Relations between Botswana and Zimbabwe are deteriorating as Botswana builds an electric fence along the border and accuses illegal Zimbabwean immigrants of robbing houses and harassing children.
The fence is going up as Botswana says it is experiencing its biggest immigration problem since independence in 1966 as thousands enter the country, fleeing economic meltdown in Zimbabwe.
The Immigration Department says it is overwhelmed by the influx and has joined police and army units patrolling the border.
The government has built a holding centre in the northern city of Francistown, on the border, following concern that illegal Zimbawean immigrants were swamping Botswana’s prisons while awaiting repatriation.
The electric fence, which will be 500km long, is purportedly to prevent foot-and-mouth-infested cattle from crossing the border, but it is 2,4m high.
The combative Zimbabwean high commissioner (ambassador) to Gaborone, Phelekeza Mphoko, said last week that ”Botswana is trying to create a Gaza Strip” by putting up the fence.
”People will continue to destroy the fence because it has divided families on either side of the border,” Mphoko told the Botswana Gazette newspaper.
Botswanan President Festus Mogae is one of the few African leaders to have spoken out against the policies of his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Mugabe.
”While we support land reform in Zimbabwe completely, we feel the implementation of the strategy is incorrect,” he said two years ago.
”Mugabe is the president of a very powerful and militarily more superior state. We have no ability nor inclination to dictate to him what to do.”
Botswanan Foreign Minister Mompati Merafhe was forced last month to deny reports that the Gaborone government was involved in plans to topple Mugabe.
”Botswana would never allow itself to be used for such treacherous activities,” Merafhe said, without specifying from where the reports emanated.
Botswanan authorities are meanwhile planning to bury 12 unclaimed bodies in a mass grave — 11 of them illegal Zimbabwean immigrants, the other a Rwandan.
Sylvia Muzila, the district commissioner in Francistown, which is Botswana’s second-biggest city, said this week that ”hordes of unclaimed corpses of illegal immigrants are jamming the government mortuaries in the country”.
”Most of the illegal immigrants were admitted into the hospitals through different ailments and they are largely of sexually active age,” she said, implying that they had died of Aids.
”The costs for dignified burial are too high and the best thing that we can do is to have a mass burial.”
Alfred Dube, Botswana’s representative at the United Nations, said on Thursday: ”We are concerned about what is going on there [Zimbabwe]. It is very unfortunate that we have our houses being burgled every day and our children being harassed. We understand why our people are saying that Zimbabweans must go.”
Merafhe on Thursday accused Zimbabwe — without naming it — of mounting a ”malicious” campaign against Botswana.
”Anybody who says that we are trying to close the border with Zimbabwe must be malicious,” he said. ”The Zimbabweans are crossing the border illegally.”
Botswana, which has a population of just 1,7 million, far below Zimbabwe’s 11,6 million, is repatriating 2 500 Zimbabweans every month, he said, but the total number of Zimbabweans living in Botswana illegally is estimated at 60 000 to 100 000.
”I cannot understand people who say we are trying close the border with Zimbabwe while we are encouraging Zimbabwean to use the gazetted points of entry,” Merafhe said.
”We have more border posts with Zimbabwe than with any other [neighbouring] country.
”The construction of the fence must continue and it will continue. We have to go ahead with the fence and when need be, we will open some more border posts, like we have proposed, to Zimbabweans rather than promote lawlessness.”
The foot-and-mouth threat, meanwhile, is real.
Botswana has had two outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in just less than two years and the source was traced back to Zimbabwe.
The outbreak of the disease led to the closure of an abattoir in the north, temporary layoffs and the suspension of beef exports to the lucrative European Union markets. — Sapa-AFP