Notes

Published in Monograph No 117, June 2005

A Mixed Reception
Mozambican and Congolese Refugees in South Africa

Jonny Steinberg

For a commentary on the legal status and rights of foreign nationals in South Africa see L Landau, K Ramjathan-Keogh and G Singh, Xenophobia in South Africa and problems related to it, Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Working Paper Series No 13, University of the Witwatersrand, 2005, pp 10-16.
C Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa and the impact of this on repatriation to and re-integration in Mozambique, Final report to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 1997, p 8.
C Dolan, Aliens aboard: Mozambicans in the New South Africa , Indicator South Africa 12(3), 1995, p 29.
For first-hand testimony of refugees who walked through the Kruger National Park, see M de Jongh, Mozambican refugee resettlement: Survival strategies of involuntary migrants in South Africa, Journal of Refugee Studies 7(2/3), 1994, pp 220-238; see also Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa, op cit. For a fictional account of a refugee’s journey through the park see N Gordimer , The ultimate safari, in N Gordimer (ed), Telling tales, Bloomsbury , London , 2004, pp 269-282.
See P Harries, Exclusion, classification and internal colonialism: The emergence of ethnicity among the Tsonga-speakers of South Africa , in L Vail (ed), The creation of tribalism in southern Africa , University of California Press , Berkeley , 1989, pp 49-81.
‘Ethnos’ is usefully defined by Ernest Gellner as “an historically formed aggregate of people who share relatively stable specific features of culture (including language) and psychology, an awareness of their unity and their difference from other groups, and an ethnonym [or proper name] which they have given themselves”. E Gellner , Soviet and Western anthropology , Columbia University Press, New York , 1980, p 155.
Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit, p 47, note 120.
Ibid, p 19.
Ibid, p 24.
Ibid, p 22.
E Ritchken, Leadership and conflict in Bushbuckridge: Struggles to define moral economies within the context of rapidly transforming political economies (1978-1990), PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand , 1995, pp 231-232. For two extraordinary histories of the Pedi, and of the prehistory, history and demise of Lebowa, see P Delius, Theland belongs to us, Heinemann, London, 1984; P Delius, A lion amongst the cattle, James Currey, Oxford, 1996.
T Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”: The integration of Mozambican refugees in rural South Africa , Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Paper Series No 8, University of the Witwatersrand , 2004, p 7.
T Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks: Mozambican refugees in South Africa – an historical overview , Paper presented at the Wits Workshop on Law and Society: “Constituting Democracy”, September 2004, p 6.
Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”, op cit, p 5.
Ibid, p 8.
See, in particular, Ritchken, op cit.
See A Machava, The importance of social networks for sustaining livelihoods; the case of former Mozambican refugees in Bushbuckridge, master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand , 2005, p 12.
C Dolan and V Nkuna, Mozambican refugees – a case study of the effects of withholding legal status on access to employment, Submission to the Labour Market Commission, Task Group on Migrant Labour, 12 October 1995, p 5.
See, for instance, F Golooba-Mutebi and S Tollman , Survival to livelihood strategies for Mozambican refugees in South Africa , Forced Migration 20, 2004, pp 28-29; see also Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit.
Dolan and Nkuna, op cit, p 5.
S Tollman, K Herbst and M Garenne, The Agincourt Demographic and Health Study: Phase 1 , Health Systems Development Unit, Department of Community Health, University of the Witwatersrand , August 1995.
C Mather and F Mathebula, “The farmers prefer us”: Mozambican farmworkers in the Mpumalanga lowveld, in J Crush (ed), Borderline farming: Foreign migrants in South African commercial agriculture, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Series No 16, 2000, pp 14-39.
Mather and Mathebula, op cit, p 22.
Ibid, p 19.
We discuss the process of the granting of permanent residence status to Mozambican refugees later.
Mather and Mathebula, op cit, p 18.
Ibid.
Ibid, p 31.
S Newton-King, The labour market of the Cape Colony, 1807-1828, in S Marks and A Atmore, Economy and society in pre-industrial South Africa, Longman, London, 1980, pp 171-207.
Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit, p 14.
G Rodgers, Structuring the demise of a refugee identity: The UNHCR’s ‘Voluntary Repatriation Progamme’ for Mozambican refugees in South Africa, in C de Wet and R Fox (eds), Transforming settlements in southern Africa, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2001, pagination obscured.
For a study of Mozambicans and other foreigners in Winterveld see M Reitzes and S Bam, Citizenship, immigration, and identity in Winterveld, South Africa, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34(1), 2000, pp 80-100.
Dolan, Aliens aboard, op cit, p 29. The UNHCR pointed out at the time that another 30,000 refugees made their way home independently.
Dolan and Nkuna, Mozambican refugees, p 4.
Rodgers, op cit, pagination obscured.
See in particular G Rodgers, When refugees don’t go home: Post-war Mozambican settlement across the border with South Africa , PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand , 2002; and Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit.
Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa, op cit, p 30.
Mather and Mathebula, op cit.
See, inter alia, Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, pp 13-14.
Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa, op cit, p 39.
N Johnson, The point of no return: Evaluating the amnesty for Mozambican refugees in South Africa, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Brief No 6, 2001, p 3.
See especially Johnson, The point of no return, op cit.
Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 11.
Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”, op cit, p 20.
Khosa and others v Minister of Social Development and others, CCT 12/03.
Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 12.
F Golooba-Mutebi, Witchcraft, trust, and reciprocity among Mozambican refugees and their South African hosts in a lowveld village, Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Working Paper Series No 9, University of the Witwatersrand, June 2004, p 4. Golooba calls the village “Tiko”, a fictitious name.
Golooba-Mutebi, op cit, p 9, note 20.
Ibid, p 4, note 7.
Machava, op cit, p 27.
Ibid, p 42.
Ibid, p 36.
Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 19.
S Lubkemann, The transformation of transnationality among Mozambican migrants in South Africa, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34(1), 2000, pp 58-59.
Rodgers, When refugees don’t go home, op cit, pp 6-7.
Ibid, pp 84-86.
M Weiner, A Bernstein and J Hudson, People on the move: Lessons from international migration policies, Centre for Development and Enterprise, Johannesburg, 1997, p 8. See also P Martin, Guest worker policies: an international survey, in A Bernstein and M Weiner (eds), Migration and refugee policies: An overview, Continuum, London and New York, 1999, pp 45-83.
I am grateful to Antony Altbeker for discussions on this theme.
See, inter alia, S Peberdy and J Crush, Trading places: Cross-border traders and the South African informal sector, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Series No 6, 1998, p 10.
A Bouillon, Francophone African migrants in South Africa: A broad overview, in A Morris and A Bouillon (eds), African immigration to South Africa: Francophone migration of the 1990s, Protea, Pretoria, 2001, p 40.
D Kadima, Motivations for emigration and the character of the economic contribution of Congolese emigrants in South Africa, in Morris and Bouillon, op cit, p 94.
A Simone, African migration and the remaking of inner-city Johannesburg, in Morris and Bouillon, op cit, pp 167-168.
D Kadima and G Kalombo, The motivations for emigration and problems of integration of the Zairian Community in South Africa, unpublished manuscript, 1995.
Kadima, op cit, pp 90-111.
See Bouillon, op cit, for the 1994 version of the wave, and Kadima, op cit, for the 1997 version of the wave.
F Belvedere, E Mogodi and Z Kimmie, National refugee baseline survey: Final report, Community Agency for Social Enquiry, Johannesburg, 2003.
L Landau and K Jacobsen, Forced migrants in the New Johannesburg, Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Working Paper Series No 6, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003, p 1.
I am grateful to Loren Landau for this observation.
Belvedere et al, op cit, pp 40-50.
Oddly, the authors do not provide a gender profile for each national group of refugees. The global gender profile of the entire sample was 83% male, 17% female.
Belvedere et al, op cit, p 54.
Belvedere et al, op cit, p 60.
M Atam, Networks as a survival strategy of new arrivals: A study of Congolese asylum seekers in Johannesburg, MA dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004.
Ibid, p 28.
Ibid, p 27.
Ibid, p 31.
Ibid, p 43.
Ibid, p 49.
O Sichone, Together and apart: African refugees and immigrants in global Cape Town, in D Chidester, P Dexter and W James (eds), What holds us together: Social cohesion in South Africa, HSRC Press, Pretoria, 2003, p 137.
See in particular M Granovetter, The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited, Sociological Theory 1, 1983, pp 201-233.
Atam, op cit, p 48.
G Gotz and A Simone, On belonging and becoming in African cities, in R Tomlinson, R A Beauregard, L Bremner and X Mangcu, Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, pp 129-131.
Gotz and Simone, op cit, p 131.
A Bhamjee and J Klaaren, Legal problems facing refugees in Johannesburg, in L Landau (ed), Forced migrants in the new Johannesburg: Towards a local government response, Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2004, pg 55.
Cited in Landau et al, Xenophobia in South Africa and problems related to it, p 27.
R Pursell, Accessing health services at Johannesburg’s clinics and hospitals, in Landau (ed), op cit, p 97.
Belvedere et al, op cit, p 143.
Ibid, pp 116-117.
Atam, op cit, pp 39-40.
Belvedere et al, op cit, p 94.
K Jacobson and S Bailey, Micro-credit and banking for refugees in Johannesburg, in Landau (ed), op cit, pp 100-101.
B Amisi and R Ballard, In the absence of citizenship: Congolese refugee struggle and organisation in South Africa, School of Development Studies and Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.
Amisi and Ballard, op cit, p 2.
Ibid, p 14.
Ibid, p 11.
See, inter alia, C Rogerson, International migration, immigrant entrepreneurs and South Africa’s small enterprise economy, South African Migration Project, Migration Policy Series No 3, 1997; C Rogerson, “Formidable entrepreneurs”: The role of foreigners in the Gauteng SMME economy, Urban Forum 9(1), 1998, pp 143-153; S Peberdy and J Crush,op cit; S Peberdy and C Rogerson, Transnationalism and Non-South African entrepreneurs in South Africa’s small, medium and micro-enterprise (SMME) economy, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34(1), 2000, pp 20-40; J Crush and D MacDonald, Transnationalism and African migration to South Africa, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Brief No 9, 2002; S Peberdy, Border crossings: Small entrepreneurs and the cross-border trade between South Africa and Mozambique, Journal of Economic and Social Geography 91(4), 2000, pp 361-378; M Reitzes, “There’s space for Africa in the new South Africa(?)”: African migrants and urban governance in Johannesburg, in O Enwezor et al [PLEASE CITE OTHERS AS WELL] (eds), Under siege: Four African cities: Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos, [CORRECT?] Hatje Cantz Publishers, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2002, pp 215-237.
Peberdy and Crush, op cit, p 1.
Peberdy and Rogerson, op cit, p 22.
Rogerson,,op cit.
N Hunter and C Skinner, Foreign street traders working in inner city Durban: Survey results and policy dilemmas, School of Development Studies, University of Natal Durban, Research Report 49, March 2001; N Hunter and C Skinner, Foreigners working on the streets in Durban: Local government policy challenges, Urban Forum 14(4), 2003.
Hunter and Skinner, Foreigners working on the streets in Durban, op cit, pp 9-10.
Ibid, pp 4-5.
Hunter and Skinner, Foreign street traders, op cit, p 14.
Hunter and Skinner, Foreigners working on the streets in Durban, op cit, p 7.
Ibid, p 8.
Ibid, p 6.
Sichone, op cit, p 134.
J Bernstein, Car watch: Clocking informal parking attendants in Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research, Working Paper No 55, University of Cape Town, 2003.
Bernstein, op cit, pp 15-16.
Ibid, p 20.
Sichone, op cit, p 133.

NOTES

Published in Monograph No 117, June 2005

A Mixed Reception Mozambican and Congolese Refugees in South Africa

Jonny Steinberg

C Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa and the impact of this on repatriation to and re-integration in Mozambique, Final report to the Norwegian Refugee Council, 1997, p 8.

C Dolan, Aliens aboard: Mozambicans in the New South Africa , Indicator South Africa 12(3), 1995, p 29.

See P Harries, Exclusion, classification and internal colonialism: The emergence of ethnicity among the Tsonga-speakers of South Africa , in L Vail (ed), The creation of tribalism in southern Africa , University of California Press , Berkeley , 1989, pp 49-81.

Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit, p 47, note 120.

Ibid, p 19.

Ibid, p 24.

Ibid, p 22.

T Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”: The integration of Mozambican refugees in rural South Africa , Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Paper Series No 8, University of the Witwatersrand , 2004, p 7.

T Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks: Mozambican refugees in South Africa – an historical overview , Paper presented at the Wits Workshop on Law and Society: “Constituting Democracy”, September 2004, p 6.

Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”, op cit, p 5.

Ibid, p 8.

See, in particular, Ritchken, op cit.

See A Machava, The importance of social networks for sustaining livelihoods; the case of former Mozambican refugees in Bushbuckridge, master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand , 2005, p 12.

C Dolan and V Nkuna, Mozambican refugees – a case study of the effects of withholding legal status on access to employment, Submission to the Labour Market Commission, Task Group on Migrant Labour, 12 October 1995, p 5.

See, for instance, F Golooba-Mutebi and S Tollman , Survival to livelihood strategies for Mozambican refugees in South Africa , Forced Migration 20, 2004, pp 28-29; see also Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit.

Dolan and Nkuna, op cit, p 5.

S Tollman, K Herbst and M Garenne, The Agincourt Demographic and Health Study: Phase 1 , Health Systems Development Unit, Department of Community Health, University of the Witwatersrand , August 1995.

C Mather and F Mathebula, “The farmers prefer us”: Mozambican farmworkers in the Mpumalanga lowveld, in J Crush (ed), Borderline farming: Foreign migrants in South African commercial agriculture, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Series No 16, 2000, pp 14-39.

Mather and Mathebula, op cit, p 22.

Ibid, p 19.

We discuss the process of the granting of permanent residence status to Mozambican refugees later.

Mather and Mathebula, op cit, p 18.

Ibid.

Ibid, p 31.

S Newton-King, The labour market of the Cape Colony, 1807-1828, in S Marks and A Atmore, Economy and society in pre-industrial South Africa, Longman, London, 1980, pp 171-207.

Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit, p 14.

G Rodgers, Structuring the demise of a refugee identity: The UNHCR’s ‘Voluntary Repatriation Progamme’ for Mozambican refugees in South Africa, in C de Wet and R Fox (eds), Transforming settlements in southern Africa, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2001, pagination obscured.

For a study of Mozambicans and other foreigners in Winterveld see M Reitzes and S Bam, Citizenship, immigration, and identity in Winterveld, South Africa, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34(1), 2000, pp 80-100.

Dolan, Aliens aboard, op cit, p 29. The UNHCR pointed out at the time that another 30,000 refugees made their way home independently.

Dolan and Nkuna, Mozambican refugees, p 4.

Rodgers, op cit, pagination obscured.

See in particular G Rodgers, When refugees don’t go home: Post-war Mozambican settlement across the border with South Africa , PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand , 2002; and Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa , op cit.

Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa, op cit, p 30.

Mather and Mathebula, op cit.

See, inter alia, Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, pp 13-14.

Dolan, The changing status of Mozambicans in South Africa, op cit, p 39.

N Johnson, The point of no return: Evaluating the amnesty for Mozambican refugees in South Africa, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Brief No 6, 2001, p 3.

See especially Johnson, The point of no return, op cit.

Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 11.

Polzer, “We are all South Africans now”, op cit, p 20.

Khosa and others v Minister of Social Development and others, CCT 12/03.

Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 12.

Golooba-Mutebi, op cit, p 9, note 20.

Ibid, p 4, note 7.

Machava, op cit, p 27.

Ibid, p 42.

Ibid, p 36.

Polzer, Adapting to changing legal frameworks, op cit, p 19.

S Lubkemann, The transformation of transnationality among Mozambican migrants in South Africa, Canadian Journal of African Studies 34(1), 2000, pp 58-59.

Rodgers, When refugees don’t go home, op cit, pp 6-7.

Ibid, pp 84-86.

I am grateful to Antony Altbeker for discussions on this theme.

See, inter alia, S Peberdy and J Crush, Trading places: Cross-border traders and the South African informal sector, Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Series No 6, 1998, p 10.

A Bouillon, Francophone African migrants in South Africa: A broad overview, in A Morris and A Bouillon (eds), African immigration to South Africa: Francophone migration of the 1990s, Protea, Pretoria, 2001, p 40.

D Kadima, Motivations for emigration and the character of the economic contribution of Congolese emigrants in South Africa, in Morris and Bouillon, op cit, p 94.

A Simone, African migration and the remaking of inner-city Johannesburg, in Morris and Bouillon, op cit, pp 167-168.

D Kadima and G Kalombo, The motivations for emigration and problems of integration of the Zairian Community in South Africa, unpublished manuscript, 1995.

Kadima, op cit, pp 90-111.

See Bouillon, op cit, for the 1994 version of the wave, and Kadima, op cit, for the 1997 version of the wave.

F Belvedere, E Mogodi and Z Kimmie, National refugee baseline survey: Final report, Community Agency for Social Enquiry, Johannesburg, 2003.

L Landau and K Jacobsen, Forced migrants in the New Johannesburg, Forced Migration Studies Programme, Forced Migration Working Paper Series No 6, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003, p 1.

I am grateful to Loren Landau for this observation.

Belvedere et al, op cit, pp 40-50.

Oddly, the authors do not provide a gender profile for each national group of refugees. The global gender profile of the entire sample was 83% male, 17% female.

Belvedere et al, op cit, p 54.

Belvedere et al, op cit, p 60.

M Atam, Networks as a survival strategy of new arrivals: A study of Congolese asylum seekers in Johannesburg, MA dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004.

Ibid, p 28.

Ibid, p 27.

Ibid, p 31.

Ibid, p 43.

Ibid, p 49.

O Sichone, Together and apart: African refugees and immigrants in global Cape Town, in D Chidester, P Dexter and W James (eds), What holds us together: Social cohesion in South Africa, HSRC Press, Pretoria, 2003, p 137.

See in particular M Granovetter, The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited, Sociological Theory 1, 1983, pp 201-233.

Atam, op cit, p 48.

G Gotz and A Simone, On belonging and becoming in African cities, in R Tomlinson, R A Beauregard, L Bremner and X Mangcu, Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the postapartheid city, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, pp 129-131.

A Mixed Reception
Mozambican and Congolese Refugees in South Africa