Historicizing the Modes of Being of Zimbabwean Immigrants in South Africa since the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WENELA)

Abstract

This study interrogates the historically constituted modes of being of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, tracing their trajectories from the WENELA (Witwatersrand Native Labour Association) era to the present. It foregrounds the paradox of migrants as indispensable to South Africa’s economy yet rendered disposable through xenophobic violence, precarious legal status, and social exclusion. At the same time, it examines migrants’ lived experiences as a struggle for recognition in the face of systemic marginalization. It argues that the fate of Zimbabwean migrants is not merely a socioeconomic question but a philosophical one, revealing the tension between freedom and constraint, visibility and erasure, survival and dignity. Ultimately, the paper calls for a rethinking of migration policies and discourses that acknowledges migrants not as transient labor units but as human beings engaged in a dialectic of becoming in Southern Africa’s contested social landscape.