Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Saana Hansen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki
Each December, long-distance buses, minibus taxis and private cars stream northwards from South Africa as Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second biggest city, prepares for its annual ritual: the seasonal homecoming of “injiva” – migrants returning for Christmas.
The old industrial city, where businesses have declined and shops and restaurants struggle to survive, fills temporarily with cars with South African number plates and people dressed in trendy clothes signalling urban South African lifestyles. Trailers are loaded with remittances known as “Christmas boxes” containing cooking oil, soap and other groceries. A jumping castle is erected in the park, and popular music merges with laughter in the restaurants.
These are historically rooted signs of achievement and success earned abroad. They are a refashioned form of the festive season of colonial-era injivas: men from the Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe who worked in South African mines and farms, returning home typically once a year with gifts.
Yet, it is common knowledge that this performance is often hard-earned, and injivas – both women and men – struggle to meet these expectations. The real-life migration experiences include economic and legal uncertainties and discrimination in the labour market, low wages and difficulty in sending remittances home.
Amid the festive return lies a quieter and more solemn south-north movement – that of Zimbabwean migrants who have passed away and are taking their final journey home. Contrasting with the festivities surrounding Christmas visits, the coffin-shaped trailers along the A6 highway from the Beitbridge border post to Bulawayo are a reminder that migration’s promise of prosperity comes with risk and loss.
This homecoming, which I studied for my PhD in anthropology and have described in a recent paper, is shaped by bureaucracy, cost and intergenerational care.
The study reveals how a life-sustaining web of care is maintained. It contributes to anthropological discussions on migration, kinship, the state, documentary practices, law and development.
The moral duty and economic headache of return
The migration pattern between Zimbabwe and South Africa has its roots in colonial-era labour migration and has intensified since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. In the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, marked by hyperinflation, political violence and mass unemployment, drove millions to seek economic opportunities and protection in South Africa.
Estimating the number of Zimbabweans in South Africa is difficult due to the largely unregulated nature of this mobility, but figures generally range between one million and three million.
Although deceased migrants, documented or not, can be buried in South African soil, bringing a body home is a vital act in Zimbabwe, as in many other African contexts. It is to restore the deceased to the lineage and to enable the spirit to be mourned and settled so it will protect younger generations. Failing to do so risks spiritual and social disorder. The respectful return in death, like the festive Christmas return of the able-bodied injivas, reinforces ties between generations.
Despite the religious and cultural importance of burial at home, repatriating a body from South Africa poses economic challenges to a family. It’s not only a moral duty but also a financial burden. So, in principle, only those whose death has been unforeseen return in coffins. Those who can will return home before they die to save the cost of repatriation.
Families make extraordinary efforts to make repatriation possible. Relatives collect and borrow money, and reach out to kin across borders. Burial societies mobilise payments from their members to collect the funds for embalming, transportation, paperwork and funerals. These obligations reveal the importance of the ancestral continuity being an economic matter, and sustenance of family welfare continuing after death.
Formal and informal burial societies
Since the 1990s, Bulawayo’s once-thriving industries have largely collapsed, leaving its old mills and factories deserted or refunctioning as spaces for religious congregations, education and garages. Amid these modest ventures, funeral services stand out in the city’s otherwise melancholic landscape.
As Zimbabwe’s economic and political instability pushes many to seek livelihoods in South Africa, the funeral industry has expanded. The Beitbridge border, crossing the Limpopo River between Zimbabwe and South Africa, has long organised the movement of labour and remittances, governing also the return of bodies.
Indeed, funeral parlours and burial societies date back to the colonial era when injured and dead migrants had to be sent home. Today, carrying prosperous names such as Doves, Kings & Queens and African Pride, funeral parlours function as key institutions in managing transnational death.
Besides these licensed funeral services, people belong to informal money pooling societies that mobilise money collectively to cover the cost of death. While some collect steady monthly deposits, others gather money ad hoc during emergencies.
These societies blur boundaries between formal and informal systems. Many “undocumented” migrants, who cannot have bank accounts, participate through friends or relatives with legal status, contributing to pooled funds tracked via mobile communication apps and bank transfer receipts. Societies sustain solidarity networks, and transparent contributions signal both moral and financial responsibility, shaping participants’ social standing.
Bureaucracies of transnational death
Between the death and the burial, numerous legal and bureaucratic steps must be completed, from obtaining death certificates and health clearances to coordinating with South African and Zimbabwean authorities.
Often, identity documents from Zimbabwe need to be collected to prove that the deceased is a Zimbabwean national. When the deceased has not revealed their identity to the South African authorities and remains “undocumented”, or has two legal identities, the disparity needs to be explained in affidavits.
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These administrative steps are not simply procedural; they are part of the politics of death. The paperwork that allows a body to move, such as a stamp, a signature, or an affidavit, is both a form of recognition and a reminder of inequality. While some deaths can move across borders with relative ease, others become delayed or trapped in institutional procedures.
Bureaucracy is a space where care, legality and belonging intertwine. State officials may draw not only on formal guidelines but also their cultural logics of care. They are central in navigating the legal and bureaucratic challenges. Immigration officers might be sympathetic and share the cultural understanding of the importance of returning home respectably.
The homecoming of the dead mirrors, in reverse, the December journeys of the living. Both are seasonal movements that bind families across generations, space and time. The same routes that carried migrants south in search of work now carry their bodies northward, accompanied by papers, payments and prayers.
In the end, the bureaucracies that regulate transnational death are not merely state procedures, but central to how families remake connection, dignity and belonging under precarious conditions.
This research was supported by funding from the Academy of Finland. The author is currently supported by the Kone Foundation.
– ref. The price of going home: Christmas boxes and the final return from South Africa to Zimbabwe – https://theconversation.com/the-price-of-going-home-christmas-boxes-and-the-final-return-from-south-africa-to-zimbabwe-268046
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