Silence and Invisibility: Exploring Labour Strategies of Zimbabwean Farmworkers in Musina, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Commercial farms in South Africa have relied on cross-border migrant workers for decades. In this article the author explores how social relations on farms in Musina, Limpopo, South Africa, shape the employment conditions of Zimbabwean farmworkers. Drawing on empirical fieldwork with 134 workers, the author argues that within a context of unequal social power on farms and conditioned by a labour migration regime that has strong informal patterns, workers use silence and invisibility as tactics of self-preservation, and everyday survival. The author locates these actions within the political economy of Musina; and the strong desire amongst farmworkers to ensure access to livelihoods in the face of compounded precarity.

Keywords:

• migrant farmworkers
• mobilisation
• precarity
• resistance
• Musina
• South Africa

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zaheera Jinnah

ZAHEERA JINNAH is a researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She holds a PhD in anthropology and has conducted research on gender, migration, and work. She is currently the recipient of a Volkswagen Stiftung postdoctoral fellowship in the Humanities in Africa (2017–2020), and part of an Investigator Award on Migration and Health in Southern Africa funded by the Wellcome Trust (2016–2018).