Address Unknown: The Temporality of Displacement and the Ethics of Disconnection among Zimbabwean Migrants in Johannesburg

Zimbabwean immigrants in Johannesburg are typically beset by a complex set of material demands and ethical constraints. These may include the demand to send money, food, durable goods, and clothing to relatives back home. They may also include the demand to physically host and provide for relatives and friends in unending succession. At the same time, a migrant may have competing ethical obligations to a diverse network of people in Johannesburg: spouses and in-laws, siblings and children, friends and allies, or church members and business partners, who together constitute an everyday social milieu. One of my emerging research interests lies in tracking the strategies by which migrants maintain social relations (and the flow of resources) across the Zimbabwean-South African border. But I am equally interested in strategies of social disconnection - of remaining out of sight or 'incommunicado'. While one might plausibly analyse such strategies in light of a rational calculus aimed at protecting hard-won assets from the claims of kin, such an analysis would take a theoretically impoverished account of the ethical judgements involved. What are the ethical implications and consequences of not forwarding one's address or cellphone number, or of not replying to calls and letters? The open-ended condition of displacement brought about by violence, insecurity and the present political impasse within Zimbabwe lends itself to a particularly vexing moral economy for Zimbabweans abroad - one in which the temporal horizon for reconciling credits and debts, present capacities and future dependencies, is unknowable.