Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa. Francis Musoni
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mines, which greatly increased during the 1890s and after the South African war of 1899–1902, the Transvaal Parliament (the Volksraad) did not seek to prohibit the influx of Africans from the Zimbabwean plateau and other areas north of the Limpopo River. Instead, it supported several initiatives that the Transvaal Chamber of Mines41 put in place with the view to meeting the Witwatersrand (Rand) mines’ demands for workers. In this respect, the Kruger administration signed a labor agreement with the Portuguese colonial officials in Mozambique in 1896. Through this agreement, which came to be known as the First Mozambican Convention, the Rand mines received permission to recruit workers from Mozambique’s southern districts, which were believed to be in the same climatic region as the Transvaal.42 In return, the Transvaal officials pledged to help the Portuguese officials in Mozambique by making sure that migrants paid their annual taxes when they were due and returned home at the expiry of their contracts. In that respect, the agreement put in place a framework similar to the Bracero Program, an arrangement that allowed the United States to import temporary workers from Mexico between 1942 and 1964.43
The Transvaal officials also supported the mining companies when they set up the Rand Native Labour Association (RNLA) in 1897 to coordinate their labor mobilization efforts. This organization followed the establishment of the chamber’s Native Labor Department in 1893, which laid the groundwork for a regional labor recruitment strategy. In 1900, the chamber transformed the RNLA and renamed it the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) with the intention of improving the methods of labor recruitment and reducing “indiscriminate competition, touting and traffic in Natives which [had] in the past existed amongst Mining Companies” on the Witwatersrand.44 Over the years, the WNLA would become a major player in the politics of labor and mobility across the Zimbabwe–South Africa border and in Southern Africa more generally.
With the Transvaal government backing the efforts to mobilize regional labor for the Rand mines on one hand and the Southern Rhodesian government supporting the Rhodesia Chamber of Mines’ competing interests on the other, it became difficult for the two territories to come up with a joint strategy of controlling cross-Limpopo mobility. In an attempt to minimize competition over the Mozambican labor, which had become crucial for the success of mining businesses in both territories, the two chambers of mines signed a memorandum of understanding in 1900. In part, the agreement required the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau (RNLB), which acted on behalf of the Rhodesia Chamber of Mines, to withdraw its labor recruiters from Mozambique and employ only Africans from that territory through the help of the WNLA. In return, the Transvaal Chamber of Mines agreed to deliver to their Rhodesian counterparts 12.5 percent of labor recruited in Mozambique and to stop WNLA agents from recruiting in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.45 Unlike the 1896 labor agreement between the Transvaal government and Portuguese officials in Mozambique, this deal did not involve government representatives from either territory. It also did not last long.
In theory, the arrangement that the Transvaal Chamber of Mines signed with its Southern Rhodesia counterpart lasted for just about a year, but in practice it suffered a stillbirth because neither party took it seriously. The RNLB continued to recruit from Mozambique while the WNLA sent its agents to recruit in the southern districts of Southern Rhodesia as well as in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In a further attempt to strike a deal, the Transvaal Chamber of Mines made a proposal for the establishment of a joint agency to recruit labor from north of the Zambezi River and distribute it to mining companies in both territories, but that plan also did not materialize.46 Competition for regional labor supplies prevented government officials and business owners in Southern Rhodesia from working with their counterparts in the Transvaal to come up with a durable agreement that could have helped control people’s movements across the Limpopo River boundary.
In another development that shows the two territories had different perceptions about the border, the Transvaal officials asked their Southern Rhodesian counterparts not to obstruct the mobility of Africans from other territories who passed through the Zimbabwean plateau on their way to South Africa. In making the request, which coincided with debates surrounding the 1902 Natives Pass Ordinance in Southern Rhodesia, the Transvaal authorities did not want their neighbors to require people in transit to obtain traveling passes if they possessed passes from their territories of origin. In line with that position, the Transvaal government backed the Rand mines’ calls for the RNLB to stop recruiting in southern Mozambique. As such, the prime minister’s office released a statement stressing that as long as the Southern Rhodesian administration denied the Transvaal companies the permission to recruit from the Zimbabwe plateau, the Transvaal government would not support the RNLB’s interests in Mozambique. The Transvaal officials further argued that “the introduction of a competing labour agency in the districts south of Latitude 22° was never contemplated, and would be detrimental to the interests of the Transvaal Mines.”47
Despite the competition and antagonism between the two territories, the WNLA made further attempts to find a working arrangement on the issue by asking the Salisbury Municipality for space to build a compound to accommodate migrant workers from Mozambique, who passed by Southern Rhodesia on their way to the Rand. The news about this proposal triggered some negative responses from various sectors of the white settler community in Southern Rhodesia. On August 17, 1907, for example, representatives of the Rhodesia Chamber of Mines, the Individual Workers and Distributors Association, the Rhodesian Landowners and Farmers Association, the Rhodesia Agricultural Union, and the RNLB met with some members of the Legislative Council under the auspices of what came to be known as the Native Labor Conference to chart the way forward. Among other things, the conference resolved to urge the Southern Rhodesian administration to turn down the WNLA’s request “to bring gangs of natives from territories beyond the Zambesi through Rhodesia to the Rand,” arguing that the government should prohibit the WNLA’s recruits from passing through the Zimbabwean plateau.48
In a letter to the editor of the Rhodesia Herald, another resident of Salisbury encouraged the municipality to turn down the request on the ground that Southern Rhodesian mine owners and farmers were concerned that the arrangement would encourage local “natives” to seek employment in South Africa. The concerned resident rhetorically asked, “Has our Rhodesian Administration given any definite assurance as to their intention to restrict by all means in their power the migration of boys from Rhodesian territory to the Rand?”49 As reflected in this individual’s letter, as well as in the Native Labor Conference’s resolutions, access to regional labor supplies was one of the major factors that shaped relations between the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia from the onset of British colonial rule in the latter. Inevitably, this issue significantly influenced the two territories’ border enforcement strategies as well as travelers’ experiences of crossing what once was merely a river in the Venda territory.
When negotiations for the amalgamation of the Transvaal, the Cape Colony, Natal, and the Orange Free State into the Union of South Africa reached an advanced stage—a few years before the BSAC’s permit to run the affairs of Zimbabwe on behalf of Britain was scheduled to expire in 1914—the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council extensively debated the idea of merging the colony into a united South Africa. During those debates, which went on for several months between 1908 and 1909, the labor question emerged as a key point of disagreement. As one legislator pointed out, the people who opposed the idea of joining the Union of South Africa feared that “the native labour of Rhodesia might be induced to go out of this country south, which would mean the ruin of both the mining and the farming industries here.”50 Contrary to this position, supporters of the merge with South Africa argued that the move would actually reduce competition for labor between the two territories and ultimately benefit Southern Rhodesian companies, which had fewer financial resources than their counterparts in the Transvaal. On this issue, Herbert T. Longden, who represented Midlands District, said “a mine in Rhodesia would have the same privileges in regard to recruiting and distributing labour as a mine on the Rand. . . . The danger threatening their labour supply would come, not if they entered the Union, but if they remained outside.”51 Stressing the same point, Western District representative Robert A. Fletcher argued that if Southern Rhodesia joined South Africa, employers “would have every right to go to the Union Parliament and ask for the protection of their native labour, as being a part of South Africa.”52