How do labour regimes change as large‐scale agriculture depends increasingly on temporary labour? The South African side of the Limpopo River, which marks its border with Zimbabwe, is populated with large‐scale fruit and vegetable farms that are heavily dependent on temporary labour. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted on a border farm in 2009–10, the paper explores how Zimbabwean managers are central to the control of labour in this area. As the interface between the farm owner and the mass of temporary workers, managers are tasked with containing the instability attendant upon the employment of a highly fluid and disaffected workforce. The expansive and many‐faceted role of black managers both disrupts and reproduces the circuits of paternalistic power. The potential for benevolence within paternalism is minimized, while the scope for arbitrary decision‐making by owners and management remains largely intact.