45. For similar analyses in other regions of the world, see Spener, Clandestine Crossings; Khosravi, ‘Illegal’ Traveller.
46. Donnan and Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, 88.
1 Colonial Statecraft and the Rise of Border Jumping
IN A STUDY of smuggling across the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, David Newbury argues that the shift from the idea of a frontier to a geopolitical boundary resulted in the illegalization of activities that had been considered perfectly reasonable and normal.1 To emphasize this point, Newbury says that the nature of the social and economic activities in the region did not change, “but a profound shift in the political/ideological context [occurred] . . . so that the same activities of at least 200 years’ duration and undoubtedly longer than that are classified in a new manner by the state system.”2 A similar scenario unfolded along the Zimbabwe–South Africa border following the British conquest of the Zimbabwean plateau in 1890. This development, which took place at the height of the European scramble for Africa, led to the reconfiguration of the Limpopo River as an interstate boundary and the beginning of state-centered controls of people’s movements between Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the Transvaal (South Africa). As the region grappled with new ideas of borders and territoriality, people who crossed the Limpopo without following officially designated channels came to be regarded as illegal or clandestine migrants. This view was a huge departure from the previous scenario where communities astride the Limpopo moved back and forth across the river without fear of breaking any state-centered protocol.
Before the colonization of Zimbabwe, the Limpopo Valley had witnessed the development of sociocultural and economic networks that thrived on cross-Limpopo mobility. Among other factors, the existence of the Venda people on both sides of the river helped make cross-Limpopo connections stronger. For example, people from the Zoutpansberg area on the southern side of the Limpopo used to send messengers to the Marungudze (Malungudze) shrine in Beitbridge District to seek spiritual guidance in times of famines, wars, and other difficulties.3 It was also common (and still is) for the Venda people to marry across the Limpopo. As a result, some men moved permanently onto one side of the river, whereas others established multiple homes (with multiple wives and children) on both sides of the Limpopo. Some parents also used to send their adolescent sons and daughters across the Limpopo to attend initiation schools. Regardless of the side of the river where the initiation rites and classes took place, the initiates sometimes spent more than six weeks in the home area of the elders who presided over their training.4 In addition, people often moved their livestock back and forth across the Limpopo in search of pastures. Sometimes cattle herders had to migrate temporarily and spend several months in camps along the banks of the Limpopo regardless of which side of the river they came from. Whether people moved from one side of the Limpopo River to another as cattle herders, initiates, brides, bridegrooms, or mere visitors, the Venda did not think of themselves as intruders, foreigners, or even migrants because they regarded the region as unified geographically, socially, and politically.5
In ways similar to the Tonga, Nambya and other communities astride the Zambezi River—the focus of JoAnn McGregor’s Crossing the Zambezi—the Venda developed an intimate understanding of the Limpopo Valley and the river’s flowing patterns.6 In addition to acquiring the skills to build makeshift canoes to cross the Limpopo in flood, they had identified low-risk crossing points, which avoided parts of the river with crocodile-infested pools. In that respect, the Venda knew how and where to cross the Limpopo River during those times of the year when it was dangerous to cross (usually December to March). They also understood the behaviors of different kinds of animals that roamed the valley before construction of the Gonarezhou and Kruger national parks on the Zimbabwean and South African sides, respectively, of the border. As David Siyasongwe, a resident of Beitbridge, pointed out, “if they [the Venda] saw elephants from a distance they would throw dust in the air to determine the direction of the wind. Knowing that the elephant’s sense of smell is much stronger than its sense of sight, they would make sure to walk on the side where the wind was blowing.”7 In this way, the Limpopo, which the Venda referred to as Vhembe, was not a boundary per se but “just one of the perennial streams that flowed across the Venda territory on their way to the Indian Ocean.”8 With no state-based controls of mobility, the Limpopo’s flowing patterns determined when and how people moved back and forth across it.
In the same vein, the Afrikaners who occupied what became the Transvaal colony in northern South Africa in the 1850s viewed the Limpopo not as a marker of territorial limits of their state but as a river within a frontier zone. Commenting on this scenario, Stefanus Du Toit—an Afrikaner participant at the 1883–84 London Convention that restored the Transvaal’s autonomy after brief colonization by the British—wrote that although “the Transvaal bound itself to enter into no treaty with the natives to the east and west of the Republic without the sanction of England, the north was, for good reasons, left unmentioned.”9 In Du Toit’s thinking, which reflects that of many of his contemporaries, not using the Limpopo to define the northern boundary of the Transvaal meant that the Afrikaners had 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,