Selecting Immigrants

Selecting Immigrants
National Identity and South Africa’s Immigration Policies
1910-2008

Sally Peberdy
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
South Africa
http://witspress.wits.ac.za

First published 2009

Text © Sally Peberdy, 2009

This publication was supported by the University Research Committee,

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

ISBN 978-1-86814-484-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express
permission, in writing, of both the copyright holder and the publishers.

Cover design and layout by Hybrid, karen@hybridcreative.co.za

Printed and bound by Creda Communications, Cape Town
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Preface ix

Introduction: Establishing the Territory 1

Immigration, Nations and National Identity 11

‘A White Man’s Land’:

Indian Immigration and the 1913 Immigrants Regulation Act 31

Not White Like Us:

Preserving the ‘Original Stocks’ and the Exclusion of Jewish Immigrants 57

Building an Unhyphenated Nation:

British Immigration and Afrikaner Nationalism 85

One (White) Nation, One Fatherland:

Republicanism, Assisted Immigration and the Metaphysical Body 109

Democratic South Africa:

Inclusive Identities and Exclusive Immigration Policies 137

Conclusion:
Nationalisms, National Identities and South Africa’s Immigration Policies 171

Notes to Chapters 183

Appendix 1: Total, immigration and emigration,

and net gain/loss in migration, by sex, 1924–2004 257

Appendix 2: Immigration by country of previous permanent residence,

birth and citizenship, 1924–2004 260

Bibliography 291

Index 320
 AcknowledgEments

This book emerges from my doctoral dissertation. I owe an enormous debt of

gratitude to my supervisor, Jonathan Crush, for his guidance and intellectual
prompting, which he continued to provide long after I had completed my thesis.
His critical interventions and questions encouraged me to think and write. He
also helped me to find funding to finance my research and extended stay in
South Africa.
The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan provided financial
support throughout my PhD studies. Queen’s University (Canada) provided
further assistance through University Graduate Awards, a Dean’s Doctoral Travel
Award and the Department of Geography. The Southern African Migration
Project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, provided
financial assistance through a Research Fellowship.
The Departments of Geography at Queen’s University and the University of the
Witwatersrand provided me with intellectual support. The latter kindly hosted my
stay in South Africa while I researched and wrote my dissertation. Particular thanks
are owed to Chris Rogerson and Charlie Mather at Wits for their encouragement.
Thanks also to my colleagues in the Department of Geography and Environmental
Studies of the University of the Western Cape for their welcome accommodation
as I joined the department while completing this book.
I would also like to thank those who helped in the production of the original
dissertation and the book. Isayvani Naicker deserves more than my gratitude for
helping me produce the tables in the appendices and acting as an e-mail translator.
Jean-Pierre Marais, Marcia Marais and Adrian Nieuwenhoudt provided collective
help with the translation of documents from Afrikaans to English. Extra thanks to
Pierre for co-driving. Louis Awanyo in Canada provided support and prodded my
mind as a colleague and friend when I was in Canada, and is owed special thanks
for helping me to print and bind the final product. Peter Alexander provided
invaluable advice, comments and suggestions for the translation of the dissertation
into the book. Alex Potter has been a patient editor.
The archivists and librarians at the National Archives in Pretoria, the
Historical Papers Collection and the Government Documents sections at the

vi
William Cullen Library of the University of the Witwatersrand provided extensive
help. Mr F.G. Brownell of the National Archives talked of his experiences
with the Department of Immigration and lent me his personal papers. At the
Department of Home Affairs, Mr Tredoux agreed to be interviewed, and various
other officials of the department in subsequent years have provided insight into
the workings of the department, and immigration policy and its practice.
Time spent working with the Southern African Migration Project gave
me the opportunity to work with people who helped me think harder about
contemporary South African immigration and migration policy, in particular
Eugene Campbell, Jonathan Crush, Thuso Green, Kate Lefko-Everett,
Ntombikayise Msibi, John Oucho, In ^es Raimundo, Dan Tevera, Maxton Tsoka
and Vincent Williams. Members of the South African NGO and migrant and
refugee communities in South Africa have also provided help in understanding
post-1994 immigration policy and its practice.
Writing involves the body as well as the mind. Between completing my
dissertation and starting this book I was involved in a car accident. I would like
to thank Dr Zorio, Dr Khourie and Dr Yao Mfodwu for the work they did in
putting my head back together again. Thanks also to Gareth Smithdorf in the
Department of Biokinetics at the University of the Western Cape who encouraged
me to work out and start cycling again as I completed this manuscript.
Writing a dissertation and converting it to a book requires more than academic
and practical support. To my friends in South Africa and Canada, thank you for
providing me with motivation, kind words and laughter and your belief in me,
as well as putting up with my emotional lows, the seemingly interminable thesis,
and then the book. In Johannesburg, special thanks are owed to Ethel Williams
and Guy Oliver for calming evenings on their stoep; Rehad and Ravi Desai
and Anita Khanna for your questions and for allowing me escape to football;
Dominique Mabaso, Bernadette Leon and Isayvani Naicker for the listening and
the wine; Nicole Johnston for your wit; Peter Alexander and Caroline O’Reilly
for your friendship and encouragement; and Mpho Kettledas for your perception,
confidence in me and for enduring the heady times, ke a leboha.
In Cape Town, thanks are owed to Zivia Desai-Kuiper, Rhona Holmes and
Jenny Parsley for helping with the transition from Johannesburg to Muizenberg

vii
and providing lighter times as I completed the book. In Canada, thanks to
Christine Faveri, who was present in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Johannes Barthes, Jeremy Shute and Kevin Telmer, thanks for the canoeing,
music and laughter.
Finally I would like to thank my family. Richard and Bridget and Joanna and
your families, it was always good to know you were out there; Philip, Aurora,
William, Isolde, David and Grace, sorry to have missed so much. To my parents,
John and Monica Peberdy, I cannot thank you enough for your belief in me, and
your support and encouragement. In many ways, this book resides with you, as it
emerges out of the ways you taught us to look around us and to question what we
see and the opportunities that you gave us to live in different places. Thank you.

viii
 Preface

The origins of this book are located in my personal history and experiences as a
migrant, as well as what I saw happening around me as I arrived in South Africa
in late 1994 to start research for my doctorate. I am a person without a strong
sense of national identity. I carry a British passport, and speak British English, but
I was not born in Britain and have spent less than half my life there. I was born in
a then-British colony, Kenya, to a father who was born in Britain, but raised and
educated in three other British colonies, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad, and who
has only lived in Britain during his university education and in retirement. My
mother is British, but her father grew up in Ireland, and she left Britain in 1954
to marry my father, and did not return for forty years.
I have spent the majority of my life living as a foreigner in countries where
I hold no rights of citizenship. Until I was given permanent residence in South
Africa in 2007, I have been classified as a migrant (not an immigrant) and my
activities circumscribed by the kind of visa I have held. Applying for visas has
allowed me to enter into the processes of inclusion and exclusion practised by the
modern nation state. It has also made me aware of the privilege of my position as
a white, middle-class woman with a British passport.
Involving myself in these processes, I have constantly been made aware of the
vulnerability of immigrants and migrants to state practices of inclusion and exclusion
and the power of immigration policy and officials. For me, there are two frustrating
and humiliating aspects to the migration process. The first is my lack of power. I feel
that I should have the right to live anywhere I want to in this world - perhaps invoked
by my own lack of national identity. I also know that I mean no ill to any place I
choose to live. But whatever my reasons, dreams or desires, the ultimate decision is not
mine. That power lies with the official state apparatus of my intended destination.
The second humiliating aspect is the obsession with my physical body
and health. Applying for visas can involve having to undergo minute physical
examinations. Less overt attention is paid to my political and criminal health, but
police reports are usually required.
My personal experiences of the processes of application, adjudication and
exclusion of various immigration regimes, as well as hours spent in queues at

ix
airports and border posts watching who takes longest to pass through immigration
controls, has raised fundamental questions for me about how and why nation states
decide whom they will allow in and whom they see as undesirable. Every time I
apply for a visa or a permit, the probing and invasive questions remind me of the
overt and hidden classifications of the immigrant selection process and the racial,
religious and national prejudices that inform the requirements used to determine
whom to include and whom to exclude.
My decision to explore these questions in the South African context was
prompted by a wave of xenophobic attacks and rhetoric directed at black African
migrants and immigrants that started shortly after my arrival in Johannesburg in
late 1994. I found it difficult to marry the dissonance in the rhetoric surrounding
the ‘new’, democratic, ‘rainbow nation’ of South Africa celebrating its unity in
diversity with xenophobic attacks and the rhetoric surrounding immigration, and
particularly African migrants and immigrants. But there was no comprehensive
analysis of the history of South African immigration policies or patterns of
immigration that could help answer my questions about the present. So I headed
to the archives.
The book that has emerged from innumerable journeys to Pretoria to peruse
the contents of the boxes of the archives does not directly answer many of the
questions around the disturbing continued prevalence of xenophobia in South
Africa. Yet, the ways that nation states construct their national identity identifies
who belongs and who does not. Citizenship lays out the expectations and rights,
entitlements and obligations of citizens, and at the same time identifies whom can
be seen to threaten those expectations. Immigration policy sets the boundaries for
belonging and exclusion. So, I hope that in some ways the book starts to lay out
some of the questions that need to be asked about nationalism, the construction of
national identity, and the setting of boundaries of exclusion and inclusion by the
state, and their relationship to immigration policy and its practice.
As I was completing the manuscript for this book in May 2008, a wave of
vicious xenophobic attacks occurred, leading to the death of over 65 people, most
of whom were black African migrants, immigrants and refugees, while others were
black South Africans. Tens of thousands of people had to leave their homes and
ended up in displacement camps. These attacks did not come out of the blue.

x
African foreigners had been experiencing xenophobia, including physical attacks,
in the years before, and attacks continued after May 2008. This book is dedicated
to those who have lost their lives, homes, hopes and dreams just because of the
nationality they hold. While it does not answer many of the questions that need to
be answered to counter xenophobia, I hope it makes a contribution to challenging
the dangerous side of nationalism.

xi
 1

Introduction: Establishing the Territory 

It was universally admitted that those who were in a country had the right to the
selection of those entering that country.
J.C. Smuts, Minister of the Interior, 30/4/19131

Foreigners have no right or claim to residence here. Their residence here is subject to
the willingness and decisions of the Government.
C.P. Mulder, Minister of Immigration, 17/2/19692

Aliens control stems from the basic right of a sovereign country to decide which non-
citizens are welcome within its border.
Lindiwe Sisulu, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, 10/4/1995 3

Across the world, people are moving in unprecedented numbers, prompted by

numerous reasons to migrate from one country to another. But their ability
to actually make the move is powerfully constrained by the gates that may be
opened or closed to them. As they move, migrants are constantly made aware
of their vulnerability to state practices of inclusion and exclusion. Unless they
are embarking on an existence as an undocumented migrant, which merely lays
out another set of fences to be crossed and negotiated, the ultimate decision
about their entry and residence is made by the state apparatus of the intended
destination and not by the individual migrants. Whatever the reasons, dreams
2 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

or desires of the immigrants, it is held that every sovereign nation state has the
right to determine who it will allow to cross its borders, who will be allowed to
stay and for how long.
Immigration policies and practices demarcate the points of designated entry
to the territory of the nation state and define who will be allowed in and who will
be kept out. But within the probing and invasive questions of their application
procedures, nation states also reveal the overt and hidden classifications of the
immigrant selection process, as well as the racial and national prejudices that
inform the requirements that such states use to determine who to include and
who to exclude. The filters and gates are designed to allow in only those seen
to be potentially useful members of the nation (or recruits to the nation, if
migrants), or those that will ‘fit’ the nation. While immigrant selection may be
tied to productivity, class, wealth and skills, the process conveys powerful ideas
about the self-image of the destination state, about race and national origins,
and about the stereotyping of other peoples and territories. The processes of
application, adjudication and exclusion of immigration regimes therefore raise
fundamental questions about how and why nation states decide who they will
allow in and who they see as undesirable. Selection criteria and immigration
policies starkly reveal the powerful myth making of nation states and their
fears that non-members or non-citizens have the potential to contaminate the
national body, as well as their perceptions of who constitutes the nation.
A second aspect that permeates most immigrant selection processes is their
interest in the physical body and health of potential immigrants. A minute
physical examination is a requirement for entry for many countries. Orifices
are examined, blood taken and lungs x-rayed. Multiple questions may be asked
about the potential immigrants’ current and past health, and their endocrine
system, lungs, eyes, ears, nose, throat (limbs seem to be exempt, unless arthritic
or rheumatic), sexually transmitted infections, tropical diseases and, in some
cases, HIV status. Less overt attention is usually paid to their political,
criminal and spiritual health, but police clearance certificates are usually asked
for. Religion, too, may be a marker of desirability or otherwise.
The main objective of this book is to trace the trajectory and practices of
South Af rican immigration policies and legislation in the twentieth century
INTRODUCTION: ESTABLISHING THE TERRITORY 3

and into the twenty-first. The practices of immigrant inclusion and exclusion
act as a lens through which the changing constructions of nationhood and
national identity by the South African state can be explored. The focus is
on those particular historical periods when immigration policies underwent
significant change, re-examination or reconstruction. These have coincided
with concomitant changes in the national form, mode of governance and
political balance of power, and therefore the national vision, national identity
and nation-building project of the state. The objective is to understand the
relationships between the development and implementation of immigration
policies and the contested and shifting construction of national identities by
the South Af rican state.
The decision to explore these complex questions in the South Af rican
context was prompted by a surprising wave of xenophobia directed at Af rican
immigrants and migrants in the ‘new’, democratic ‘rainbow nation’ of South
Af rica in late 1994 and early 1995. These xenophobic attitudes saturated
the speeches of the minister of home affairs in the 1990s (Dr Mangosutho
Buthelezi) and other members of the government, announcements by the
Department of Home Affairs and the South Af rican Police Service, and items
in the media. Hostile attitudes were increasingly translated into physical
attacks on black Af rican immigrants and refugees by South Af rican citizens.
These were superceded in intensity, scale and scope in May 2008 with a wave
of xenophobic attacks across the country in which over 65 black Af ricans,
mostly non-citizens, were killed and tens of thousands of other black Af rican
foreigners displaced over several weeks of violence and intimidation. 4
The immigration policy of the post-apartheid South African state and the
language used to justify it at times seem to contradict its stated and apparent
commitment to democracy, inclusivity and human rights, and raises questions
about continuity and change with the past. In order to understand post-1994
attitudes to immigrants and immigration policies, it was necessary to go back into
history to look at past discourses around immigration and the past immigration
policies and practices of the South African state.
Unpacking South Africa’s immigration history reveals two striking things.
Firstly, there is a synergy between periods of significant change in state
4 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

discourses and policies of immigration, on the one hand, and the historical
moments when South Africa was reinvented politically or was in a process
of active nation building, on the other. Secondly, the language used by state
officials constantly invokes notions of the nation as a body that could be
fortified or contaminated by immigrants. Metaphors of the physical and
metaphysical body of the nation and its contamination litter the immigration
files of the archives.
For most of the twentieth century, immigration in South Africa meant white
immigration. This has led to four common assumptions. Firstly, it is assumed that
South African immigration policy was driven primarily by anxieties about the
black–white population imbalance and the threat it posed to white supremacy.
That white immigration was perceived as a tool to counter ‘the black peril’ is
indisputable. However, if this were the only consideration, it becomes hard to
explain why successive white South African governments were so selective, at
times to the point of almost total restriction, about white immigration.
The second assumption, therefore, is that an obviously racist white South
Af rican state allowed in any and all white immigrants and kept out all black
immigrants. This obscures the question of how the state defined who was
white and who was black, and why some whites were more acceptable than
others. In other words, it ignores the factors that determined who would be
included as white South Af ricans and who excluded, and how this changed
over time.
Thirdly, it is often assumed that South Africa’s racially divided history
produced divided and contesting ethnic nationalisms and identities created by
the divisions imposed on the South African population by the white state. The
focus on the divisions among competing ethnic identities and contestations
between the national projects of ethnic nationalisms obscures the way that the
South African state constructed successive national identities, which can be seen
in and through its immigration policies.
Fourthly, based on the second assumption, it is commonly assumed that black
African immigrants were excluded from South Africa. On one level this is true.
However, it masks the long history of state-sanctioned black African temporary
migration from southern Africa to the mines and commercial farms of South
INTRODUCTION: ESTABLISHING THE TERRITORY 5

Africa, as well as the tacit sanctioning of other forms of migration from the
region, including ‘clandestine’ migration, for much of South Africa’s history.
The majority of South Africa’s recent geographical and historical
scholarship has focused, not surprisingly, on South Africa’s stark history of
racial discrimination, oppression and exclusion. The racist practices of the
South African state that created division among black, coloured, Indian and
white have driven the examination of colour-defined racial difference and its
representation. However, past official debates and discourses around immigration
and national identity suggest the need for a more nuanced investigation of the
shifting constructions of white national identity. This book is therefore centred
not on the long history of segregation and apartheid, but on the divisions and
congruities within the changing white nation of South Africa. But it concludes
by exploring the intersection between immigration policy and the construction
of national identity with the latest reinvention of the South African state in the
form defined by the non-discriminatory post-apartheid government.
The focus is on the relationship between South Africa’s changing immigration
policies and shifting official constructions of South African national identity.
It examines South Africa’s immigration rather than temporary migration or
refugee policies and histories. It is located within immigration policies and
histories, because it is immigrants, or permanent residents, who intend to remain
permanently, who can qualify for citizenship and who are potential new members
of the nation. Migrants or temporary residents and contract workers are people
who intend to and are only allowed to spend defined amounts of time in another
country for specific purposes. Refugees and asylum seekers are admitted under
a human rights imperative. They are not selected, and all too often are seen as
temporary sojourners (if relatively long-term ones) who will return to (or be
returned to) their home countries when they are able to.
The book starts in Chapter 2 by situating the research in relation to existing
studies of immigration and migration to South Africa. The chapter then
explores the historiography on the development of South African nationalisms.
It demonstrates that although the construction of ethnic nationalisms has been
a recurrent subject of debate, the construction of successive national identities
and the reciprocal relationship between the construction of nation and national
6 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

identity, on the one hand, and immigration policy and practice, on the other,
has been largely overlooked. The chapter then discusses the broader historical
and theoretical literature that has been of particular use in conceptualising the
intersection between immigration and state constructions of race and national
identity, as well as the anthropomorphisation of the nation and associated
notions of contamination.
Chapters 3 through 7 move to the substance of the book. Each chapter deals
with a particular episode or moment in the history of immigration to South Africa.
Significant changes in South Africa’s immigration policies coincide with those
moments when the South African state went through major changes in form or
political dispensation and therefore in its nation-building projects and construction
of national identity. The first of these chapters begins with a brief overview of the
legacies of the past that influenced the immigration policies and nation-building
project of the new unified state of the Union of South Africa, which was established
in 1910. It then examines the attempts by the new dominion state of the British
Empire to establish and implement an immigration policy through the introduction
of the 1913 Immigrants Regulation Act. The chapter shows how the exclusion of
Indian immigrants was central to the new government’s immigration policy. It
demonstrates how the immigration policy of the newly formed state promoted and
reflected the vision of a white national identity and South Africa as a ‘white man’s
land’. Integral to this vision were ideas of disease, disability and contamination,
which permeated debates around immigration and immigration policy.
Chapter 4 moves to the inter-war years when the South African state
consolidated its nation-building process, while slowly attempting to devolve
itself from British control. It shows how the definition of whiteness and white
national identity were both flexible and contested. The primary focus is on the
intense efforts of the state to prevent Jewish immigration in the 1920s and 1930s.
The chapter explores the development of new local racialised anxieties centred
on Jewish immigrants and fears that Jewish immigrants were contaminating
the (white) body and ‘stocks’ of the new nation. The discussion is framed by
an exploration of the relationship between these new racial anxieties and the
epistemologies of racial science and eugenics that became an integral part of
official discourses around immigration at this time.
INTRODUCTION: ESTABLISHING THE TERRITORY 7

Chapters 5 and 6 move the discussion to the post-1945 years and the realisation
of power by Afrikaner nationalists. Chapter 5 explores the ‘immigration debate’
of the 1940s in South Africa. The expansive and inclusive immigration policy of
Jan Smuts’s post-war government contrasted sharply with the National Party’s
national vision and nation-building project. The United Party government
encouraged white, particularly British, immigration to South Africa. Afrikaner
nationalism articulated an even narrower and more chauvinistic redefinition of
the boundaries and membership criteria of the white South African nation. The
1948 National Party government, with its narrow Afrikaner nationalist vision
of South African national identity, and unhappy with its relationship to Britain,
pursued a largely restrictive policy, particularly for British immigrants. The
language of immigration policy shifted in tandem. In contrast to its United
Party predecessor, which imagined immigrants as vitamins promoting the health
of the metaphorical national body, the apartheid state was concerned with the
‘preservation’ and ‘protection’ of its vision of a restricted white Afrikaner South
African national identity and justified its exclusionary immigration policies
through reference to the ‘absorptive capacity’ of the fictive national body.
In 1961, after a whites-only referendum, the National Party declared South
Africa a republic and took the country out of the Commonwealth. Chapter 6
examines the impact of the formation of the Republic, resistance to apartheid and
the decolonisation process elsewhere in Africa on the construction of national
identity and the immigration policies of the National Party government. The
formation of the Republic in 1961 was accompanied by a shift by the state to
a more inclusive white national identity and an expansive immigration policy.
Despite the new openness to immigration, the apartheid state still harboured
fears that some immigrants had the potential to contaminate the national body.
The body itself became as much metaphysical as physical, reflecting the deep
hold of religious iconography over Afrikaner nationalism, as well as fears of
communism and black resistance. Immigrant selection in the 1960s and 1970s
became increasingly based on religious and political criteria, and Catholic
immigrants became a particular target for exclusion.
In contrast to the historical emphasis of earlier chapters, Chapter 7
interrogates the contemporary period for many of the same issues and themes.
8 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

The 1990s have witnessed yet another reinvention of South Africa, this time as
an inclusive democracy in which the state, for the first time, represents all of the
country’s citizens. As on previous occasions when South Africa has undergone
significant change in its political form and definition of national identity, the
question of immigration has come to the fore. Although it is still too early to draw
definitive conclusions about the contemporary relationship between changes in
immigration policy and the new South African national identity and nation-
building project, the links clearly exist. In documenting the development of
new state discourses and restrictive immigration policies since 1994, the chapter
pays particular attention to fears that immigrants and migrants, documented
and undocumented, have the potential to derail the nation-building process and
contaminate both the physical and social body of the ‘new South Africa’.
State discourses around immigration are no longer confined to documented
immigrants. New fears, accompanied by new policies and practices focused on
irregular migration, have developed. Because, for geographical reasons, most
undocumented migrants are likely to be Africans, the fears and anxieties of
the new state often focus on the supposed threat to the new nation posed
by African immigrants and migrants. The chapter places these fears and the
seeming contradiction between the immigration policies of the post-1994 South
African state and its apparent commitment to democracy, inclusivity and human
rights within the context of the construction of its new nation-building project
and national identity. It suggests that a shift in emphasis towards citizenship
and inclusivity as markers of belonging has led, paradoxically, to an exclusionary
immigration policy. As the epigraph to this introduction confirms, the idea of
the nation state and its right to defend its national territory and integrity from
the outsider, the immigrant, remain as powerful as ever in South Africa.
 2

Immigration, Nations and National Identity

You know who you are, only by knowing who you are not.
Robin Cohen, 1994 1

Approaching South African immigration

South Af rica’s immigration history is rich, long and complex. The story of
white migration begins when the first white settlers arrived at the Cape in 1652
under the leadership of the mythologised Jan van Riebeeck, with the intention
of establishing a victualling station for the Dutch East India Company. Other
Dutch, French and German settlers and refugees soon followed. By 1820, six
years after Britain took control of the Cape, the white population numbered
over 42 700, of whom about 5 000 were British. 2 The migratory history of
black Af ricans who lived in and moved in and out of the region that would
become South Af rica stretches back even further. 3
Between 1814 and 1899 the British government initiated and assisted
several public and private settlement schemes, with the aim of establishing
and consolidating colonial control in the Cape and Natal.4 Not all the new
settlers were British, and other settlement schemes brought Dutch, German and
Scandinavian settlers.5 At the vanguard of the British schemes were the ‘1820
settlers’, who, for English-speaking South Africans, came to rival Jan van Riebeeck
as icons of white South African settler history.6 However, it was not until the
discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 that South Africa experienced
12 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

a significant inflow of immigrants and migrants. The ‘mineral revolution’

transformed South Africa into an industrialised country and stimulated in-
migration from all over the world, particularly from Britain and Europe.7 The
white population tripled between 1850 and 1891 to approximately 620 000.8
British post-Anglo-Boer War colonial settlement schemes and independent
migration raised South Africa’s white population to over 1.2 million by 1911.9
The ‘mineral revolution’ also initiated the development of temporary and more
permanent black labour migration from neighbouring states to work on the
mines, establishing migratory patterns that persist today. It was accompanied by
the expansion of white agriculture and migration from neighbouring states to
work on commercial farms.
The copious literature on migration to the British colonies and the Boer
Republics prior to the formation of the Union emphasises the edges of white
settlement silencing the presence and lives of black people who were already
living in the region. 10 It sheds little light on the individual immigration policies
of the pre-Union colonies and republics that had to be consolidated into a single
new policy with the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. This
process took over three years to accomplish and was intrinsic to the consolidation
of the Union of South Africa as a unitary state, and to the first South African
nation-building project.
Scholarship on immigration and migration to South Af rica between
1910 and the present falls into four categories, separated chronologically
and by focus. The first, with a long genealogy, reflects South Af rica’s
divided history. It centres on documenting the arrival and exclusion of
various groups of white immigrants, usually defined by nationality, and their
subsequent settlement and assimilation. The second, mainly produced since
1994, is policy- and rights-oriented. The third category, shaped by South
Af rica’s racially exclusionary history, spans both time periods and explores
the geographies of migration and the lives of migrants who were excluded
f rom the immigration process after 1913, particularly black Af ricans. The
fourth, although it still barely constitutes a category, raises questions about
women’s migration to South Af rica and the gendered nature of immigration
legislation and national identity.
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 13

Historical and sociological literature on white immigration to South Africa

produced before 1994 focuses primarily on the settlement of specific groups
of immigrants.11 It tends to be tightly defined spatially and temporally, as well
as by nationality. Mirroring the state’s concern with the ability of immigrants
to assimilate, adapt and contribute to South Africa, the central focus is on the
experiences and assimilation of immigrant groups after arrival. British immigrants
are the primary subjects.12 South African Jewish historiography focuses on the
formation of Jewish communities in South Africa, including their experiences,
divisions between German and East European Jews, language, and participation
in South Africa’s economy and politics. 13 Surprisingly little attention is paid
to South African immigration policy, its relationship to anti-Semitism and
attempts by the state to exclude potential Jewish immigrants.14
The historiography of immigrant communities who were excluded from the
formal immigration process to South Africa after the formation of the Union
is more comprehensive than that of the included. It centres on the formation
of these communities and migration processes; and, in the case of Indians, on
their exclusion from full economic and political participation in South Africa.15
Swan breaks from the tradition of documenting the arrival and settlement of
Indian indentured labourers and ‘passenger’ or independent Indian immigrants
and their economic activities and social formations.16 She documents Indian
resistance to measures introduced by the Union government to control the
immigration of Indians, as well as their movement and activities in South
Africa.17 Accounts of Chinese South Africans similarly focus on socioeconomic
activities, experiences and histories.18 Park makes a notable contribution in her
exploration of the shifting identities of the small South African-born Chinese
population. 19 Significantly, she identifies how the state, through its changing
classification process, played a role in shaping the identities of members of this
South African diasporic community.
After the formation of the Union, the Immigrants Regulation Act of 1913 and
subsequent legislation prevented black immigration to South Africa. However,
the Act and its reinventions maintained clauses based on bilateral agreements
that allowed temporary contract labour migration from neighbouring states.
Black male contract labour migration to the South African gold mines and
14 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

commercial farms and plantations is the most enduring form of legal cross-
border labour migration within the region, beginning in the late nineteenth
century and continuing to the present.20 Labour migration to the mines, which
has encompassed nationals of Lesotho and Mozambique, and to a lesser extent
Malawi, Swaziland, Botswana and Zimbabwe, has been well documented.
Studies of mine migration explore the scale, scope and nature of migratory
flows and identify their impact on the apartheid economy and ideology.21 The
twentieth century also saw increasing use of labour from neighbouring states
on South Africa’s commercial farms, a form of labour migration that has also
continued into the 2000s. 22 Rarely discussed are the ‘secret side deals’ between
South Africa and the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) and Portuguese East African
(now Mozambique) colonial governments to allow what was called ‘clandestine
migration’.23 Similarly, the free movement across borders for nationals of
Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Swaziland until
1963 is rarely referred to.24
The historical, sociological and geographical literature on immigration and
migration to South Africa prior to 1994 provides background information.
But because it is so narrowly focused, empiricist and fragmented, divided
temporally, ethnically and spatially, it does not provide an adequate sense of
the overall trajectory of the geographies of immigration to South Africa or the
development of immigration policies. Because it fails to engage with the whole
immigrant selection process, and with the question of why certain groups of
immigrants were included and others excluded at different times, the linkages
between immigration and the formation of South African national identity
remain unexplored.

Narrating immigration since1994

After the reinvention of South Africa in 1994, the profile of immigration as a
public policy and research issue grew and reinvented itself. Scholarly concern
with assimilation has been augmented by interest in the human rights of
undocumented migrants and refugees, and with legislation. The focus is threefold:
firstly, the social, economic and policy implications of (African) undocumented
and forced migration to South Africa; secondly, contemporary immigration,
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 15

refugee and citizenship policy and legislation, and the human rights of migrants
and refugees; and thirdly, brain drain migration.
Primary, usually survey, research has examined the economic activities
of migrants and refugees, their access to and use of social services, and the
security and criminal implications of undocumented migration.25 Studies of
contract workers have focused on changes to the migrant labour system and
the implications of an amnesty designed to transform mine migrants into
permanent residents. 26 Refugee studies have centred on the lack of legislation
governing refugee determination, the inadequacies of the existing refugee
determination process, and the experiences and living conditions of asylum
seekers and refugees. 27 Research documenting xenophobia in South Africa and
South Africans’ attitudes to non-South Africans demonstrates that levels of
xenophobia in South Africa are high and that many South Africans favour
restrictive immigration and refugee policies, some to the extent of stopping all
in-migration to the country.28
Contemporary debates are, almost without exception, ahistorical. The
legacies of South Africa’s immigration legislation, policy and practice are usually
ignored. At times, it seems that the new government inherited a tabula rasa that,
since 1994, has been rapidly clouded by African irregular migrants and refugees.
This no doubt reflects the limited and fragmented terrain of migration literature
produced before 1994. However, as the contemporary legislative framework
remained rooted in past immigration legislation and policies until at least 2002,
and as the legacies of past policies can be seen in contemporary patterns of
documented and undocumented migration, it is a singularly important omission.29
It is difficult to understand and analyse the present without understanding the
legacies of the past that are woven into the present-day tapestry of immigration.
The post-1994 South African state has committed itself to creating a ‘culture
of human rights’ and protects the basic human rights of both citizens and
non-citizens. 30 Debates around migration reflect this shift as they have moved
towards discussion of human rights and the constitutionality of the statutory
framework controlling immigration, migration, refugee determination and
citizenship. 31 Notwithstanding this burgeoning literature, legal immigration
to South Africa, as opposed to undocumented, contract and forced migration,
16 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

has largely disappeared from the research agenda. 32 Analyses of immigration

legislation have interrogated their implications and located critiques in the
context of the stated objectives of the South African state and South Africa’s
regional and continental obligations. In so doing, they highlight the often
dissonant relationships between them.33 Research on migration to South Africa
since 1994 often challenges the xenophobic assumptions of the state and civil
society, and provides valuable critiques of challenges to the human rights of
undocumented and forced migrants and insight into their lives and experiences
in South Africa. However, it does not interrogate the new immigration policies
and practices of the post-1994 state. Nor does it explore their relationship to the
construction of a new national identity and national project by the state since
the demise of apartheid.34

Gendered silences
Women are largely absent in South Africa’s state discourses, as well as research
around immigration and migration, past and present. Gendered analyses
of migration and immigration are similarly missing. Yet the meaning of the
categories of women and men are not static. Policies of the state, and even the
state itself, are gendered. As Manicom argues, men and women are ‘defined
and constructed within the particular discourses and practices of ruling’ through
‘commission reports, parliamentary debates[,] … laws’ and administrative
procedures and practices.35 So, ‘the very fundamental categories of state and
politics — like citizen, worker, the modern state itself — are shot through with
gender’, but all too often they have been ‘historically constructed and reproduced
as masculine categories’. 36 So, too, have been the categories of immigrant,
migrant and refugee. 37
In South Africa prior to 1994, women were conspicuously absent from
official debates around immigration. For the state, immigrants were seen as
white men. Women were their silenced spouses.38 White women only appear
regularly in official letters and memorandums on immigration immediately
following the introduction of the 1913 Immigrants Regulation Act (Act 22),
and then again in the 1960s and 1970s, when the state was trying to encourage
white immigration.39 When the state saw white women immigrants at all, it
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 17

imagined them as wives and mothers, as stabilising forces, whose contentment

was essential to the male immigrants’ decision to stay. 40 White women are also
missing from historiographies of immigration prior to 1994, although there are
some glancing references to their presence in studies of migrant groups.
Black Af rican women migrants were almost completely silenced by
officialdom prior to 1994, although researchers have documented some of the
history of black women’s migration. 41 Even more so than their male counterparts,
their entry and exit went unrecorded. However, in contrast to white women
immigrants, black African women migrants, when they did appear in debates
around migration and urbanisation, were portrayed as contaminators and
disrupters of the social order — as ‘undesirable women’. 42
Although post-1994 debates and research around migration remain largely
gender blind, there has been increasing recognition of migration as a gendered
process, and, more than in the past, women are seen as migrants in their own
right. Women are most likely to appear in official debates around migration
as refugees, emigrants and victims of human trafficking. Research is largely
gender blind, although some has disaggregated data by sex, and has explored
the experiences of women migrants and emigrants and their participation in
particular occupations. 43 No gendered analysis has been made of the increasing
feminisation of flows of migration to and from South Africa.44 No attention
has been paid to the gendered assumptions underpinning male contract labour
migration to the mines and its regulatory framework. Analyses of post-1994
immigration legislation and policy suggest that, by remaining gender blind, it
becomes, if unintentionally, discriminatory.45
The silencing of the history and experience of women’s immigration and
migration to South Africa is more than a missing historical and geographical
record. The packing of women into the baggage of their male counterparts and
their inclusion as wives and mothers reflect the way that South African national
identity was from the earliest years constructed as male. Indicating the shift
to an explicitly inclusive national identity since 1994, women and gendered
analyses of migration have become more visible. Immigration legislation and
policy remain ostensibly gender blind, but this blindness has implications for the
development of policy and the impact of practices of inclusion and exclusion.
18 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

This book in effect reproduces the silence of official discourses around

women’s immigration. This is inevitable in a study that focuses primarily on the
development of official policies and practices of the state in twentieth century
South Africa when immigration debates were centred around a nation that
the state conceived as white and male. The role of gender in the shaping of
immigration and migration patterns to South Africa; the migration of women;
and pre- and post-apartheid constructions of gendered and racialised categories
of immigrant, migrant and citizen certainly deserve a more detailed examination
than they can be given here.

Managing immigration
Scholars have long tried to grapple with the nature of the South African state.
Discussion has centred on the relationships between the state and capital in the
context of segregationist and apartheid policies. 46 At the core of the debate has
been the issue of the autonomy of the state. Reading from the perspective of the
formation of immigration policies by the South African state, the relationship
between capital and the state is undoubtedly complex. While the state often
took cognisance of the demands of capital when devising immigration policy, it
also acted against them at particular junctures; for instance, in the 1950s, and
some would argue since 1994. In the context of immigration policy, the state
must, despite its empirical relationship to capital at any one time, be treated as
an actor in its own right.49
The state is more than just a vector for the interests of capital; it also makes,
implements and manages policy. Posel, in an exploration of the development of
apartheid policies, examines ‘institutional conflicts within the state in relation
to the broader economic and political forces impinging on it’. 50 She identifies
the struggles within the state between and within its executive and bureaucracy,
showing how the competing interests of different departments and individuals
affected the formation and implementation of policy at particular historical
and spatial conjunctures. 51 The institution of the state, at times, takes priority,
emphasising its sometime autonomy from socioeconomic influences.
O’Meara argues that this approach overemphasises the institutionality of
the state; is ahistorical; and does not pay sufficient attention to the economic,
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 19

political and social contexts, both local and international, in which a state operates
at a particular moment in time.52 However, he too identifies how contestations
within the executive of the South African state at times shaped the formation of
policy.53 Therefore, while recognising that the state has a degree of autonomy, he
underscores the way that at any one historical moment, the way in which a state
acts and at times its ability to act in a particular way are also shaped by a range
of material and ideological factors.
Within this context, O’Meara demonstrates that the origins of a state
‘bequeath an institutional legacy which provide the terrain, routine and
rituals of state politics’. 54 The struggles that give rise to the state in question
‘fashion its dominant social and political forces, shape its founding myths
and establish political cultures and political issues’ that are projected ‘into
state politics long beyond the founding moment ’. 55 Therefore it is necessary
to understand the implications of the origins of the South Af rican state in
the Anglo-Boer War and the formation of the Union as a dominion state.
The legacies of the genesis of the South Af rican state can be seen in its
institutional formations, as well as in the contestations over the relationship
between South Af rica and Britain. The immigration policies of the South
Af rican state have been shaped in part by its origins, as well as its changing
national form or reinventions.
States are also spatial entities, and spatiality is a ‘central component of state
power’.56 The state holds rights over a territory — a defined space — in which
it uses its powers to control and organise in order to maintain those rights. The
very definition of the state is tied to ‘its territorially based claims to sovereignty’,
and the ‘exercise of power takes place across this territory’.57 From its earliest
days, the South African state, with its history of segregationist and apartheid
policies, is marked by the ways it tried to control space and saw that control as
central to its existence. The borders of a state indicate the boundaries of the
exercise of state power, and the ways in which the state controls who can enter
and inhabit its territory are also part of the territorial practices of the state. The
South African state has introduced a (changing and at times contested) ‘set of
practices’ to not only control the movements of people within, but also into and
out of the nation state in the exercise of state power, with the aim of maintaining
20 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

state power and the nation. Immigration legislation demarcates the boundaries
of the territory and defines the locations, practices and criteria through which
entry and exit are allowed, and, therefore, who will be allowed in and out.
An examination of the ‘institutional materiality’ of the state and
contestations that take place within the state emphasises its autonomy. It
leads to an understanding of the state as ‘a set of administrative, policing and
military organisations headed and more or less well coordinated by, an executive
authority’.58 But it remains important to locate the state within ideological,
economic, social and political contexts. Recognising the legacy of the origins of
a state is particularly relevant to understanding how the changing national form
of the South African state, or its reinventions, relates to changes in the way it
has constructed South African national identity and practised its immigration
policy. These analyses lead towards a conceptualisation of the South African
state as a multifaceted institution affected by internal and external conditions at
particular historical conjunctures and with competing interests. These interests
are intimately linked to the spatiality of the South African state and the way
it has acted to maintain its control over its bounded territory, as well as how it
sees itself, its citizens and its national identity. Immigration controls have been
fundamental to this project of the South African state.
For the majority of its history, the South African state was essentially
concerned with maintaining white rule. Not surprisingly, analyses and critiques
focus on the racist policies of the apartheid South African state, emphasising
the striking attempts by the South African state to control the black population
through the organisation of its localised internal space. There seems to be a
tendency to forget that the South African state was and is also a nation state.
No attention is paid to the different ways in which the South African state
constructed a wider (white) national identity. Yet, who a state chooses to allow
in — or keep out — is influenced by the way the state constructs and represents
itself, the territory it controls and how it perceives the people who inhabit it.

South African nationalisms

Hobsbawm suggests that nationalism is ‘primarily a principle which holds that
the political and national unit should be congruent’. 59 Yet South Africa’s history
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 21

is permeated by racial, ethnic and regional divisions. Until 1994, the majority of
South Africa’s population was excluded by the state from political participation
in the ‘national unit’. South Africa’s divided, exclusionary and discriminatory
history is reflected in scholarly approaches to South African nationalism — or,
more accurately, nationalisms — as it focuses on the construction of different
ethnic nationalisms, and competition and contestations among them, rather
than the construction of South African nationalism or national identity.
Not surprisingly, given South Africa’s apartheid history, past explorations
of Afrikaner nationalism have taken centre stage.60 These investigations have
explored the imaginary of Afrikaner national identity and the construction of
Afrikanerdom as a primordial nation, identifying the ways that culture, language,
religion and even blood were seen as innate characteristics of Afrikanerdom. 61
Others have explored the role of religion in the construction of Afrikaner
nationalism, emphasising the beliefs (and rhetoric) of Afrikaner nationalism
in the divine destiny of Afrikaners and of a republican Protestant South Africa
controlled by Afrikaners. 62
Analyses of Afrikaner nationalism point to the importance of the Protestant
republican ideal to the National Party state, its nation-building project and
national identity. They also suggest the ways in which constructions of Afrikaner
nationalism were mediated by material (political and economic) considerations.
The relationships between capital and class, as well as changes in the economic
structure of South Africa, underpin the formation of Afrikaner nationalism and
identity, as well as the exercise of power by the National Party. Persistent concern
with white and Afrikaner identity since 1994 indicate some of the questions of
diversity that the state has had to grapple with in its post-apartheid nation-
building project.63
Marks and Trapido shift the boundaries of the debate away from Afrikaner
nationalism. They suggest that the formation of the Union in 1910 out of
disparate population groups led to the emergence of ‘new ethnic identities’ as the
‘state was being constructed as a single entity’.64 Underpinning the development
of competing black (including Indian and coloured) and white nationalisms
in South Africa were ‘late-nineteenth century industrialisation’ and British
imperialism. 65 They suggest that the ‘history of regional divisions, racism and
22 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

social Darwinism’ and the ‘political-cum-class struggles’ that emerged at the same
time as the Union prevented the formation of a single unified nationalism.66
There are some problems with these approaches. Firstly, by focusing on the
included and excluded within the boundaries of South Africa, the discussion
focuses on the construction of fragmented ethnic nationalisms and identities.
But by emphasising ethnic nationalisms, efforts by the state to imagine and
construct a national identity (even if only white) are generally ignored. Secondly,
the role of the national form is inadequately addressed. Identity is not solely
shaped by changing economic relationships and modes of production, or by the
imaginary. Nations, nationalisms and national identities are socially constructed
and historically contingent, but they also reflect the national form of a state,
whether settler, colonial, dominion, apartheid or post-colonial. 67 There is a need
to interrogate the relationships among nationalism, changing national form
and the new nation-building projects, and the construction of national identity
before and after 1994.

Post-apartheid identities
Since1994, scholars, particularly from the disciplines of sociology and cultural
studies, have started to pay attention to the construction of identities in post-
apartheid South Africa. 68 Almost without exception, these collections start with
a discussion of apartheid and its legacy of difference among South Africans. Such
differences encompass race, class, religion, ethnicity, history and wide gaps in
economic experiences. This trajectory means that explorations of post-apartheid
identities have tended to reproduce categories of difference, produce fragmented
accounts and have largely overlooked attempts by the state to construct a post-
apartheid national identity.
Interrogations of South African nationalism point to the construction of
a wider national identity, but some remain constrained by perceived divisions
within South Africa and a binary construction of African and more general
white nationalisms. 69 Attempts to grapple with South African nationalism since
1994 hinge their explorations on the transition to a democratic government
and the post-1994 nation-building projects of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC), the Constitution and the relocation of South Africa in
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 23

Africa. In the process, they identify key components of the construction of post-
1994 national identity by the state.
As Chipkin suggests in his largely unsatisfactory attempt to engage with
Af rican nationalism, ‘the South African people came to be defined and
produced in and through the politics and culture of nationalist struggle’. 70
However, this was an anti-apartheid, anti-colonial nationalist struggle that was
waged on the basis of non-racialism dating back to the Freedom Charter and
before. So the post-apartheid state has ‘repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment
to the Charterist ideal of the South African nation as a union built on cultural
diversity and equality while seeking to promote the growth of a single national
identity’. 71 So, it seems the state is constructing South African identity as one
based on diversity.
The TRC was about revealing the shared history of the nationalist struggle,
both of the oppressed and the oppressor; and it was about nation building. The
TRC allowed both sides of the struggle to be included in the process of truth
telling and reconciliation, but also as part of the new nation. It ‘sought to provide
a principle of commonality that would ground South Africans, despite their
differences of culture, religion, language and race, as a people … by determining
the basis on which to found South Africans as a nation’. 72 It therefore allowed
the development of ‘collective memories’ that could be used by the state to create
‘narratives of nation’ — narratives built on diverse and even oppositional, but
shared, histories of the struggle against apartheid.73
The TRC exposed (at least some) of the human rights abuses of the apartheid
state, which, it could be said, defined and perpetuated that state’s existence. The
reinvention of the South African nation in 1994 stood starkly in contrast, defined
by democracy and a commitment to human rights as celebrated in the Bill of
Rights of the new Constitution: a rights-based democracy. 74 The Constitution is
non-discriminatory in the rights it bestows on South Africans, and, technically,
on all who live in South Africa. Thus the national project emphasises both
democracy and human rights for all, ‘united in our diversity’.
The final component emerging from post-1994 writings on identity is a tension
between the construction of a South African and African national identity, where
being African refers to being South African, but also belonging to the continent
24 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

and not to a race.75 The iconic ‘I am an African’ speech of then Deputy President
Thabo Mbeki at the adoption of the Constitution exemplifies being an African
South African.76 He invokes the symbols of South Africa, of its landscape and
its history; he claims descent from all the peoples of South Africa, regardless of
origin or colour; he celebrates human rights and the rule of law in South Africa
and what they mean for being South African. But he concludes by locating being
South African as being part of the African continent. The post-apartheid state
has shown commitment to the continent and the development of a form of pan-
African identity. South Africa was instrumental in the foundation of the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development and the project of the African Renaissance.77
The post-1994 state is constructing a South African identity that is also African.
The contemporary literature is incomplete, does not explicitly focus on the
construction of South African national identity by the state, and largely remains
bound by South Africa’s history of internal division and oppression. Nor does it
engage with immigration. However, it does provide suggestions as to the type of
national identity the post-apartheid state is trying to build; namely, one built on
principles of unity with respect for diversity, democracy and human rights, and one
that is also African, and with a shared history of struggle as its foundation.

Nations, national identities and immigration

The origins of nations as we understand them today, as territorially bounded
nation states, are contested. Some contend that nations are a ‘natural’ or
primordial form of human social organisation, whether realised or incipient;
that there are ‘congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on’ that ‘have an
ineffable, and at times overpowering coerciveness in and of themselves’. 78
However, the roots of nations and nation states, as we understand them today, lie
in Europe and the Americas of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and
in the development of capitalism.79 Their formation as a system of territorial,
political and social organisation lies with the demise of religious communities
and dynastic realms as systems of social organisation and governance and not
with inevitable primordial entities.80
The coincidence of language and literacy with the development of print
media associated with capitalism and industrialisation provided a medium
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 25

for the promulgation of the idea and language of the nation, and therefore,
in Anderson’s much-used phrase, the ‘imagined community’ of the nation
state.81 These transitions expose the ways that nations are constructed, or are
‘cultural artefacts’, as well as territorially bounded systems of governance.82
Although national boundaries imply a fixed territoriality, they may encompass
elastic conceptions of national identity and limits of inclusion and exclusion.
The imaginary of nations as ‘systems of cultural representation’ are realised in
practices through which ‘social difference is both invented and performed’.83
Studies of the construction of national identities in settler states suggest
that changing relationships between the settler state and the metropolis are
both complex and important to the process.84 So, although links are maintained,
the dislocation of distance between ‘the imperial place’ and the ‘colonised place’
creates new and differentiated national identities through community, history and
place.85 Discussions of post-colonial nations and the nationalism of anti-colonial
movements in Asia and Africa identify the contradictory relationships among
colonial and post-colonial nationalisms, national identities and the national form.86
Anti-colonial movements used the national imaginaries constructed by colonial
rulers to forge post-colonial identities.87 So, anti- and post-colonial nationalisms
identify with the territorial boundaries and models of the nation of the colonial
state and are rooted in the common history of colonialism.88 But the national
imaginaries of post-colonial nations were not always incorporated wholesale from
colonial constructions of the colonised nation.89 Instead, they are constructed
through a complex interaction between difference and identification tied to the
change from colonial to post-colonial nation.90 This helps in understanding the
changing construction of South Africa’s nation-building projects and national
identity and their relationships to immigration policy.91 The shifting forms of
the South African state from its origins in the Anglo-Boer War, through the
formation of the dominion state of the Union, the apartheid Republic and a
democratic South Africa are visible in the subsequent reinventions of the nation
and national identity by the state.
Definitions of nations and national identity can encompass notions of
common territory, language, history, community, ethnicity and race. Race may
be defined by ‘racial appearance or assumed biological difference’. 92 Miles, more
26 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

usefully, defines it as ‘the attribution of social significance ... to particular patterns

of phenotypical and/or genetic difference’ that, he says, can be extended to the
addition of the ‘deterministic ascription of real or supposed other characteristics
to a group constituted by descent’. 93 Seeing race solely as a physical construct
hides the ways in which race can be conflated with nationality, as well as
culture and religion. 94 While nationality, culture and religion are mutable social
characteristics, they have in certain historical and spatial conjunctures been seen
or constructed as inherent, even physical, and therefore racial characteristics.95
Although the categories of race and nation are often thought of as natural
and constant, they are both ‘the product of specific historical and geographical
forces’. 96 But it is the way in which race and nation are imagined to create
a community that constructs national identity. However, the imaginary of the
nation is often tied to homogenising notions of a shared ethnicity, race or common
ancestry. 97 The state uses immigration laws to maintain the homogeneity of the
nation, so that the ‘further a person is’ from the ‘norm the less likely it is that
the person will gain admission to the state’.98 So, ‘exclusions of “the other” can
become an inherent part of national ethnicities’.99
Intrinsic parts of nationhood and the construction of national identity are the
policies and practices of inclusion and exclusion that determine who is allowed
to enter and become a part of a nation and who is excluded from membership.
As Cohen argues, ‘[t]he right to control entry and demand departure is part of
the very constitution of a nation-state — as major a source of state authority
as the right to dominate the means of violence’.100 Through the processes of
exclusion, ‘a complex national and social identity is continuously constructed
and reshaped in its (often antipathetic) interaction with outsiders, strangers and
foreigners’. 101 In the process of identifying ‘the foreigner, stranger or alien’, states
are ‘so to speak, delineating one or other aspect of themselves’.102 So, ‘You know
who you are, only by knowing who you are not’.103
Cohen highlights the importance of ‘frontier guards’, who include policy
makers and practitioners, for example politicians, civil servants, immigration
officers and the police. Besides guarding the nation’s borders, they act to
influence ‘the ideological and legal parameters of nationality and citizenship and
belonging’. 104 At the same time, however, frontier guards are constrained by the
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 27

‘policies, structures and institutions’ that they are part of.105 Thus, identities are
constructed and unveiled within immigration policy and its implementation by
the state. The ‘processes of exclusion and rejection uncover and reveal and become
constitutive of the national identity itself ’. 106 But, because the relationship is
contingent, changes in national identity become part of the processes that shape
policies and practices of inclusion and exclusion.
The policing of the frontiers of identity (encompassing the state’s policies and
practices of exclusion) is historically, politically and socially contingent. Cohen
demonstrates how the changing national form of Britain from an imperial power,
through the break-up of its colonial empire and concluding with its entry into the
European Union continuously reshaped British national identity and the state’s
policies and practices of exclusion.107 The process is one of fluidity and contestation,
whereby national identity is ‘continually defined and redefined’.108
Immigration controls delineate the territorial borders of a state and the
points and ports of entry, but they also delineate the boundaries of national
identity. Understanding how the imaginary of nations, nationalisms and national
identities are socially constructed and historically contingent, as well as related
to the national form of a nation state, helps to unravel the complex relationships
among changes in the national form, national identity, and immigration
policies and practices. In South Africa, where attention has centred on internal
practices of exclusion and inclusion and the creation of fragmented ethnic
identities, immigration policy opens a window through which to view changing
constructions of national identities by the state and their relationship to changes
in the national form and nation-building project.

Contamination and the anthropomorphised nation

Notions of family, community, citizenship, race and ethnicity pervade the
language of nations and national identity. In many cultures and belief systems,
the body acts as a metaphor for a society’s perception of itself. 109 The nation
regularly appears as a gendered, physical, political and social being: a citizen
representing all citizens, with a biology, mind and soul. It is embodied in the
metaphorical language of blood, stock, the body politic and gendered nations —
the motherland and fatherland.110
28 SELECTING IMMIGRANTS

The idea that the nation is a physical body, if a collective body, allows notions
of contamination and pollution to permeate the language of nationalism and
immigration. The physical body of the nation can be contaminated by those
deemed to have different racial or ethnic identities or ‘blood’, or by those seen
as carriers of disease and physical disability. However, the nation is not just
imagined as a physical entity; it is also given a mind and a soul. Its mind, or
the body politic, and the soul, or metaphysical body, of the nation may also be
contaminated by those who are deemed to have different political or religious
beliefs or cultural identities.
The anthropomorphisation of nations is historically closely connected to the
construction of national identity. Practices of inclusion and exclusion protect
the national body from contamination. The processes and determinants of
exclusion within immigration policies clearly reflect who is being constructed as
a potential contaminator of the physical or metaphysical national body.111 So, ‘the
frontier guards’ of ‘national identity delineate and then exclude the “dangerous
individuals” threatening the health of the body politic’. 112 Who the state sees
as a potential contaminant reflects how it has constructed its national identity.
But the nation is a fluid conception tied to particular historical conjunctures. So
hegemonic epistemologies, particularly racially and medically coded discourses
(for instance, racial science and eugenics) and their localised interpretations
may play an important role in who is seen by the state to have the potential to
endanger the national body.113
There are strong connections between constructions of race and the
anthropomorphisation of nations. As Stepan suggests, there is often a ‘desire
to “imagine” the nation in biological terms’. 114 As a result, the ‘reproduction’
of the population may be seen to require purifying ‘to fit hereditary norms’. 115
In Stepan’s study of the relationship between eugenics and national identity
in South America in the 1920s and 1930s, attempts to ‘regulate the flow of
peoples across national boundaries, to define ... who could belong to the nation
and who could not’ were manifested in the practices of inclusion and exclusion
of immigration controls. 116 Immigrants can also be seen as harbingers of
degeneration and contamination with the potential to contaminate the body of
the nation with disease and disability.117 Kraut shows how, in the United States,
Immigration, Nations and National Identity 29

different immigrant groups, ranging from Italians through East European Jews
to the Irish and, in the 1980s, Haitians, were seen as racially innately unhealthy,
but each in a different way. 118 Each nationality brought its own type of diseased
body that threatened the national body of the nation.
Immigrants can be seen as potential contaminators in a number of ways.
They can contaminate the metaphorical national body by carrying disease or
the wrong blood (or the wrong race), or can act as parasites, leeching the
lifeblood f rom the nation. Those who share different religious or other cultural
identities and those who hold ideas that threaten the body politic can be seen
as contaminators of the mind or soul of the nation or its metaphysical body. But
those immigrants who are wanted, like vitamins, fortify the nation. Exploring
how successive groups of immigrants have, in different ways at different times,
been identified as potential contaminators or fortifiers of South Africa’s
metaphorical national body opens another window to understanding the
relationship between immigration and the construction of national identity.
It locates the different ways that unwanted immigrants have been constructed
by the state. Looking at how immigrants have been seen as endangering the
anthropomorphised nation reveals that the state’s rhetoric and metaphors
around immigration can be as illuminating as its practices.