![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article examines the transnational operations of the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to mobilise migrant supporters living in South Africa during the 2000s. Drawing together a variety of empirical sources, including extensive original interviews with former MDC party officials and Zimbabwe diaspora civil society organisers, this article explores the challenges of diaspora engagement within contexts of poverty, legal precarity, and political violence in both origin and residence countries. Bringing together emerging research on transnational party mobilisation with the robust literature on distributive politics and clientelism, I show how assistance with asylum became a patronage good, distributed to party members in exchange for participation in party activities and electoral support. Moreover, the plight of Zimbabweans in South Africa illuminates how the line between forced and voluntary migration is both difficult to delineate and has increasingly dire consequences for populations that do not fit precisely within legal determinations of mass refugee movements. Keywords: Diaspora, Political Parties, Refugee Policy, Elections, Africa
Acknowledgements
Prior versions of the project were presented at 2019 African Studies Association conference, the Politics of Migration mini-conference at 2020 SPSA, 2020 APSA, and the Politics of the Refugee/Migrant Binary conference in February 2021. Thank you to the editors and reviewers of this special issue for their incisive recommendations, as well as Lamis Abdelaaty, Fiona Adamson, Roni Amit, Katrina Burgess, Chipo Dendere, Rebecca Hamlin, Michael Kenwick, Kathleen Klaus, Loren Landau, Khangelani Moyo, Derya Ozkul, Susan Stokes, Kudakwashe Vanyoro, Beth Elise Whitaker, and Franzisca Zanker for feedback. Special gratitude to those interviewed for this research for generously sharing their time and insights. Research conducted under Yale University HSC Protocol #1406014245 and approved by the Williams College Institutional Review Board, with support provided by the Social Science Research Council, The MacMillan Centre Dissertation Research Grant for International Fieldwork, the Lindsay Fellowship for Research in Africa, and the Mamdouda S. Bobst Centre for Peace and Justice at Princeton University, and the Stanley Kaplan Program at Williams College.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Délano and Mylonas (Citation2019) for a review.
2 Neither the JEMS special issue ‘Political Remittances and Political Transnationalism’ (Krawatzek and Müller-Funk Citation2020) nor an edited book on political parties abroad (Kernalegenn and Van Haute Citation2020) include a single case study of a political party from, or operating in, sub-Saharan Africa.
3 The Refugees Act 130 or 1998 (Republic of South Africa Citation1998).
4 Author Interview, former MDC-SA organizer, Johannesburg (Zoom), June 16, 2021.
5 Author Interview, former MDC-SA organizer, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
6 I follow Stokes et al. (Citation2013) who identify patronage within their conceptual scheme of distributive politics as a form of clientelism directed at party members, whereby constituents receive the benefit of a policy in exchange for their political support.
7 For additional case studies and considerations, see the recent special issue ‘The Politics of the ‘Refugee/Migrant Binary’ in The Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies (Abdelaaty and Hamlin Citation2022).
8 In the 2011–2013 Afrobarometer survey of 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 16% of respondents reported having been offered a tangible benefit for their vote while 48% of respondents feared being a target of violence during elections; The country with the highest levels of poor voters disproportionally reporting fearing targeted election-related violence was Zimbabwe (Mares and Young Citation2016, 268, 282).
9 A study comparing diaspora voting policies and provisions from violent democracies is a recent exception (Nyblade, Wellman, and Allen Citation2022).
10 As this article attempts to further our understandings of transnational party mobilization within an understudied region, I adhere to Gerring (Citation2012, 741), who cautions that descriptive inference is useful only in cases of ‘novel empirical terrain, or by thoroughly revising our sense of an established terrain.’
11 For an extended political history of South African immigration policy and the roots of xenophobia, see Klotz (Citation2013).
12 As ‘the stronghold of the MDC in its formation [was] in Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South, most of their relatives are here in South Africa’, explained an MDC-SA organizer. Author interview, Johannesburg, March 25, 2015a.
13 The Refugees Act 130 or 1998 (Republic of South Africa Citation1998). Two things permit holders cannot do is vote in South African elections or leave the country, discussed later in the article.
14 For comparative context, the United States received 47,900 asylum applications the same year.
15 Author interview, Johannesburg, June 16, 2021.
16 Note this is the same time as the xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
17 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
18 Author Interview, Johannesburg, March 25, 2015; Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
19 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
20 Author Interview, Johannesburg, April 16, 2015.
21 Research was conducted under Yale University HSC Protocol 1406014245 and approved by the Williams College Institutional Review Board.
22 Author interview, Johannesburg, March 25; 2015.
23 MDC Citation2000, Article 6.10.
24 Diaspora groups have a long history of lobbying residence-country governments for foreign policy changes toward origin countries (e.g., Shain Citation1999; Prasad and Savatic Citation2021); for the opposite scenario of the role of immigrant efforts to gain suffrage, see Wegschaider (Citation2023).
25 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
26 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
27 ‘Alex’ is short for Alexandra, an informal township outside of Johannesburg with 200,000 people, including thousands of Zimbabweans. Alexandra has been the site of numerous xenophobic attacks over the past 20 years (Misago Citation2019).
28 Author Interview, Johannesburg, April 16, 2015.
29 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
30 Author Interview, Johannesburg (Zoom), June 16, 2021.
31 Author Interview, March 25, 2015; Author Interview, April 16, 2015.
32 Author Interview, June 5, 2015.
33 Author Interview, June 5, 2015.
34 Author Interview, MDC South Africa, March 25, 2015.
35 Author Interview, MDC South Africa, March 25, 2015a.
36 Author Interview, June 5, 2015.
37 Author Interview, March 25, 2015a; March 25, 2015b, and June 5, 2015.
38 Author Interview, March 25, 2015a.
39 Author Interview, Johannesburg, June 5, 2015.
40 Author Interview, June 5, 2015.
41 Author Interview, Johannesburg, March 25, 2015.
42 Author Interview, Johannesburg, March 25, 2015; Author Interview, Johannesburg (Zoom), June 16, 2021.
43 In the exodus out of Ukraine in early 2022, the United States and European Commission are also granting ‘temporary protection’ rather than refugee status (Sanchez Citation2022).