Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa. Francis Musoni
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natives themselves.”25 This statement shows how the interests of business owners began driving Southern Rhodesia’s policies toward the local people just as the colonial state was evolving. This outcome is not surprising, given that this colony was founded and administered by a for-profit company. However, such an approach fueled the tension between the state and the local people, whose lives became more difficult following the introduction of this ordinance.
The 1902 law required every male African aged fourteen years and older to obtain a registration certificate containing the details of his name, height, and any visible marks as well as the identities of his ethnic group, chief, headman, and district of residence. Each certificate had a unique identity number assigned to the holder. Although it was considered lawful for such people to move around the districts in which they resided without a permit, the ordinance required them to carry their registration certificates and be prepared to produce them at any given time if asked to do so by state officials.26 The Natives Pass Ordinance also required African chiefs and village heads, the majority of whom had been coopted as salaried civil servants, to ensure that “all male natives of the age of fourteen years and upwards living or being within their tribal districts are properly registered.”27 Furthermore, it became mandatory for male Africans to obtain traveling passes (also known as permits of removal) from pass officers in their districts every time they traveled to other areas. Section 8(1) of the Natives Pass Ordinance says, “Any native desiring to remove from the district in which he shall have been registered to any other district shall before removal obtain a travelling pass in the prescribed form which he shall produce at the proper Pass Office in such last-mentioned district, together with his certificate of registration in order that he may be properly registered in such district.”28
If the purpose of leaving one’s district of habitual residence was to look for employment, the ordinance required that he obtain “a pass to seek work, in the prescribed form which shall be of force for a period not exceeding twenty-one days. Should the Native fail to find work within the period mentioned in his pass he shall proceed to the nearest Pass Office and may obtain an extension for a period not exceeding fourteen days, which shall be noted upon the pass.”29
It was also a requirement that the pass contain the holder’s identity number, as indicated on his registration certificate. As a result, the issuing of identity documents helped with the mobilization of labor and the collection of taxes while taking away African people’s anonymity and the power and freedom that came with it. The 1895 regulations required the registration and identification of only those Africans entering designated towns and labor areas, whereas under the 1902 law, every male “adult” had to obtain a certificate of registration. In a way that speaks to “the creation of tribalism” thesis, which Terence Ranger and others have debated extensively.30 Identity documents also sought to tie different groups of Africans to specific geographical areas in colonial Zimbabwe.
The 1902 law also reflected the BSAC administration’s desire to control the mobility of migrant workers brought into Southern Rhodesia from Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, and Mozambique. Although the migrants benefited from transportation and food handouts provided by the Rhodesia Labor Bureau, which brought them into the colony, many such migrants left their jobs and the colony (often without notice) as soon as they found an opportunity to proceed to South Africa.31 In an attempt to stop “foreign natives” from leaving the colony willy-nilly, section 3(1) of the 1902 ordinance provided for the issuance of registration certificates as well as traveling passes and passes to seek work to “any native entering the Territory from any country in which no provision exists for the granting of passes.” It also stipulated that “on leaving the territory such native shall deliver up to the Pass Officer, who issues him a travelling pass for that purpose, his certificate of registration.”32 Regarding migrants who entered Southern Rhodesia in possession of identity documents or passes from other countries, the ordinance required such documents to be endorsed, without delay, by the magistrate or other official who would then issue traveling passes or passes to seek work to the concerned individuals. In so doing, Southern Rhodesian officials made it clear that they preferred to shut the colony’s southern border to Africans intending to move to the Transvaal while leaving the northern and eastern borders with Northern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa open to let in migrant workers.
In further attempts to tighten the control of Africans’ mobility, the 1902 ordinance made it mandatory for employers to keep passes of their African workers for the duration of the service contract. At the expiry of employment contracts, employers had to endorse the pass by signing it before returning it to its holder. If a discharged worker wanted to look for another job, he had to take his signed-off pass to the nearest pass office and obtain a traveling pass and a pass to seek work. Failure to observe any stipulations of the pass law attracted various amounts of fines and prison terms for African workers and employers alike. In this respect, section 26(1) of the ordinance states that “any native who, while under contract of service to one employer, shall knowingly enter the service of another employer, shall on conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding ten pounds, and in default of payment to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a term not exceeding three months.”33 Pertaining to employers, the ordinance imposed a fine of up to £50 or prison terms not exceeding six months in cases involving a misdemeanor such as knowingly employing an African bound by a contract of service to another employer, withholding a pass or certificate of registration of any person entitled to it, or destroying or tampering with any pass or certificate of service belonging to an African.34
Over the next few years, the Legislative Council amended the ordinance to address some inadequacies that had emerged. For example, through the 1905 Natives Pass Amendment Ordinance, Southern Rhodesia made it a punishable offence for Africans to erase, alter, or destroy a pass.35 A year later the Natives Pass Further Amendment Ordinance (1906) was issued, and a 1909 review of the pass laws revealed that a large section of the white community desired to see a much tighter native pass system. Although several native commissioners urged the government to require employers to closely monitor African workers to avoid desertions that had become a major issue of concern, one went further, arguing that “some system of finger prints must be enforced if it is desired to really possess an effective Pass Law.”36 In calling for such measures, the colonists wanted to ensure better state control of Africans’ mobility within the colony as well as movements from Southern Rhodesia to South Africa. Given that Southern Rhodesian officials were, at the time, considering the use of fingerprints to weed out “undesirable” and “prohibited” immigrants from India, such a recommendation probably resonated with the majority of British settlers in the colony.37
Along with enforcing the pass laws in the colony, the BSAC administration instructed railway staff to refuse tickets to Africans traveling to South Africa without permission to leave the territory. Although this requirement may sound familiar and logical in today’s world, where international transporters are required to check travelers’ identity documents before boarding a plane, bus, train, or ship, such a policy presented several challenges for people who were not used to carrying identity documents all the time. Furthermore, Southern Rhodesian officials established rudimentary checkpoints at places such as Liebig’s Drift and Main Drift along the Limpopo River and occasionally deployed police patrol units that apprehended people trying to cross the border without passes.38 In implementing such measures, colonial officials in Southern Rhodesia sought to assert the state’s position as the “monopoly of the legitimate means of movement” and to impose a new kind of (dis)order based on the strict control of the colonized people’s mobility.39 As was the case at the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the imposition of state-centered instruments of migration control changed the meaning of cross-Limpopo mobility.40 Furthermore, state-based controls of Africans’ movements had the effect of classifying cross-Limpopo mobility into some movements that were legalized and others that were illegalized.
It Takes Two to Tango: The Transvaal’s Open Border Policy
In contrast to their northern neighbors who zealously embraced the colonial border and fervently sought to enforce it, the Transvaal authorities did very little to control cross-Limpopo mobility before the formation of the