Elusive Histories

A profound, sensitive examination of an overlooked corner of southern African history, Elusive Histories comprehensively redraws spatial and conceptual boundaries of southern African labor migration. Mozambican migrants’ multifaceted lives shine through obstacles of colonial racism, dangers of the bush, oppressive working conditions, and xenophobia endured in colonial Rhodesia. Once again, these authors light the way forward in African social history.

~Teresa Barnes, author of Uprooting University Apartheid in South Africa: From Liberalism to Decolonization

In this fascinating untold story of African agency, migrants from colonial Mozambique crossed the Zimbabwe border clandestinely, exchanging the harsh forced labor regime in Mozambique for low-wage jobs on the farms and in the mines of Zimbabwe. Based on colonial-era written records and new oral accounts, Elusive Histories sheds light on the motives and actions of historical actors who have often been cast as victims.

~Elizabeth Schmidt, author of Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939

The story of Mozambican migrant workers in Rhodesia has seldom been told, despite the significant shared national boundary and mutual histories, marked by kin and ethnic connections and ongoing border crossings. The accounts told here rectify that gap by discussing the hardships of migration, menial labor, harsh living conditions, and racism, while relating how those workers built new lives, families, and communities.

~Kathleen Sheldon, author of Pounders of Grain: A History of Women, Work, and Politics in Mozambique