Zimbabwe’s Exodus
Crisis, Migration, Survival

Edited by
Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera

Published by SAMP, Cape Town and IDRC, Ottawa

Southern African Migration Programme - Canada
152 Albert Street
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
Canada

www.queensu.ca/samp/
samp@queensu.ca

Southern African Migration Programme - Southern Africa
6 Spin Street
Church Square
Cape Town

International Development Research Centre
PO Box 8500
Ottawa, ON K1G 3H9
Canada

www.idrc.ca
info@idrc.ca

ISBN 978-1-55250-499-4 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-920409-22-7

© Copyright SAMP

First published 2010

Cover by Joan Baker and Jacana Media
Layout by Joan Baker, waterberrydesigns cc
Production by Idasa Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the publishers.

Bound and printed by Unity Press, Cape Town

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Foreword

Stories about migration are full of stereotypes and over-simplification. “Aliens” invade “our” country, bringing a foreign culture; people uproot their lives and move in response to shifts in relative wages; remittances promote economic development “back home.” Often, there is a grain of truth behind these ideas. Migration does bring about a mingling of cultures; relative wage rates do matter; and remittances have helped finance new capital formation. But the grain of truth is most often enveloped, and over-powered, by myths, exaggerations and selective use of evidence, both inadvertent and – sometimes – deliberate. Both pro- and anti-migration orthodoxies suffer from these faults.

Zimbabwe’s Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival is both an easy and a challenging book to read. It is easy because it is well-organised and well-written, drawing on leading experts and the latest research in the field. It is challenging precisely for the reasons that make it a successful and important book, because it dissects myths, analyses stereotypes, and reveals the complexities and ambiguities of the very difficult questions it addresses. Neither pro- nor anti-migration orthodoxies are spared.

I appreciate this book for three other reasons as well. First, it situates the recent migration out of Zimbabwe in its proper historical context. In most of the western media, the decline of Zimbabwe dates from and is attributed to the land reforms of 2000-2003. This book clearly situates the migration question in a generalised socio-economic decline that was underway for a decade before that. Zimbabwe’s long history as a site of migration, to and from other countries and within the country, is appropriately highlighted, as is the question of borders, both international and, in colonial times, internal borders within the then Rhodesia.

Secondly, the authors deal with issues of social differentiation – gender, social class and ethnicity – head-on. This involves tackling in a forthright manner some ugly questions of sexual violence, racism, poor governance, corruption and discrimination within Zimbabwe, in its neighbouring states and further abroad.

Thirdly, the book looks at migration from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines. Migration is examined at its micro-, macro- and sectoral levels, using large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, media reports and official statistics, quantitative and qualitative methods. The result is a rich and multi-faceted set of studies that is worth spending time with.

Naturally, this book will be of great interest to Zimbabweans at home and abroad, and to all others interested in the political economy of modern Zimbabwe. But this book will also be of great interest to specialists and students in migration and development studies more generally, given the quality and the incisiveness of the contributions that the authors and editors bring to the field.

Canada’s International Development Research Centre has supported several research projects on migration in recent years, including this one. I am delighted to see this fine collection in print.

Lauchlan T. Munro
vice President
International Development Research Centre
Ottawa, Canada

Acknowledgements

We extend our grateful thanks to all the contributors to this book for agreeing to provide chapters, responding quickly and generously to our editorial suggestions and showing great patience while the manuscript was being readied for publication. We would also like to thank Abel Chikanda, Ashley Hill, JoAnn McGregor, Miriam Grant, Kate Lefko-Everett, Aquilina Mawadza, Blair Rutherford and Godfrey Tawodzera for providing us with oral testimonies by Zimbabwean migrants or conducting interviews on our behalf. Our thanks to the following for their assistance with the manuscript at various stages of production: Cassandra Eberhardt, Meg Freer, Ashley Hill, Moira Levy, Bronwen Müller, Jennie Payne and vincent Williams. The cover photograph is from Peter Mackenzie’s Photographic Exhibition for SAMP entitled “Here and There.” It shows a young Zimbabwean migrant leaving the informal settlement of Olievenhoutbosch, Gauteng, with his belongings following xenophobic attacks in the settlement. Edgard Rodriguez, Basil Jones and Paul Okwi of IDRC were very supportive of SAMP and co-publication. We would like to thank the IDRC for funding the SAMP project “Migration, Poverty Reduction and Development in Southern Africa.” We would also like to acknowledge the UK-DFID, CIDA, IOM, PRM and the SSHRC for their support of SAMP.

Jonathan Crush
Daniel Tevera

Acronyms

Chapter One
Exiting Zimbabwe

Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera

When modern states go into terminal decline or fail altogether, the predictable response of ordinary people is to get out, as soon as they can, to wherever they can go.1 Zimbabwe has now joined the list of ‘crisis-driven’ migrations which includes such recent African crises as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone.2 Twenty years ago, despite growing political authoritarianism, few would have predicted this fate for Zimbabwe. Following a bitter and protracted independence war, Zimbabwe made major economic and social gains in the 1980s. After 1990, however, the accelerating social, political and economic unravelling of the country led to a rush for the exits. An economy in free-fall, soaring inflation and unemployment, the collapse of public services, political oppression and deepening poverty proved to be powerful, virtually irresistible, push factors for many Zimbabweans.3 The proximity of Zimbabwe to countries such as Botswana and South Africa, and the demand for Zimbabwean professionals abroad, provided people with somewhere to go.4 The numbers exiting Zimbabwe increased in the 1990s and have risen sharply since 2000.5

Mass out-migration would seem to be a perfectly predictable consequence of Zimbabwe’s economic and social collapse. As one commentator recently observed, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people is the result of “the Zimbabwe government’s political actions and the country’s decline [which] have led to their economic destitution and desperation, and have ultimately forced them to leave the country to survive the political and economic crisis.”6 However, although large numbers have left, the majority remain. Given the ruinous state of the country’s economy, it remains a puzzle as to who, why, and indeed how, anyone could stay. The transformation of Zimbabwe from breadbasket to basket-case has been a protracted process lasting well over two decades.7 Migration (both internal and international) has varied considerably in volume, direction and character over that period. While out-migration is a common response to socioeconomic disintegration, it can also accelerate that process, leading, in turn, to further migration.

Emigration has led to crippling skills losses in the public and private sectors in Zimbabwe over the last two decades. No country could experience this kind of professional brain drain without it seriously affecting the quality of education and healthcare, the productivity of the private sector or the efficiency of the public. This is something of a vicious cycle, for as the rot sets in, workloads increase and employment conditions deteriorate so more skilled people, in turn, decide to leave. Without a compensating inflow of skilled immigrants, the cycle is difficult to break. Immigration to Zimbabwe came to a virtual standstill in the 1990s. Emigration without immigration has clearly facilitated the economic and social collapse of Zimbabwe. Yet emigration also shapes the character and speed of decline and can sometimes, paradoxically, even slow its pace. It does this by providing people who remain behind with the remittances and other resources to survive increasingly intolerable personal circumstances.

The essays in this volume focus on the connections between economic and social decline and migration since 1990 in Zimbabwe. These connections are explored from different angles and use a number of different methodologies ranging from large-scale national surveys to individual life histories. The volume also seeks to give contemporary migration movements historical depth and to place them in their regional and international context. Historically, Zimbabwe has simultaneously been a country of in-migration and out-migration. In the last two decades of decline, it has become a place almost exclusively of out-migration. In terms of theoretical context, the volume seeks to situate the Zimbabwean case within the current high-profile international debate on the relationship between migration and development.8 As scholars of migration from “failing states” have pointed out, this debate is especially relevant in the case of countries, like Zimbabwe, that are undergoing accelerating poverty, economic collapse, de-development and mass out-migration.9

The introduction to this volume is divided into three sections. The first section provides a socio-demographic profile of the Zimbabwean migrant population. Then we examine some of the major themes of the contemporary international migration-development debate and relate them to the situation in Zimbabwe. Finally, the chapter summarises how the individual chapters relate to one another and to the themes of the book as a whole.

ZIMBABWE’S DIASPORA: A PROFILE

Estimates of the number of Zimbabweans who have left the country in recent years vary widely – from the barely plausible to the totally outlandish. Excoriating the South African government for its foreign policy stance on Zimbabwe, veteran journalist Allister Sparks recently argued that there were three million Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa and that without a tougher line against Robert Mugabe, South Africa “could well see another two million pour in here.”10 Whatever the truth of his numerical claims (and most knowledgeable commentators would think them highly exaggerated), this kind of alarmism omits a crucial dimension of the migration equation.11 What Sparks overlooks is that every Zimbabwean working in South Africa supports an average of five people at home. As long as each migrant is able to support dependants in Zimbabwe, they will tend to stay where they are. In other words, but for migration there would be a great deal more migration than there has been. This is only one of the many paradoxes of Zimbabwe’s recent migration history.

The South African media claims that there are three million Zimbabweans in South Africa. The earliest use of this figure dates back to 2003; the most recent, early 2009. What are we to make of the inference that the number of Zimbabweans in the country has not increased in six years? After all, this is the same media that for the last six years has plied its readership with stories of Zimbabweans “pouring” and “flooding” across the Limpopo. Does this mean that there are now well over three million or that the 2003 figure was incorrect? And if it was correct, then what is the actual number now? To resolve this contradiction, it is helpful to know where the three million figure first came from.

The original source seems to have been former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who reportedly told Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon in October 2003 that “he has three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, Chissano (Mozambique) has 400,000 while Botswana hosts up to 200,000 of them.”12 The Department of Home Affairs, cited in the same article, contradicted Mbeki by stating that there was no way of knowing how many Zimbabweans were in the country because they enter illegally: “These people do not use the designated ports of entry but enter the country clandestinely by jumping the borders, swimming through the river etc.”13 Here, in one article, are the two elements that have characterized all reporting on Zimbabwean migration to South Africa. Migration flows are in the “millions” and migrants from Zimbabwe (“these people”) are “illegal.” The South African media and officialdom have a history of making up numbers about migration to the country.14 These numbers, often highly exaggerated for alarmist effect, acquire a life of their own once they enter the public realm. Tracking down their source usually reveals that they have no sound statistical basis.

The Zimbabwean government has not kept any reliable statistics of departures. South Africa, the main receiving country, can tell how many Zimbabweans enter the country legally every month and the stated purpose of entry but publishes no corresponding record of departures. In addition, there are no reliable estimates at all of how many migrants enter South Africa clandestinely. Further complicating matters is the migration behaviour of many Zimbabwean migrants within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region who return home extremely frequently for periods of time.

The majority of migrants from Zimbabwe head either for South Africa or the United Kingdom. The volume of legal cross-border traffic between Zimbabwe and South Africa has gone through several phases since Zimbabwean independence (Figure 1.1). For most of the 1980s, about 200,000 people crossed from Zimbabwe into South Africa each year. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of apartheid and growing economic hardship in Zimbabwe, the numbers increased dramatically, peaking at 750,000 in 1994. Thereafter, the numbers actually fell again, reflecting the tightening of restrictions on Zimbabwean movement by the post-apartheid South African government. These restrictions gradually eased after the passage of the 2002 Immigration Act. In 2000, around 500,000 people crossed legally from Zimbabwe into South Africa.15 By 2008, this figure had more than doubled to 1.25 million. In the case of the United Kingdom, official immigration statistics show a recent decline in the entry of Zimbabweans from 56,600 in 2002 to 39,250 in 2007. Most of the drop is in the “visitors” category, a result of increased restrictions on entry to the UK.

In 2001, according to the South African Census and the United Nations (UN) “migrant stock” database, a total of 131,887 Zimbabwean-born people were in South Africa and 49,890 were in the United Kingdom. The South African figure included 66,033 black and 64,261 white Zimbabweans. The number of black Zimbabweans in South Africa at any one time has undoubtedly increased since 2001 but by how much is uncertain. The World Bank has estimated that in 2005 there were 510,084 Zimbabweans in South Africa (although the basis for this estimation is unclear). In this volume, Makina uses a different methodology to arrive at a figure of 1,022,965 in 2007. Whatever the precise numbers, it is clear that there has been a substantial increase in migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa since 2000 and a drop in migration to the United Kingdom.

Figure 1.1: Recorded Cross-Border Movement from Zimbabwe to South Africa, 1983-2008 Source: South African Department of Trade and Industry

Within SADC, 55 percent of the Zimbabwean migrant stock in 2001 was in South Africa, followed by Mozambique (17 percent), Zambia (16 percent) and Malawi (16 percent) (Table 1.1). A Southern African Migration Progamme (SAMP) sample survey (conducted in 2005) found that 58 percent of Zimbabwean migrants were within the SADC region. The two data sources suggest some interesting changes in migration patterns. For example, the proportion of Zimbabweans outside SADC seems to have increased from 33 percent to 41 percent. Since migration to the UK became more difficult, this trend – if verifiable – might suggest a greater global dispersal of Zimbabwean migrants. Within SADC, the proportion of SADC migrants in South Africa remained virtually constant (at around 55 percent) but there appears to have been a very significant increase in movement to Botswana (from 1.5 percent to 28 percent) and corresponding fall in migration to Mozambique (17 percent to 9 percent), Zambia (16 percent to 4 percent) and Malawi (7 percent to 1.5 percent).

Table 1.1: Location of Zimbabwean Migrants Within SADC

Source: UN, SAMP

The UN Migrant Stock database suggests that the Zimbabwean-born diaspora was already becoming global in its distribution in 2001. Nearly 20 percent of the global migrant stock was located in Western Europe, 5 percent in North America, 4 percent in Australasia and 3 percent in the rest of Africa (Table 1.2). Of the 222 jurisdictions (countries and other territories) reported in the database, 192 (or 86 percent) have at least one Zimbabwean-born person. However, certain countries have clearly been major destinations. They include the United Kingdom (14 percent of the global stock), the United States (3.5 percent), Australia (3.3 percent), Germany (2.8 percent) and Canada (1.2 percent).

Table 1.2: Zimbabwean Migrant Stock by Region

Source: UN

At the time of the 2001 South African Census, 52 percent of recorded Zimbabweans were in the province of Gauteng, with smaller numbers in KwaZulu-Natal (13 percent), Limpopo (12 percent) and the Western Cape (9 percent) (Table 1.3). Most of the post-2000 doubling of movement from Zimbabwe to South Africa came from migrants who declared their purpose of entry as “holiday,” an all-purpose category that conceals a multitude of motives for entry and provides no insights at all into what people actually do in South Africa (Table 1.4). Very few, we can be sure, were “on holiday.” They were joining or visiting relatives, getting medical help unavailable at home, buying and selling goods and, of course, making money to send or take home. They are legally in the country but they are certainly not on holiday. The number of legitimate entrants on “business” remained virtually stable over the period. The numbers of legal entrants for work and study did increase but remained a small proportion of the total. The numbers with legal work permits increased from 3,500 in 2001 to 21,000 in 2008, suggesting that it has become easier to legally employ Zimbabweans in South Africa since the 2002 Immigration Act was passed. However, a greater number are almost certainly working without permits.

Table 1.3: Location of Zimbabweans in South Africa, 2001

Source: Statistics South Africa

Table 1.4: Stated Purpose of Entry from Zimbabwe to South Africa, 2002-8

* Includes in transit and border passes

Source: Statistics South Africa

In the United Kingdom, a growing proportion of entrants were returnees coming back after a visit home (rising from around 20 percent of entrants in 2002 to over 50 percent in 2007) (Table 1.5). In all other categories – ordinary visitors, business visitors, students, work permit holders, dependants of permit holders, reunified spouses or fiancés and refugees – the numbers have consistently declined since 2000. This seems counterintuitive since the pressures for migration from Zimbabwe to the UK have only increased. Rather, it reflects tighter British border and visa controls by a government trying to keep Zimbabweans out, and able, much more effectively than South Africa, to actually do so. The tightening of restrictions on migration to the UK has, of course, had the perverse effect of increasing the migration pressure on neighbouring South Africa and Botswana.

Table 1.5: Zimbabwean Entrants to United Kingdom, 2002-7

Source: UK Control of Immigration Statistics, 2002-7

Traditionally, in Southern Africa, outbound migration streams were dominated by young, single, unskilled males. The contemporary migration flow from Zimbabwe is extremely “mixed” compared with pre-1990 out-migration and with that from other countries in the Southern African region. There are almost as many women migrants as men; there are migrants of all ages from young children to the old and infirm; those fleeing hunger and poverty join those fleeing persecution and harassment; they are from all rungs of the occupational and socioeconomic ladder; they are highly-read and illiterate, professionals and paupers, doctors and ditch-diggers.

The most recent national profile of the Zimbabwean migrant worker population was obtained in a representative household survey undertaken by SAMP in 2005. The survey confirmed the increase in migration from Zimbabwe after 2000 (Table 1.6). Nearly three-quarters of the sample (72 percent) had worked outside the country for 5 years or less and only 10 percent had been working as migrants for over 10 years. There was no major difference between men and women, suggesting that for the vast majority of both sexes out-migration is a recent experience.

Table 1.6: Length of Migratory Experience

N = 805

Source: SAMP

The 2001 South African Census found that 57 percent of Zimbabweans in South Africa were male and 43 percent female. In 2005, SAMP found a very similar ratio still pertained (56 percent and 44 percent). Many more migrants were married than unmarried (58 percent versus 31 percent) with another 10 percent widowed, separated or divorced (Table 1.7). Around a third of migrants were sons and daughters in the household, 28 percent were heads of households and another 13 percent were spouses or partners of household heads. All of this suggests a broadening and deepening of participation in migration from Zimbabwe.

Table 1.7: Demographic Profile of Migrants

Source: SAMP Migration Database

The majority of migrants were relatively young (72 percent are under the age of 40) and well-educated. Less than 1 percent had no schooling and over 50 percent had a post-secondary diploma, undergraduate degree or post-graduate degree. Migrants were employed in a wide variety of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled jobs outside Zimbabwe. In other words, this is a generalized out-movement of people, not confined to one or two professions or sectors. Twenty percent of migrants were in the informal sector as traders, vendors, hawkers or producers. Also significant were skilled professionals (15 percent), health workers (12 percent), services (9 percent), teachers (7 percent), manual workers (6 percent) and office workers (5 percent) (Table 1.8).

Table 1.8: Occupational Profile of Zimbabweans

Source: SAMP Migration Database

A comparison of total with out-of-country employment by sector shows that 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s health workers were migrants. Over 40 percent of professional workers, service workers, managerial office workers and mineworkers were also migrants. Between 30 and 40 percent of office workers and agricultural workers were outside the country. For teachers, the proportion was 28 percent and for domestic workers 25 percent. Only in the security and military sector and in farming were there significantly more people employed inside the country than out of it.

Table 1.9: Frequency of Return

Source: SAMP Migration Database

The survey also confirmed that most migrants maintain close connections with Zimbabwe. Nearly half visit their families at least once every three months. However, almost 20 percent of the migrants (mostly living overseas) are only able to return home once a year (Table 1.9). Absences from home are highly variable: 18 percent are away for less than a month at a time, 19 percent for between one and six months and 30 percent for between six months and a year. Twenty percent are away for a year or longer. As several of the essays in this collection show, these patterns facilitate the flow of remittances as well as influence the channels preferred by migrants for sending money home.

MIGRATION AND ZIMBABWEAN DE-DEVELOPMENT

The developmental role of migrant remittances is central to the current international focus on the relationship between migration, poverty and development.16 International bodies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) remain incorrigibly optimistic about the development potential of migrant remittances.17 Researchers have generally been more sceptical, highlighting the degree to which remittances are used for basic needs rather than for savings and investment in productive activity.18 Various reasons have been advanced for why remittance flows often fail to improve the development prospects of a country of origin: “First, there is the difficulty in many countries of converting remittances into sustainable productive capacity; second, remittance income is rarely used for productive purposes but for direct consumption. Very little is directed to income-earning, job-creating investment. Finally, remittances increase inequality, encourage import consumption and create dependency.”19 In short, it is “a distant hope that remittances could help families, communities and countries remain permanently out of poverty.”20 If this is true of developing countries in general, it is a statement of the obvious in fragile and failing states. There remittances can play a crucial role in taking the edge off people’s suffering and in providing them a basic livelihood in the midst of economic and social chaos, but little else.21

If remittances were once a potential lever for sustainable livelihoods in Zimbabwe, that threshold has long ago been crossed. The vast majority of Zimbabwean households with a migrant member in the region or abroad regularly receive remittances.22 Indeed, remittances from the Zimbabwean diaspora have reached such volumes that they kept the economy grinding along for a number of years. Cognizant of this fact, the Mugabe government tried various ruses to ensure that the state got its hands on a greater proportion of the remittance inflow.23 However, as in many parts of the developing world, remitters tend to avoid formal channels and use informal means in the main. Without the constant infusion of remittances from abroad, the economic and social collapse of Zimbabwe would have been much faster and even more catastrophic.

Levels of poverty and chronic shortages of the basic necessities of life are such that remittance getting is a survival, not a development, strategy in contemporary Zimbabwe.24 The proportion of migrant remittances spent on food is amongst the highest in the world. The Zimbabwean population, as has often been mentioned, is unable to feed itself, necessitating large-scale food imports.25 Very few households can afford to invest funds in activities that would, for example, enable them to increase their own food production. What is sometimes forgotten is that without remittances of food and cash to purchase food, the hunger and malnutrition situation in Zimbabwe would be even more dire than it has become.

Globally, skilled emigration from almost all developing countries increased substantially in the 1990s. For many, the share of skilled nationals residing in developed countries became “staggeringly high.”26 Much skilled migration is South-North in character; an estimated 90 percent of skilled migrants from developing countries live in the member states of the OECD.27 The estimated percentage of emigrants with tertiary education is largest for Africa at 75 percent, followed by Latin America at 48 percent, and Asia and the Pacific at 20 percent.28 Others estimate that one in ten tertiary-educated adults born in the developing world resided in America, Australia or Western Europe in 2001; this figure rises to between 30 and 50 percent for individuals trained in science and technology.29

Critics argue that the “brain drain” has a major negative impact on the development prospects of a country: “While high skilled migration in sectors such as IT seems to have played an integral role in helping spur economic development in a few source countries, high-skilled migration in other sectors – health and medicine, in particular – [has] done considerable damage to source countries.”30 Most effects discussed in the general literature are negative. They include output and productivity declines; larger skill premiums that increase inequality; fiscal losses through lost tax revenue; diminished scale economies; loss of role models and spillover knowledge from most-skilled to lesser-skilled individuals; loss of entrepreneurs; and changed comparative advantage. Human capital is lost with implications for gross domestic product (GDP), entrepreneurialism, training the next generation, flows of foreign direct investment and a country’s capacity to build critical domestic institutions.31

The established wisdom on the “brain drain” has been challenged by adherents of the self-styled “new economics of the brain drain” approach.32 This postulates that “brain drain” is a temporary stage and that, indeed, it may even be the “harbinger of powerful gains.”33 One argument is that the prospect of migration produces over-education, a “brain strain” and “educated unemployment.” Another is that the feedback effects of migration (including remittances, investment and knowledge transfer) as well as return migration should be considered. The “new economics” approach uses selective case studies to make its point, proving only that generalizations across the South are inadvisable. Tanner, however, asserts that benefits accrue more to large, relatively better-off developing countries that have deliberate labour-export policies, and to elites in these countries:

The measures presented as mitigating or even eliminating the effects of brain drain do not achieve an ethically sustainable objective – to directly or indirectly relieve general poverty and inefficient use of human resources, and to promote more equitable long-term development throughout the country of origin’s society as a whole.34

The Southern African region has been in the grip of a serious “brain drain” for two decades.35 Not only have skills losses been very serious but there is little prospect of the drain being reduced as long as employment opportunities persist in destination countries. With the notable exception of Botswana, and more recently South Africa, none have pro-active immigration policies to counteract the ensuing skills crisis. Of all the countries in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe has been worst-affected by the “brain drain.”36 In the 1980s, the black Zimbabwean population benefitted from a post-independence educational policy that emphasized universal access and advanced skills acquisition. As the 1990s progressed, and global competition for developing country skills intensified, advanced qualifications became a passport out of the country. There was growing “educated unemployment” but many of those who left had jobs in Zimbabwe. The extent of the “brain drain” from the private and public sector has been of such magnitude and impact that it has had severely negative, even ruinous, impacts.37 The “emigration potential” of those who remain is extremely high and it is certain that without significant return migration there is little hope of sustained economic recovery in Zimbabwe.38 The phrase “feminization of migration” has been coined to describe increases in the volume of international female migration and its growing importance relative to male migration.39 While there has certainly been a global increase in female migration in recent decades, the UN has pointed out that in proportional terms, the global female stock of migrants was already 47 percent in 1960 and increased to 49 percent by 2000.40 In recent writing “feminization” has therefore come to refer more to changing forms of female migration, including a greater degree of independent migration and migration for employment purposes.41 The evidence suggests that in Africa as a whole female migration has increased in numbers and relative importance in recent decades (from 41 percent in 1960 to 47 percent in 2000). In Southern Africa, however, male migration still predominates.42 A 2005 SAMP survey of migrant-sending households in five SADC countries, found that 84.5 percent of migrants were male and only 15.5 percent were female. Migration from Zimbabwe was highly “feminized” in comparison with the other three countries (with 44 percent of migrants being female) (Table 1.10).

Table 1.10: Sex of International Migrants, 2005

Source: SAMP Migration Database

Diminishing alternatives have forced Zimbabwean women from across the full range of age, skills and education levels to engage in various forms of cross-border economic activity, from informal trade to long-term formal employment. Without reliable, regular data on levels of female migration at earlier dates, it is difficult to accurately assess the extent to which female migration has increased in either absolute or relative terms. An earlier SAMP survey in 1997 found that the ratio of male to female migration from Zimbabwe was very similar to that in 2005.43 There is very little gender difference in the lengths of time that people have been migrating. In other words, in Zimbabwe (unlike other countries) the majority of male and female migrants are recent migrants. This suggests that feminization of migration relates more to growing numbers and new roles rather than any sudden post-2000 surge in the importance of female versus male migration.

Another important aspect of the global migration and development debate concerns the role of diasporas in the development of countries of origin.44 To some extent, the focus on diasporas is a conscious antidote to the critics of “the brain drain” for, if nothing else, the idea that migrants do not leave for good clearly softens the claims of those who feel that skills loss represents an unmitigated disaster. In the global discourse on migration and development, diasporas are rapidly replacing remittances as the “new development mantra.” One classification helpfully identifies three forms of diaspora engagement: first, development in the diaspora (the economic and social advancement of immigrants in the host country); secondly, development through the diaspora (the use by diasporic communities of their global connections to facilitate economic and social development); and thirdly, development by the diaspora (how diasporic flows and connections to home countries facilitate development in those localities).45 Diaspora actors include individuals, hometown associations, ethnic associations, alumni associations, religious associations, professional associations, development NGOs, investment/business groups, political groups, national development groups, welfare/refugee groups and virtual organizations.

There has been a growing recognition in destination countries that diaspora individuals, groups and organizations are engaged independently in activities that have developmental aims and outcomes and that these should be encouraged and supported. Diasporas are themselves increasingly well-organised and lobbying for assistance in these activities. By tapping the diaspora, developing countries aim to encourage remittance flows, investment and technical and scientific knowledge transfer. The oft-cited cases of India and China are particularly important in demonstrating how diasporas can contribute to investment and economic growth in countries of origin.46 The evidence for Africa is less compelling although the African Union has been particularly active in encouraging African states to engage with their emigrant diasporas.47 In some cases, states have met a very positive response from abroad.48 Diaspora organizations and networks with an express development brief have begun to spring up in destination countries and are actively seeking ways in which to bring their knowledge, capital and connections to bear on the challenges that face many African countries.

The Zimbabwean diaspora is widely-dispersed, very young and extremely insecure.49 This is not a group who have emigrated permanently to another country over an extended period of time, put down roots and achieved the kind of social and economic success that enables systematic engagement of the kind usually associated with diasporas in development. Zimbabwean diaspora organizations are increasingly common in countries such as South Africa and the United Kingdom. However, these tend to be of two kinds: politically-focused organizations dedicated to raising consciousness about Zimbabwe or protesting treatment in their countries of destination, and humanitarian groupings and networks dedicated to helping new migrants survive, settle and integrate.50 While the Zimbabwean diaspora remains intensely interested in their home country and follows events there with great assiduity, many in the diaspora are profoundly hostile to the political regime in power. Supporting struggling families at home is one thing. Engagement in any activity that might be deemed supportive of – or co-optable by – Mugabe is not.

Zimbabwean migrants within Southern Africa, but also those living outside the region, return home relatively frequently. When away they also maintain very close contact with relatives and kin still in the country. The intensity of contact and exchange is such that the terms “transnational migration” and “transnationalism” have been increasingly applied to Zimbabwean migration.51 Transnational migration has been defined as “a pattern of migration in which persons, although they move across international borders, settle and establish ongoing social relations in a new state, maintain ongoing social connections with the polity from which they originated.”52 Transnational migrants literally live out their lives across international borders through “the high intensity of exchanges, the new modes of transacting, and the multiplication of activities that require cross-border travel and contacts on a sustainable basis.”53 The concept of transnationalism seeks to capture the reality of “simultaneous embeddedness in more than one society.”54 However, the term “transnationalism” and the reality it seeks to capture are extremely subversive of conventional policy notions and models of migration.55 At best, policymakers have admitted the term “circulation” to the debate.56 But while circulation is a feature of transnational migration, transnationalism is not simply about continuous or regular physical movement between two places.

Transnationalism first emerged as a way of describing and understanding migrant cultural identities and practices.57 Assimilation of immigrants into some fictive “national culture” is a primary goal of many social and cultural integration and social cohesion programmes in the West. However, for transnational migrants “success does not depend so much on abandoning their culture and language to embrace another society as on preserving their original cultural endowment, while adapting instrumentally to a second.”58 Underlying the cultural emphasis of transnationalism is an argument that hybrid identities and cultures cannot be explained without examining forms of migration and mobility that produce them.59

A collection of essays published in 2002 by SAMP assessed the utility of the concept of transnationalism to contemporary African immigration to South Africa.60 The editors concluded that much temporary migration to South Africa was of a transnational character and involved a “dense web” of personal and economic links with the country of origin. None of the essays in that particular collection addressed the situation of Zimbabwean migrants but the thesis is now gaining increasing currency. There is certainly no question that migrants who have left Zimbabwe maintain the kinds of “high intensity exchanges” that characterize transnationalism. In fact, the crisis-driven nature of migration, and the dire situation of many people in the country, probably intensifies connectivity with home. But to what extent are Zimbabweans who have migrated embedded in the society and culture of their destination countries? The recency of much migration may suggest that it is really too soon to tell. But part of the equation is the reception they receive on arrival. Are destination countries and communities inclusive or exclusionary? The evidence suggests that Zimbabwean migrants as a whole are denigrated, devalued and marginalized (especially in South Africa and the United Kingdom).61 In the context of such social, economic and cultural exclusion, it is hard to see how Zimbabwean transnational migrant behaviour will translate into “simultaneous embeddedness” in two societies.

The UN has taken a strong stance on migrant rights through the controversial International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and through efforts to have the Convention ratified in more states. None of the states to which Zimbabweans prefer to migrate has ratified the Convention. Their rights are seriously circumscribed in many states, including South Africa and the United Kingdom. The global media has ensured that no one can be unaware of the trials and tribulations of ordinary Zimbabweans under the Mugabe regime. Yet this has not translated into a great deal of sympathy for those Zimbabweans who have left the country. The world, it seems, would prefer that Zimbabweans stay home and suffer.

Perhaps the most outrageous example of hostility occurred in South Africa in May 2008, when scores of Zimbabweans, along with migrants from other African countries, were hounded out of their homes and communities by rampaging mobs.62 This was not an aberration, as hostility towards Zimbabwean migrants has been pervasive in all sections of society in countries such as South Africa and Botswana for many years.63 In South Africa, Zimbabweans elicit the most consistently negative responses of migrants from any country in Africa (with the exception of Nigeria). South Africa’s visa regime with Zimbabwe has been so punitive financially that it almost inevitably pushed people into clandestine migration channels. Zimbabweans worldwide have found it extremely difficult to access refugee protection systems. In many countries where they either live beyond the margins of legality or even within them, labour market discrimination finds them struggling to make ends meet.64 When migrants are shut out of the labour market in destination countries (or forced to be downwardly mobile into jobs that hardly make best use of their skills and experience) then the ability of households in Zimbabwe to survive is reduced and the migration of more family members becomes an almost inevitable consequence, especially if they are reduced to destitution.

MIGRATION THEMES

The first two chapters in this volume provide important context for the contributions that follow. The initial chapter by historian Alois Mlambo surveys the history of migration to and from Zimbabwe before 1990. The current debate about migration and development is notable for its superficial approach to the history of this relationship and blindness to longstanding arguments about the meaning of development.65 Policy-related discussions about contemporary migration in Southern Africa are similarly blinkered regarding the region’s long history of cross-border migration.66 This is surprising since the historiography of migration in Southern Africa constitutes a particularly voluminous and rich body of scholarship. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the history of cross-border migration in Southern Africa was one of the major pre-occupations of progressive researchers in the 1970s and 1980s.67 The disconnect between this body of work and contemporary writing on migration is striking. This is not simply a matter of acknowledging that migration has a history but also of understanding the relevance of this history in the present. The relationship between migration and development, for example, is not a new debate in Southern Africa. In one way or another, it has been a constant preoccupation of colonial and postcolonial states.

Mlambo shows that, for most of its history, Zimbabwe was primarily a destination for migrants. Prior to the nineteenth century, the Zimbabwe Plateau was peopled by migrants from the north. In the early eighteenth century, there was a wave of migrants from the south fleeing the political and economic upheavals of Zulu expansionism. In the twentieth century, following colonial conquest and extensive land expropriation, white settlers entered the country in considerable numbers. Their numbers peaked at 270,000 in 1970 but would have been even larger, says Mlambo, but for a restrictive immigration selection policy that welcomed whites from the UK and discouraged those from elsewhere.

The contemporary migration and development debate has recently discovered circular migration as if it were a new phenomenon. However, it has been the dominant form of migration in Southern Africa for many decades. Unable to secure enough labour for their farms, plantations and mines, white settlers imported unskilled black migrants from neighbouring Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. In a region well-known for the temporary nature of unskilled migration, these migrants often stayed in Zimbabwe and eventually cut their links with home. Zimbabwe experienced other types of in-migration as well. During Southern Africa’s Thirty Year War of liberation from colonial white rule, for example, Zimbabwe became a destination for white settlers from other newly-independent African countries. Later it was a haven for political refugees from South Africa and Mozambique.

Set against this long history of in-migration, Zimbabwe’s recent and rapid transformation into a country of out-migration is particularly stark and dramatic. However, as Mlambo shows, people have always found reasons to leave Zimbabwe. During the period of colonial and settler rule, almost as many settlers left as came. Between 1921 and 1964, for example, the country received a total of 236,330 white immigrants but lost 159,215 (around two-thirds) through emigration. Between 1960 and 1979, more whites left than arrived (202,000 versus 180,000). At independence, whites who feared the loss of racial power and privilege relocated to apartheid South Africa or left the region altogether. Their numbers dropped by two-thirds in the first decade of independence and were down to less than 50,000 when the farm seizures began at the turn of the century.

Some black Zimbabweans worked on settler farms and mines (often migrating within the country to do so) but throughout the twentieth century many crossed into South Africa to work, where, despite the humiliations of apartheid, wages were generally higher. As Mlambo points out, there are parts of southern Zimbabwe where migration to South Africa by young men was something of a “rite of passage.” In the 1970s, thousands of Zimbabwean workers were recruited to fill the mine labour shortages in South Africa caused by the recall in 1974 of 120,000 Malawian migrant workers. Political reasons for leaving Zimbabwe also pre-date the 1990s. In the 1970s, for example, many black Zimbabweans opposed to the Smith regime went into exile but returned again after independence. While Zimbabwe has now experienced almost two decades of unrelenting emigration, history suggests that the country’s more natural state is as a country of both origin and destination.

Apart from historical amnesia, another major omission in the migration and development debate is any systematic consideration of internal migration and its relationship with international migration. Indeed, some commentators have pointed out how internal and international migration are often viewed as separate spheres or “disconnected circuits.”68 Rather, their causes and origins, the processes involved and their impact and outcomes are so similar that they ought to be considered together. In a volume devoted almost exclusively to international migration from Zimbabwe, it is therefore important to understand what was happening to internal migration during this period and to identify any parallels and connections with out-migration from the country. In her chapter, Deborah Potts provides an overview and analysis of internal migration trends from 1990 to the present.

Potts points out that in relation to the usual economic forces driving internal migration in Africa, Zimbabwe has experienced only two decades of “normality” – the 1980s and 1990s. During the period of white settler control, many Zimbabweans were forcibly displaced from their lands to make way for white settlement. Then they were “subject to a vast array of institutionalized controls and constraints on their freedom of movement and settlement in urban areas.” One effect of such constrained urbanization was to reduce the size of the indigenous urban population below the levels that would have occurred in the absence of such restrictions. In the 1970s, as the independence war escalated, these restrictions broke down and migration to urban areas increased significantly. Potts sums up the pre-independence experience as follows: “The experience of coerced migration away from areas of economic opportunity (as well as ancestral rights) was sadly familiar to many African households, as was the prevention of migration into areas of economic and social opportunity.”

The 1980s are earmarked by Potts as a decade of normality in the sense that postcolonial internal migration in Zimbabwe resembled that of most other African states after independence. Freed of controls on their mobility, rural dwellers headed for new economic opportunity in the towns. Urbanization outpaced the delivery of employment opportunities and an informal sector took root. Most migrants felt insecure about a long-term future in the urban areas and retained close connections with their rural homes. Despite the intense economic competition and lack of a social safety net, Potts still designates this as a “halcyon period” in the eyes of many black Zimbabweans. While the departure of disaffected whites accelerated, that of blacks came to a virtual halt. In 1981, Mugabe recalled all Zimbabwean mineworkers in South Africa and banned any further recruiting. South Africa in the 1980s was also in the violent death throes of apartheid and was not an appealing prospect for migrants. In the first post-independence decade, the new opportunities afforded by unrestrained internal migration “substituted” for international migration, thus reducing its importance to ordinary households.

In the 1990s, as Potts’ careful analysis of the available data confirms, there was a dramatic deceleration in urban growth rates in Zimbabwe, especially in the larger towns and cities. Two smaller towns that did continue to experience rapid growth were Mutare and Beit Bridge. Both are border towns whose growth was a function of increasing cross-border movement and informal trade with Mozambique and South Africa respectively. By 2002, virtually all of Zimbabwe’s provinces were experiencing net out-migration. None had net in-migration from internal sources, and the population of every province was growing at a rate less than the natural increase due to emigration. Potts, like other commentators, attributes decelerating urbanization and growing emigration to the devastating economic impact of World Bank-led Structural Adjustment.

The data is not yet available to show what has happened to internal migration at the national scale since 2002. However, Potts argues that two major policy interventions (expropriation of commercial farms and urban “cleansing”) have had a dramatic impact on livelihoods and precipitated household responses that involve internal and international migration, or some combination thereof. The expropriation of white-owned farms forced a significant net out-migration of farmworkers, many of whom were the descendents of migrants from other countries. After 2005, the government’s Operation Murambatsvina targetted informal housing and employment in the towns, again destroying the livelihoods of thousands. This led to massive internal movement within the cities and “significant short-term out-migration from the towns by people who could find no other urban livelihood or accommodation.” Both of these interventions swelled the numbers of households without a livelihood and added to the pool of desperate people forced to try their luck outside the country’s borders.

Those sceptical of the developmental value of migration often point to the crippling impact of skills migration from developing to developed countries. The next two chapters in the volume, by Daniel Tevera and Jonathan Crush and by Abel Chikanda, focus on different aspects of the “brain drain” from Zimbabwe which began in the 1990s and has gathered pace ever since. Tevera and Crush lay out two contrasting positions on brain drain causality. One, what we might call the “discourse of poaching,” argues that the main imperative for the brain drain comes from the demand of developed countries for highly specialised professionals. A contrary line of thinking – the “discourse of flight” – blames the developing world for its own misfortune. In other words, there would be no brain drain if conditions at home were more conducive for skilled people to stay. Emigration is people voting with their feet, “a flight from spectacular misgovernment, from appalling working conditions and pay levels so low that they are below subsistence.”69 While Zimbabwe would appear to be an ideal exemplar of the “discourse of flight,” skilled Zimbabweans would never have left in such numbers if they had not also been considered valuable assets in the developed world’s competitive global quest for skills.

A common approach to the brain drain is the compilation of large macro-scale data sets of migrant flows from which to make inferences about causality and impacts. This approach is favoured by neoliberal researchers anxious to conclude that the “brain drain” is not, in fact, as damaging as the proponents of the “discourse of poaching” maintain.70 These conclusions have predictably enjoyed rapid take-up amongst developed country governments. To understand the actual migration behaviour of skilled people and the impact of migration on those who remain, such analyses obviously need to be supplemented with interview-based studies of the attitudes, perceptions and actions of actual and potential migrants. The problem here is that many studies rely on such small samples that it is hard to know how representative the opinions gleaned actually are. SAMP’s alternative approach has been to try and understand decisions about migration through the decision-makers themselves but to do so in a way that is statistically representative and policy-relevant.

Tevera and Crush’s chapter on “Discontent and Departure” analyses the results of two surveys undertaken by SAMP in Zimbabwe – one of skilled and professional Zimbabweans working in the country and the other of final-year students in universities and technical colleges. The latter study was undertaken on a regional scale at the prompting of the then Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in South Africa, Charles Nquala, who maintained that departing professionals were essentially “traitors” uncommitted to the development of the region and that the next generation of skilled people would be much more “loyal.” Unfortunately, the research showed that the region’s potential skills base, unencumbered by job seniority and family obligations, would be even more footloose than their predecessors. The surveys discussed by Tevera and Crush are not strictly comparable since the two sample populations differ and were taken some years apart. For example, levels of discontent were notably higher amongst the student body but we cannot conclude that the students were necessarily more dissatisfied than working professionals at the time. In all likelihood, the dissatisfaction levels of those working in Zimbabwe increased considerably in the years following the survey. If that is indeed the case, then the findings (from related though not identical samples) become instead a commentary on how much worse conditions became between 2001 and 2005.

The two surveys revealed extreme dissatisfaction amongst the skilled residents (actual and in training) with a wide variety of economic and social conditions in the country. On virtually every indicator, a majority said that they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Moreover, most also felt that the situation would get worse or much worse in the ensuing five years. Comparing conditions in Zimbabwe with those in their most likely destination of emigration, their home country scored worse on every social and economic measure. These findings are extremely sobering for they are significantly more negative than those for the other countries surveyed in SADC, including South Africa (which also has a major brain drain to contend with). Given the widespread dissatisfaction with current conditions and the deep pessimism about future general and personal prospects, it is unsurprising that the “poachers” of Zimbabwean skills have found such rich pickings. Tevera and Crush also examine the relationship between negative attitudes and emigration intentions. Some 57 percent of the skilled professionals and 71 percent of the students had given emigration a great deal of consideration. Sixty seven percent of the professionals said it was likely or very likely they would emigrate within five years. Seventy percent of the students said they would leave within two.

The magnitude and impact of the medical brain drain from Zimbabwe has garnered much attention in the literature. The debate is an uncomfortable one. Hardly anyone blames Zimbabwe’s doctors and nurses for wanting to leave completely intolerable working conditions in the public health sector. Most would do the same in their position. Yet, at the same time, the healthcare situation for the mass of the population becomes more dire with each one who leaves their post. As Chikanda points out, the brain drain of nurses from Zimbabwe’s public health system began in the late 1990s after other means of redress for their grievances had been tried, and failed. They found a ready market for their skills overseas, especially in the UK, and began to leave in increasing numbers. By 2003, Zimbabwe had become the fourth largest “supplier” of nurses to the UK (after the Philippines, India and South Africa). The number of Zimbabwean health professionals registered in the UK increased from 76 in 1995 to 2,825 in 2003. Of these, over 80 percent were nurses. Nurses came formally through private recruiters and under their own steam.

In 1997, only 56 percent of nursing staff requirements in the Zimbabwean public health system were filled. At that time, the primary reason was movement out of the public into the private system (a career move often accompanied by internal migration). The number of nurses employed in the public sector fell by 19 percent between 1995 and 1999, while the public sector share of nurses fell from 58 to 45 percent in even less time (1996-99). Internal migration (from public to private, and from rural hospitals to towns, where most private practices are located) was often a prelude to international migration. Chikanda argues that many nurses engaged in “step-wise migration,” moving internally into the private sector in order to accumulate the funds (and contacts) to make the move overseas. The migration attitudes of in-country nursing professionals revealed in the survey showed enormous dissatisfaction with working conditions. His survey of nurses found that as many as two-thirds were considering a move to the private sector and that 71 percent were considering leaving the country. The most likely destination was the UK (30 percent), while 24 percent preferred destinations within Africa (mostly South Africa followed by Botswana). The extent of dissatisfaction in the public health sector was massive, a finding replicated in SAMP surveys.

Brain drains are often said to cause general “skill shortages” and “crises.” One remedy, which has so far escaped most Southern African countries, is to make in-migration of skilled migrants a lot easier. In Zimbabwe, this has never really been an option. Working conditions were so poor and continued to deteriorate. Even the most active global recruiting campaign would have had little success. In the medical sector there is no such thing as a general impact of migration. The results are felt immediately by patients and by those workers who have not yet left. When nurses leave the public health system for the private sector or for other countries, it is not only the patients who suffer but the nurses who remain. Chikanda shows how this has produced a vicious circle in Zimbabwe. Nurses leave the country. Those who remain work longer hours, carry heavier patient loads and, particularly in rural areas, are forced into multiple roles for which they have no formal training. Conditions become so taxing and morale so low that they too leave. None of the government’s attempts to stop the exodus have had much effect.

Despite the increasingly global spread of the Zimbabwean diaspora, migrants congregate in certain countries and in certain places within those countries. The next three chapters in this volume, by Alice Bloch, JoAnn McGregor and Dominic Pasura, examine different aspects of the Zimbabwean diaspora’s recent experience in the United Kingdom. Zimbabwean migrants there tend to be middle-class, educated professionals. The historical linkages between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom have made this an obvious channel for skilled migrants leaving the country. The result, as Bloch points out, is that the Zimbabwean population of the UK is considerably less diverse socially and economically than that in South Africa. Two-thirds of Bloch’s respondents left Zimbabwe after 2000. Over 80 percent had jobs but almost half said they had skills and experience which were not being used in their jobs in the UK. Many were forced into the lower levels of the UK labour market. The rise in the numbers of Zimbabweans doing care work indicates that skilled migrants are being “trapped” in a lower-skilled sector “notable for its exploitative labour market practices.”

As Bloch shows, Zimbabweans in the UK are “active economic, social and political transnational actors.” Nearly everyone has close family members in Zimbabwe with whom they maintain frequent contact by telephone, email and text messaging. Eighty percent remit money to Zimbabwe and 19 percent elsewhere, indicating an active global diaspora network. Forty percent remit at least once a month with the amount remitted strongly correlated with income. Family livelihood needs are the main reason for remitting, though 12 percent remitted for the main purpose of buying land or property or investing in business. Zimbabweans in the UK have strong social ties, and migrant networks provide advice about moving, accommodation and help in obtaining visas.

Interest in return migration is strong, with 72 percent definitely wanting to return home. Only six percent definitely did not want to return to Zimbabwe in the future. Having a spouse or partner or children in Zimbabwe was a key factor influencing the desire to return. The longer people had been in the UK, and the more secure their immigration status, the lower the desire to return to Zimbabwe. The minority who definitely did not want to return to Zimbabwe emphasized the political and economic situation and the uncertain future. Bloch also explores whether there is any interest in participating in development activities in Zimbabwe. Only six percent said they were definitely not interested.

As Bloch points out, the UK “care industry” has become the single major employer of Zimbabwean migrants during the last decade. In her survey, nearly 20 percent of migrants were working as carers or care assistants. Drawing on her interviews with those working in the sector, McGregor examines the role and experience of an exploited and extremely dissatisfied group of Zimbabwean migrants. In Zimbabwe, migrants in the sector are disparagingly referred to as “bum technicians” or as “working for the BBC” (British Bottom Cleaners). Most migrants have little experience in care when they arrive in the UK and are forced into the sector only because the jobs are available and they have few alternatives: “Most Zimbabweans working as carers are stressed and frustrated because they have experienced deskilling and a loss of status, and feel trapped in care work, with little prospect of using their qualifications in the UK.”

The “care gap” between demand and supply in Britain has been created by an aging population, geographical mobility (which has split up families) and the fact that British women have been less able or willing to perform “traditional” caring roles. The privatisation and outcontracting of local authority residential and home care services has worsened conditions of employment in parts of the labour market, making care jobs increasingly unattractive to native workers. As McGregor notes: “These changes have been important in spreading temporary work and creating unstable and insecure employment conditions at the bottom end of the job market, contributing to the shortages of carers and the growing importance of migrants.” The care gap is increasingly filled by insecure (often irregular) international migrants, although “their service has often been “invisible,” and their contribution is little appreciated.”

Most Zimbabwean carers had little or no experience in care work prior to arriving in the UK, partly because the majority have skills or training or experience in other professions and partly because there is no care industry as such in Zimbabwe (where care is the responsibility of the family). Zimbabwean carers prefer working for clients who are more independent rather than in nursing and dementia homes. Many work for agencies supplying temporary staff to residential homes. Rates of pay “vary enormously” and carers are typically responsible for their own insurance and receive no benefits. McGregor’s respondents described “killing themselves with overwork,” pushing themselves to the limit to raise enough money to cover rent and other living expenses in the UK as well as meeting their obligations to support networks of dependants in the UK and in Zimbabwe. Most were unhappy with their social life in Britain, as anti-social hours allowed them little time with family and friends. At work, friction with the permanent staff is exacerbated by the fact that the temporary staff are African or other migrants, compared to a predominantly white permanent staff. Racist attitudes and verbal abuse from clients is also not uncommon. In addition to the racism from clients and permanent staff, the male carers complained of gender discrimination at work. At the same time, many men felt that their masculinity was challenged by jobs that were beneath them.

The different responses to care work by male and female migrants, in a sector in which neither would work voluntarily, shows that the Zimbabwean diaspora experience is profoundly gendered. This theme is taken up in the chapter by Dominic Pasura who shows how gender roles, norms and expectations in Zimbabwe have been challenged and reconfigured once migrants arrive in the UK. In the private spaces of the household, Pasura argues, gender roles and expectations brought from Zimbabwe have come under pressure, leading to intense domestic conflict and the break-up and dissolution of many marriages. The primary reason is that in the UK women have become the primary income earners in many households. Men resent the loss of “status” and their self-image as breadwinners almost as much as they dislike having to undertake household chores they would certainly never have considered doing back home. Most of Pasura’s male respondents referred to the shift in the balance of power in diaspora households when women do paid work: “Women’s access to an independent income, which in most cases is more than that of the husband, threatens men’s hegemonic masculinity which centres on being the main provider and decision-maker in the family. Most of the women claimed to have control over how they used their salaries, unlike in Zimbabwe.”

Quite apart from their new role as primary breadwinners and the financial independence this has brought, the diasporic context has led women to question basic assumptions about traditional gender roles and relations and to carve out new gendered identities. They are able to do this more successfully in Britain than in Zimbabwe, where extended families and kinship ties are central to the production and reproduction of gendered ideologies. Marriage in Zimbabwe is primarily a contract between two families. In the diaspora context, divorced from its social and cultural context, the contract often does not hold up. Other forms of relationship are taking its place. One, discussed by Pasura, is the “move-in household,” a form of common-law arrangement where there appears to be a greater degree of autonomy and equality between the two partners in the relationship. The dissolution of conventional marriage partnerships, the invention of new forms and the reconfigured gender relationships that accompany both, do not go uncontested, particularly in the public spaces of churches and public houses. Churches are attended more by women than men, yet the church leaders are generally male and propagate an ideology of male authority and female subservience more in keeping with the pre-migration situation in Zimbabwe. Pubs and gochi-gochi (a Shona word for barbecue, where friends get together, roast meat and drink beer) are also male domains where men reassert their crumbling masculinity. Men, not surprisingly, see the regendering of domestic roles as a temporary phase which will come to an end with their eventual return to Zimbabwe.

In contrast to the skilled and highly educated profile of the Zimbabwean migrant cohort in the United Kingdom, that in South Africa is far more diverse, drawn from virtually all social and economic strata of Zimbabwean society. Historically, both Johannesburg and the farms of northern South Africa are established destinations for Zimbabwean migrants. However, as migration from Zimbabwe has become more generalized, so the profile of migrants in both sites has diversified and become more complex. Based on recent sample survey research, Daniel Makina and Blair Rutherford construct a picture of the migrant population in both centres. There are certainly differences between the two groups of migrants in Johannesburg and on the farms but these are not as significant as one might think, a direct result of the desperate situation of many in Zimbabwe and their willingness to accept employment wherever they can find it.

Johannesburg is the main destination for migrants from Zimbabwe and also has the most diverse Zimbabwean population. Harrowing scenes of desperate Zimbabweans camped in and around the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg have come to symbolize the sorry plight of the most vulnerable migrants. But these groups, though increasingly common, are far from typical of the Zimbabwean population of Johannesburg. In 2007, Makina undertook a survey of over 4,000 Zimbabwean migrants in inner-city Johannesburg which showed how diverse the migrant population is, even within three high-density inner-city suburbs. The most striking finding was how quickly the influx of Zimbabweans into the city gathered pace after 2000. Only 8 percent of the migrants had arrived in the city before 1999. Between 2001 and 2006, the average annual growth rate for new arrivals was 34 percent.

Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg hail from all parts of Zimbabwe. However, the majority (70 percent) are from the southern provinces. Half of the migrants in Johannesburg came from Zimbabwe’s two largest cities. In other words, there is significant urban-urban migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa. While a third of the migrants who arrived in Johannesburg in the 1990s were female, the overall proportion of women climbed to 41 percent by 2007. Labour migration to South Africa was once the preserve of the single, unmarried young adults of the Zimbabwean household. This group constituted only 36 percent of Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg. As Makina concludes, over half of the migrants are married or cohabiting which “is testimony to the extent to which patterns of migration to South Africa have changed over the last decade. In many Zimbabwean households, anyone who can work is now a candidate for migration whatever their age or marital status.” Johannesburg migrants are relatively well-educated with over 50 percent holding diplomas and university degrees. They work in a wide variety of jobs and have very low rates of unemployment. Yet there is considerable deskilling with many people being over-qualified for the jobs they do. Nor are they well paid, with only 20 percent earning more than R4,000 a month. Despite this, 90 percent remit regularly to Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean farmworkers in northern South Africa earn a pittance by comparison with most migrants in Johannesburg. The legal minimum wage on the farms was R785 a month in 2005. The farmworkers earned an average R571 a month with 35 percent earning less than R400 a month. Nevertheless, these migrants too, were regular remitters of money and goods to Zimbabwe. In Johannesburg, Zimbabweans work in a multitude of occupations. In the farming zone, there is only one occupation, though a variety of farm tasks. Like migrants in Johannesburg, many working on the farms have prior employment experience in Zimbabwe. Two-thirds of the farmworkers had been employed at home, though only one in ten had prior farm experience. They were employed in a wide variety of occupations, including office work, retail, domestic work, and teaching.

Rutherford compares his results with those of an earlier SAMP survey in the same area to examine how the crisis in Zimbabwe has reshaped the character of migration to the farms of South Africa. One major change is where migrants come from in Zimbabwe. Most farmworkers (who have been crossing the border to work on the farms in small numbers since the mid-twentieth century) used to come from communities just across the border, primarily as seasonal workers. While the majority are still from the south of Zimbabwe, there are now farmworkers in the border zone from many other parts of the country, including Harare. Other changes identified by Rutherford include a reduction in the numbers of young migrants and a dramatic increase in those over the age of 30, a marked increase in married migrants of both sexes and a more educated workforce (a common complaint of Zimbabwean workers now is that they are too educated and skilled for farm work). In 1998, the majority of farmworkers were temporary (often seasonal) workers but this pattern seems to be giving way to a more extensive “permanent” workforce. With labour in abundance and no chance of employment at home, workers are tending to stay on the same farm and build patronage relations with farmers.

In 1998, the proportion of migrant farmworkers who had entered South Africa without documentation was over 90 percent. This made them very vulnerable to arrest and deportation when they were off the farm, or when the police raided the farms (often just before payday with the connivance of farmers). More recently, the legal status of farm-workers has, somewhat inadvertently, improved. For the first decade of ANC rule, the South African government pursued a relentless rights-disregarding campaign of arrest and deportation of migrants from neighbouring states, under powers inherited from the apartheid government. Those draconian powers were meant to be softened somewhat by the Immigration Act of 2002 but deportations and rights abuses by agents of the state continued in defiance of the law and the Constitution. Between 1994 and 2008, over 2 million people were detained and forcibly removed from South Africa in a policy widely regarded as a complete and extremely expensive failure. The numbers would have been even higher but for the well-known propensity of the police to accept bribes in exchange for not arresting migrants or tearing up their documentation. The disruption to lives and livelihoods has been immense, an aspect of the migration and development “debate” which has received scant attention globally.

Zimbabweans have increasingly born the brunt of deportations. In 2005, Zimbabwean deportations exceeded those of Mozambicans for the first time and have since risen to over 150,000 per annum. Denied access to the South African refugee system or documentation to work in South Africa, Zimbabweans became easy prey for a dispirited police force anxious to boost its “crime-fighting” statistics. The result has been the dangerous and corrupting “revolving door” of expulsion, re-entry, evasion, arrest and re-deportation. The policy shift should spell relief for migrant farmworkers who have been preyed on mercilessly by the police in Limpopo Province for many years. However, at the same time, the Immigration Act also regularized a set of very messy, local arrangements (including farmers issuing their own “work permits”) that prevailed in the area for the first decade after apartheid. Farmers have been applying for, and been granted, corporate work permits under the Act to hire a specified number of foreign workers. Unfortunately, legal status has not made much difference to the working and living conditions of the average Zimbabwean migrant farmworker.

SAMP has consistently tried to understand migration in terms both of its general macro-level characteristics and trends and as experienced through the eyes of migrants themselves. This volume therefore discusses the results of large-scale, statistically representative national household surveys and provides examples of how migration is experienced, talked about and interpreted by individual migrants. One of the major shifts in migration over the last two decades is growing female cross-border migration. In the case of Zimbabwe, this process has been accelerated by the economic collapse of the country. Initially, in the 1990s, the majority of female Zimbabwean migrants worked in informal cross-border trade. In the last decade, this has changed dramatically, as unemployed women have looked to use their formal sector skills and experience in South Africa. The chapter in this volume by Kate Lefko-Everett examines this shift from the perspective of the women themselves.

Lefko-Everett provides a mechanism for the “voices” of migrant women to be heard, through extensive verbatim quotation from in-depth individual interviews and focus groups. The women are extremely direct and frank about the factors encouraging migration from Zimbabwe. They are in South Africa out of necessity, not because they find it a pleasant place to be. SAMP has shown how pervasive and virulent xenophobic attitudes are in contemporary South Africa.71 All foreigners from Africa are disliked, and those from Zimbabwe even more than most. While the xenophobic violence of May 2008 was directed at foreign migrants in general, many Zimbabweans were caught up in the firestorm – at least five of those who were killed were Zimbabwean.72 Xenophobia was not a new experience for migrant women in South Africa, however, as the women’s “voices” reproduced here clearly show.

Crossing into South Africa, as Lefko-Everett’s respondents show, is an extremely hazardous undertaking. There is a clear preference for legal border crossing, not least because it is much safer. At the same time, many women are forced into irregular channels by costs and the restrictive visa regime between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Once in those channels they face almost certain physical hardship, exploitation and, in many cases, sexual assault. The interaction between border-crossing and sexual violence in South Africa is a shameful by-product of draconian, but ultimately pointless and ineffective border controls in Southern Africa. Do borders serve any function other than the sexual and material gratification of those, including male agents of the state, who prey on disempowered migrant women?

The question of the “purpose” of borders within Southern Africa is also raised by Nelson Pophiwa’s chapter on clandestine informal trading across the Mozambican and Zimbabwe border. In the eyes of the state, borders are there to clearly demarcate the territorial limits of the nation-state and its differentiation from its neighbours. Zimbabwe, however, has six neighbours and thousands of kilometres of unguarded and unpatrolled borders. The challenge to the state comes when the borders are ineffective physical barriers, when people have reasons for crossing them and when the state cannot prevent them from doing so by force or deterrent.

As Pophiwa points out, large-scale informal trading under the noses of the authorities took off in the 1990s along the border with Mozambique and exploded with the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe. The state engages in sporadic high-profile efforts to crack down on “smuggling” (defined as such for its supposed illegality) without a great deal of success. The trade is simply too important to households that have few other means of economic survival. The state blames syndicates and gangs when, in truth, most “smugglers” are ordinary men, women and children. This border is considerably less dangerous for border-crossers than others (such as the South Africa-Zimbabwe boundary). This is because, in the study area at least, the border cuts communities of similar culture and language in two. Local cross-border movement to visit friends and relatives has been going on for many years. Everyone knows about the paths across the border and can guide those who come from outside the district, adding to their income. In other words, it is the very existence of the border that makes “smuggling” an economically attractive proposition. And it is the fact that people know the border so well, through long residence in the border zone, that renders it ineffectual as a means of controlling “smuggling.” The best the state can hope for is to drive the trade through the formal border post where officials can collect duties from some and demand bribes from the rest.

The next three chapters in the volume examine the central question of how households have managed to survive in a country that is in total economic disarray. As argued earlier, remittances from those who do leave are the key to unlocking why more people do not flee collapsing states and how households keep going in intolerable circumstances. Because so much of the remittance flow to Zimbabwe is informal in nature, there are no reliable estimates of the total sums involved. The chapter by Daniel Tevera, Abel Chikanda and Jonathan Crush presents the results of the first national survey of remittance-receiving households in Zimbabwe, conducted in 2005 by SAMP. In the year prior to the survey, 75 percent of migrant-sending households had received remittances. Although the remittance package (in rand terms) was not large (an average of R3,700 per annum), the regularity of remitting behaviour is very striking, with 62 percent of households receiving cash remittances at least once a month. Almost two-thirds had received remittances in the form of goods in the year prior to the survey, including foodstuffs (for example, maize-meal, sugar, salt, and cooking oil) as well as consumer goods (such as bicycles, radios, sofas, agricultural inputs and building materials.) Informal channels are definitely the preferred method of remitting with 70 percent either bringing the money in person or sending it with a relative, friend or co-worker. This is enabled by an extremely regular pattern of home visits, confirming that the vast majority of migrants see themselves as “temporary exiles” engaged in circular migration.

The survey found that various factors influence the amounts remitted by individual migrants. For instance, heads of households remit more on average than their children. Men remit slightly more than women – an indication of greater labour market access and higher earning potential in destination countries. Those in the 40-59 age group remit more than migrants in any other age category, probably because they have the greatest number of dependants. Married migrants remit more than those who are single for similar reasons. The geographical destination of migrants also affects the volume of remittance flows. Migrants overseas remit more on average than those within Southern Africa. This is consistent with another finding – that skilled migrants tend to remit more than those who are unskilled or semi-skilled. However, the gap is not massive, suggesting that the latter probably remit a much greater proportion of what they do earn.

The bulk of remittances are spent on basic livelihood needs. Food purchase is particularly important but remittances are also vital in providing for clothing, transportation, school fees, housing and medical treatment. Remittances are the main source of household income for the surveyed households but the situation is precarious as the vast majority of households depend on just one or two migrants. Forty-two percent of households in the survey said they spend 40 percent or more of their income on food. Twelve percent spend over 70 percent of their income on food. Very little of the remittance package is available for savings or investment in income-generating activity. Without remittance flows, the situation of many Zimbabwean households would be even more dire. Remittances reduce vulnerability to hunger, ill-health and poverty in both rural and urban households. Households with migrants go without basic necessities less often. Remittances also allow families to keep children in school and to put roofs over the heads of household members.

The authors point to a double irony. Without the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, migration would not have reached the volume that it has. In turn, migration (through remittances) has staved off the worst aspects of that crisis for many households, and even kept the national economy afloat: “However, the depth of the crisis and the struggle for survival mean that remittances are rarely used in a systematic or sustained manner for what might broadly be called “developmental” purposes. That is not why migrants remit and those are not the uses to which remittances are put.”

The other two chapters dealing specifically with remittances add considerable nuance to the national picture sketched by Tevera, Chikanda and Crush. In their chapter, Sarah Bracking and Lloyd Sachikonye discuss the results of two surveys of urban households in Zimbabwe, conducted a year apart in the same cities (2005 and 2006). In 2006, 50 percent of households in Harare and Bulawayo were receiving remittances from outside the country. The proportion of households receiving cash remittances at least once a month was over 70 percent in both years. In a single year, there was an increase in the number of households reporting that the receipt of goods was a regular event (from 38 percent to 52 percent), a reflection of the increasingly empty store shelves in both cities. Another significant shift in a single year was a noticeable increase in personal conveyance as the main channel for remitting. Use of all other channels (including entrusting remittances to friends or co-workers) declined between 2005 and 2006. A decline in the use of formal sector banks for remitting corresponded to increased reliance on informal mechanisms of currency exchange. In 2006, over 50 percent of remittance-receiving households used money changers (up from 40 percent in 2005.) As the authors point out, this signifies the ever-greater and unrealistic gap between official and parallel rates during the survey period and suggests a consolidation of the parallel market.

Bracking and Sachikonye also reflect on the struggle between state and citizen over control of the remittance package. Migrant remittances clearly play an important role in household poverty reduction. However, “not only are Zimbabwean dollar receipts subject to constant devaluation, remittance receivers have experienced expulsion and government extortion.” Although households resist the pressure from the government to surrender remittance receipts into the formal system, the market value of remittances does not stay constant at the parallel rate. The Zimbabwean ruling elite view remittances as somehow belonging to them, and punitive taxation regimes and spurious taxes are often devised to capture some of the income sent by migrants. The government’s “Home Link” scheme failed because “the indirect tax built into the scheme was punitive in relation to the value of the money.” However, the lucrative rents and profits to be found in money changing and money supply in transactional exchange between the informal and formal economy benefits the “cash barons” at the heart of government. “Spoils politics” undermines the pecuniary value of remittances, by reproducing chronic scarcity in goods markets, and by failing the citizens in terms of the welfare obligations of government to the poor.

The chapter on remittances by France Maphosa explores the relationship between remittances and irregularity in the context of migration to South Africa from a rural district in southern Zimbabwe. Undocumented migrants in South Africa face a double bind. Their irregular employment status makes it difficult to access the formal labour market without the connivance of South African employers seeking cheap, exploitable labour. This means that even those who do obtain employment are underpaid and have less to remit home. Their irregular legal status makes them vulnerable to arrest and deportation with consequent loss of employment and earnings. To avoid deportation, they are forced to pay bribes to the police. They keep their jobs (until the next arrest) but have less to remit. Nevertheless, in Maphosa’s study, nearly 80 percent of rural households surveyed still received regular remittances. As in the towns, remittances are used primarily for household livelihood needs. There is some investment in agriculture (stock purchase and buying seeds and fertilizer) but no significant investment in other income-generating activity. While virtually all remittances go through informal channels, undocumented migrants take much greater personal risks if they go home as often as they would like. As a result, these migrants are connected with their home communities by the activities of omalayisha (transport operators) who ferry goods and cash from migrants to their rural homes.

Maphosa shows how irregular migrants seek to minimize the odds of being arrested and deported by “blending” as far as possible into local communities and populations. Most of these migrants have learned one or two South African languages as the South African police often use cultural signifiers and lack of language proficiency as markers of “foreignness.” The local symbols and products acquired by migrants extend to dress, music, dances, style of walking, mannerisms and food. The term injiva describes a distinct migrant way of life, a combination of characteristics such as language, dressing, preferences for music (usually the kwaito genre), type of dance, style of walking, mannerisms, food preferences and even temperament. As Maphosa argues, the introduction of cultural symbols and practices into the rural community by young migrants often causes conflict with elders who decry the loss of “local cultural values” due to migration.

The final two chapters in this volume build on Maphosa’s examination of the reception of Zimbabwean migrants in countries of destination, especially South Africa. Hostility towards foreign migrants has been a pervasive and troubling feature of post-apartheid South Africa, culminating in widespread violence against non-citizens in May 2008 which killed over 60 people and displaced over 100,000. The “dark side of democracy” was of little relevance to Zimbabweans prior to the disintegration of their own country and the emergence of South Africa as a migrant destination. As migration increased, South Africans had very little difficulty transferring their general dislike of foreign nationals to Zimbabweans, migrants from a neighbouring country with strong historical ties to South Africa. A leading force in the reconfiguration of Zimbabweans as a threat to South Africans was the South African media. The chapter by Aquilina Mawadza and Jonathan Crush shows how the xenophobic media sentiment of the 1990s was repackaged to represent Zimbabwean migration to South Africa. The negative metaphors associated with migration came to epitomize media coverage of Zimbabweans coming to and living in South Africa. The chapter shows how three dominant anti-immigration metaphors (the migrant as alien, migration as an unnatural disaster and migration as a process of invasion) were, and continue to be, applied to Zimbabwean migrants. The South African media is always quick to distance itself from xenophobia but this chapter leaves little doubt about media complicity.

While the media and ordinary citizens have responded with venom to the growing presence of Zimbabweans in South Africa, the government, in contrast, has adopted a position of “studied indifference.” The final chapter in this volume, by Tara Polzer, analyses the institutional response to Zimbabwean migration. After reviewing the evidence she concludes that the South African government “has failed to meet its legal obligations to Zimbabwean migrants, including its obligation to prevent refoulement and to uphold basic constitutional rights.” The government’s “business as usual” approach means an inability or unwillingness to articulate an overall policy position on migration from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean migrants are treated (and mistreated) as if this was just another unwanted migration movement to the country, rather than a crisis-driven influx requiring a coordinated policy response. So total has been the silence from the central government that other levels of government have no guidance or operational framework with which to work. Polzer attributes the paralysis within government concerning Zimbabweans in South Africa to South Africa’s foreign policy stance on Zimbabwe and associated tendency to downplay the magnitude of the social and economic crisis within Zimbabwe itself.

Governmental paralysis has made life in South Africa extremely challenging for most Zimbabwean migrants. There is an assumption that civil society organizations have managed to pick up much of the slack. Polzer challenges this view, arguing that civil society has also failed to develop a coherent response to the challenge of Zimbabwean migration. The cumulative impact of actors dealing with legal and protection issues and those providing social welfare has been relatively small in relation to numbers and needs. Furthermore, “where Zimbabwean issues have brought together a wider range of South African civil society institutions, including labour unions and social movements, this has been mainly focussed on advocacy regarding the situation within Zimbabwe, rather than the plight of Zimbabweans in South Africa.” The South African Human Rights Commission, which abandoned an anti-xenophobia campaign in 2002 in favour of rights issues affecting citizens, has also abdicated its potential role as a voice on Zimbabwean migration.

The economic and social collapse of Zimbabwe has been both a consequence and a cause of migration. The transformation of Zimbabwe into one of the world’s larger migrant-sending states has largely been prompted by the intolerable situation at home and the need to find employment to support those who remain behind. No one knows quite how many Zimbabweans have left, or exactly how much they send home. In an especially vicious cycle, out-migration of the skilled, in particular, weakened the economy and accelerated the collapse of public services. That, in turn, has provided others with greater incentive to leave. But the final meltdown has been delayed precisely because migrants remit and households could survive, buying food and fuel, paying school fees and meeting medical expenses. Yet, the reception that migrants have received outside their own country has been anything but welcoming. Acceptance and integration have certainly not been the experience of most Zimbabweans in the major destination countries of South Africa, the United Kingdom and Botswana. Given this, and the reasons for leaving in the first place, it is worth asking, in conclusion, about the likelihood of return migration if conditions were to change in Zimbabwe. Or, to put it another way, what would have to change to entice people back?

Daniel Makina put this question to Zimbabweans in Johannesburg. Over two-thirds said they would return for good if Zimbabwe were to normalize. A third did say they would stay in South Africa, but only 6 percent said they would remain permanently. Of the 72 percent who would return home, 48 percent said they would want to return and set up a business, 25 percent said they would want to be “gainfully employed,” 14 percent would want to work in the NGO sector and the rest simply said they would “settle.” Twenty-one percent of the total sample (and 62 percent of those who would stay in South Africa) said they would want to establish a business in South Africa. These findings suggest, first, that the vast majority of Zimbabweans want to go back if the conditions are right. And even those who do not want to go back straightaway would want to invest in and grow businesses at home. Second, perhaps sceptical that Zimbabwe’s unemployment problem will be easily overcome, many migrants see entrepreunership as the way forward, possibly indicating that the émigré experience has encouraged a more entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge.

The similarities with Zimbabwean migrants in the United Kingdom are striking. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of Zimbabweans interviewed by Alice Bloch said they definitely wanted to return and a further 22 percent might want to return. As in South Africa, only 6 percent definitely did not want to return. Bloch also found that migrants with a partner or children in Zimbabwe had even higher rates of potential return (over 80 percent). Length of time and legal status in the UK were also important determinants. In general, as Bloch shows, the longer people had been in the UK and the more secure their immigration status, the lower the desire to return to Zimbabwe. Only half of those with UK or EU citizenship wanted to return, for example.

What does “normalization” mean for Zimbabweans abroad? Improvement in the political situation was mentioned by nearly 90 percent as a precondition for return. Other preconditions include an improvement in the economy (mentioned by over 80 percent), the security situation (over 70 percent) and the health situation (over 60 percent). Finally, when asked what development activities they were interested in pursuing in Zimbabwe, 62 percent said that investment in business was a priority. As with migrants in South Africa, entrepreneurial activity rates most highly, surely an encouraging sign for the rebuilding of a crisis-ridden country that has seen its “best and brightest” leave over the last two decades, but not necessarily for good.

NOTES

1 N. Van Hear, New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping Of Migrant Communities (London: Taylor & Francis, 2007).

2 Solidarity Peace Trust, No War in Zimbabwe: An Account of the Exodus of a Nation’s People (Port Shepstone, 2004); A. Bloch, “Emigration from Zimbabwe: Migrant Perspectives” Social Policy & Administration 40(1) (2006):67-87.

3 H. Besada and N. Moyo, Zimbabwe in Crisis: Mugabe’s Policies and Failures, Working Paper, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, 2008.

4 L. Zinyama and D. Tevera, Zimbabweans Who Move: Perspectives on International Migration in Zimbabwe, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 25, Cape Town, 2002.

5 R. Leslie, ed., Migration from Zimbabwe: Numbers, Needs and Policy Options (Johannesburg: CDE, 2008).

6 Human Rights Watch, Neighbors in Need: Zimbabweans Seeking Refuge in South Africa (New York, 2008), p. 3.

7 A. Hammar, B. Raftopoulos and S. Jensen, eds., Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: R ethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (Harare: Weaver, 2003); B. Raftopolous and I. Phimister, “Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion” Historical Materialism 12(4): 355– 82; S. Dansereau and M. Zamponi, “Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Decline” Discussion Paper 27, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, 2005.

8 See Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM), Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action (Geneva, 2005); United Nations, International Migration and Development: Report of the Secretary General, A60/871/, UN General Assembly, New York, 2006; World Bank, Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration (Washington: World Bank, 2006); J. DeWind and J. Holdaway, eds., Migration and Development Within and Across Borders: Research and Policy Perspectives on Internal and International Migration (Geneva: IOM, 2008); R. Skeldon, “International Migration as a Tool in Development Policy: A Passing Phase?” Population and Development Review 34(1) (2008): 1-18; L. Chappell and A. Glennie, “Maximising the Development Outcomes of Migration: A Policy Perspective” UNDP Human Development Reports Research Paper 2009/11, New York, 2009.

9 P. Fagen with M. Bump, “Remittances in Conflict and Crises: How Remittances Sustain Livelihoods in War, Crises, and Transitions to Peace” Policy Paper, International Peace Academy, Georgetown University, Washington 2006.

10 A. Sparks, “SADC Leaders Should Refuse to Recognize Mugabe as President” Cape Times 25 June 2008; J. Crush, “Numbers Game” Cape Times 27 June 2008.

11 L. Landau, “Drowning in Numbers: Interrogating New Patterns of Zimbabwean Migration to South Africa” In R. Leslie, ed., Migration from Zimbabwe: Numbers, Needs and Policy Options (Johannesburg: Centre for Development and Enterprise, 2008), pp. 7-15.

12 “Mbeki Claims Millions of Zimbabweans in SA” News24 16 October 2003.

13 Ibid.

14 Landau, “Drowning in Numbers”

15 This is the number of recorded border-crossings not separate individuals who may have crossed many times during the year. Once a valid visa is issued a person may cross backwards and forwards until the visa expires without being recorded in these statistics. In other words, these figures should be seen as indicative not definitive.

16 J. Crush and B. Frayne, “Perspectives on the Migration-Development Nexus in Southern Africa” Development Southern Africa 24(1) (2007): 1-24.

17 S. Maimbo and D. Ratha, eds., Remittances: Development Impacts and Future Prospects (Washington: World Bank, 2005); World Bank, Global Economic Prospects. Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration (Washington: World Bank, 2005); P. Giuliano and M. Ruiz-Arranz, “Remittances, Financial Development and Growth” Working Paper 05/234, IMF, Washington, 2005; OECD, Migration, Remittances and Development (Paris: OECD, 2005); B. Ghosh, Migrants’ Remittances and Development: Myths, Rhetoric and Realities (Geneva: IOM, 2006).

18 H. de Haas, “International Migration, Remittances and Development: Myths and Facts” Third World Quarterly 26(8) (2005): 1269-84; D. Kapur, “Remittances: The New Development Mantra?” In Maimbo and Ratha, Remittances, pp. 331-60; H. de Haas, “Migration, Remittances and Social Development: A Conceptual Review of the Literature” Social Policy and Development Programme Paper No 34, UNRISD, Geneva, 2007.

19 W. Pendleton, J. Crush, E. Campbell, T. Green, H. Simelane, D. Tevera and F. de Vletter, “Migration, Remittances and Development in Southern Africa” Migration Policy Series No. 44, Cape Town, 2006, p. 1; K. Newland, “Migration as a Factor in Development and Poverty Reduction: The Impact of Rich Countries’ Immigration Policies on the Prospects of the Poor” In R. Picciotto and R. Weaving, (eds.), Impact of Rich Countries’ Policies on Poor Countries (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 2004), pp. 194-5.

20 K. Hamilton, “Migration and Development: Blind Faith and Hard-to-Find Facts” Migration Policy Institute, Washington, 2003.

21 Fagen with Bump, “Remittances in Conflict and Crises”; P. Fagen, “Remittances in Crises: A Haiti Case Study” Background Paper, Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute, London, 2006; A. Lindley, “Remittances in Fragile Settings: A Somali Case Study” Working Paper No. 27, Households in Conflict Network, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, 2007.

22 Pendleton et al, Migration, Remittances and Development in Southern Africa.

23 F. Maphosa, “Remittances and Development: The Impact of Migration to South Africa on Rural Livelihoods in Southern Zimbabwe” Development Southern Africa 24(1) (2007), p. 132.

24 S. Bracking and L. Sachikonye, “Remittances, Poverty Reduction and the Informalisation of Household Wellbeing in Zimbabwe” Working Paper No. 45, Global Poverty Research Group, 2006; Maphosa, “Remittances and Development” pp. 123-36.

25 Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET), “Zimbabwe Food Security Outlook” at http://v4.fews.net/docs/Publications/Zimbabwe_200708en.pdf

26 D. Kapur and J. McHale, “The Global Migration of Talent: What Does It Mean for Developing Countries?” Center for Global Development Brief, Washington, October 2005.

27 F. Docquier and A. Marfouk, “International Migration by Education Attainment, 1990-2000” In Ozden and Schiff, International Migration, p. 154.

28 F. Docquier and A. Marfouk, “Measuring the International Mobility of Skilled Workers (1990-2000)” Policy Research Working Paper 3381, World Bank, Washington, 2004; D. Kapur and J. McHale, Give Us Your Best and Brightest (Washington: Center for Global Development, 2005).

29 L. Lowell, A. Findlay and E. Stewart, “Brain Strain: Optimising Highly Skilled Migration from Developing Countries” Asylum and Migration Working Paper 3, Institute for Public Policy Research, London, 2004, p. 9.

30 I. Goldin and K. Reinert, Globalization for Development (Washington: World Bank, 2006), p. 183.

31 Kapur and McHale, Give Us Your Best and Brightest.

32 U. Hunger, “The ‘Brain Gain’ Hypothesis: Third World Elites in Industrialized Countries and Socioeconomic Development in their Home Country” Working Paper of Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2002; O. Stark, “Rethinking the Brain Drain” Discussion Paper on Development Policy No. 71, Centre for Development Research, University of Bonn, Bonn, 2003; Lowell, et al., “Brain Strain”; M. Beine, F. Docquier, and H. Rapoport, “Brain Drain and LDCs’ Growth: Winners and Losers” IZA Discussion Paper No. 819, Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn, 2003; S. Commander, M. Kangasniemi, and L. Winters, “The Brain Drain: Curse or Boon?” IZA Discussion Paper No. 809, Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn, 2003; O. Stark and C. Fan, “Losses and Gains to Developing Countries from the Migration of Educated Workers” Discussion Paper on Development Policy No 116, University of Bonn, Bonn, 2007.

33 Stark and Fan, “Losses and Gains to Developing Countries.”

34 A. Tanner, Emigration, Brain Drain and Development: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa (Helsinki: East-West Books, 2005), p. 77.

35 D.A. McDonald and J. Crush, eds., Destinations Unknown: Perspectives on the Brain Drain in Southern Africa (Pretoria and Cape Town: Africa Institute and SAMP, 2002).

36 R. Gaidzanwa, Voting With Their Feet: Migrant Zimbabwean Nurses and Doctors in the Era of Structural Adjustment (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999); C. Chetsanga, An Analysis of the Cause and Effect of the Brain Drain in Zimbabwe (Harare: Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre, 2003); D. Tevera and J. Crush, The New Brain Drain from Zimbabwe, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 25, Cape Town, 2003; D. Tevera, Early Departures: The Emigration Potential of Zimbabwean Students, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 39, Cape Town, 2005.

37 A. Chikanda, “Skilled Health Professionals’ Migration and Its Impact on Health Delivery in Zimbabwe” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32(4) (2006): 667-81; A. Chikanda, “Medical Migration from Zimbabwe in the Post-Esap Era: Magnitude, Causes and Impact on the Poor” Development Southern Africa 24(1) (2007): 47-60.

38 D. Taylor and K. Barlow, “What About the Future? Long-Term Migration Potential to South Africa from Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe” In D.A. McDonald, (ed.), On Borders: Perspectives on International Migration in Southern Africa (New York and Cape Town: St Martin’s Press and SAMP, 2000), pp. 151-67; Tevera, Early Departures.

39 J. Carling, “Gender Dimensions of International Migration” Global Migration Perspectives No. 35, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva, 2005; N. Piper, “Gender and Migration” Policy Analysis and Research Programme, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva, 2005.

40 H. Zlotnik, “The Global Dimensions of Female Migration” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, Washington, 2003.

41 N. Piper, ed., New Perspectives on Gender and Migration: Rights, Entitlements and Livelihoods (London: Routledge 2008).

42 B. Dodson, “Women on the Move: Gender and Cross-Border Migration to South Africa from Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe” In McDonald, On Borders, pp. 71-85; B. Dodson with H. Simelane, D. Tevera, T. Green, A. Chikanda and F. de Vletter, Gender, Migration and Remittances in Southern Africa, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 49, Cape Town, 2008.

43 L. Zinyama, “Who, What, When and Why: Cross-Border Movement from Zimbabwe to South Africa” In McDonald, On Borders, p. 77.

44 Y. Kutznetsov, ed., Diaspora Networks and the International Migration of Skills: How Countries Can Draw on Their Talent Abroad (Washington: World Bank Institute, 2006); H. de Haas, “Engaging Diasporas: How Governments and Development Agencies Can Support Diaspora Involvement in the Development of Origin Countries” International Migration Institute, Oxford University, 2006; D. Ionescu, “Engaging Diasporas as Development Partners for Home and Destination Countries: Challenges for Policymakers” Research Series No. 26, International Organization for Migration, Geneva, 2006; R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 2008).

45 N. Van Hear, F. Pieke, and S. Vertovec, “The Contribution of UK-Based Diasporas to Development and Poverty Reduction” Report for the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, Oxford University, 2004; see also K. Newland and E. Patrick, “Beyond Remittances: The Role of Diasporas in Poverty Reduction in their Countries of Origin” Study for the UK-Department for International Development (DFID), 2003.

46 A. Pandey, A. Aggarwal, R. Devane and Y. Kuznetsov, “The Indian Diaspora: A Unique Case?” In Kuznetsov, Diaspora Networks, pp. 71-98; D. Zweig, Chung Siu Fung and Donglin Han, “Redefining the Brain Drain: China’s ‘Diaspora Option’” Science Technology and Society 13(1) (2008): 1-33.

47 African Union, “Programme of Action of the First Africa Ministerial Conference on the Diaspora” Johannesburg, 2007.

48 L. Henry and G. Mohan, “Making Homes: The Ghanaian Diaspora, Institutions and Development” Journal of International Development 15(5) (2003): 611-22.

49 D. Pasura, “Gendering the Diaspora: Zimbabwean Migrants in Britain” African Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World 1(1-2) (2008): 86-109.

50 See, for example, D. Pasura, “Zimbabwean Transnational Diaspora Politics in Britain” Paper presented at Conference on Diasporas and Decentralised Development, St Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 2008.

51 A. Bloch, “Zimbabweans in Britain: Transnational Activities and Capabilities” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34(2) (2008): 287-305; J. McGregor, “Abject Spaces, Transnational Calculations: Zimbabweans in Britain Navigating Work, Class and the Law” Transactions of Institute of British Geographers 33 (2008): 466-82.

52 N. Glick Schiller and G. Fouron, “Terrains of Blood and Nation: Haitian Transnational Social Fields” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2) (1999), p. 344.

53 A. Portes, L. Guarnizo and P. Landolt, “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promises of an Emergent Research Field” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2) (1999), p. 219.

54 N. Glick Schiller, L. Basch and C. Blanc-Szanton, “From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration” Anthropology Quarterly 68(1) (1995), p. 48.

55 See P. Levitt and N. Nyberg-Sorenson, “The Transnational Turn in Migration Studies” Global Migration Perspectives No 6, Global Commission on International Migration, 2004; S. Vertovec, Transnationalism (London: Routledge, 2009). For a critique see R. Waldinger and D. Fitzgerald, “Transnationalism in Question” American Journal of Sociology 109(5) (2004): 1177-95; and R. Waldinger. “‘Immigrant ‘Transnationalism’ and the Presence of the Past” In E. Barkan, H. Diner and A. Kraut, eds, From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era (New York: New York University Press, 2008), pp. 267-85.

56 K. Newland, D. Agunias and A. Terrazas, “Learning by Doing: Experiences of Circular Migration” Migration Policy Institute, Washington, 2008.

57 Vertovec, Transnationalism.

58 Portes, Guamizo and Landolt, “Study of Transnationalism” p. 229.

59 N. Piper, “Rethinking the Migration-Development Nexus: Bringing Marginalized Visions and Actors to the Fore” Population, Space and Place 15(2) (2009): 93-101.

60 J. Crush and D.A. McDonald, Transnationalism and New African Immigration to South Africa (Toronto and Cape Town: CAAS and SAMP, 2002).

61 Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Window on the Situation of Zimbabweans living in Gauteng” Idasa, Pretoria, 2005; Human Rights Watch (HRW), Unprotected Migrants: Zimbabweans in South Africa’s Limpopo Province (Johannesburg 2006); E. Sisulu, B. Moyo and N. Tshuma, “The Zimbabwean Community in South Africa” In S. Buhlungu, J. Daniel, R. Southall and J. Lutchman, eds., State of the Nation: South Africa 2007 (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007) pp. 552-73; B. Rutherford, “An Unsettled Belonging: Zimbabwean Farm Workers in Limpopo Province, South Africa” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26(4) (2008): 401-15; McGregor, “Abject Spaces.”

62 Southern African Migration Project, “The Perfect Storm: The Realities of Xenophobia in Contemporary South Africa”, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 50, Cape Town, 2008.

63 J. Crush and W. Pendleton, Regionalizing Xenophobia? Citizen Attitudes to Immigration and Refugee Policy in Southern Africa, SAMP Migration Policy Series No. 30, Cape Town, 2004.

64 J. McGregor, “Joining the BBC (British Bottom Cleaners): Zimbabwean Migrants and the UK Care Industry” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(5) (2007): 801-24.

65 M. Cowen and R. Shenton, “The Invention of Development” in J. Crush, (ed.), Power of Development (London: Routledge, 1995): 27-43.

66 J. Crush, “Migrations Past: An Historical Overview of Cross-Border Movement in Southern Africa” in McDonald, On Borders, pp. 12-24.

67 C. Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933 (London: Pluto Press, 1976); W. Beinart, The Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860-1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); R. First, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant (Brighton: St Martin’s Press, 1983); J. Crush, The Struggle for Swazi Labour, 1890-1920 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987); W. Worger, South Africa’s City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoloy Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867-1895 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); P. Harries, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860-1910 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994); D. Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

68 J. DeWind and J. Holdaway, “Internal and International Development in Economic Development” Paper for Fourth UN Coordination Meeting on International Migration, New York, 2005. See also R. King, R. Skeldon and J. Vullnetari, “Internal and International Migration: Bridging the Theoretical Divide” Paper presented at Conference on Theories of Migration and Social Change, Oxford University, 2008.

69 N. Harris, Thinking the Unthinkable: The Immigration Myth Exposed (London: IB Taurus, 2002), p.87.

70 O. Stark, “Rethinking the Braindrain” World Development 32 (1) (2004): 15-22.

71 SAMP, “The Perfect Storm.”

72 Ibid.

THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT

My grandmother came to Johannesburg long ago before my mother was born. My mother was born in 1937 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. I passed my interview but when we were supposed to go for a teaching course I found my name wasn’t there. I don’t want to speak about the government of Zimbabwe but at that time they used surnames. 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. Working hours are too long for me: from 8 o’clock to 5 o’clock and there is no lunch hour. You have to eat while you are serving the customers. I earn R650 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. I don’t accept that foreigners are the crime causers or whatever. When I came to South Africa, I found that the jails here were there for South Africans. So it wasn’t only foreigners who were committing crimes. The police are afraid to arrest South Africans because they are told that someone will come to their house and kill the children. So the police turn to us foreigners because they know we can’t do anything. They arrest us to keep themselves busy so that the government will think they are doing their job by saying “I arrested 1,000 immigrants.” But they are running away from the fact that they are not arresting their fellow South Africans. They also will never stop the white man in the street and ask him “where are your documents?” I do agree that some foreigners do crimes but when you take the percentage I can say that over 90% of criminals are South Africans. I always tell myself one day the truth will come out.

Chapter Two
A History of Zimbabwean Migration to 1990

Alois S. Mlambo

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. Examples abound: the Kalanga of southwestern Zimbabwe and northeastern Botswana; the Shangaan, Venda and Tsonga peoples of southern Zimbabwe, southern Mozambique and northern South Africa; the Manyika and Ndau people of eastern Zimbabwe and central Mozambique; and the various ethnic groups astride the Zambian-Malawi, the Zambian-Zimbabwean and the Zambian-Angolan borders, as well as the border between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 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 1990.1 For much of this history, Zimbabwe was a destination country for migrants.Population movement into the area began with the peopling of the Zimbabwe Plateau. In the nineteenth century, there was an influx of groups from the south fleeing the Mfecane/Difaqane in South Africa. 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. Southern Africa’s “Thirty Years War” of liberation (from the 1960s to the 1990s) brought white immigrants fleeing independence in Africa and black refugees from the civil war in Mozambique.

Zimbabwe was also a “sending” country during the twentieth century although the numbers were generally much smaller. Migrant workers from some parts of Zimbabwe engaged in circular migration for work in South Africa. Zimbabwe’s own war of liberation forced many blacks into exile in the 1970s. 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 1990. This was to change in the 1990s as the country was dramatically transformed into a leading migrant sending country. The primary purpose of this chapter is to situate this post-1990 transformation in historical context to identify the distinctive aspects of the current “exodus” when compared to earlier rounds of migration to and from the country.

PRECOLONIAL PEOPLING OF THE ZIMBABWE PLATEAU

Zimbabwe was originally the home of hunter-gathering, stone-age people who are believed to have inhabited the region from 100,000 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 1000, a cattle-keeping culture, referred to by archaeologists as the Leopard Kopje culture, had developed in south-western Zimbabwe, reaching its climax around 1100 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 1300 with the rise of the Great Zimbabwe culture, with its capital at the Great Zimbabwe complex, built between 1200 and 1450, 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 1450 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 1500 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. At the end of the 1600s, a new political power, the Rozvi Changamire state, emerged and remained powerful until it was destroyed, in turn, by the Nguni invasion from the south during the Mfecane/Difaqane.

In the early 1800s, political and demographic upheaval in the eastern part of South Africa (known to historians as the Mfecane/Difaqane), led to population movements that greatly impacted upon the demographic profile of the land between the Limpopo and the Zambezi and beyond. Some attribute the Mfecane/Difaqane, and the resultant depopulation of large swathes of land in the South African interior, to aggressive nation-building campaigns by the Zulu under Shaka.2 Others have labelled this view a self-serving historical invention and rationalization to justify white occupation of the interior with the excuse that it was unoccupied when they arrived because of the Mfecane/Difaqane. They attribute the population dispersal to drought and environmental degradation, trade, and the advance of white settlement. Whatever the causes, the Mfecane/Difaqane induced northward population movements which had far-reaching political and demographic effects on Zimbabwe.

In the 1820s, the first wave of Nguni migrants from the south under Zwangendaba destroyed the Rozvi/Changamire Kingdom, before crossing the Zambezi in 1835 and proceeding further north, reaching Lake Tanganyika in the late 1860s. Another group originating from northern Natal in the 1820s, 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 1837 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 MIGRATION, 1890–19903

White hunters, adventurers, explorers and missionaries had long traversed the land between the Limpopo and the Zambezi before British colonization in 1890, but none had settled permanently in the region. This was all to change with the arrival of a group of approximately 700 whites, calling themselves the Pioneer Column. Armed and funded by Cecil John Rhodes through his recently-established British South Africa Company (BSAC), this advance party of British imperialism claimed the territory that was to be known as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) for Britain by raising the Union Jack at Fort Salisbury (now Harare) in 1890. Thereafter, the BSAC and subsequent self-governing administrations after 1923 made determined efforts to encourage white immigration into the country in line with Rhodes’ dream of developing Rhodesia as a “white man’s country.”4

Early white immigration was fuelled in the run-up to the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. There was a large inflow of mostly English-speaking immigrants from South Africa between 1901 and 1911 (from 11,000 to over 23,000), making this the fastest white population growth decade in the entire period of colonial rule (Table 2.1).5 Negotiated on favourable terms for the Afrikaners, the Union helped to push English-speaking South Africans into Rhodesia.6

Table 2.1: White Population Increase 1891-1969

Source: Rhodesia, Census of Population 1904-1969 (Salisbury: CSO, 1969), p. 62.

Increased white immigration was also a result of vigorous efforts by the BSAC government to entice white farmers into the country. Rhodes’ colonizing project had been driven by the belief and hope that the land north of the Limpopo had large gold deposits that would compare favourably with, if not surpass, those on the Rand. While the country did have some gold deposits, they were nowhere near as abundant as had been envisioned. The BSAC government turned to vigorously promoting commercial agriculture from 1902 onwards, once it “accepted the unpalatable fact that gold-mining was never going to constitute a basis for great wealth on the lines of the Witwatersrand.”7 In 1908, it adopted a white-agriculture policy that deliberately promoted settler agriculture; this included reducing land prices to prospective settlers and expanding the foreign and contract labour supply system to provide sufficient agricultural labour.8

The Company government’s commitment to settler agriculture included the establishment of recruiting and promotional offices in London and Glasgow, and a Land Settlement Department and Land Bank in Salisbury. As a result “there began a steady, if not very large, stream of immigrants of a good type, many being experienced farmers.”9 The Company also enticed immigrants through its own farming and ranching activities. From 1907, Company ranches “with pure-bred dairy of beef stock, citrus estates with large irrigation schemes, experimental tobacco estates with warehouses, and farms where mealies were the main crop, were acquired, stocked and equipped.”10

After a hiatus during World War One, white immigration picked up again.11 The attainment of Responsible government in 1923, the subsequent provision of development assistance by the British Government, and the British inauguration of a sponsored three-year settlement scheme led to substantial immigration from 1924 to 1928. The numbers declined from 1931 to 1936 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.

After the War, immigration increased dramatically as hundreds of demobilised British soldiers entered the country as part of the Rhodesian government’s post-war settlement scheme. In 1948, a record 17,000 immigrants arrived.12 Over 100,000 Africans were moved from their lands to accommodate the new arrivals.13 Additional immigrants were attracted by job and other economic prospects in the rapidly-industrialising Rhodesian economy. Job reservation provided unlimited opportunities for white immigrants who could live “a privileged, comfortable life.”14

Economic depression in the Central African Federation from 1956 to 1958, and the rise of militant African nationalism, led to a decline in white immigration. This decline continued in the 1960s when economic sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia after its unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in November 1965. 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 1975 following the end of Portuguese colonial rule in those countries.

Throughout the twentieth century, foreign-born whites outnumbered those born in the country (Table 2.2). The dominance of immigration over natural increase was still evident as late as 1969 when approximately 59 percent of the white population were foreign-born. Of these, over 55 percent arrived after World War Two (Table 2.3).15

Table 2.2: White Population by Country of Birth, 1901-1956

Source: A. Rogers and C. Frantz, Racial Themes in Zimbabwe: The Attitudes and Behaviour of the White Population (New Haven: Yale University, 1962), p. 14.

Table 2.3: White Population by Country of Birth, 1969

N= 228,296

Source: Southern Africa: Immigration from Britain, A Fact Paper by the International Defence and Aid fund (London: IDAF, 1975), p. 17.

Until 1961, net migration consistently outnumbered natural increase (Table 2.4). 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 1911, 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 1911 and 1921. Increasingly, the white population began to resemble that of older settler societies (Table 2.5).16

Table 2.4: White Net Migration and Natural Increase, 1901-1969

Source: Census of Population, 1969, p. 3.

Table 2.5: White Population Sex Ratio, 1901-1956

Source: Rogers and Frantz, Racial Themes in Southern Rhodesia, p. 15.

Table 2.6: Racial Composition of Population, 1911-1951

* These were estimates based on periodic population counts. The first comprehensive census of the African population was not until 1962, although limited sample surveys were taken in 1948, 1953 and 1955.

Source: Southern Rhodesia, Central Statistical Office, Official Yearbook of Southern Rhodesia (Salisbury: Rhodesia Printing and Publishing Company, 1952), p. 130.

Because natural population growth was slow and immigration flows were limited by highly selective government immigration policies, the white population was increasingly outstripped by the African population so that the dream of developing Rhodesia as a white man’s colony remained unfulfilled (Table 2.6).

A prominent feature of the history of white migration was its high turnover rate. For every ten immigrants who entered the country between 1921 and 1926, seven left.17 Between 1926 and 1931, the ratio was 5:3 and between 1931 and 1936, 9:7. An analysis of net migration between 1921 and 1964 shows that, in this period, Rhodesia received a total of 236,330 white immigrants but lost 159,215, or 67 percent, through emigration (Table 2.7).

Table 2.7: Net White Migration, 1921-1964

Source: Census of Population, 1969, p. 168.

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. Immigrants were also attracted by job opportunities as the beleaguered Rhodesian economy adopted import substitution industrialisation strategies that created career openings for skilled workers in the country’s expanding manufacturing sector.18

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. Determined to allow in only the “right type” of immigrant, by which they meant British immigrants, the government discouraged other nationalities and ethnic groups from migrating to the country. Of the 33,620 whites in Rhodesia in 1921, 32,203 were British by birth or naturalization. By 1931, 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.19

So determined were the Rhodesian authorities to maintain the “Britishness” of the country, that they passed the Aliens Act in 1946. The Act established a quota system under which non-British immigrants were allowed into the country at the rate of only five to ten percent of British immigrants and subject to the control of an immigrants’ selection board which would maintain the “right standards.”20 As late as 1957, a Government Economic Advisory Council’s report on immigration endorsed the long-standing policy of giving preference to immigrants from the United Kingdom “because of the importance of preserving the British way of life.”21

Throughout the period under study, therefore, the immigration of non-British whites was kept to a minimum. Afrikaners remained generally suspect and unwelcome.22 A strong anti-Semitic undercurrent ensured that Jewish immigration was also tightly controlled, despite the fact that Rhodes himself had been very partial towards Jewish immigration.23 Other groups such as Poles, Greeks, Italians and Spaniards fared no better.24

Despite such attitudes and restrictions, the number of non-British immigrants did increase slightly in the 1930s and during World War Two. By 1946, there was a sizeable Italian population in the country. Other non-British groups that entered in the war years included Germans, Poles, Greeks, Americans, Lithuanians, Swiss, Yugoslavians, Czechoslovakians and Swedes. But collectively, they remained a small minority compared to the largely British white population in the country.25 After UDI, however, the widely-ostracised and reviled Smith government was glad to accept any white people who wished to enter 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.26

As for Indians, laws were enacted early in the century to limit their entry.27 Indian immigration was repeatedly discouraged, starting with the immigration law of 1903, followed by legal restrictions in 1924 and, lastly, in 1963. Because of these measures, the Asian population never constituted more than 2 percent of the total population of the country.

The country recorded a net gain from migration of 47,121 whites, Asians and “coloureds” in the 10 years following the declaration of UDI.28 By the mid 1970s, however, white emigration began to increase. For a brief period following the independence of Mozambique and Angola in 1975, there was a sudden surge of immigration when an estimated 25,000 whites fled the Portuguese territories to Rhodesia.29 But the escalating guerrilla campaign and growing economic hardships as a result of tightening international economic sanctions made Rhodesia an increasingly unattractive place to live. In 1976, the country recorded a net white migration loss of 7,702, while in 1978, 13,709 whites left the country, many of them skilled professionals whose services were essential to the country’s economy.30 In a bid to stem the outgoing tide, the Rhodesian authorities reduced holiday allowances in September 1976 to prevent intending emigrants using them as a cover to repatriate their capital. Despite this measure, emigration continued to swell (Table 2.8).

Table 2.8: Net White Migration, 1972-1979

Source: Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics (Salisbury: Central Statistical Office, 1972-1979); Annual Reports of the Commissioner of the British South African Police, 1972-1979.

High levels of white emigration continued into the independence period. An estimated 20,534 people, mostly whites, left the country in 1981, fleeing the incoming black government. Between 1980 and 1984, net migration losses exceeded 10,000 annually despite the fact that there were many black Zimbabweans returning from exile.31 By 1987, there were only 110,000 whites left, approximately half of the white population in 1980.

MIGRANT LABOUR TO ZIMBABWE

Labour migrancy in Southern Africa dates back to the 1850s with the development of the sugar plantations of Natal. Thereafter, it intensified with the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1870 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886. 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. These “southernmost centres, where capital was best developed and entrenched, each in turn fed off the less developed northern periphery for part of its labour supplies.”32

Labour migrancy linked the various countries and colonies in the sub-region into one large labour market, with various countries sending and receiving migrants.33 Sub-regional labour migration was facilitated by a number of factors including the very porous borders that made it easy for work-seekers to travel to mining centres and plantations in Zimbabwe and South Africa. 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.

The country’s expanding agricultural sector and mining industry required abundant cheap labour which, for a variety of reasons, was not available locally in sufficient quantities despite colonial efforts to coerce Africans, through taxation, to sell their labour power. 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.34

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.35 Foreign migrant labour became increasingly important in the Rhodesian economy before 1910 (Table 2.9).

Table 2.9: Africans Employed in Mining, 1906-10

Source: Report of the Native Affairs Committee of Enquiry, 1910-11 (Southern Rhodesia Government, 1911), para. 214.

Between 1903 and 1933, a government agency, the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau (RNLB), recruited foreign labour and supplied an average of 13,000 workers to employers each year.36 Many other workers migrated on their own, outside the auspices of the RNLB and other agencies. Indeed, the majority of labour migrants probably made their own way to Zimbabwe under the so-called selufu (self/independent) system.37 They did so through dangerous territory and at great personal risk.38 By 1912, there were 10,000 Malawian workers in Zimbabwe, accounting for 35 percent of the country’s entire African mine labour force of 48,000.39 They were soon to displace the Tonga and Ngoni people from Zambia and workers from the Tete area of Mozambique who had, until then, been the largest group of migrant workers.40 From 1920 onwards, Malawian migrant workers “exceeded even Southern Rhodesian Africans.”41

Meanwhile, the colonial state assisted employers to secure labour by concluding labour agreements with Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi. These included the Tete Agreement of 1913 with Mozambique and the Tripartite Labour Agreement of 1937 with Malawi and Zambia. Malawian labour migration was boosted by the introduction of a free transport service for migrant workers in 1927.42 The Free Migrant Labour Transport Service (popularly known among Malawian migrant workers as “Ulere”) enabled workers to travel to and from Zimbabwe free of charge and provided them with free rations and accommodation.43 Until the end of World War Two, Malawian immigrants were in the majority in Salisbury (Table 2.10) and the rest of the country (where they accounted for between 35 and 50 percent of all migrant workers).44 Inner Salisbury was dominated by “foreign” Africans, as the local Shona inhabitants preferred to remain on the outskirts of the growing colonial town to produce agricultural commodities that they sold to the urban population to raise the income they that required to meet growing colonial tax demands.45

Table 2.10: African Population by Nationality, Salisbury, 1911-1969

Source: T. Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Social History of Harare Before 1925 (Harare: Weaver Press, 2007), p. 160.

In 1946, the government established the Rhodesia Native Labour Supply Commission (RNLSC) to recruit foreign workers for the country’s farming sector. The RNLSC imported an average of 14,000 workers per year from 1946 to 1971.46 Migrant labour inflows were further encouraged during the Central African Federation from 1953 to 1963 when Malawian migrants coming into Zimbabwe were allowed to bring their families with them. Others were allowed to settle in Zimbabwe after a stipulated period of service. An estimated 150,000 Malawians and Zambians took this opportunity to settle in the country.47 In 1958, an estimated 123,000 Malawian men, out of a total of 169,000 then outside the country, were in Zimbabwe.48

The number of male labour migrants from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique continued to increase (Table 2.11). By the 1950s, they were well-represented in all sectors of the economy (Table 2.12). 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 1970s (Table 2.13). Of approximately 890,000 Africans employed in the economy in 1973, about 200,000 were foreign-born.49 The majority of foreign workers continued to be Malawian, accounting for 20.2 percent of male agricultural workers in 1972. Mozambicans were next. 50

Table 2.11: Origin of African Male Employees in Zimbabwe, 1911-1951

Source: P. Scott, “Migrant Labor in Southern Rhodesia,” Geographical Review, 44 (1), 1954, p. 31.

Table 2.12: Foreign Workers in Zimbabwe, 1956

Source: J. Crush, V. Williams and S. Peberdy, “Migration in Southern Africa,” Report for SAMP (Cape Town, 2005), p.4.

Table 2.13: Foreign Workers in Commercial Agriculture, 1941-74

Source: D. Clarke, Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1977), p. 31.

MIGRANT LABOUR TO SOUTH AFRICA

By 1911, the South African gold mines had become the major regional employer of migrant labour.51 Mine labour recruitment was mainly handled by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique and the Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. Zimbabwe contributed to the South African mines’ labour complement, although its numbers were never as large as those of the other countries in which the WNLA and NRC operated.

Table 2.14: Contract Labour Migration to South African Mines, 1920-90

Source: J. Crush, A. Jeeves and D. Yudelman. South Africa’s Labor Empire (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 234-235.

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.52 So important did the Wenela experience and anticipated economic rewards become that young men risked their lives, walking for weeks through lion-infested country, spending nights tied to branches in trees to escape the ravages of wild animals, and braving the crocodile-infested Limpopo River, to get to the mines. As recently as the 1960s, 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 1920 and 1990 (Table 2.14).

Table 2.15: Foreign Black Workers Employed Legally in South Africa

Source: E. Leistner and P. Esterhuysen, eds., South Africa in Southern Africa: Economic Interaction (Pretoria: African Institute of South Africa, 1988), p. 125.

Zimbabwean labour migrancy to South Africa increased considerably in the 1970s. 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. As a result, there were well over 20,000 black Zimbabweans working in South Africa’s mines in the 1970s, with a peak of 37,900 in 1977.53 In 1981, the independent Zimbabwean government ended the migrant labour system to South Africa’s mines. However, around 7,000 Zimbabweans were still working legally in other sectors in South Africa for most of the 1980s (Table 2.15).

MIGRATION AND THE THIRTY YEAR WAR

Migration in the sub-continent was also fuelled by the region’s liberation struggles that raged from the 1960s and ended with the political transition in South Africa in 1994. 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 1975, to Mozambique. In 1975, for example, an estimated 15,000 Zimbabwean refugees entered Mozambique.54 By 1976, 70,000 Zimbabwean refugees had crossed the border.55 The number rose to 150,000 by 1979.56 Many Zimbabwean refugees also went to Tanzania and Lesotho. By 1980, approximately 1.4 million people had been displaced by the war. Of these, 228,000 were in the neighbouring countries of Mozambique (160,000), Zambia (45,000), and Botswana (23,000).57

Following the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was invited to coordinate the repatriation and resettlement of Zimbabweans who had taken refuge in neighbouring countries and to arrange the resettlement of internally displaced people who were living either in “protected villages,” or in urban areas. The total number of returnees and internally-displaced persons in need of immediate assistance was estimated at 660,000. The repatriation was carried out in two phases starting in January 1980. By 31 December 1980, 72,000 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.58 While most refugees had been repatriated to Zimbabwe by the end of 1981, a number continued to trickle back into the country throughout the first independence decade and may have contributed to the numbers of “returning residents” (Table 2.16).

Table 2.16: Immigrants to Zimbabwe by Category, 1978-1987

Source: L. Zinyama, “International Migration to and from Zimbabwe and Influence of Political Changes on Population Movements, 1965-1987” International Migration Review 24(4) (1990): 748-67.

The 1980s witnessed two waves of out-migration, mostly to South Africa. The first was the exodus of whites fleeing black rule.59 The second migration wave, as yet unquantified, was the movement of thousands of Ndebele people from the southwestern part of the country into South Africa and Botswana to escape the Gukurahundi massacres of the early 1980s when the Zimbabwean government’s Korean-trained 5th Brigade brought terror to Matebeleland in its effort to put down anti-government rebels labelled by the government as “dissidents.”60

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. Mozambican refugees were fleeing from that country’s South Africa backed fratricidal war between the ruling Party, FRELIMO, and the Mozambican Resistance Movement (RENAMO) that broke out soon after independence in 1975. Thousands of Mozambicans sought refuge in South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. By October 1992, when the two warring parties signed a peace agreement, an estimated 4.5 million Mozambicans had left the country as refugees and around 140,000 were in Zimbabwe. This may be an underestimate since there were probably another 100,000 unregistered refugees living outside the official camps.

CONCLUSION

Migration has clearly been an important part of the history of Zimbabwe since early times. From the arrival of the Bantu during the Iron Age, through the Mfecane/Difaqane and the subsequent period of white immigration and inward and outward labour migrancy, groups of people have moved into and out of Zimbabwe for a variety of reasons. Population movement and labour migration between Zimbabwe and its neighbours has been a constant feature of the region’s history. 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.

Another significant difference is the fact that, while in the past, migrants were mostly labourers seeking jobs in the region’s mining and agricultural sectors, current migration includes growing numbers of highly qualified professionals, including medical doctors, engineers, academics, nurses, pharmacists and teachers, who are also leaving Zimbabwe because of unfavourable economic and other factors. 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. While Zimbabwe has, in the last two decades, become a country of major out-migration, this is not its “natural” migration state. 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.

NOTES

1 Modern names for countries in the region are used throughout the chapter, except where their use might cause confusion.

2 J. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London: Longman, 1966); A. Smith, “The Trade of Delagoa Bay as a Factor in Nguni Politics 1750-1835” in L. Thompson, (ed.), African Societies in Southern Africa (London: Heine-mann, 1969), pp. 171-89; J. Pieres, (ed.), Before and After Shaka: Papers in Nguni History (Grahamstown: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, 1981); J. Cobbing, “The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo” Journal of African History 29(3) (1988): 487-519; J. Omer-Cooper, “Has the Mfecane a Future? A Response to the Cobbing Critique” Journal of Southern African Studies 19(2) (1993): 273-94.

3 This section of the chapter draws on A. Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia: From Occupation to Federation (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publishers, 2000).

4 A. Keppel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1884-1902 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983).

5 R. Roberts, “The Settlers” Rhodesiana 29 (1979): 55-61.

6 B. Schutz, “European Population Patterns, Cultural Resistance and Political Change in Rhodesa” Canadian Journal of African Studies 7(1) (1973), p. 7.

7 I. Henderson, “White Populism in Southern Rhodesia” Comparative Studies in Society and History 14(4) (1972): 387-99.

8 D. Clarke, Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1977), p. 16.

9 E. Tawse Jolie, “The Chartered Company in Rhodesia,” The British South Africa Company Historical Catalogue & Souvenir of Rhodesia Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg, 1936-37 [www.tokencoins.com/bbp.htm].

10 Ibid.

11 Rhodesia, Official Yearbook (Salisbury: CSO, 1924), p. 37.

12 Schutz, “European Population Patterns” p. 16.

13 R. Palmer and I. Birch, Zimbabwe: A Land Divided (Oxford: Oxfam, 1992), p. 8.

14 Schutz, “European Population Patterns” p. 16.

15 Mlambo, White Immigration, p. 2.

16 Schutz, “European Population Patterns,” p. 8. See also, Mlambo, White Immigration, pp. 8-9.

17 Rhodesia, Census of Population of Zimbabwe Pt. 1 (Salisbury: CSO, 1941), p. 5.

18 L. Zinyama, “International Migration to and from Zimbabwe and the Influence of Political Changes on Population Movements”International Migration Review 24(4) (1990): 748-67.

19 Schutz, “European Population Patterns” p. 17.

20 Ibid., p. 16.

21 National Archives of Zimbabwe, F170/18, Report on Immigration Policy by the Economic Advisory Council, 1957.

22 For Rhodesian Attitudes to Afrikaners, see R. Hodder-Williams, “Afrikaners in Rhodesia: A Partial Portrait” African Social Research 18 (1974): 611-42.

23 See M. Gelfand, ed., Godfrey Huggins: Viscount Malvern, 1883-1971- His Life and Work (Salisbury: Central African Journal of Medicine, n.d.), p. 39; F. Clements, Rhodesia: The Course to Collision (London: Pall Mall Press, 1939), p. 43; B. Kosmin, “A Comparative Historical Population Study: The Development of Southern Rhodesian Jewry, 1890-1936”, Henderson Seminar Paper, No. 17, University of Zimbabwe, November, 1971; B. Kosmin, “Ethnic Groups and the Qualified Franchise in Southern Rhodesia, 1898-1922” Rhodesian History 8 (1977): 33-70; B. Kosmin, Majuta: A History of the Jewish Community in Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1980).

24 For a discussion of Rhodesian attitudes to other non-British immigrant groups, see Mlambo, White Immigration, pp. 64-7.

25 Ibid., p. 12.

26 Ibid., p. 20.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Rhodesian Government, Monthly Migration and Tourist Statistics (Salisbury: CSO, 1972-1979); M. Sinclair, “The Brain Drain from Zimbabwe to Canada: The Issue of Compensation Payments” Issue: Journal of Opinion 9(4) (1979): 41-3.

31 Zinyama, “International Migration to and from Zimbabwe.”

32 C. van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1976), p. 120.

33 J. Crush, V. Williams, and S. Perbedy, “Migration in Southern Africa,” Paper prepared for the Global Commission on International Migration Policy Analysis and Research Program (September 2005), p. 1.

34 van Onselen, Chibaro.

35 Ibid., pp. 81-83.

36 Ibid., p. 25.

37 W. Chirwa, “‘TEBA is Power’: Rural Labour, Migrancy and Fishing in Malawi, 1890s -1985” PhD Thesis, Queens University, 1992, pp. 133-4.

38 E. Makambe, “The Nyasaland African Labour ‘Ulendos’ to Southern Rhodesia and the Problem of the African ‘Highwaymen’, 1903-1923: A Study in the Limitations of Early Independent Labour Migration” African Affairs 79(317) (1980): 548–66.

39 van Onselen, Chibaro, p. 122.

40 Scott, “Migrant Labor in Southern Rhodesia,” p. 32.

41 F. Sanderson, “The Development of Labour Migration from Nyasaland, 1891-1914” Journal of African History 2 (1961): 259-71.

42 Clarke, Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia, p.

43 Scott, “Migrant Labor in Southern Rhodesia,” p. 36.

44 Ibid., p. 32.

45 T. Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Social History of Harare before 1925 (Harare: Weaver Press, 2007), p. 162.

46 J. Chadya and P. Mayavo, “‘The Curse of Old Age:’ Elderly Workers on Zimbabwe’s Large-Scale Commercial Farms, with Particular Reference to ‘Foreign’ Farm Labourers up to 2000” Zambezi XIX (i) (2002): 12-26.

47 F. Wilson, “International Migration in Southern Africa” International Migration Review 10(4) (1976): 451-88.

48 A. Hanna, The Story of the Rhodesias & Malawi (London: Faber & Faber, 1960), p. 230.

49 Wilson, “International Migration” p. 461.

50 Clarke, Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia, p. 32.

51 C. Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 63.

52 The author’s own father and his three young brothers all spent time working on the mines before they started families upon their return.

53 Zinyama, “International Migration to and from Zimbabwe.”

54 A. Adepoju, “The Dimension of the Refugee Problem in Africa” African Affairs 81(322) (1982), p 9; D. Knight, Refugees: Africa’s Challenge (London: Christian Aid, 1978).

55 N. Shamuyarira, “Liberation Movements in Southern Africa,” Presented at the Eighth Annual Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture, Dar-es-Salaam, April 1977.

56 Adepoju, “Dimension of the Refugee Problem,” p. 29.

57 Economist Intelligence Unit, Special Report No. 111: Zimbabwe’s First Five Years, Economic Prospects Following Independence (London, EIU, 1981), pp. 15-16.

58 UNHCR, Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (New York: United Nations, 1981).

59 D. Tevera and J. Crush, “The New Brain Drain from Zimbabwe” SAMP Migration Policy Series No 29, Cape Town, 2003, p. 6.

60 For a detailed account of the Gukurahundi massacres, see Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice, Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace/Legal Resources Foundation, Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matebeleland and the Midlands, 1980 to 1998 (Harare: CCJP/LRF, 1997).

WHEN THINGS GO BAD

I’m from Gweru. 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. Often there wasn’t enough for school fees or sometimes even for food. 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. The name “South Africa” was on everybody’s lips.

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 2006, when I was 36. 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. If you didn’t have customers there was no pay. You could go for two to three days before you would get a customer and you would get 10% of the bill for the table you served. 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. I only worked there for about ten days and I couldn’t take it any more so I quit.

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 R2,500 per month and eventually went up to R4,000 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.m. and had to be back at work at 8 a.m. 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 owner was sorry, but he didn’t report this to the police and instead ran it through his insurance. 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. The first lawyer told me to plead guilty to a crime I didn’t commit so I left him and found another lawyer through legal aid.

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.

Chapter Three
Internal Migration in Zimbabwe: The Impact of Livelihood Destruction in Rural and Urban Areas

Deborah Potts

The people of Zimbabwe have probably experienced less than two decades of “normality” in relation to the more usual causes of migratory flows in African countries (excluding drought and war). Prior to 1980, 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. These policies were broadly designed to serve the economic and political interests of the white settlers.1 One effect was to reduce the size of the indigenous urban population below the levels that would have occurred in the absence of such restrictions. In the 1960s, for example, the national population was growing annually at around 4 percent (in part caused by immigration), but the two main towns, Salisbury and Bulawayo, grew at only 2.3 percent and 1.7 percent. The proportion of Africans enumerated in towns in 1969 was only 14 percent. In the subsequent decade, as the war of liberation escalated, these restrictions broke down to a large extent and in-migration to towns increased significantly. Some in-migrants were refugees, not all of whom stayed once the war ended and independence was achieved.2

In the earlier decades of the twentieth century there had been extensive internal population displacement as half the country’s land was alienated by whites, leading sometimes to immediate forced displacement of the indigenous land occupiers or their eventual removal when this suited the white farmers. Very often people were moved to already overcrowded rural areas – the so-called “native reserves” – and to areas far less agro-ecologically suited to arable agriculture.3 Prior to 1980 therefore, the experience of coerced migration away from areas of economic opportunity (as well as ancestral rights) was sadly familiar to many African households, as was the prevention of migration into areas of economic and social opportunity.

The influences on internal migration in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 include some factors which confound the normal expectations of migration theory. These “unusual” factors have come into play mainly since 2000, when the state embarked on a programme of so-called fast-track land reform. This led to the almost immediate expropriation of the majority of the country’s large-scale commercial farms, which were still mainly white-owned.4 This not only caused a few thousand white owners and their families to move off the farms but also led to a much larger movement of agricultural workers whose livelihoods were disrupted or destroyed. Then, in 2005, the government embarked on a massive campaign against informal housing and employment in the towns, again destroying the livelihoods of thousands. This led to massive internal movement within the cities themselves, as dislocated people sought replacement accommodation. It also produced significant short-term out-migration from the towns by people who could find no other urban livelihood or accommodation. An important element of this out-migration was coercion by the government, which wished to displace some of the urban residents to rural areas within Zimbabwe.

INTERNAL MIGRATION IN THE 1980s

After 1980, rural-urban migration in Zimbabwe was no longer restricted and came under the same kinds of influences which have affected most other Sub-Saharan African countries since the 1960s. The most significant cause of escalating migration was the difference in economic opportunities and incomes between the towns and the “communal areas” (CAs), as the former reserves were renamed. The new government’s development programmes mirrored, in many respects, the “modernization” programmes that most newly-independent African countries embarked on in the 1960s. They encouraged urban-based economic development as well as a surge in public sector employment to deliver a range of new services (such as health and education) to the African population. The CAs were not neglected, however. They not only enjoyed major improvements in social services but also a roll-out of government-backed agricultural services to encourage production and marketing of peasant crops.5 This resulted in Zimbabwe’s “agricultural revolution” in the 1980s, as peasant output of marketed maize and cotton, from the more agro-ecologically suited CAs in particular, grew rapidly and soon dominated the domestic market.6

Rates of migration to town increased in the 1980s as many rural people moved to take advantage of higher urban incomes and better social facilities. Land shortage remained a major factor in out-migration from the CAs, as it had through the colonial period, as the government land reform programme’s delivery of land purchased at market prices from the commercial sector slowed, after an initial surge facilitated by the availability of abandoned land in the early years.7 Squatting on such land, and encroaching on under-used commercial land, was one factor in rural-rural migration at that time and continued to be an influence into the 1990s, indicating significant land hunger.8

For the urban areas, independence meant much higher annual population growth rates, similar to those in other independent African countries in their first postcolonial decade. The extraordinary rates of in-migration experienced in, for example, Kenya, Nigeria or Zambia, were not replicated in Zimbabwe, however. The national annual urban growth rate from 1982-1992 was 5 percent (Table 3.1), compared to a national rate of 3.3 percent (which was boosted by immigration, particularly refugees from the war in Mozambique.) Natural increase was around 3 percent. Harare, the capital, grew at 6.2 percent; over half of its growth comprised net in-migration. In Bulawayo, the next largest town, net in-migration probably accounted for about a quarter of the growth. A number of other towns also experienced significant growth although many began from a very small base. Of those with populations of at least 20,000 in 1982, of particular note were Mutare, Masvingo, Marondera, Chinhoyi, Gweru and Chitungwiza.9 Other centres, such as Hwange, Zvishavane and Redcliff, did not attract many in-migrants in net terms, or may have experienced some net out-migration. By 1992, the urbanization level was about 31 percent, compared to 26 percent in 1982.

Table 3.1: Urban Population Growth Rates,1982-2002

* Annual Average Growth Rate

+ Natural Increase

a. No data available but since the averaged growth rate (2.4%) exceeds NI for nearly all of the major urban areas, evidently the urban areas experienced net in-migration when taken together.

b. Includes the population of the mining areas.

Source: Compiled from census data in 2002 national and provincial profile reports, supplemented by T. Brinkhoff, “City Population,” 2007, http://www.citypopulation.de; AAGRs calculated from raw data.

In the rural areas, one element of internal migration was officially-sponsored movement to resettlement areas (RAs), the commercial farms bought by the government for land redistribution. By 1992, their population was about 427,000 but just over half of the national population remained in the CAs. The population of the commercial farms was then more than two and a half times that of the RAs (Table 3.2).

In retrospect, the 1980s were a halcyon period for Zimbabwe, with positive average annual per capita GDP growth, a lessening of both rural and urban poverty, and admirable progress in many social indices.10 The growth of formal, urban-based jobs did not keep pace with urban population growth, as in most of Africa, and an informal sector began to develop, albeit on a limited scale compared to most other African cities. The majority of urban in-migrant heads of household, who had moved to town since 1980, had formal sector jobs. Nonetheless, the insecurities of urban life, with virtually no welfare net for the unemployed, elderly or sick, was one reason that most rural-urban migrants eventually planned to leave town and return to the CAs, perhaps after a lifetime of urban work.11 Social and cultural factors also played an important part in such decisions.

Table 3.2: Provincial Population Distribution by Land-Use Category, 1992 and 2002 (‘000s)

Note: Totals do not add up as growth points, administration centres, “special” and state land categories are excluded as these only account for about 1% of the population in both census years. Urban totals may not add up precisely due to rounding. Reductions in “other urban areas” will be due to redesignation of some as urban councils (thereby increasing the relative growth of urban councils).

Source: Central Statistical Office, Zimbabwe

INTERNAL MIGRATION IN THE 1990S

National factors are not the only structural conditions that influence decisions to migrate. In many ways, Zimbabwe’s efforts to “modernize” according to the tenets of the development models of the 1960s were hampered by global trends in ideology and practice. In the 1980s, the majority of African countries north of Zimbabwe came under the control of the international financial institutions, which were convinced that states should withdraw from their experiments at “modernization” and allow market forces to be the main determinants of economic development. Zimbabwe’s first decade of development practice flew in the face of this ideology and hampered its access to external investment and aid.12 By the 1990s, the government had acceded to international pressure and adopted the structural adjustment policies (SAPs) that much of the rest of the continent had already experienced under the auspices of the World Bank. The outcomes were unfortunately very predictable. Urban and rural poverty increased, social indices declined, massive formal job loss occurred in towns and the informal sector expanded still further.13 The negative impact was felt across the country but it was worst in the urban areas.14 Incorporation into the global ideology of market liberalization thus began to change the relative economic advantages of towns versus rural areas – although both suffered.

Prices rose in towns and incomes fell in real terms in the formal sector, as well as much of the informal sector (with some important exceptions such as the used clothes trade) due to increased competition.15 Prices also rose in rural areas as the cost of agricultural inputs increased. Many households were not food self-sufficient which caused problems for them. Research on perceptions of the impact of SAPs found that urban-based migrants were well aware of the problems faced by rural dwellers, but they also emphasised that the full impact of cost rises was mitigated in rural areas by food production and the avoidance of many urban costs, such as rents for housing, energy and water charges and regular transport fares.16 Most migrants had positive attitudes towards the land reform programme and judged that the beneficiaries had generally gained materially (although they also suggested many ways in which the programme could be improved). Only 18 percent of the respondents felt that they would definitely remain permanently in Harare. This was about half the proportion in a previous survey conducted in 1985. By 2001, only 13 percent definitely planned a permanent stay. Fourteen percent expected to stay at least ten years (i.e. were long-term migrants) and for most of the rest, there was simply a great deal of uncertainty about the prospects of any sort of urban future.17 Overall, perceptions of the security and benefits of urban livelihoods had deteriorated very sharply compared to the 1980s, which was a rational response to national economic trends.

The reduction in the rural-urban income gap in many African countries in the 1980s and 1990s, combined with deterioration in urban services, depressed urban population growth rates as net in-migration fell. Even if rates of rural out-migration were high, this was counterbalanced by a greater propensity of urban in-migrants to opt for shorter term stays, resulting in net in-migration becoming a smaller share of urban population expansion in many towns across the continent.18 Given the economic trends in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, there were good reasons to expect similar shifts there.

The magnitude and nature of internal migration between 1992 and 2002 can be deduced from the 2002 census and other sources. Before embarking on this exercise, however, it is necessary to discuss the nature of the data and some of the controversies which surround the 2002 census. A sharp political divide between the ruling party and the opposition was firmly in place by the time of this census and, given ZANU-PF’s record of political violence and repression by the 2000s, it was inevitable that the opposition would be extremely suspicious of census results which can, as is well known, be manipulated to political advantage. Such advantage normally results from boosting the population in one area over another, since national resources are partly allocated on the basis of population figures.

Zimbabwe’s 2002 census enumerated a population of about 11.6 million, considerably less than many had anticipated given the growth rates experienced in the previous two inter-censal periods, and the rates of natural increase extant in 1992. The intercensal national annual growth rate was 1.1 percent (Table 3.1), a third of that in the previous inter-censal period and very low by comparison with most African countries. There were many allegations that the census had under-enumerated the population for political gain. However, there are a number of counterpoints. First, it is unclear what the government could gain by systematic under-enumeration. Selective under-enumeration of urban areas might yield some gain if the figures were used to drive down resources allocated to them, and certainly many town councils protested the census figures, including Bulawayo. However, this is fairly ubiquitous across Africa, for nearly all urban authorities tend to project their growth from past rates, despite the fact that these have unquestionably fallen.19

Second, under-enumerating the urban population to reduce voter rolls for the disaffected urban population, who have voted against the ruling party in the last two elections, could be an effective tool, but only if there were a direct link between the two. In fact, voter rolls are based on separate registration. There was definite evidence that the government did indeed interfere in this process to boost rural versus urban voter rolls, and to hinder the registration of urban youth, their greatest critics, but this did not rest on the census figures. Indeed, in the end, the opposition used the evidence of the 2002 census – which had recorded higher urban than rural growth – to support its allegations of voter roll rigging.20

A third counter-argument is that Zimbabwe has experienced a sharp and sustained fall in fertility, in common with some other countries to its south.21 By 1999, the total fertility rate was 3.96, compared to 5.4 in 1988, and further reduced slightly to 3.8 by 2005-6.22 At the same time, after a decade of declining mortality, the 1990s saw a rise in mortality, both for adults in the sexually-active age groups because of AIDS, and amongst children due mainly to reversals in the social welfare successes of the 1980s as health budgets were squeezed and household incomes declined. Demographic Health Surveys reported that in the early 1990s, under-five mortality rates were 58 deaths per 1,000 births but this rose to 102 for the five years prior to 1999, falling to 82 in 2005-6. When this situation is combined with the fact that adult mortality rates more than tripled between 1994 and 2005-6, with the rate of increase particularly rapid between 1994 and 1999, it becomes clear that a dramatic fall in natural increase rates in the 1990s was inevitable.23 In fact, the NI (natural increase) rate for 2001-2, the year before the census, was just 1.3 percent, based on a crude birth rate of 30.3 and a crude death rate of 17.2, compared to 2.5 percent for the year prior to the 1992 census (Table 3.3).24 These rates generally accord with what is known about national rates from other studies; they also indicate how steeply fertility fell during the 1980s and how the national population growth of 3.3 percent in that decade must have incorporated significant immigration.25

The final counterpoint to allegations of serious undercounting in the census is that there was significant emigration from Zimbabwe during the 1990s and even more so in the 2000s. Much of the movement across borders has been circular in nature but there has also been true emigration, driven by the country’s economic decline and negative political factors. Zimbabwe has become a country of net out-migration, after decades of attracting immigrants from neighbouring territories.26 The political significance of this emigration has, quite rightly, been publicized by the opposition. Large-scale emigration should logically also lead to an expectation that national population growth would fall, as the census recorded.

Table 3.3: Provincial Population Growth Indices, 1992-2002

a Harare province comprised three separately designated urban areas in 2002, Harare, Chitungwiza and Epworth, which essentially function as an urban conglomeration. The rural population of the province only accounts for about 1% of the population

b Bulawayo province comprises Bulawayo city; the two are synonymous.

c Average annual growth rate.

Source: compiled or calculated from data from the Central Statistical Office, Zimbabwe.

In sum then, the 2002 Census is not so seriously flawed that its results cannot be used for analysis, especially given the fact that it generally indicates relative changes, geographical patterns and general rates in line with broad expectations, given what is known about trends and levels of demographic indices from other surveys and from economic and political trends. In the 1990s, therefore, urban growth rates fell across the country, with a few exceptions (Table 3.1). Harare recorded an inter-censal average growth rate of 1.9 percent per year (about a quarter of the rate in the previous ten years) and Chitungwiza, 1.6 percent. More remarkably, Bulawayo’s annual rate fell to 0.8 percent from 4.1 percent in the 1980s.

The 2002 census reported the crude birth and death rates for all the towns in the year before the census. The resulting NI rates for each town are shown in Table 3.1. The rates only pertain to 2001-2, and are not valid for the entire inter-censal period. Rates would have been higher at the beginning of the period when death rates would have been significantly lower and birth rates slightly higher – thus the inter-censal average would be higher than the 2001-2 figure. On the other hand, the annual average growth rate (AAGR) smooths out the known variation over the whole ten-year period, which would have been on a downward trend, and so the rate for 2001-2 (NI plus net in- or out-migration) would have been lower than the average shown in Table 3.1. These two measures thus have a use as a crude index, comparable across the spectrum of urban areas, of the relationship between total growth and NI at the end of the inter-censal period.

When the NI in 2001-2 exceeded the AAGR for an urban settlement, it is likely that the settlement was experiencing net out-migration towards the end of the 1990s, and certainly by the beginning of the 2000s. This does not mean that the settlement was experiencing no in-migration, a common misunderstanding. There could still have been considerable in-migration but it was counter-balanced by a larger outflow. Where this situation pertained by 2001-2, the cells in Table 3.1 are shaded. The larger the gap between NI and the AAGR, the larger the likely flow of net out-migration. It should be noted that this measure includes emigration and is not confined to internal migration alone. The significance of this is obvious when looking at the national rates. It is known that there was significant emigration from Zimbabwe by 2002, due to the extreme economic stresses being experienced. This is indicated by the fact that NI in 2001-2 exceeded the AAGR (1.3 percent compared to 1.1 percent). The same appears to have been true for Harare, Bulawayo and Chitungwiza (the three largest towns), Gweru, Hwange, Zvishavane, Redcliff, Kariba, Shurugwi and Gwanda.

NI rates in urban areas across Africa are often as high, or higher, than those in rural areas and this was true also of Zimbabwe.27 Taking all urban areas together, the growth rate was 2.4 percent per year, well above anything that can be accounted for by urban NI alone, although birth and death rate data are not available for the aggregated urban system. This means that there must have been net in-migration to the urban system from rural areas over the inter-censal period. However, the data show that this must have been skewed towards the lower end of the urban hierarchy. The proportion of the national population in urban council areas increased by 3.9 percent. Some of the seeming population growth in urban council areas must be due to the re-definition of small urban settlements (where the proportion fell), a factor which often confounds urban growth analysis.

The data suggests that relative to population size, net in-migration was strongest in some of the smaller towns such as KweKwe, Masvingo, Marondera, Chegutu, Bindura and Victoria Falls. In towns with over 100,000 people in 1992, the one that continued, in relative terms, to attract most in-migrants, was Mutare near the Mozambican border. This was probably because of the opportunities created by cross-border trading with Mozambique which became increasingly important as the 1990s wore on. Similar factors in relation to South Africa probably underpin Beitbridge’s strong growth. Furthermore, with the exception of Epworth, virtually all the centres with more than 50,000 in 2002 grew at an average rate which was well under half that experienced from 1982-92. Given the parameters of migration outlined above for the 1990s, this is in line with expectations whereby net rural-urban migration streams have weakened considerably.

Nearly all of the provinces were experiencing net out-migration by the end of the inter-censal period (Table 3.3). Only three had a higher AAGR than NI rate in 2001-2, and in each case the difference was a mere 0.1 percent: Harare province (which essentially comprises the three urban areas of Harare city, Chitungwiza and Epworth) and Mashonaland East and Central provinces. It is possible, therefore, that even these provinces had some net out-migration by the 2000s. This would mean that none of the provinces had net in-migration from internal sources, and that the population of every province was growing at a rate less than NI, due to emigration.

In brief, the larger the gap between NI and the AAGR, the longer the period of out-migration (both internal and external). A large gap probably also indicates that emigration, rather than internal net out-migration, was more important and started earlier. This suggests that the provinces of Manicaland and Bulawayo had the strongest emigration, particularly Manicaland where the AAGR was only 0.2 percent per year, and NI was 1.4 percent in 2001-2 (although the province also saw sharp falls in its commercial farm population). This accords with a wide range of evidence that there was much emigration from Bulawayo to South Africa and Botswana, and cross-border emigration from Manicaland to Mozambique (reversing the usual direction of flows for many decades before). The data also suggest that Matabeleland North experienced rather more out-migration than Matabeleland South, but in this case the relative size of outflows seem to have been roughly the same as in Mashonaland West, Masvingo and Midlands.

Table 3.4: Interprovincial Lifetime Migration, 2002

a Figures differ slightly from census totals as they are for Zimbabwean-born population only.

b Population residing in province but born elsewhere (= lifetime in-migration) minus those born in province but living elsewhere (= lifetime out-migration).

Source: Central Statistical Office, Zimbabwe, “2002 Census,” 2004.

The census also provides information on (a) inter-provincial lifetime migration, based on place of birth, compared to place of enumeration in 2002; and on (b) inter-censal interprovincial migration, based on place of residence in 1992 compared to 2002.28 The two urban provinces of Harare and Bulawayo (which together contain the country’s three largest urban areas, plus Epworth) have experienced significant lifetime net in-migration (Table 3.4). For Harare province the rate was +22 percent, and for Bulawayo +19 percent. For Harare, this suggests that, in relation to the Zimbabwean-born population there in 2002, just over a fifth were accounted for by the difference between people born elsewhere who had moved into Harare province since, and those born in the province who had moved out and were enumerated elsewhere. A different way of measuring this is that the 2002 population exceeded the total ever born in the province by 28 percent (i.e. it was 128 percent of the ever born).

These indices hide the sheer scale of lifetime movement in and out of these two provinces (Table 3.4). In both cases, just under half of the 2002 population was born in the province, with the other half being lifetime in-migrants. However, this has to be balanced against the fact that almost a third of those born there had moved out in both provinces. Some of this would be children born in town who have subsequently gone to live in CAs, a fairly common pattern in Zimbabwe. But it undoubtedly involves a significant amount of out-migration by other age groups. The table indicates that large-scale out-migration has also occurred in all the other provinces, equivalent to roughly a fifth to a quarter of people born, with even larger outflows for Masvingo and Mashonaland East. Inflows of people born in other provinces counterbalanced these movements to quite a large extent. Mashonaland Central and West were net gainers, and the others net losers, with particularly strong outflows from Masvingo province (-19 percent), followed by Manica-land and Matabeleland South.

As would be expected, geographical distance plays a major part in determining the source of these lifetime in-migration flows for all the provinces. Taking the urban provinces as examples, in Harare 14 percent of the 2002 population were born in Mashonaland East, 12 percent in Manicaland, and 12 percent in the other two Mashonaland provinces. Only 1.5 percent came from Bulawayo. For Bulawayo, almost 5 percent had been born in Harare but the strongest inflows were from the two Matabeland provinces which accounted together for 26 percent of its population, followed by Midlands at 8 percent.

Inter-censal flows generally replicate the broad patterns of lifetime migration in terms of provincial net losers and gainers, the geographical sources of migration, and the fact that net migration disguises very large amounts of movement in and out of provinces in the ten years before the census (Table 3.5). The data here, taken together with all the other tabulated data so far discussed, suggest a number of things.

Table 3.5: Inter-Censal, Interprovincial Migration, 2002 Province

a. To compare populations in 1992 and 2002 the census tables exclude those under ten years of age in 2002 as they had not been born in 1992. To retain comparability the matrices used to generate inter-censal flows also exclude the under-tens in 1992. The CSO also excluded from the 2002 population those who reported that their place of enumeration had not been their main place of usual residence during the 12 months before that census.

b. Population resident in 2002 minus the 1992 residents still there in 2002 (= inter-censal in-migration), minus difference between 1992 resident population and the 1992 residents still there in 2002 (= inter-censal out-migration).

Source: Central Statistical Office, Zimbabwe, “2002 Census,” 2004.

First, Harare and Bulawayo provinces gained people from elsewhere from 1992-2000, but it is very likely that the net gain occurred in the earlier parts of this period, to be replaced by net out-migration in the last few years. In other words, in relation to the 1992 census population, roughly two-fifths of Harare’s population (aged over ten years) moved in during the inter-censal period, but most of them must have come early on, while of the quarter who moved out, most probably did so towards the end of the period. This, of course, fits with economic trends, with urban circumstances becoming increasingly difficult and thus attracting fewer in-migrants by the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, and also encouraging a larger outflow of those already there. Of Harare province’s net in-migration (equivalent to about 13 percent of its population in 1992), the largest shares came from Mashonaland East and Manicaland, and the least from the Matabeleland provinces. For Bulawayo, the net internal gain was +6 percent, a balance of about 13,000 people over ten years. However, its average growth rate was so low that this was more than counterbalanced by emigration. Given the size of the Zimbabwean population in South Africa and Botswana (the most likely destinations for emigrants from Bulawayo), it is evident that such a small net internal gain would be swamped by the emigration that has occurred.

Second, most other provinces had relatively small amounts of positive or negative net migration, although in every case there was considerable movement in and out, especially in Mashonaland East and West, where a migration flow approximating a fifth of the numbers there in 2002 had moved in, and a fifth had moved out. Finally, Manicaland and Masvingo provinces had the largest net outflows to places elsewhere in Zimbabwe, as with lifetime migration patterns, but the NI data suggest that for Manicaland in particular this would have been greatly exacerbated by emigration too.

LIVELIHOOD DESTRUCTION AND INTERNAL MIGRATION

Economic decline in the 1990s, and its acceleration after 2000, caused some of the internal migration flows documented above. Thus, the shift to net out-migration from the main towns was caused by the crisis in the formal urban job market and the serious decline in urban incomes. An urban vulnerability assessment in September 2003 found that in the high-density areas where the majority of Zimbabwe’s urban people live, 77 percent of households were poor. This figure included 57 percent deemed to be “very poor,” meaning that they could not afford to buy enough food, much less anything else.29 The proportion below the poverty line had roughly trebled in 12 years.30 The vulnerability assessment also found that 66 percent of urban households were food insecure, compared to 64 percent in rural areas.

As a significant proportion of the urban population had come from rural areas, some still had the possible alternative of a rural livelihood. An increasing proportion of urbanites were planning or anticipating return moves to rural areas in 1994, and an even larger proportion in 2001. Circular migration has remained important in Zimbabwe, and the evidence suggests that during the 1990s, the average length of stay of individual migrants shortened, and the rate of out-migration increased. This in itself is confirmation of a sort of livelihood destruction in both rural and urban areas.

After 2000, two deliberate and disruptive government policies caused further livelihood destruction and related internal migration: the expropriation of commercial farms and Operation Murambatsvina. In 2000, the Zimbabwean government announced a policy of forced expropriation of commercial farms in the country. Historical explanations for this dramatic intervention and the nature of the programme itself have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere.31 The government’s stated intention was to replace the ownership and agricultural systems on most of the expropriated farms with small-scale peasant farms based largely on family labour – called A1 farms – as in the CAs and most of the RAs. The rest, so-called A2 farms, were to be transferred to black African owners, to strengthen black ownership and control of the commercial farming sector.

The impact of fast-track land reform on internal population distribution in Zimbabwe was bound to be large. By July 2003, 6.4 million hectares had been allocated to A1 and A2 farms at a ratio of about 2:1. At that point, the uptake of allocations amongst A1 peasants was reported as 97 percent, and of A2 farms as 66 percent. A further 2.8 million hectares was unallocated. About 1.2 million hectares remained as “large-scale commercial farms,” often white-owned.32

Had there been full uptake of all the expropriated farms, had all the land been actively farmed by its new occupants (whether commercial farmers or peasant smallholders) and had the programme been supported by investment in inputs and infrastructure (as on the previous RAs), there would probably have been a net shift of the country’s population onto these farms once they were all allocated. This would have involved a considerable amount of in- and out-migration based on the assumption that the average household size on the A1 farms would have approximated that on the RAs (around 10 - 11 per household), and that the new commercial farmers would have retained their labour force in order to ensure continued production.33 The existing labour force was skewed towards the farms allocated to A2 owners, as these were more likely to be of higher agro-ecological value and more intensively farmed by their former owners, and thus had larger workforces. The black elite were able to steer the process so that A1 farms were more likely to be less naturally productive and less likely to have irrigation facilities.34