Zimbabwian Farm Workers in Northern South Africa.

This article analyses the precarious livelihoods of Zimbabweans working on commercial farms in northern South Africa. Based on research carried out in 2004 and 2005, we examine how these Zimbabweans seek pathways of survival and, for a few, potential accumulation across space, sectors, and international boundaries. The article analyses how the Zimbabwean farm workers are situated in an ambivalent legal terrain, the neo-liberal restructuring of agriculture and thre articulation of paternalistic rule into a far more authoritarian logic of rule on the farms, all of which have made the border-zone state of exception for them which conditions their livelihoods. The article highlights that although these processes intensify labour exploitation, they also recalibrate the survival strategies of Zimbabweans and generate varied forms of resistance. Zimbabweans working on the farms in northern Limpopo province, South Africa are becoming more visible in public policy debates. They have been the subject of human rights reports and academic studies documenting abuses of commission or omission by state officials, white and black farm employers and farm management staff (Lincoln & Mararike, 2000; SAHRC, 2003:105-106; RI, 2004; HRW, 2006), treatened targets of mass deportations (SABC, 15 October 2001), viewed as potential HIV/AIDS carriers (IOM, 2004), objects of international memoranda of understanding 'Eveleth, 1999a), ands cited as exemples of the violent despotism of the ZANU (PF) regime -SPT, 2004:64ff). While he have learnt much from this growing attention on the possible legal, policy or activist interventions arising out o human rights or development agendas, we highlight here he importance of also paying attention to the precarious transnational terrain of economic survival these Zimbabwean farm workers pursue. We also stress the articular politics that shapes their reception in south Africa. In so doing, we can better situate the proposed interventions into the wider politics of land in the region.