Francis Musoni | University of Kentucky (original) (raw)
Papers by Francis Musoni
African and Asian Studies, 2017
The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settle... more The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settlement by immigrants from Europe, South Africa, India and other regions. Using their position as benefactors of the emerging colony, the British-born settlers deployed various notions of foreignness to marginalize the indigenous populations and other groups. Focusing on thirty-three years of company rule in Zimbabwe, this article examines how Indian immigrants contested the British attempts toforeignizethem in the emerging colony. Rather than presenting Indian migrants as passive victims of discrimination and marginalization, the study emphasizes their creativity and determination to establish their own destiny, against all odds. It also shows that foreignness in colonial Zimbabwe was a key factor in the politics of power, identity formation and nation-state building. In that respect, the article explores the constructed-ness as well as the malleability of foreignness in processes of natio...
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2016
Female Informal Cross Border Traders (FICBT) are key economic actors in Zimbabwe and their activi... more Female Informal Cross Border Traders (FICBT) are key economic actors in Zimbabwe and their activities should be viewed as a continuum of the formal sector. This study focuses on the importance of informal cross border trading in Zimbabwe as well as its impact on the vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. It argues that Zimbabwe should examine HIV and AIDS and informal cross border trading in an attempt to make meaningful and relevant legal and policy interventions for HIV and AIDS mitigation. Informal cross border traders make a major contribution to the growth of the Zimbabwean economy. It is a source of livelihood for many poor people especially women. This research used the qualitative approach in gathering data. Primary data was collected through key informant interviews and survey questionnaires. A literature review of existing data on characteristics and movement of informal cross border traders and HIV and AIDS was also carried out. The findings of the study indicated that FICBT were more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS because of gender inequality, duration of time spend at border posts which are high transmission zones, accommodation and transport challenges and limited access to healthcare facilities. The research recommends that the Government of Zimbabwe should come up with appropriate sexual education and reproductive health programmes, recognise the role of informal cross border traders by designing intervention strategies and provision of adequate health care facilities at border posts.
African Studies Review
:This article examines the historical as well as contemporary significance of South Africa’s 1913... more :This article examines the historical as well as contemporary significance of South Africa’s 1913 ban on the recruitment of migrant workers from areas north of latitude 22 degrees south. This ill-conceived policy not only criminalized the employment of so-called “tropical natives” in South Africa but also triggered contestations, fueling illegal migration from the restricted areas. By 1933, when the ban was lifted, illegal migration from Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) had become a major site of contestations among policymakers, labor agents, business owners, and migrant workers in South Africa. While the dominant narrative in Southern Africa holds that illegal migration only became an issue of concern after the end of apartheid rule, this phenomenon has a much longer history in the subregion. Identifying factors that push people to move from one country to another and those that force or encourage travelers to cross international boundaries without following official channels facilitates the understanding of the complexities involved in cases of illegal migration wherever this practice exists. While low wages and other sources of insecurity in colonial Zimbabwe may indeed have compelled many people to consider moving to South Africa, such factors did not cause migrants to use unofficial channels in crossing the border. Rather, South Africa’s ban imposed numerous barriers, rendering it difficult for those seeking work to cross between the two countries through legal and/or formal channels.
The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settle... more The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settlement by immigrants from Europe, South Africa, India and other regions. Using their position as benefactors of the emerging colony, the British-born settlers used various notions of foreignness to marginalize the indigenous populations and other groups. Focusing on thirty-three years of company rule in Zimbabwe, this article examines how Indian immigrants contested the British attempts to foreignize them in the emerging colony. Rather than presenting Indian migrants as passive victims of discrimination and marginalization, the study emphasizes their creativity and determination to establish their own destiny, against all odds. It also shows that foreignness in colonial Zimbabwe was a key factor in the politics of power, identity formation and nation-state building. In that respect, the article explores the constructed-ness as well as the malleability of foreignness in processes of nation-state formation in Africa.
This article examines the significance and contestations surrounding some small huts, which are f... more This article examines the significance and contestations surrounding some small huts, which are found at the margins of many homesteads in Beitbridge district on the Zimbabwean border with South Africa. Locally referred to as zvimba zvemipfuko, the huts are part of a socio-cultural phenomenon called chimwanakadzi, which also involves the pledging of young girls to appease avenging spirits of migrants killed in Beitbridge as they travelled between Zimbabwe and South Africa. The study argues that chimwanakadzi is not only intended to treat people haunted by avenging spirits, but it is also an attempt to combat on-going violence and build cohesive communities in the border district. However, this phenomenon faces opposition from Christians who castigate it as sinful, and human rights activists who view it as an abuse of young girls and a denigration of women’s dignity.
African Studies Review, 2014
This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitant... more This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitants of Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe and Ndebele speakers who settled in the area after being forcibly removed from various parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between the 1920s and 1950s. It shows how competition for productive farmlands, which became visible beginning in the 1940s, produced and sustained the Ndebele-Shona hostility in Buhera. While other scholars view this hostility primarily from an ethnic perspective, this article argues that ethnicity was just one of many factors that shaped relations between these people.
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2010
Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infr... more Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infrastructure on 19 May 2005, some street vendors whose market stalls had been destroyed were back at their trading sites. Four years after this clean up exercise, code-named Operation Murambatsvina, tens of thousands of informal traders could be seen on the pavements of Harare and other Zimbabwean cities. While debates about murambatsvina have focused on why this blitz occurred and how it affected livelihoods depending on the informal economy, little is known about the vendors who revived their activities in the post-murambatsvina period. This case study of Makomva Business Centre in Harare's Glen View Township attempts to understand how the ‘survivors’ of this blitz responded and explains why they responded in the manner in which they did. The study found out that rather than resorting to organised forms of resistance, the murambatsvina victims realised their limited capacity to confront the armed police and a government determined to use brute force. Instead, street vendors devised more subtle forms of resistance. Contrary to the argument that by not mobilising confrontational resistance against the destruction of their houses, businesses and jobs, Zimbabwean informal traders were apolitical, this study argues that street vendors demonstrated a high level of sophistication and political maturity by opting for adaptive resistance. Indeed, rather than viewing road-side traders as passive victims of state-sponsored violence, this article perceives them as critical political thinkers whose interactions with the state are guided by a nuanced understanding of the broader politics of the day.
African and Asian Studies, 2017
The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settle... more The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settlement by immigrants from Europe, South Africa, India and other regions. Using their position as benefactors of the emerging colony, the British-born settlers deployed various notions of foreignness to marginalize the indigenous populations and other groups. Focusing on thirty-three years of company rule in Zimbabwe, this article examines how Indian immigrants contested the British attempts toforeignizethem in the emerging colony. Rather than presenting Indian migrants as passive victims of discrimination and marginalization, the study emphasizes their creativity and determination to establish their own destiny, against all odds. It also shows that foreignness in colonial Zimbabwe was a key factor in the politics of power, identity formation and nation-state building. In that respect, the article explores the constructed-ness as well as the malleability of foreignness in processes of natio...
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2016
Female Informal Cross Border Traders (FICBT) are key economic actors in Zimbabwe and their activi... more Female Informal Cross Border Traders (FICBT) are key economic actors in Zimbabwe and their activities should be viewed as a continuum of the formal sector. This study focuses on the importance of informal cross border trading in Zimbabwe as well as its impact on the vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. It argues that Zimbabwe should examine HIV and AIDS and informal cross border trading in an attempt to make meaningful and relevant legal and policy interventions for HIV and AIDS mitigation. Informal cross border traders make a major contribution to the growth of the Zimbabwean economy. It is a source of livelihood for many poor people especially women. This research used the qualitative approach in gathering data. Primary data was collected through key informant interviews and survey questionnaires. A literature review of existing data on characteristics and movement of informal cross border traders and HIV and AIDS was also carried out. The findings of the study indicated that FICBT were more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS because of gender inequality, duration of time spend at border posts which are high transmission zones, accommodation and transport challenges and limited access to healthcare facilities. The research recommends that the Government of Zimbabwe should come up with appropriate sexual education and reproductive health programmes, recognise the role of informal cross border traders by designing intervention strategies and provision of adequate health care facilities at border posts.
African Studies Review
:This article examines the historical as well as contemporary significance of South Africa’s 1913... more :This article examines the historical as well as contemporary significance of South Africa’s 1913 ban on the recruitment of migrant workers from areas north of latitude 22 degrees south. This ill-conceived policy not only criminalized the employment of so-called “tropical natives” in South Africa but also triggered contestations, fueling illegal migration from the restricted areas. By 1933, when the ban was lifted, illegal migration from Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) had become a major site of contestations among policymakers, labor agents, business owners, and migrant workers in South Africa. While the dominant narrative in Southern Africa holds that illegal migration only became an issue of concern after the end of apartheid rule, this phenomenon has a much longer history in the subregion. Identifying factors that push people to move from one country to another and those that force or encourage travelers to cross international boundaries without following official channels facilitates the understanding of the complexities involved in cases of illegal migration wherever this practice exists. While low wages and other sources of insecurity in colonial Zimbabwe may indeed have compelled many people to consider moving to South Africa, such factors did not cause migrants to use unofficial channels in crossing the border. Rather, South Africa’s ban imposed numerous barriers, rendering it difficult for those seeking work to cross between the two countries through legal and/or formal channels.
The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settle... more The British South Africa Company’s conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s opened the country to settlement by immigrants from Europe, South Africa, India and other regions. Using their position as benefactors of the emerging colony, the British-born settlers used various notions of foreignness to marginalize the indigenous populations and other groups. Focusing on thirty-three years of company rule in Zimbabwe, this article examines how Indian immigrants contested the British attempts to foreignize them in the emerging colony. Rather than presenting Indian migrants as passive victims of discrimination and marginalization, the study emphasizes their creativity and determination to establish their own destiny, against all odds. It also shows that foreignness in colonial Zimbabwe was a key factor in the politics of power, identity formation and nation-state building. In that respect, the article explores the constructed-ness as well as the malleability of foreignness in processes of nation-state formation in Africa.
This article examines the significance and contestations surrounding some small huts, which are f... more This article examines the significance and contestations surrounding some small huts, which are found at the margins of many homesteads in Beitbridge district on the Zimbabwean border with South Africa. Locally referred to as zvimba zvemipfuko, the huts are part of a socio-cultural phenomenon called chimwanakadzi, which also involves the pledging of young girls to appease avenging spirits of migrants killed in Beitbridge as they travelled between Zimbabwe and South Africa. The study argues that chimwanakadzi is not only intended to treat people haunted by avenging spirits, but it is also an attempt to combat on-going violence and build cohesive communities in the border district. However, this phenomenon faces opposition from Christians who castigate it as sinful, and human rights activists who view it as an abuse of young girls and a denigration of women’s dignity.
African Studies Review, 2014
This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitant... more This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitants of Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe and Ndebele speakers who settled in the area after being forcibly removed from various parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between the 1920s and 1950s. It shows how competition for productive farmlands, which became visible beginning in the 1940s, produced and sustained the Ndebele-Shona hostility in Buhera. While other scholars view this hostility primarily from an ethnic perspective, this article argues that ethnicity was just one of many factors that shaped relations between these people.
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2010
Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infr... more Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infrastructure on 19 May 2005, some street vendors whose market stalls had been destroyed were back at their trading sites. Four years after this clean up exercise, code-named Operation Murambatsvina, tens of thousands of informal traders could be seen on the pavements of Harare and other Zimbabwean cities. While debates about murambatsvina have focused on why this blitz occurred and how it affected livelihoods depending on the informal economy, little is known about the vendors who revived their activities in the post-murambatsvina period. This case study of Makomva Business Centre in Harare's Glen View Township attempts to understand how the ‘survivors’ of this blitz responded and explains why they responded in the manner in which they did. The study found out that rather than resorting to organised forms of resistance, the murambatsvina victims realised their limited capacity to confront the armed police and a government determined to use brute force. Instead, street vendors devised more subtle forms of resistance. Contrary to the argument that by not mobilising confrontational resistance against the destruction of their houses, businesses and jobs, Zimbabwean informal traders were apolitical, this study argues that street vendors demonstrated a high level of sophistication and political maturity by opting for adaptive resistance. Indeed, rather than viewing road-side traders as passive victims of state-sponsored violence, this article perceives them as critical political thinkers whose interactions with the state are guided by a nuanced understanding of the broader politics of the day.