marowa.
Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the support I got from the offices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Harare, Beitbridge, and Musina. Special thanks go to the Chief of Mission of the IOM Harare office, Marcelo Pisani, for taking me in as an affiliate during the time I conducted field research in the Zimbabwe–South Africa border zone. Katie Kerr and Peter Mudungwe helped with the process of obtaining affiliation, and Nick van der Vyver hosted me at the IOM offices in Beitbridge. In addition to introducing me to local government representatives in the border district, Nick allowed me to join IOM teams on several of their field trips. It was during those trips that I met most of the people I interviewed for this project. I am also thankful for the support I got from the staffs at the IOM office and the Refugee Reception Center in Musina. The bulk of the ethnographic materials I use in this book came from my interviews and informal interactions with migrants and residents of the border towns of Beitbridge and Musina. I extend my special thanks to them. Thanks to Simon Muleya, the district administrator for Beitbridge, for providing introductory letters that I carried as I traveled in the border area. Special thanks to Thupeyo Muleya, Gift (Papi) Mbedzi, Remember Ndou, and the management of the Beitbridge Country Club for the warm welcome that made my stays in Beitbridge town enjoyable.
Funding from Emory University’s Laney Graduate School, the Institute of African Studies, the Race and Difference Initiative, the Institute of Critical International Studies, and the Joseph Mathews Fellowship sponsored the first phase of my research in Zimbabwe and South Africa, which lasted from July 2009 to July 2010. Subsequent trips in 2012 and 2013 benefited from funding provided by the history department, College of Arts and Sciences, and Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Kentucky. I am grateful for the generosity of these institutions. Last, but not least, I would like to salute my father, who died around the time this project was born; my mother and siblings; and my wife, Everjoy, and our children, Nyasha, Anopa, and Taonashe, for their understanding and unconditional support, which eased the pain of writing and rewriting this book.
An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as an article in the African Studies Review (Francis Musoni, “The Ban on ‘Tropical Natives’ and the Promotion of Illegal Migration in Pre-Apartheid South Africa,” African Studies Review 61, no. 3 (2018): 156–177, doi:10.1017/asr.2018.73).
| ANC | African National Congress |
| BL | British Library |
| BSAC | British South Africa Company |
| BSAP | British South Africa Police |
| CID | Criminal Investigation Department |
| DHA | Department of Home Affairs |
| ESAP | Economic Structural Adjustment Program |
| ETD | emergency travel document |
| GNU | Government of National Unity |
| IOM | International Organization for Migration |
| MDC | Movement for Democratic Change |
| MK | Umkhonto we Sizwe |
| MP | member of parliament |
| NASA | National Archives of South Africa |
| NAZ | National Archives of Zimbabwe |
| NRC | Native Recruiting Corporation |
| PAC | Pan African Congress |
| RC | registration certificate |
| RENAMO | Resistência Nacional Moçambicana |
| RLB | Rhodesia Labour Bureau |
| RMS | Railway Motor Services |
| RNLA | Rand Native Labour Association |
| SACP | South African Communist Party |
| SADC | Southern African Development Community |
| SADF | South African Defense Forces |
| SAIMR | South African Institute for Medical Research |
| SAMP | Southern Africa Migration Project |
| SANDF | South African National Defense Forces |
| SAPS | South African Police Services |
| SAR | South African Railways |
| SME | small to medium enterprises |
| TEBA | The Employment Bureau of Southern Africa |
| UDI | Unilateral Declaration of Independence |
| WNLA | Witwatersrand Native Labour Association |
| ZANLA | Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army |
| ZANU | Zimbabwe African National Union |
| ZANU-PF | Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front |
| ZAPU | Zimbabwe African People’s Union |
| ZDP | Zimbabwe Dispensation Program |
| ZIPRA | Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army |
BORDER JUMPING AND MIGRATION
CONTROL IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
WHILE INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION has been a major focus of debates in many parts of the world since the early twentieth century, global attention to cross-border movements that seek to evade official channels of migration