Since the advent of colonialism migration in Southern Africa has become a hotly contested activity. The settler colonial government of Southern Rhodesia imposed spatial and mobility restrictions on the native population in order to control access to cheap labour. Southern Rhodesia and South Africa were in a constant competition over access to cheap labour from the region’s interior territories. The shadows of gender began to shape the politics of belonging and mobility for native women that have encrypted themselves into the worldview of migration policymaking in Southern Africa. The Gukurahundi genocide and the ensuing 1990s economic recession caused by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPS) feminized migration to South Africa changing the dynamics mobility. Zimbabwean migrant women face gendered violence at the border and in the city of Johannesburg, on top of being extorted. Gendered stereotyping of mobility is embedded into the public attitudes and the securitization of migration enforcement.