Zimbabwe's Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival

Chapter Ten. Zimbabweans on the Farms of Northern South Africa

chapter ten Zimbabweans on the Farms of Northern South Africa Blair rutherford In 2000, SAMP published a path-breaking empirical study of Zimbabwean migrant farmworkers in northern South Africa, a topic that was just starting to receive national and international attention.1 Based on fieldwork, interviews, policy reviews, and a questionnaire administered to former Zimbabwean farmworkers who were living in southern Zimbabwe, the study was the first of its kind on Zimbabwean farmworkers in the northern South African border zone. It provided important insights into their working and living conditions, and the wider institutional arrangements controlling Zimbabwean farm-workers in northern Limpopo Province. With hindsight, the research was carried out on the cusp of significant changes in the dynamics of Zimbabwean migration to South Africa. The year 2000 marked the start of an ongoing political crisis viscerally and visibly affecting the country, resulting in what one civic group has aptly called a “meltdown.”2 The crisis entailed widespread state-supported and perpetrated violence aimed primarily at keeping the ruling ZANU-PF party in power, and a deepening economic crisis resulting in the dissolution of most formal sector jobs and many pre-existing livelihood strategies. A significant result was a sizeable increase in the number of Zimbabweans leaving their country for South Africa, including the border farms in the north.3 CHAPTER TEN ZIMBABWEANS ON THE FARMS OF NORTHERN SOUTH AFRICA 245 This chapter is based on ethnographic research carried out in 2004 and 2005, and a survey administered in 2005 on farms near Musina, the South African border town with Zimbabwe. A comparison with the 2000 SAMP study provides much-needed insight into what has changed, and what has not, in a specific geographic locus of Zimbabwean migration and employment in South Africa. The chapter also examines how changes in migration rates and policies have affected those working on these farms as well as their working and living conditions. The chapter provides temporal depth that is sometimes lost as media outlets and public commentators focus on “signs of a growing migration crisis in the Limpopo province.”4 The geographic location for the study is a 70 kilometre-wide belt north of the Soutpansberg range and south of the Limpopo River and between the Mogalakwena River to the west and the Pafuri to the east. Aside from small pieces of the former Lebowa, Gazankulu and Venda homelands that are found in this area, and the town of Musina, most of this land is comprised of commercial farms, parks, and mines. This semi-arid area (with annual rainfall averaging between 350 and 400 millimetres per year) has a relatively recent history of commercial agriculture, with European commercial farms starting to become more established only in the twentieth century through racialized state support to white farmers.5 Extensive cattle ranching and maize farming were the main farming activities carried out by white farmers in this area until a change towards more neo-liberal agricultural policies, starting in the 1980s, saw an increasing emphasis on export agriculture such as citrus and horticultural farming.6 The growing importance of citrus and horticultural farming led to a growing demand for casual labour, particularly during the harvesting season. Overall, the production processes on these farms require significantly more labour than cattle farming. When the SAMP study was carried out in 1998, many of the seasonal workers came either from Zimbabwe or from the former homeland areas to the south, leading to some conflicts and resentments on the part of the South Africans.7 However, as the study pointed out, Zimbabweans had worked on farms in the area since the middle of the twentieth century at least. Most came from the southern part of the country, close to the border with South Africa: “There is no direct correspondence between national territories, cultural boundaries and regional labour markets, and the Limpopo has always been merely a nuisance for generations of work-seekers in the region [of southern Zimbabwe] who have migrated southwards.”8 ZIMBABWE’S EXODUS: CRISIS, MIGRATION, SURVIVAL 246 In the 1990s, this area of northern South Africa was designated a “special employment zone,” a quasi-legal designation under which the immigration authorities permitted South African farmers to recruit and employ Zimbabwean workers on their farms. But, there have been a number of changes since 2000 in both Zimbabwe and South Africa that have affected Zimbabweans working on these farms. The rising rate of migration, particularly...