Recently, I participated in a powerful policy dialogue organised by SAPES on the plight of Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. Following the decision not to renew Exemption permits for 178 000 Zimbabweans at the end of December 2021, the existential xenophobia heightened in 2008 which others have described as Afrophobia as it is mainly meted at African foreigners in South Africa.  I choose to go further and characterise it as “Zimbophobia” given the surge in xenophobic incidences from 2005 to date. The surge coincides with the mass migration of Zimbabweans as the political, social and economic crises deepened during that period due to a number of factors.

As was pointed out by Moeletsi Mbeki at the same,  SAPES Policy Dialogue, and I largely share the same opinions, the mass migration of Zimbabweans has mostly to do with the inimical policies of the ZANU-PF government since 2000. Beginning with the ill-conceived land reform process (displacing hundreds of thousands of commercial farm workers and their families), the downstream effects of the disruption of commercial agriculture (collapsing a significant portion of manufacturing and service industries, and thousands of jobs lost), and the continuous decline in the economy. Additionally, migration was fuelled by the repeated violent elections, and Operation Murambatsvina (and other continued displacements to date)

Migration in Southern Africa

Previous mass migrations in the region had mainly been caused by war and conflicts. This meant that most of the migrants were refugees fleeing from their home countries to seek refuge in neighbouring countries form political, social and economic challenges caused by conflict. For example, during the Mozambican civil war, it was estimated that 2 million had become refugees (mostly in Malawi). In Zimbabwe a significant number of Mozambiquans worked in farms and mines, but the spirit of “Ubuntu” which exists amongst many Africans allowed the embracing of the migrants and co-existence was the norm. Prejudices could be found in the derogatory names given to the refugees, but these never turned to violence.

The migration for economic reasons of the past decades is the transnational system of labour migration otherwise known as Wenela. Both Zimbabwe and South Africa were the major beneficiaries as the Africa of labour reserves characterised by a combination of great mineral wealth, commercial agriculture and chronic labour shortages. Since then, Zimbabwe has remained a permanent source of cheap proletariat labour for the South African economy depending on the push and pull factors of the migrants.

It is estimated, that over 3 million Zimbabweans are migrants in different countries but mainly in South Africa where estimates indicate that since 2015, over a million Zimbabweans have involuntarily fled to South Africa mainly ‘to look for jobs’, but significant numbers would also fit the description of “refugee” due to the political violence.  According to United Nations data Zimbabweans constitute 24% of all foreign immigrants in South Africa. Zimbabweans are therefore the largest foreign population group in South Africa. Attitudinal studies in the informal sector in Cape Town indicate that Zimbos are also the most disliked nationality amongst surveyed people. So do spare a thought for the millions of Zimbabweans who daily suffer harassment and targeted violence sometimes culminating in open and typical zimbophobic violence and hostility as is currently happening right now. The majority of these, our brothers and our sisters, are at the same time subsidising the South African middle-income economy and households as maids, waiters, and skilled labourers, mostly in insecure and exploitative conditions. It is the reasonable prospects of finding a job that compels the majority of Zimbabwean migrants to risk arriving illegally in South Africa, either through dangerous crossings or hefty bribes.

The characterisation of the Zimbabwean migrants therefore is mainly economic. South Africa has been viewed as the land of opportunities for Zimbabweans who have reeled in the triple burden of extreme poverty, unemployment, and inequalities. The underclass has been left hopeless while wealth transfers into private hands through grand corruption and economic mismanagement, and impunity continues unabated in the once inherited jewel of Africa. The push factors remain largely unaddressed. The major push factors for Zimbabwean diaspora have been bad governance, human rights violations, structural violence and policy disillusionments; since independence these have had serious ripple effects on the economy and ultimately livelihoods.

Migration and South Africa

Viewing the pull factors of economic opportunities in South Africa has meant strained relationships and the erosion of “Ubuntu” to welcome refugees, whether political or economic. This change of attitude in South Africa has been aired from high officials as recently commented by the SA Minister of Home Affairs:

“People keep blaming the immigration services of SA as if when one country creates a crisis, the country closest to it must respond by building the requisite capacity to deal with that crisis. That’s the logic here…There’s also this belief that SA has abundant resources for everybody. That’s nonsense. No country has the capacity to accommodate everyone who has problems in the country they come from. In other words when more and more people come, we must be able to hire more and our resources must expand. That’s not on.”

At the community level in particular, those stricken by the poverty, unemployment and inequalities prevalent in South Africa have viewed the foreign migrants as rivals in the pull factors that have attracted cheap migrant labour to farms, restaurants, mines, informal sector/vending, commercial sex work, middle – upper class homes and industries. The rivalry has been expressed in violent xenophobic attacks which the South African authorities have taken a long time to accept and address.

The South African response has been inept despite the existence of the SADC Protocol on Facilitation of the Movement of Persons (2005). The protocol requires SADC to develop policies aimed at the progressive elimination of obstacles to the free movement of capital and labour, goods and services and of the people of the region generally amongst Member States. The ineptness is founded on the systemic nature of the South African political and economic model. The same relates to the push factors in Zimbabwe. Without addressing those underlying issues, the migrants in South Africa and Zimbabweans in particular, given their numbers, find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

The perfect implementation of existing normative frameworks guaranteeing migrant rights in South Africa is insufficient to protect migrant rights without radical measures to dismantle the primitive accumulation underpinning neoliberal capitalist systems in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The same system is being regionalised all over SADC and the growing internal displacements in countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe to pave way for mega-business projects attest to this worrisome trend.  There are reasons why the progressive COMESA Protocol on the free movement of persons, labour, services, the right of establishment and residence (2001), or the SADC or ECOWAS equivalents, have had limited effect. The reasons lie in the fact that the migrant labour system has had a historical and contemporary contribution to the South African economy as a supply of relatively cheap labour. And behind the human suffering embedded in the migrant labour system are millions of profits for predominantly white owned farms, restaurants, mines and factories. The system is where the problem lies.

The Economics behind Migration

Throughout the history of colonialism, racist capitalist development and the present neo-liberal capitalist orders in Southern Africa, the obligation to support the reproduction of the next generation of workers through decent wages and living conditions, has been predominantly outsourced. Likewise for the majority of migrant workers, capital and government will assume no responsibility for their retirement, social security and health, naturally as they expected to return back across the border as migrants streams continue to circulate. But back across the boarder the burdens of reproduction and social care remain disproportionately implanted on the shoulders of already marginalised women and poor farmers in rural areas where the majority of migrant workers derive from. The scars of labour migratory systems are particularly evident in dry and climate impacted Reserves where entire generations of young people have fled leaving remaining communities without the labour to sustain local economies especially in farming. Of course, the “Reserves” were deliberately created by the colonial system to compel Africans to choose wage labour over traditional farming in un-arable lands in the first place.

What becomes clearer is that as long as the pull and push factors of migration serve the ruling political elite and business at both ends, border controls and management is made porous to facilitate that movement of undocumented labour migrants. South African and Zimbabwe have been by far the major beneficiaries of the transnational system of labour migration since Wenela. Zimbabwe has remained a permanent source of cheap proletariat labour for the South African economy. This is true of the vast majority of Zimbabwean migrants in low skilled wage labour as it is for highly skilled professional workers in South Africa’s industrialised economy. Prior to land reform in 2000, commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe benefitted from the migration of Malawians and Mozambicans in the labour forces of white-owned commercial farms.

The Zimbabwean ruling elite benefits from this migration at 4 levels. Firstly, there is a release from fiscal pressure in creating employment, social security and basic social services as citizens leave to look for opportunities in neighbouring countries or hassle for survival in the informal economy locally. This was cynically put by Security Minister, Didymus Mutasa in 2005, when he said, “We would be better off with six million people, with our own people who supported the liberation struggle”.

Secondly, since the late 1990s as workers began to be disgruntled, thrown out of employment on farms, the progression of the obliteration of the middle class through migration has created difficulties for the workers to organise and challenge the government on the abrogation of its mandate to guarantee basic human rights across the spectrum of different generation of rights.

Thirdly, the diaspora has been deprived of their vote despite the advocacy and engagement to allow them exercise their right to vote. This means that millions of Zimbabweans have been disenfranchised. Lastly, the diaspora remittances have sustained the status quo by subsiding the government where it has fallen short in provision of services. In fact diaspora remittances in Zimbabwe is a major source of forex- coming second in contributions after the Platinum metal group.

Understanding Marx’s framework of ‘primitive accumulation’ provides a useful framework to understand the processes involved in South Africa and Zimbabwe’s neo-liberal capitalist development now corroborated by the liberation movement political parties. The tendencies towards violence, commodification of labour, extreme inequality, and unjust labour relations inherent in the migratory labour system are all consistent with the predatory practices of primitive accumulation that exist in both countries. The majority of immigrant workers in low wage jobs, such as waiters and farm workers, are typically stripped of their rights and denied the means to seek fair compensation or claim access to public goods and services at the same level as their South African compatriots. However, the paradox is that the contribution of these migrant workers into the Zimbabwean economy as remittances, in turn cross-subsidises a criminally austere government responsible for the harshest cutbacks to public health, education and social services in the expectation that households will use their remittances to cover the gap.

Migration and Xenophobia

Without a doubt South Africa does have a xenophobic crisis. Videos are circulating of the organised and worrisomely militarised South Africa for South Africans Campaign conducting door-to-door raids to hunt down foreign immigrants. This self-organised initiative explicitly views itself as a complimentary action to support the South African government’s clampdown on illegal immigrants. Nationalist politicians and other groups have encouraged popular narratives blaming foreign nationals for the increased hardships experienced by poor South Africans. This notwithstanding that the foreign immigrant population constitutes an estimated 2.9 million people or 5% of the 60 million people in South Africa. Shock moments such as the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating impacts on the poor through loss of incomes, coupled with heavy inflationary pressures have contributed to xenophobic violence by heightening tensions in communities and informal sector spaces. This trend is likely to persist so long as people living in poverty remain uninsulated from shock economic events. As pointed out earlier, anti-immigrant policies are now part of the platform for virtually every South African political party, so the scapegoating for policy failure has an expedient target.

The system is the same in both countries The dehumanising insecurity experienced by Zimbabwean migrants constantly at risk of displacement and violent attacks is not unlike the felt experience of their compatriots of the Shangaan tribe in Chilonga in Zimbabwe, currently facing imminent displacement to make way for a lucerne grass project. Neither are they unlike the 800 000 people caught in the middle of military violence triggered by the largest foreign investment Project in Africa to extract gas from Cabo del Gado for export into the South African market and abroad. The primitive accumulation at the heart of capitalist development in the SADC region has the proven capacity to undermine the progressive normative frameworks in place to safeguard the rights of migrant workers whilst finding ways to absolve itself of the harmful impacts on marginalised groups.

A closer look of the narratives shaped by the nationalist politicians, both in Zimbabwe and South Africa shows that the precarious conditions created across both borders emanate from the need to protect and maintain political power. On both ends populism is adopted as policy when political power is under threat and there is voter disgruntlement. When populism is adopted as policy, it births fascism and violence, and both have been experienced in South Africa and Zimbabwe. There iare tangible and intangible pacts between the political and economic elites to create narratives that set up those living in extreme poverty.  When agency has been taken away by marginalising the majority, the only way to misdirect energy and citizenship rights is to set them against each other by counter narratives, thereby creating democratic deficits as the governments get away with misgovernance and unaccountability.

This is why the greater part of the solution to the resolution of the migrant crisis in South Africa lies in collective efforts to challenge both the political and economic systems that have exacerbated xenophobia in general, and Zimbophobia in particular, since 2008.

SADC has a protocol that has not been fully implemented to facilitate the protection of migrants in South Africa. At the national level, South Africa has not done much to legislate against xenophobia. In Zimbabwe, the shrinking civic, political and economic space for the majority has created a governance crisis which SADC has not dealt with despite calls for its intervention to facilitate an inclusive dialogue process to resolve the crisis.

The SADC region is becoming a more and more unequal society. Extreme poverty is becoming a trend and the economic model has drastically been consolidated to serve large businesses that create precarious employment for both locals and migrant workers. Internal displacements of communities for mega-deals are the norm. Resilience mechanisms to climate shocks, pandemics and other disasters are terribly weak, further exacerbating the humanitarian and human rights crisis faced by the many peoples in the region. SADC as a bloc, therefore has duty and a mandate to go beyond putting in place normative frameworks to address migration in the region. The following suggestions are key in coming up with solutions that protect migrants in the region and end xenophobic attacks on fellow citizens in the region.

Dealing with the negative effects of migration

SADC must strengthen cohesion to address the economic model that currently exists. The region has not developed a coherent policy response to migration beyond an agreement to work towards the freer movement of people within SADC once sufficient countries have ratified the SADC Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of people. There are gaps in policy, legislation, and systems for economic migration linked to national and regional development that SADC has to engage member states on.

The regional bloc must take responsibility to engage with the Zimbabwean authorities to end the protracted social, economic and political crisis which has failed to be resolved by elections. The people of Zimbabwe from different quarters have called on SADC to intervene and lead in mediation and a national dialogue to deal with the different standpoints that exist in Zimbabwe if the crisis is to be dealt with. This includes ensuring that the trend of disputed elections is addressed b y ensuring free, fair and democratic elections in Zimbabwe.

At the national levels, both Zimbabwe and South Africa have a duty and responsibility to deal with their governance frameworks that have made it unattainable for their citizens to access opportunities to participate meaningfully in the political and economic spheres. Both governments suffer a crisis of the state in which there is predatory state tendencies that have not fully responded to the triple problems of inequalities, extreme poverty and unemployment. The crisis of the lack of a developmental model that respects human rights fully has been missing in both countries and this has to be addressed by national legislation for people-centred policies that put human rights at the centre of economic development. Populism which serves the ruling elite does not combat the xenophobic attacks. It causes anarchy and an endangered future for the region.