‘Totemless Aliens’: The Historical Antecedents of the Anti-Malawian Discourse in Zimbabwe, 1920s–1979

Due to their state of unbelonging, many immigrants across Africa have, in times of turmoil, been stereotyped or constructed as unpatriotic outsiders, with adverse consequences on their welfare in foreign spaces. Such has been the case of migrant descendants (aliens) in Zimbabwe, who were victimised during the country’s agrarian reform and electoral processes in the new millennium. While literature on the discrimination of immigrants in post-2000 Zimbabwe is rich, there is little work on its historical roots. Therefore, using life histories, archival data and secondary literature, this article seeks to provide historical insights into the emergence and evolution of hostility in Zimbabwe towards African immigrants from the north from the 1920s to 1979. It historicises the antecedents of the anti-migrant sentiments, focusing mainly on people of Malawian ancestry in Zimbabwe who, because of various historical configurations and dynamics, became associated with the unpatriotic tag. Central to this characterisation was the immigrants’ alleged collusion with settler ‘domestic’ regimes, capital and power; their hegemonic influence over urban space, trade unionism and proto-nationalism during a period when they demographically dominated the Rhodesian African labour force; and their alleged disruption of local gender dynamics. All this became part of an anti-Malawian discourse that could be drawn upon in independent Zimbabwe to legitimise their economic and political exclusion.