Immunity Passports, "Vaccinated Travel", and the Governance of Mobility across South Africa’s Borders with Zimbabwe and Botswana after Covid-19

Two futures face Southern Africa in the wake of Covid-19. First, there is an emerging global trend towards vaccination or proof of virus testing – ‘or immunity passports’ – as a condition for cross-border travel. Second, contrary to the first, there is a growing informalization of cross-border mobility in the region.

Using the cases of the Beitbridge border port-of-entry of South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the Kopfontein border port-of-entry of South Africa and Botswana, this project explores how mobility governance southern Africa is responding to the pandemic and establishing a pattern for the future. What lessons can be drawn from the two border posts as regards future cross-border mobility?

Through document and policy analysis, expert interviews, and participant-observation fieldwork, the project explores an emerging global border regime in which the governance of international mobility appears to be characterized by systems that connect states to institutions that now collapse borders with epidemiology and thus operate in spaces ‘between public health, the state, and supranational organizations’ (Papadopoulos, et al., 2008) Such systems drag the collective health of individuals into the management of border systems. The Southern African case is particularly relevant as it so clearly and instructively exhibits a conflict of interests that is now of global relevance: the conflict between a need mobile foreign workers and concerns for public health.