AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 and denationalising are back in fashion to sanction people deemed ‘undesirable’.28 There has been increased nationalism and restrictive migration responses to prevent perceived ‘others’ from integrating into societies. Some governments are intentionally framing foreigners as threats to society. This is putting people at risk of, or creating, or perpetuating statelessness. IV. CASE STUDIES (a) Zimbabwe Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative labels Zimbabwe as the ‘main’ citizenship crisis in Southern Africa.29 When the country gained political freedom in 1980, the citizenship issue was immediately politicised. The colonial government expropriated land from native farmers and gave it to white settlers to profit for decades from commercial farms. It established labour recruitment systems from Nyasaland (Malawi), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and Mozambique. Labour migration largely ceased when Rhodesia declared independence from Britain in 1965, but most foreign workers stayed. When the country gained majority rule in 1980, between one-quarter and one-half of farmworkers had foreign origins, although most had been born in Zimbabwe.30 More worked in commercial and mining sectors. In the new democracy, citizenship was immediately highly politicised.31 The 1979 Constitution allowed for dual nationality. This was negotiated on behalf of the defeated white settlers, almost all of whom retained British nationality, to protect their interests in the country. The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) — now ZANU-PF (Patriotic Front) — opposed this provision, and by 1983, the new majority government had already amended the Constitution to prohibit dual citizenship. The spirit of this amendment was directed at white settlers who were able to hold both Zimbabwean and British citizenship. In 1984 the government passed a new citizenship law prohibiting dual citizenship and requiring Zimbabweans to renounce any other citizenship they were entitled to.32 Approximately two-thirds of the one million white residents left Zimbabwe, while 20,000 renounced entitlements to foreign citizenship to keep their Zimbabwean ones. Thousands more held foreign passports but remained residents without full citizenship. A large percentage of the farmworkers, mineworkers, and commercial workers of foreign African origin were impacted by the dual nationality ban even though Guy Goodwin-Gill ‘Statelessness is back (not that it ever went away...)’ (12 October 2019) EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, available at www.ejiltalk.org/statelessness-is-back-not-that-it-ever-went- away/ 29 Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative ‘Southern Africa’, available at http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/region/southernafrica/, accessed on 28 November 2022. 30 Manby op cit note 7. 31 Bronwen Manby ‘Report on Citizenship Law: Zimbabwe’ Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies European University Institute (2019). 32 Bronwen Manby ‘Dual citizenship, denationalisation and disenfranchisement in Zimbabwe’ in Bronwen Manby Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging (2018) 149–163. 28 82