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
The Beginning of State-Centered Restrictions of Cross-Limpopo Mobility
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,