Fleeing Mugabe - no fence too high for border jumpers

Apr 20, 2007, 15:11 GMT

Musina, South Africa - On the 27th anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence this week, hundreds of young Zimbabweans were scouring the 150-kilometre-long barbed-wire border fence with South Africa for holes through which to wriggle free of the hardship wrought by President Robert Mugabe.

While ruling party faithful were being treated to rousing music and military displays in Harare, a group of migrants were passing their belongings across the border fence in broad daylight.

European Pressphoto Agency (epa) photographer Kim Ludbrook watched as four Zimbabweans, some of them wearing conspicuously bright clothing, wormed their way into the country just under 200 metres from a South African army base.

Zimbabwe is haemorrhaging citizens, mostly the young and able-bodied, to its wealthier neighbour, as many as 49,000 a month, according to some estimates.

Widespread hunger and poverty triggered by mass unemployment and record inflation of over 1,700 per cent, is spurring this human tide southwards on a journey fraught with dangers.

The migrants must first cross the Limpopo River that forms the natural border between the two countries and teems with crocodiles when swollen by rains.

Once through the three-metre-high border fence, the migrants are shepherded by paid 'leaders' across farms and game reserves to quiet roads where illegal taxis wait to transport them in the dead of night to the city of Johannesburg and beyond.

Inside South Africa thieves known as 'amagumaguma' often lie in wait in the bush to relieve the migrants of money and valuables, often down to their shoes. Those without cash to hand over are often beaten.

Last month brothers Stephen, 23 and Joseph, 26, from a village in central Zimbabwe showed Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa ugly welts on their arms and legs dating from their encounter with the 'amagumaguma.'

Dierk Lempertz, who runs a game reserve outside Musina, found a Zimbabwean woman naked, 'nearly dead' on his land after she had been robbed and raped, allegedly by thieves.

Between 2 and 3 million Zimbabwean illegals, including many professionals, are estimated to be living in South Africa, where they find work as domestic workers, gardeners or traders.

With unofficial unemployment in South Africa estimated at around 40 per cent, Zimbabwean migrants represent unwelcome competition for low-paid jobs.

Each day, between 130 to 150 Zimbabweans are detained at a repatriation centre near Johannesburg and dropped back across the border, from where most simply launch a fresh attempt at jumping the border.

As farm labourers in Musina, Stephen and Joseph earn 400 rands a month (56 dollars), a fraction of what locals earn, but around four times the salary of an office worker in Zimbabwe.

'The situation at home is more and more desperate. Anyone who can is going overseas,' said William, 35, a gardener in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Emmarentia.

Althought South Africa and former colonial power Britain are the favourite destinations of Zimbabweans, other southern African countries, including poor countries such as Zambia and Malawi, are also witnessing influxes.

Despite the spillover of the Zimbabwean problem, leaders in the region have been loathe to criticize former liberation-struggle icon Mugabe.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has been appointed the region's point man in Zimbabwe, amid warnings from Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that: 'South Africa cannot perform magic to solve the problems in Zimbabwe.'

Moeletsi Mbeki, the intellectual and businessman brother of South Africa's leader, worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. This week he scathingly described the government's policy with Harare as a 'do nothing while appear to be doing a lot' approach.