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Bessie Head and the Zimbabwean women who are forced to wait in Lindela

abstract In the last half-century, `strong passport’ national democracies have turned the application for asylum into a criminal justice procedure. In so doing, these nation-states have redefined citizenship. With the opening of Lindela Repatriation Centre, South Africa joined the community of democratic nations in that project. Lindela, meaning `wait’ or `wait here’, is a prison filled with people, many of whom have committed no crimes, assigned to waiting: waiting for processing and/or deportation, and waiting, in a different sense, for citizenship. For asylum seekers, and for Zimbabwean women asylum seekers in particular, the `crime’ is that of being unworthy of citizenship. This article attempts use Bessie Head’s writings to read the situation of Zimbabwean women asylum seekers in Lindela, and more broadly in South Africa and Zimbabwe.