Nearly half the illegal immigrants on a repatriation train last week jumped off before it arrived in Mozambique
Khadija Magardie
It’s early morning on the repatriation train to Mozambique, and police Captain Pieter Cloete, clad in a T-shirt and sleeping shorts, is running bewildered through the carriages.
“Where are all the people?” he shouts – so inebriated and sleepy that he cannot stop the passengers from spilling out of the moving train.
Yet barely hours earlier, walking through the rows of Mozambican immigrants squatted alongside the awaiting train, Cloete was your typical “tough cop”.
“Chafkop,” he roared, and everyone would duck, putting their heads between their knees – failure to do so could bring a nasty slap to the head.
Cloete’s body language and his tone of voice said he was in charge as he strutted between the rows, hurling insults and orders at the immigrants and fellow officers.
Cloete’s job is to escort immigrants out of the country and it is clear they fear him. But by the end of the journey, Cloete’s reputation for fierceness was considerably tarnished. Not only had he openly displayed his drunkenness, but he had also taken time off to fire rounds of ammunition to “skiet” (shoot) at what he said were “krokodille” (crocodiles) in a nearby stream.
The behaviour of the highest-ranking policeman on the train is just the tip of the iceberg in a series of events that culminated in the arrival of the train at the Ressano Garcia border post with just over half its original load.
Every Wednesday the Department of Home Affairs, together with the South African Police Service Border Police, repatriates scores of immigrants from Zimbabwe and Mozambique from the Lindela Detention Centre outside Krugersdorp. Among them last week were some of the nearly 8E000 illegal immigrants arrested in the recent anti-crime blitz in various parts of Gauteng.
Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete and National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi hailed the operation as “a success”. But it appears that although police have little trouble in getting the immigrants to Lindela, they are less successful when it comes to getting them back to their countries.
Last week, thanks to incompetence and negligence, only 503 of the approximately 965 deportees arrived at their destination. The rest jumped with relative ease out of the train, allegedly with police complicity.
The sight of people literally stepping out of the train – many before the train had even left the outskirts of Johannesburg – raises questions as to why the police contingent on board made little, if any, effort to stop them. Many say they pre-arrange with certain policemen – by paying.
Some are so confident that they wave brazenly to the guards who load them on to the trucks that ferry them to the station. “Ngisa ku-bona kusasa, ne? [I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?]” one grinning man shouts to the guard.
The guards laugh and wave back, but they know they will see the same faces as soon as the next day. It is easy to understand why deportees are in such high spirits – some know they will pay their way out of Lindela; others know they will pay the police on the train to be allowed to jump off. And the rest will start making their way back after arriving at the border, because there are no immigration officials waiting there to document or charge them.
“I have been meaning to go home for a holiday for some time now, and now I won’t have to pay for a ticket,” says Wisinia (23), a hairdresser from Sunnyside, Pretoria.
Initially, there is an almost eerie calm. Cloete and the rest of the police are at their best, shouting for silence, and parading up and down the aisles.
The 45 women and children, including a woman with an infant, are in a separate coach. The policeman in charge explains that there have been several attempted rapes, especially in the early hours of the morning.
There is also an elderly man in the women’s carriage. The man, whom the women christen “Madala” (old man) says he was a labourer on a South African farm for more than 30 years. Recently, the farm was sold, and he was put out on to the streets. Social workers who found him penniless and destitute said it was “better if he went back to Mozambique”, which he had not seen for the past 40 years. He says he does not remember where his family is, nor where he comes from.
“Chafkop,” shout the police in unison, and the deportees crouch as the train slowly pulls out of the station. There are 13 policemen on the train. There is also a home affairs official on board. We run into him at around 8pm in the first class section of the train. He warns us not to disturb him, as he is retiring for the night. We only see him again the next morning, when the train is on its way back to South Africa.
As the train gathers speed, the policemen order the men to remove their belts, and hang them on the overhead compartments. Most of the men are wearing baggy pants, or bits of fabric held together with pieces of rope. Police say that the need to hold their pants together will cripple their speed, should they attempt to escape. This apparently has little effect, because by the time the train reaches Johannesburg Station, six deportees have escaped into nearby bushes. At Germiston, no fewer than 40 have leapt out of the train. Two men hang on to the train door for more than five minutes, waiting for a chance that will minimise injury. Each time the train slows down more people hop out, many carrying bags. In the women’s coach, two women open a window and force themselves out, in full view of the policeman on duty. The policeman says he was “too slow” to dash from the opposite side of the carriage.
In some of the men’s coaches, particularly those towards the front of the train, police presence has some effect, because many arrive in Mozambique with a nearly full cargo. But the majority of the coaches arrive half-full, some nearly empty. In one coach, the policeman on duty excuses himself to go to the toilet no fewer than 14 times in the space of two hours. Each time he disappears, scores of passengers take advantage of the opportunity, opening windows and doors and leaping out. The scene is almost festive as those remaining cheer them on.
Most escape on the pretext of going to the toilet. The policemen on duty allows up to four people to go to the toilet at a time. At one stage, a policeman orders journalists to move out of certain carriages, and threatens that they will “be locked up in their cabins” if they do not comply. Immigrants say this is to prevent anyone from observing the transactions between the police and “the jumpers”.
By the time the train reaches Nelspruit in the early morning, whole carriages are jumping out en masse. It is at this stage that Cloete, who had long since retired to his compartment to socialise and drink with other policemen, appears, out of uniform and out of breath, to take stock, and promptly returns to his sleep.
In one “mass jump” at Witbank, while the train is stationary, one policeman half- heartedly gives chase, firing a couple of shots into the air. During the chaos, he leaves his carriage unguarded, and the remaining people in it jump out.
Before the train reaches Komatipoort, a town close to the border, journalists find, among other things, a female deportee in a first class compartment with a policeman, and sleeping policemen nodding off as their carriages empty by the hour.
At Komatipoort, Cloete and a group of white officials, who had been holed up in the first class cabins, disembark for breakfast, leaving the train to head for Mozambique. Still in their pyjamas and anoraks, and clutching plastic carrier bags with food, beer and cooking utensils, the group plan to stay in the town until the train returns. As the train pulls out of the station, Cloete shouts to the journalists that they should go to a certain caf in town that makes good hamburgers.
l The trains used to transport illegal foreigners have recently been changed, following concerns expressed by the Human Rights Commission and Lawyers for Human Rights over the previous trains. Previously, train windows were soldered shut, and ventilation and light were poor. In some instances, police forced the passengers to sit in silence, in a crouched position, for a substantial part of the journey.
It costs R25 a day to house and feed someone at Lindela, and an additional R50 per person to transport them to Mozambique or Zimbabwe. The police and immigration officials on board get a R150 “allowance”.