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On May 8, 1913, South Africa’s Native Affairs Minister announced a ban on the recruitment of migrant workers from areas north of latitude 22 degrees south. This development not only marked a major shift from previous practice whereby South African businesses—especially the Transvaal mine owners and farmers—imported workers with very little involvement of the government. It also meant that employers were prohibited from recruiting in places from which they had previously obtained large numbers of workers, such as the British colonies of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi), and the northern part of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Why did the South African government decide to prohibit so-called “tropical natives” from entering the country at this juncture? How did government officials enforce the ban? How did employers, who had enjoyed several years of unrestricted access to migrant workers, respond to the ban? How did those from the restricted territories seeking employment respond to the new dispensation? As part of a broader discussion of criminality and punishment in Africa, this article attempts to answer these questions, while shedding light on related contemporary iteration of similar themes, via an examination of the impact of the 1913 ban on illegal migration across the Zimbabwe-South Africa border.
Drawing on research at the British Library (London), the National Archives of South Africa (Pretoria), and the National Archives of Zimbabwe (Harare), this article reveals that by 1933—when the South African government lifted the ban—the country had witnessed increased illegal migration from Southern Rhodesia compared to numbers previous to the ban. Although the search for better-paying jobs along with other factors might have compelled people to move from Southern Rhodesia to South Africa, it is most likely that the upsurge of illegal migration between the two countries in this period was largely a result of multi-sited contestations over the enforcement of the ban. By attempting to stop regular migration streams that had existed at least since the late nineteenth century throughout the subregion (e.g., Harries 1994), the ban inadvertently encouraged the expansion of unofficial channels of cross-border mobility and the creation of new illicit movements. Furthermore, inconsistencies and contradictions among government officials militated against smooth enforcement of the ban, while work-seeking migrants from Southern Rhodesia and other restricted areas deployed various strategies...