Elusive Histories: Mozambican Migrant Laborers in Rhodesia, Ca. 1900-1980

At the heart of Elusive Histories is a long-neglected story of the clandestine journeys of Mozambican migrant laborers and their families to Rhodesia. Drawing from oral histories, court records, archives, newspapers, and popular magazines, the authors chronicle Mozambican migration, work experiences, and settlement in Rhodesia. Thousands of men, women, and children traveled long distances, often on foot, to reach Rhodesia. Starting with a trickle of workers seeking to avoid chibharo, a Mozambican agricultural forced-labor system, the number of migrants peaked in the 1950s. In 1958, the Rhodesian government passed legislation to bar new Mozambican migrants from entering large cities, redirecting them toward agriculture and mining. When Black Rhodesian laborers began to complain about losing jobs to Mozambicans, the restrictions became an outright ban to prevent further migrants from entering the country. Contrary to previous assumptions, Mozambican labor in Rhodesia was not contract labor derived from bilateral negotiations between the Mozambican colonial and Rhodesian governments. In fact, many Mozambicans who came to work and live in Rhodesia arrived as illegal migrants. The book also demystifies the widely held notion that all foreign migrant workers in Rhodesia who spoke Nyanja were Nyasalanders. Because Nyanja is widely spoken at the confluence of Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, many Mozambicans who came to work in Rhodesia were fluent. Despite the national, racial, and cultural differences and the discrimination in job placement, promotion, and housing, Mozambican migrant laborers creatively adapted and made Rhodesia home for the duration of their lives.

Allen F. Isaacman Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including the co-authored (with Barbara Isaacman) Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007, winner of the ASA Book Prize and the AHA Klein Prize in African History. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others.

Joy M. Chadya is an associate professor at the University of Manitoba. Her research interests include African women and gender, the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, the shifting deathscape in Zimbabwe from the inception of colonial rule, the Zimbabwean economic crisis, and the Zimbabwean diaspora since the 1990s.

Barbara S. Isaacman has coauthored numerous books, including Mozambique’s Samora Machel: A Life Cut Short and the award-winning Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007.