Why are zimbabweans migrating

Crush, ed. See also R. King, R. Skeldon and J. My grandmother came to Johannesburg long ago before my mother was born. My mother was born in and she is the last born of nine children. My grandmother worked here for so long and she told us her mother had worked in South Africa too.

My mother never came here though. Only my aunties and uncle would come here. Some came and stayed forever and some just worked for a few years and went home.

My father was a policeman during the time of Smith and the government of South Africa allowed the police to come here so my father came and looked for work here as a policeman. He went up and down. Immediately after finishing school in Zimbabwe I went for an interview to be a teacher. This is an Ndebele, this is a Shona. They gave preference to Shonas even if they did not pass the interview.

I was just disappointed so I came to South Africa instead. At first I was a garden boy and later I became a houseman. Now I am a salesman in a small shop for bags and jewellery.

My sister is working as a domestic worker and my brother-in-law is working for a company in Germiston. You have to eat while you are serving the customers. I earn R a month. From there I just go to my flat and sleep. There is nothing else I do except on Sundays I go to church.

The police here are always a problem. They keep on asking you this and that. I hate to be asked the same thing by the same police every day. Sometimes my aunt has to come and talk to them so I am not arrested. The police are afraid to arrest South Africans because they are told that someone will come to their house and kill the children. I always tell myself one day the truth will come out.

Population migration into and out of present-day Zimbabwe long pre-dates European conquest and the imposition of artificial colonial borders. Not only did people move from one area to another as need arose, ethnic boundaries were fluid enough to allow individuals or groups to move in or out of population clusters and ethnic groupings with relative ease. Movement did not cease after the establishment of colonial boundaries either.

These arbitrary borders divided families, clan groups and ethnic communities between different colonies. Not surprisingly, local communities generally ignored these colonial impositions and went about their normal business with their kith and kin, crossing borders without regard to colonial laws and immigration requirements. They also crossed borders in search of employment, and for other reasons, and continue to do so to this day.

This chapter traces the long history of Zimbabwean migration from precolonial times to Population movement into the area began with the peopling of the Zimbabwe Plateau. In the twentieth century, white immigrants from Europe and South Africa established farms and plantations and mines where they employed black migrants from neighbouring countries such as Malawi and Mozambique.

Migrant workers from some parts of Zimbabwe engaged in circular migration for work in South Africa. They returned at independence, just as whites began to leave in growing numbers. However, in general, Zimbabwe was more of a receiving than a sending country before This was to change in the s as the country was dramatically transformed into a leading migrant sending country.

Zimbabwe was originally the home of hunter-gathering, stone-age people who are believed to have inhabited the region from , years ago onwards. They were eventually displaced by the Bantu, an iron-age people with skills in mining and iron smelting, coming in from the north.

By the year , a cattle-keeping culture, referred to by archaeologists as the Leopard Kopje culture, had developed in south-western Zimbabwe, reaching its climax around with the development of Mapungubwe on the Shashe-Limpopo River confluence.

This cattle-keeping and farming community traded in ivory and gold with traders from as far afield as China. The Mapungubwe culture went into decline after with the rise of the Great Zimbabwe culture, with its capital at the Great Zimbabwe complex, built between and , south-east of the modern Zimbabwean city of Masvingo. Like its Mapungubwe predecessor, the Great Zimbabwe culture was based on cattle-keeping and farming, as well as trade in gold with the Swahili coast.

In its turn, this kingdom went into decline from about onwards, with some groups moving westwards to found the Torwa state whose capital was at Khami near the present-day city of Bulawayo. Others moved north-westwards to establish the Munhumutapa Kingdom, which by had expanded as far as the Indian Ocean and whose economy was based on gold mining and trade.

The Munhumutapa Kingdom eventually went into decline in the face of growing Portuguese influence along the Indian Ocean. They attribute the population dispersal to drought and environmental degradation, trade, and the advance of white settlement.

Another group originating from northern Natal in the s, under the leadership of Soshangane, devastated the area around present-day Maputo and then established the Gaza Empire, part of which encompassed the Shona-speaking groups of eastern Zimbabwe, such as the Manyika and the Ndau.

Lastly came the Ndebele under Mzilikazi. Having initially settled in the northern Transvaal, Mzilikazi and his followers were forced to move northwards in because of the encroachment of Boers from the south.

They eventually settled in southwestern Zimbabwe and established the Ndebele Kingdom incorporating local Rozvi groups in the process. Ndebele hegemony over southwestern Zimbabwe was to be broken only with the arrival of European colonialism at the turn of the century when white immigration changed the political and demographic profile of the country even further.

White hunters, adventurers, explorers and missionaries had long traversed the land between the Limpopo and the Zambezi before British colonization in , but none had settled permanently in the region. This was all to change with the arrival of a group of approximately whites, calling themselves the Pioneer Column.

Early white immigration was fuelled in the run-up to the establishment of the Union of South Africa in There was a large inflow of mostly English-speaking immigrants from South Africa between and from 11, to over 23, , making this the fastest white population growth decade in the entire period of colonial rule Table 2. Increased white immigration was also a result of vigorous efforts by the BSAC government to entice white farmers into the country.

While the country did have some gold deposits, they were nowhere near as abundant as had been envisioned. After a hiatus during World War One, white immigration picked up again. The numbers declined from to because of the Great Depression and the deliberate Rhodesian government policy of discouraging immigration in order to minimize unemployment. Immigration also declined considerably during World War Two due to the difficulties of overseas travel.

In , a record 17, immigrants arrived. Economic depression in the Central African Federation from to , and the rise of militant African nationalism, led to a decline in white immigration. This decline continued in the s when economic sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia after its unilateral declaration of independence UDI in November Escalating military clashes between the regime and nationalist liberation forces made the country unattractive as a destination for European migrants.

However, some immigrants entered the country fleeing black rule in African countries such as Kenya, Zambia and the Congo. The country also received large numbers of immigrants from Mozambique and Angola in following the end of Portuguese colonial rule in those countries. Throughout the twentieth century, foreign-born whites outnumbered those born in the country Table 2.

The dominance of immigration over natural increase was still evident as late as when approximately 59 percent of the white population were foreign-born. Of these, over 55 percent arrived after World War Two Table 2. Source: A. Rogers and C. Table 2. Until , net migration consistently outnumbered natural increase Table 2. One reason for the slow increase of the locally-born white population, at least in the early period, was the paucity of white women in the country.

Until , the gap between the sexes was very wide. Thereafter it narrowed as more vigorous efforts were made to attract female immigrants. The percentage of white women in the country rose from 34 percent to 44 percent between and Increasingly, the white population began to resemble that of older settler societies Table 2.

The first comprehensive census of the African population was not until , although limited sample surveys were taken in , and A prominent feature of the history of white migration was its high turnover rate.

For every ten immigrants who entered the country between and , seven left. An analysis of net migration between and shows that, in this period, Rhodesia received a total of , white immigrants but lost ,, or 67 percent, through emigration Table 2. White emigration increased during the UDI years as the economic and political situation deteriorated and the military conflict between the regime and nationalist liberation forces intensified.

In the first few years of UDI, however, the country actually recorded net migration gains, partly as a result of concerted campaigns by the Rhodesian government to woo immigrants through vigorous propaganda campaigning in Europe, travel subsidies, and the provision of housing, tax relief and customs concessions, among other incentives. The inflow of white immigrants into the country might have been larger had successive Rhodesian governments not been very selective about the type of immigrants that they would accept.

Of the 33, whites in Rhodesia in , 32, were British by birth or naturalization. By , British settlers accounted for 92 percent of the white population. Similarly, the majority of immigrants during the immediate post-War period were British born and nearly half migrated directly from Britain to Rhodesia.

Throughout the period under study, therefore, the immigration of non-British whites was kept to a minimum. Afrikaners remained generally suspect and unwelcome. Despite such attitudes and restrictions, the number of non-British immigrants did increase slightly in the s and during World War Two. By , there was a sizeable Italian population in the country.

But collectively, they remained a small minority compared to the largely British white population in the country. While building the country as a British settlement remained the ideal, Afrikaners, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese and other European ethnic groups were now welcomed.

As for Indians, laws were enacted early in the century to limit their entry. Because of these measures, the Asian population never constituted more than 2 percent of the total population of the country.

For a brief period following the independence of Mozambique and Angola in , there was a sudden surge of immigration when an estimated 25, whites fled the Portuguese territories to Rhodesia.

Despite this measure, emigration continued to swell Table 2. High levels of white emigration continued into the independence period. An estimated 20, people, mostly whites, left the country in , fleeing the incoming black government. Between and , net migration losses exceeded 10, annually despite the fact that there were many black Zimbabweans returning from exile. Labour migrancy in Southern Africa dates back to the s with the development of the sugar plantations of Natal.

Thereafter, it intensified with the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in and gold on the Witwatersrand in The uneven development of capitalism in Southern Africa, with its emerging mining and agricultural economic centres in South Africa in the nineteenth century and Zimbabwe in the twentieth, led to new forms of migration, as workers from neighbouring countries migrated in search of work.

Labour migrancy linked the various countries and colonies in the sub-region into one large labour market, with various countries sending and receiving migrants. In this regional migration network, Zimbabwe played a dual role as both a receiver of migrant labourers from its neighbours and as a supplier of migrant labour to South Africa. Sometimes it was used merely as a conduit by migrant labourers from Malawi and Zambia en route to South Africa who would work in Zimbabwe for a while to earn enough to finance their journey southward and then move on.

Local Africans were reluctant to work on the mines and farms, partly because they were still able to produce agricultural surpluses and meet their increasing tax obligations to the colonial state. The colonial authorities resorted to coerced labour or chibaro to try to obtain the labour they required.

The general reluctance of local Africans to enter the colonial labour market led to growing reliance on foreign migrant workers. They dominated the wage labour market in the early colonial years, not just on the mines and farms, but also in the urban centres. The early colonial labour shortfall was met through the recruitment of African labour from neighbouring territories, with the main recruiting grounds being Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.

Rhodesian mine owners also experimented with recruiting Aandab, Abyssinian, Somali and Chinese migrant labour without much success. Between and , a government agency, the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau RNLB , recruited foreign labour and supplied an average of 13, workers to employers each year.

Meanwhile, the colonial state assisted employers to secure labour by concluding labour agreements with Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi. Malawian labour migration was boosted by the introduction of a free transport service for migrant workers in Source: T. Others were allowed to settle in Zimbabwe after a stipulated period of service. An estimated , Malawians and Zambians took this opportunity to settle in the country. The number of male labour migrants from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique continued to increase Table 2.

By the s, they were well-represented in all sectors of the economy Table 2. With the exception of commercial agriculture, there were few female migrants from these countries. Foreign workers continued to be very significant in that sector until the s Table 2. Of approximately , Africans employed in the economy in , about , were foreign-born. Mozambicans were next. Source: P. Source: J. Crush, V. Williams and S. Source: D. By , the South African gold mines had become the major regional employer of migrant labour.

Crush, A. Jeeves and D. Over time, labour migration to the mines became entrenched in parts of Zimbabwe, particularly Matabeleland and the eastern part of the country.

It became almost a rite of passage for young men to go kuWenela with WNLA to the South African mines to raise cash to meet colonial tax requirements at home and to earn money for lobola bridewealth to enable them to settle down and start their own families.

As recently as the s, among the Ndau of eastern Zimbabwe, those who had spent time in South Africa were known as Magaisa , highly respected as men of substance, especially when they returned after many years of absence with money and valuable goods. Similarly, in southwestern Zimbabwe, going to work in Egoli Johannesburg became a virtual rite of passage for young Ndebele men. The people of Matebeleland had always had close ties with South Africa, given the Nguni origins of the Ndebele people in that country.

Moreover, the similarity of the Ndebele language of Zimbabwe with some South African languages, such as Zulu and South African Ndebele, also meant that migrants could easily blend in once they were on the mines or on the farms.

However, Zimbabwean workers were still a small minority of contract labourers on the South African mines between and Table 2. Source: E.

Leistner and P. Esterhuysen, eds. Zimbabwean labour migrancy to South Africa increased considerably in the s. The South African mines targeted Zimbabwean workers when supplies from the traditional source of Malawi temporarily dried up. This followed a disagreement between the South African and Malawian governments, after a plane accident in Botswana killed over 70 Malawian migrant workers.

However, around 7, Zimbabweans were still working legally in other sectors in South Africa for most of the s Table 2. The wars generated a large number of refugees from the conflict countries of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa to neighbouring states, especially Zambia, Zaire and Tanzania. Angolan refugees tended to flee to Zaire and Zambia, while South African and Zimbabwean refugees went to Zambia and Tanzania and, after the defeat of Portuguese colonialism in , to Mozambique.

In , for example, an estimated 15, Zimbabwean refugees entered Mozambique. By , approximately 1. Of these, , were in the neighbouring countries of Mozambique , , Zambia 45, , and Botswana 23, The total number of returnees and internally-displaced persons in need of immediate assistance was estimated at , The repatriation was carried out in two phases starting in January By 31 December , 72, refugees had been brought back into the country under this programme.

At the same time, an unknown number of refugees made their own way back from Mozambique. Source: L. The s witnessed two waves of out-migration, mostly to South Africa. The first was the exodus of whites fleeing black rule. Continuing its traditional role as both a receiver and a sender of migrants, Zimbabwe also played host to many refugees from Mozambique and South Africa during its first independence decade. By October , when the two warring parties signed a peace agreement, an estimated 4.

This may be an underestimate since there were probably another , unregistered refugees living outside the official camps. Migration has clearly been an important part of the history of Zimbabwe since early times.

As in the past, labour continues to migrate from one country to another in search of better opportunities. South Africa, continues to attract migrants from the rest of the region. There are, however, some notable differences in the population flows now as compared to the past. For instance, the volume of migration is presently much higher than in the past, especially from Zimbabwe to South Africa, as political and economic problems in the home country force many people to migrate to escape hardships at home and to seek better economic conditions.

Thus, what had been a trickle in the past has become a virtual flood, with many risking life and limb crossing the Limpopo River and entering the country without proper documentation in their determination to find greener pastures.

Lastly, unlike the past when migrants were mostly male, women now comprise a sizeable and growing percentage of migrants, with many criss-crossing regional boundaries as cross-border traders.

Thus, there are clearly differences in the composition, numbers and types of migrants between the past and the present. What the history of Zimbabwe teaches, however, is that no movement or trend is permanent. As soon as the forces propelling this unprecedented out-migration are reversed, there is every likelihood that Zimbabwe will attract back many of those who have left, becoming once again a country of both origin and destination.

Thompson, ed. Pieres, ed. Palmer and I. See also, Mlambo, White Immigration , pp. Gelfand, ed. Williams, and S. Chadya and P. A few years back I moved to work at a big hotel in Victoria Falls.

I was the Head Waiter. But when things started to go bad, they cut our hours back to where my rent was higher than my pay. I quit, went back to Gweru and tried to be a cross-border trader. That was really uncertain because so many others were also doing that. Inflation kept going higher and higher and the dollar was worth less everyday.

I was trying to support my wife and three kids and also my mother. So my wife and I decided that she would stay there with the kids and I would go to South Africa to look for work. I crossed at the border OK because I was on a Malawi passport, even though I have lived in Zimbabwe all my life and my family is there. I came in October of , when I was In Johannesburg, I stayed with a friend from school who is like a brother to me so he and his wife welcomed me to their home.

They live very close to East Rand Mall so I went there to look for a job as a waiter. One place hired me but your only pay was tips. It was very hard because as a person from Zimbabwe, the other guys gave each other tables first and they would all have at least two tables to serve before you would get any. There was supposed to be a job in Grahamstown at a pizza take-out place so that is where I went next. I was hired to be a manager, but on a low wage and told that eventually my wage would increase.

I found all kinds of inefficiencies and within months I had saved the owner lots of money on fuel, wages and in ordering supplies. I started at R2, per month and eventually went up to R4, a month although if the shop was ever short of stock, he would deduct it from my wages despite all the other employees who worked there.

I often worked until 3 a. I worked 7 days a week for a year without any holidays or a chance to go and see my family. I also had to pay for any food that I ate at work and I had to pay for my cell phone, which was used for work. I was robbed twice while trying to make a deposit at the bank. The first time, two thieves kidnapped me, stabbed my hand with a screwdriver and drove me way out of town to a remote area. They had a gun and I thought they were going to kill me. Instead, they took the money, removed the sim card from my phone, and dumped me out in the middle of nowhere.

I was so lucky that a white couple picked me up and drove me to the hospital in Grahamstown. The second time I was robbed right outside the bank before going in. The police arrested me and the only other Zimbabwean who worked at the pizza store. They held me for four days and nights in jail and beat me so that I suffered a broken rib. At the pizza store, the South African employees lied to the police and tried to blame myself and my friend. I had no money for rent, my accounts were in arrears and my family back home suffered.

My former boss sent me an SMS saying I should pay him and he would drop the case. I phoned a friend in Canada and she said that was blackmail and not to do it. When we finally went to court I was found not guilty and the case was dismissed after eight months of struggling financially and emotionally.

Finally I was able to get my passport from the police station and to look once again for other employment. Prior to , the country was under white settler control, and the African population was subject to a vast array of institutionalized controls and constraints on their freedom of movement and settlement in urban areas.

The migrants were particularly harsh in their comments about the police who were widely seen as either conniving in the violence or uninterested in protecting migrants.

The perceptions of the migrants that nothing is done may simply be a function of who was interviewed and does not necessarily reflect the actual reality. The report therefore evaluates the response of the South African government to the ongoing crisis of xenophobia and concludes that some actions — such as sending in the army — are taken during episodes of nationwide violence but that ongoing daily and weekly attacks are generally ignored.

There is a strong official line that these attacks are not motivated by xenophobia and. Indeed, that xenophobia does not even exist. This is clearly contradicted by the migrants who view the attacks as motivated by xenophobia.

A second element of the official response is that the migrants are partially to blame for what happens to them as their business success builds resentment amongst South Africans. Government has yet to acknowledge that migrant-owned informal enterprises make a valuable contribution to the economy of the country, including through job creation for South Africans. The primary response to the violence of was the launching of a military-style Operation Fiela which was justified as a crime-fighting initiative but appears to have targeted migrant enterprises.

The final sections of the report examine the responses and programmes of various non-governmental and international organisations to the crisis of xenophobia. During large-scale xenophobic violence there is considerable mobilisation of anti-xenophobia civil society organisations to offer protection and protest.

An immigration official at the Beitbridge border post, this time from the Zimbabwean side, speaking on condition of anonymity, rebuffed reports of a renewed exodus. Up and until the s, Zimbabwe was one of the wealthiest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but over a decade later it became one of the world's worst.

That has sent many Zimbabweans packing, according to human rights activists. Please contact us for subscription options. Related topics Zimbabwe. In the second chapter, Zinyama provides a detailed demographic and behavioural profile of these new and old migrants from the SAMP survey. In addition, he shows that the migrants have become the target of extreme hostility from South Africans, particularly since Levels of intolerance are at an alltime high in South Africa, leading to the charge that South Africa is the most xenophobic population in the world.

Zimbabweans and Mozambicans have been the usual targets of xenophobic sentiment and action on the ground. All Zimbabweans have come to be stereotyped as a social, economic and criminal threat to South Africans. These are clearly stereotypes with little basis in fact or appreciation of the benefits of increased trade and economic interaction between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Apologists for the xenophobic tendencies of South Africans have argued that South Africans are not unique, that similar views and attitudes are found throughout the SADC. Even if true, this does not exonerate South Africans.

It simply means that the task of public and official education is that much greater. The survey showed that, in general, ordinary Zimbabweans are more tolerant and welcoming than South Africans, have a greater appreciation of the benefits of migration to their country and have a much more developed understanding of the necessity for refugee protection.

However, there is certainly no room for complacency. In the South African case, levels of hostility were high regardless of the race, age, education, economic status or gender of the respondent. In Zimbabwe, marked differences emerged around the variable of economic and employment status. A further In other words, Zimbabweans fit the more classical profile in which middle-class, educated and economically-secure people are likely to be more tolerant and accepting of outsiders than the poor and unemployed.

However, there is little evidence that Zimbabweans explicitly blame migrants and immigrants for this state of affairs again in stark contrast to South Africans. Zimbabwean migration patterns are currently in a state of flux. However, it would be incorrect to suggest that the correlation is simple or direct. More skilled Zimbabweans are leaving but not all are able to do so and many choose to stay, hoping for a turnaround.

The unemployed and retrenched are more restless and mobile and South Africa and Botswana are a definite draw card. However, as the South Africans have yet to appreciate, most are circular migrants and would much prefer that Zimbabweans had the same legal mechanisms of access to the South African labour market as do Mozambicans, Batswana, Swazi and Basotho.

It is ironic that apartheid-era labour agreements, still in force, shut out Zimbabweans but welcome the others. Zimbabwe needs to seek a general bilateral labour agreement with South Africa, as well as working within the structures of SADC to encourage greater cross-border mobility in the region as a whole. The other major shift of the last decade, requiring a rational policy response on the part of both governments, is the massive growth of informal cross-border trade.

Zimbabwe sits at the center of regional informal trade networks. They are shut out once again in the new South African Immigration Act. This is a gap which urgently requires attention, not least because it discriminates unfairly against women migrants.