Traversing the Environmental Push Factors to the Zimbabwean Migration into Southern Africa from 2000 to 2025: Implications to School Leadership

Bernard Chingwanangwana 1 ORCID iD & Maserole Christina Kgari-Masondo1  ORCID iD

Issue: Vol. 6 No.12 Article 30 pp. 3301 – 3311
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202561230 | Published online 28th  November, 2025
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Views: 95
143 Downloads

DOWNLOAD PDF

Zimbabwe started implementing the Fast-Track Land Reform in February 2000 when the Mugabe government took most of the farms from the four thousand white farmers who had held them since the colonial era to redistribute them to the blacks. This triggered a plethora of migrations all over the globe, with the mainstream of the migrants housed in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Namibia, regionally. This current qualitative desktop study used Zimbabwe as a case to explore the environmental push factors prompted by the land reform implementation, and how education has been affected. The environment, as a push factor, has been ignored in the Zimbabwean turbulence discourse; arguably, Jared Diamond explicitly reveals that even in the early 1500s, the major determinant of the collapse of the kingdoms was the environment. The findings indicate that the land reform programme was the chief cause of the environmental-related migrations of Zimbabweans to Southern Africa and globally. These factors prompt migrants to seek economic refuge, better living conditions, health care, access to resources, and relief from various pressures. The study concludes that the worst is not yet over, as the situation continues to deteriorate, with migration still on the high. The paper recommends that the Zimbabwean government and people take proactive initiatives to fix the environmental policies, demographic, social, health, economic, political, and governance factors to arrest the exodus, thereby restoring education. This can be achieved by employing Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Ubuntu philosophy, decoloniality strategies, case studies on African solutions for African problems, and wide stakeholder consultations. The study contributes literature on the land reform programme in Zimbabwe and how it prompted high migration rates, affecting families and educational provision.

Keywords: Educational Provision, Environmental Factors, Migration, School Leadership, Zimbabwe.

 

Angellar, Manguvo, D Whitney Stephen, and Chareka Ottilia. “The Crisis of Student Misbehavior in Zimbabwean Public Schools: Teachers’ Perceptions on Impact of Macro Socioeconomic Challenges.” Int. J. Educ. Adm. Policy Stud, 2011.

Beabout, Brian R. “Urban School Reform and the Strange Attractor of Low-Risk Relationships.” School Community Journal 20, no. 1 (2010): 9–30.

Bhatasara, Sandra. “Women, Land and Poverty in Zimbabwe: Deconstructing the Impacts of the Fast Track Land Reform Program.” Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa 13, no. 1 (2011): 316–30.

Bimha, Primrose Zvikomborero Joylyn. “Legalising the Illegal: An Assessment of the Dispensation of Zimbabweans Project (DZP) and Zimbabwe Special Dispensation Permit (ZSP) Regularisation Projects.” University of Cape Town, 2017.

Brown, Michael E, and Linda K Treviño. “Ethical Leadership: A Review and Future Directions.” The Leadership Quarterly 17, no. 6 (2006): 595–616.

Chambati, Walter. “Restructuring of Agrarian Labour Relations after Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe.” In Outcomes of Post-2000 Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe, 141–62. Routledge, 2014.

Crush, Jonathan, Abel Chikanda, and Godfrey Tawodzera. “The Third Wave: Mixed Migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa.” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 49, no. 2 (May 4, 2015): 363–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2015.1057856.

Crush, Jonathan, and Daniel S Tevera. Zimbabwe’s Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival. African Books Collective, 2010.

Dana Burde. “Weak State, Strong Community: Promoting Community Participation in Post-Conflict Countries.” Current Issues in Comparative Education 6, no. 2 (January 1, 2004). https://doi.org/10.52214/cice.v6i2.11379.

Dendere, Chipo. “The Impact of Voter Exit on Party Survival: Evidence from Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF.” ScholarWorks@ Georgia State University, 2015.

Diamond, Jared M, and Doug Ordunio. Guns, Germs, and Steel. Vol. 521. Books on Tape New York, 1999.

Erlinghagen, Marcel, and Karsten Hank. Transnational Family Relations of German Emigrants. Edited by Marcel Erlinghagen and Karsten Hank. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-44543-0.

Gemenne, F. “Why the Numbers Don’t Add up: A Review of Predictions and Forecasts for Environmentally-Induced Migration.” Global Environmental Change 21, no. S1 (2011): S41–49.

Hunter, Lori M., Jessie K. Luna, and Rachel M. Norton. “Environmental Dimensions of Migration.” Annual Review of Sociology 41, no. 1 (August 14, 2015): 377–97. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112223.

Jones, Hywel. “Welsh Speakers: Age Profile and out-Migration.” Welsh in the Twenty-First Century, 2010, 118–47.

Kgari-Masondo, Maserole Christina. “‘A Superstitious Respect for the Soil’?: Environmental History, Social Identity and Land Ownership–a Case Study of Forced Removals from Lady Selborne and Their Ramifications, c. 1905 to 1977.” Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, 2008.

Kgari-Masondo, Maserole Christina, and Bernard Chingwanangwana. “Examining the Pragmatism of Unhulized Leadership in Schools Amid Socio-Political and Economic Turbulence in Zimbabwe: The Experiences of School Heads and Teachers in Marondera District.” Leadership and Policy in Schools 24, no. 3 (July 3, 2025): 590–602. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2024.2313015.

Magaramombe, Godfrey. “‘Displaced in Place’: Agrarian Displacements, Replacements and Resettlement among Farm Workers in Mazowe District.” Journal of Southern African Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2010): 361–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2010.485789.

Makina, Daniel. “Migration and Characteristics of Remittance Senders in South Africa.” International Migration 51, no. s1 (July 22, 2013). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2012.00746.x.

Moyo, Inocent. “Zimbabwe’s Unemployed Youth: On Waithustlinghood, Struggle for Survival and Political Activism.” Social Sciences & Humanities Open 8, no. 1 (2023): 100535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2023.100535.

———. “Zimbabwean Dispensation, Special and Exemption Permits in South Africa: On Humanitarian Logic, Depoliticisation and Invisibilisation of Migrants.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 53, no. 8 (December 22, 2018): 1141–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909618776413.

Musoni, Francis. “Border Jumping and Migration Control in Southern Africa.” Migration Studies 10, no. 2 (2022): 283–89. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40949.

Nzima, Divane, and Khangelani Moyo. “Escaping the ‘Diaspora Trap’: A Narrative of Struggle and Resilience by an Unskilled Zimbabwean Migrant in South Africa.” Sozialpolitik. Ch 2, no. 2023 (2023): 2–5.

Potts, Deborah. “‘Restoring Order’? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 273–91.

Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 168–78.

Segatti, Aurelia, and Loren B. Landau. Contemporary Migration to South Africa A Regional Development Issue. Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2011.

Shapiro, Joan Poliner. Ethical Educational Leadership in Turbulent Times. Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203809310.

Sherbinin, Alex de, Kathryn Grace, Sonali McDermid, Kees van der Geest, Michael J. Puma, and Andrew Bell. “Migration Theory in Climate Mobility Research.” Frontiers in Climate 4 (May 10, 2022). https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2022.882343.

Shizha, Edward, and Michael T Kariwo. Education and Development in Zimbabwe. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

Stark, Oded, and David E Bloom. “The New Economics of Labor Migration.” The American Economic Review 75, no. 2 (1985): 173–78.

Tevera, Daniel, and Lovemore Zinyama. Zimbabweans Who Move: Perspectives on International Migration in Zimbabwe. Idasa and Queens University, 2002.

UNESCO. Global Education Monitoring Report: Migration, Displacement and Education – Building Bridges, Not Walls. UNESCO, 2019. https://doi.org/10.54676/XDZD4287.

Vanyoro, Kudakwashe. “The Political Work of Migration Governance Binaries: Responses to Zimbabwean ‘Survival Migration’ at the Zimbabwe–South Africa Border.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2023): 286–312.

Weda, Zenzele, and Rian de Villiers. “Partial and Virtual Return: The Willingness of Migrant Zimbabwean Teachers in South Africa to Participate in Skills Transfer.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 22, no. 3 (2021): 849–64.

World Bank. “Industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Seizing Opportunities in Global Value Chains.” World Bank Group, 2021.

Zimbabwe Government. Zimbabwe Education Act. Harare : Government Printers, 1987.

Dr. Bernard Chingwangwana, holder of PhD in Educational Leadership (Witwatersrand), born in Zimbabwe, South Permanent Resident, currently doing a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship with the University of Venda, South Africa. He is on leave of absence from Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University. He has been in Education for over 35 years from High School to University. He has published over fifteen articles on Educational Leadership and Management. His area of specialty and research interest is ethical leadership in schools.

Professor Maserole Christina Kgari-Masondo, Associate Professor of History, University of Venda. South African-born and educated, widely published with an excess of twenty articles. Has experience in teaching Cultural History. Has a cutting-edge approach to Decolonization and Indigenous knowledge insight and campaign, through her various writings and practices. Professor Maserole Christina Kgari-Masondo grew up as an orphan and in a poverty-stricken household. Despite that, she used her family background and personal challenges as motivation to be a high achiever. Studied her degrees through academic awards from – Kellogg’s Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and National Research Fund. For PhD, she won a prestigious Academic Award from Carnegie Mellon Scholarship for Black Students in 2004-2007.

Chingwanangwana, Bernard, and Maserole Christina Kgari-Masondo. “Traversing the Environmental Push Factors to the Zimbabwean Migration into Southern Africa from 2000 to 2025: Implications to School Leadership.” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 6, no. 12 (2025): 3285 – 3301, https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202561230

© 2025 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Articles in this Issue

About Journal