Breaking the chain: How SA's economic system fuels Zim migration

THE chorus is a familiar one, a relentless refrain in South Africa's political and social discourse: “Illegal Zimbabweans” are crossing the Limpopo in droves, “stealing” jobs from South Africans, social services like health and education and transforming the essence of the nation.

- SIYABONGA HADEBE

A 'TEAR' in one of South Africa's porous border fences.

(Supplied)

This narrative, politically potent and emotionally charged, is repeated in taxi ranks, talk radio shows and parliamentary debates.

However, for all its volume, it is dangerously incomplete.

It focuses on the symptom, “the migrant”, while wilfully ignoring the deep-seated historical and economic engine that actively imports this labour.

The truth, far more complex and inconvenient, is that the migration of a significant number of Black Zimbabweans to South Africa is not a random, anarchic influx.

It is, rather, the tail end of a deeply entrenched, paternalistic economic system that packed its bags and moved across the Limpopo River, travelling in tandem with white Zimbabwean capital and social networks.

To understand the present crisis, we must first confront a forgotten, shared past and acknowledge the invisible chain that binds employer and employee across generations and borders.

The story does not start in 2000 with Zimbabwe's land reforms, but in the colonial state of Rhodesia.

Many South Africans remain unaware that their northern neighbour operated a sophisticated system of controlled and bonded labour (“serfdom”).

This system was, for all practical purposes, a mirror image of apartheid South Africa's Masters and Servants Act and related laws.

Southern Rhodesia (from the 1890s to 1980) created a coercive system that functioned as bonded labour.

The 1930 Land Apportionment Act confined the African majority to overcrowded reserves.

Combined with compulsory poll taxes and restrictive pass laws, this engineered a cycle of poverty.

African men were systematically forced into migrant labour for white-owned mines and farms to survive.