The strategies of border jumping changed significantly in the post-1960s period, in large part due to shifts in South Africa’s migration control policies. Although border jumpers continued to use some of the existing routes and networks, they devised new ways of overcoming an increasingly hardened border. This approach developed particularly after the South African government installed an electrified fence and deployed armed personnel along the borderline. The border jumpers might have easily studied and mastered the routines of the border patrol units, which could not cover the entire stretch of the border at all times, but the electrified fence posed a real danger to people trying to cross the border at places other than the official check points. Through sheer resilience, some border jumpers dug holes under the fence and crawled into South Africa. Others threw blankets, clothes, or other nonconductive materials on the fence and climbed over it, whereas the more cunning ones used wire cutters to create holes in the fence and slip through. As already suggested, it was also common for migrants to utilize the services of informal transport operators and other people who smuggled them across the border, often with the help of corrupt state functionaries. Each individual’s decision to use any of these strategies was informed not just by his or her specific situation but also by his or her own understanding of the benefits and risks associated with border jumping.
In examining these strategies and others used by travelers, this book presents the men and women who “illegally” crossed the Zimbabwe–South Africa border as rational thinkers whose actions were informed by their fears, struggles, and desires.45 Rather than presenting border jumpers simply as lawbreakers, these strategies show that they were smart, savvy, and able to adapt to changing circumstances in Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the border zone. By engaging in activities that were prohibited by legal statutes or other policy frameworks, border jumpers not only expressed their disgruntlement with the border and how it was enforced but also challenged the legitimacy of the states that sought to regulate people’s mobility across the Limpopo River. In the words of Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson, border jumpers threatened “to subvert state institutions by compromising the ability of the institutions to control their self-defined domain.”46 This is not to say that subaltern agency (in the form of border jumpers’ ingenuity) alone gave rise to border jumping in this region. This phenomenon emerged and thrived against the backdrop of competing interests of and contradictory interactions among travelers, state functionaries, and other actors both in and away from the border zone.
Structure of the Book
Although chronology is key to understanding the story I tell in this book, each chapter is focused on a specific regime of migration control that contributed to the historical evolution of border jumping across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border. The first chapter focuses on the two decades between the colonization of the Zimbabwean plateau in 1890 and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910—a fragile period of state formation that witnessed the emergence of a Westphalian type of boundary and the advent of state-centered restrictions of mobility between these two countries. I argue that contestations between Southern Rhodesian authorities, who wanted to restrict migration to the Transvaal, and people from communities astride the Limpopo River, who wanted to continue the patterns of mobility that existed before the 1890s, created the phenomenon of border jumping that is currently prevalent in this region. I also show how state controls of cross-Limpopo mobility created incentives for nonstate actors and corrupt state functionaries to earn money by assisting travelers to cross the border through unofficial channels.
The discussion in chapter 2 explores how South Africa’s ban on migrant workers from Zimbabwe and other areas north of latitude 22° south (announced in 1913 and lifted in 1932) stirred contestations among officials in different departments of the South African state, between state officials and employers’ groups in South Africa, between government officials in South Africa and their counterparts in Southern Rhodesia, and between cross-Limpopo travelers and border enforcement personnel in both countries. I argue that these multisited contestations encouraged and promoted border jumping, which went on to become a defining feature of diplomatic engagements in Southern Africa. Building on this argument, chapter 3 examines how competition for regional labor (from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s) created tensions between Southern Rhodesian authorities, who sought to impose stringent controls of cross-Limpopo mobility, and their counterparts in South Africa, who preferred an open border policy—fueling border jumping between the two countries.
Chapter 4 examines how the intensification of black people’s struggles for independence in South Africa and Zimbabwe shifted the dynamics of mobility between these countries. I argue that the securitization of the border, which began in the 1960s and led to the construction of South Africa’s border fence along the Limpopo River between 1985 and 1986, did not stop border jumping. Instead, it made this phenomenon more dangerous than before. In the fifth chapter, the discussion advances by examining the dynamics of border jumping across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border from the 1990s to 2010—a period when the flow of mobility between these countries significantly increased. I argue that South African authorities’ decision to impose stringent visa conditions on Zimbabwean travelers at a time when the Zimbabwean economy was in distress encouraged contestations, which in turn fueled border jumping as travelers and human smugglers deployed more sophisticated strategies to evade official measures of controlling migration in the region.
In the conclusion, I emphasize the study’s significance in understanding historical and contemporary dynamics of border jumping across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border, arguing that this phenomenon is an understudied legacy of the European partitioning of Africa. The concluding chapter also reiterates the view that border jumping as a product of contestations over borders and regimes of border enforcement—not simply as a result of conditions of insecurity in migrants’ countries of origin—helps explain why this phenomenon is prevalent in many regions of the world despite huge investments in the construction of border fences, walls, and other measures for controlling people’s mobility across international boundaries.
Notes
1. Ruben Andersson, Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014); Reece Jones, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (London: Verso, 2016). See also, Europe or Die, directed by Milene Larsson (New York: Vice News, 2015), https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exqgek/europe-or-die-all-episodes.
2. Given the prevalence of unrecorded movements of people from Zimbabwe to South Africa, Botswana, and other countries in the region, it is hard to know exactly how many people left the country during this period. For further discussion of this, see Alexander Betts, Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera, eds., Zimbabwe’s Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival (Cape Town: SAMP, 2010); Robyn Leslie, Sandy Johnston, Ann Bernstein, and Riaan de Villiers, eds., Migration from Zimbabwe: Numbers, Needs and Policy Options (Johannesburg: Centre for Development and Enterprise, 2008); JoAnn McGregor and Ranka Primorac, eds., Zimbabwe’s New Diaspora: Displacement and the Cultural Politics of Survival (New York: Bergham, 2010).
3. Malayitsha is a noun derived from the verb layitsha, which refers to the act of loading stuff into a big container, cart, or vehicle. In this case, malayitsha refers to informal transporters of people and goods across the border. Maguma-guma derives from guma-guma, which denotes the use of crooked ways to achieve one’s objectives. In this case,