The paper situates the containment of migrant women entrepreneurs in the borders of Southern Africa within the history of the colonial encounter. I deploy Mayblin and Turnner's counsel to pivot the history of colonialism in the study of the current migration issues. The study argues that colonial logics and structures continue to govern the migration policy of South Africa and Botswana. The androcentric and racialized mobility management that was instituted during the colonial times, criminalized the mobility to urban spaces and entrepreneurship among women. The qualitative study utilises archival and ethnographic tools to collect data on Zimbabwean migrant women entrepreneurship in South Africa and Botswana. A historical analysis that links the present bordering processes to the past, is deployed in the present study based on the insights from Mayblin and Turner. The historical and ethnographic approach is imperative in capturing the voices of African women, who tend to be marginalised in Eurocentric scholarship. In decolonizing studies of mobility in the Global South, the structures of global coloniality that maintain the criminalization of the mobility of Africans within Southern Africa need to be exposed. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's call for decolonizing borders and decriminalizing migration is extended in the current study to include decriminalizing migrant women entrepreneurship in Southern Africa. The results of the present research reveal the active participation of women in contesting border violence since colonial times.