Migration, Borders, and Borderlands : Making National Identity in Southern African Communities

Compiling various perspectives from borderlands across the SADC region, Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making National Identity in Southern African Communities, edited by Munyaradzi Mushonga, John Aerni-Flessner, Chitja Twala, and Grey Magaiza, provides a synthesis of the experiences of borderland residents in this economically and socially integrated region. This book reframes debates around nationalism and belonging in southern Africa as it uses the idea of a "borderscape" to argue that nations are made at the border and in the contestations that take place in the borderlands. Understanding borders and bordering in the SADC region is crucial to understanding how policies made in oft-distant national capitals have played out among borderlands residents over time. The contributors present why national citizens in SADC so often end up in countries distant from where they were born and reside, and why leaders need to be cognizant of this. Exploring gender, history, policy, and the ways that people have moved across borders despite a myriad of restrictions stretching from the early twentieth century to the present, this collection centers the voices and experiences of the most marginal to make the plea for a more humane border regime in Southern Africa and globally. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Bibliography Part I: Bordermaking, Smuggling, and Contemporary Resonances Chapter 1: “Putting Gunboats on the Lake”: Frelimo’s Guerrilla War and Malawi’s Border Dispute with Tanzania in the 1960s Colonial Cartography and the Origins of the Dispute over Lake Malawi/Nyasa Making Waves: Frelimo, Mozambican Refugees, and the Battlefront of Lake Nyasa/Malawi The Lake Malawi/Nyasa Showdown between Banda and Nyerere Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 2: Permitless Crossing and Tourism: Constructing Border Regimes in the Drakensberg Mountains, 1950s–Present Mountain Passes, Government Policies, and Smuggling Regimes in the 1950s and 1960s Tourism, Nature Conservation, and the Construction of “Illegality,” 1970s–1990s Contemporary Border Crossing in the Drakensberg Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 3: Posted Passports and Fake Stamps: Documented Mobility, Invisibility, and the Informal Enforcement of South Africa’s Border with Zimbabwe The Promise of Making It across the Border: Illegalization, Invisibility and the Making of South Africa’s Border Enforcement Regime Point-of-Entry Visa Stamps and the Politics of Invisibility A Slap in the Face: Fake Stamps and the Limits of Invisibility Illegalization and Mobility Governance between South Africa and Zimbabwe Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 4: Contested Borderscapes, Border Farms, and Guided Travels in Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Self-Rule, 1960–1970s Methodological Note The Birth of Nyafaru Farm Nyafaru as a Contested Borderscape “Bring Us Two Rams of Sheep”: Mugabe’s and Tekere’s Guided Journey via Nyafaru “Are You Going to University or War?” Nyafaru’s Encounters and Escape Plans Nyafaru Farm Declared a No-Go Area, 1976–1980 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part II: (Im)Mobilities, Transnational Communities, and Settlement Chapter 5: “The River Is a Natural Resource, Not a Border?”: Understanding Tonga Borderland Community Responses to State Border Security Policy in Binga District of Zimbabwe, c. 1957 to 2017 Binga District Geographical Setting and Research Methods The Tonga People’s Historical Attachment to the Zambezi River and Implications for Binga Community Responses to State Border Security Policy The Construction of the Kariba Dam, Displacement, and the Realignment of the Tonga Borderland Community Zambian Independence, the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, and the UDI, 1964–1979 Zimbabwean Independence and Border Life in Binga District, 1980–1999 The Nexus Re-examined: Border Security, Economic Development, and Tonga Social Life in Binga District, 2000–2017 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 6: Crossing a “Fictitious” Border: Angolan Refugees’ Mobility and Settling Dynamics in the Lower-Congo (1950s–1970s) The Multidimensional Character of Mobility: Border-Crossing Dynamics and Refugee Eligibility “Unsettling Refugees”: Mobility as an Asset Throughout the War Crossing a “Fictitious” Border: Mobility, Settlement, and Refugeedom Notes Bibliography Chapter 7: Angolan and Mozambican Border Towns: Interconnecting and Consolidating Southern African Mobilities Methods Migration, Mobilities, Borders, and Urban Settlement Border and Border-Related Towns in Angola and Mozambique Border Control and Blockages to Mobility Encouraged Cross-Border Circulation Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 8: Cross-Border Mobility of Mozambicans to South Africa and the Growth of Informal Trade in the City of Xai-Xai 2005–2022 Brief Notes on the City of Xai-Xai A Brief History of Border Crossing of Mozambicans to South Africa The Emergence and Development of Cross-Border Trade in the Study Area The Categories of Informal Traders in Xai-Xai Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 9: Cultural Capital, Virtual Borderlands, and the Making of the Southern African Communities in Two Zambian Novels Methodology Virtual Borderlands and “Cultural Capital-on-the-Move” in Saidi’s Day of the Baboons and Banda-Aaku’s Patchwork Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part III: Gender and the Politics of (Il)Legal Border Crossing Chapter 10: “You Have to Pay with Your Body”: The Precarity of Subaltern Basotho Migrant Women within the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s Methodology Gendered “Borders and Orders,” Push-Pull Factors, and the (Im)mobility of Women Subaltern Struggles and the Precarity of Subaltern Basotho Migrant Women in the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s “You Have to Pay with Your Body”: Sexual Assault and Rape in the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s Matsepi’s Sexual Harassment and Attempted Rape Mampho’s Gang Rape by Four Paqama Scouts/Touts Conclusion: Strategies to Enhance Human Security and De-Borderization Notes Bibliography Chapter 11: Women Entrepreneurs and Border Jumpers in the Zimbabwe-South Africa Border ESAP and the Feminization of Migration across the Zimbabwe-South Africa Border When Border Jumping Seems to be the Only Way Out Women’s Evasion of Border Control Measures Border Jumping as Business: Women Entrepreneurs in the Border Zone Women and Violence in the Border Zone Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 12: Of Paqama Gates and Paqama Scouts: The Innerworkings of Regulated Illegal and Irregular Border Crossing between Lesotho and South Africa Methodological Considerations Contextualizing Lesotho’s Borders with South Africa and Their Proliferation Borderlands and Cross-Border Historiographies Unpacking the Nomenclature of Paqama Gates and Paqama Scouts Paqama Activities at the Border Gates The Risks Associated with Illegal Crossing through Paqama Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Contributors