Harare | Monday
SOUTH Africa has begun deporting some 15 000 Zimbabweans as part of a recent decision to rid the country’s farms of legal and illegal immigrant workers, state radio said on Monday.
Three trucks loaded with some 400 deportees arrived at the southern border town of Beitbridge on Sunday, the radio said.
South African authorities last week announced they would remove Zimbabweans from farms in Northern Province to make way for unemployed locals.
Those working with permits, particularly for unskilled jobs, would not have them renewed, while those working illegally would immediately be sent home, officials said.
Zimbabwe’s official state daily, The Herald, said the move to repatriate the workers, some of whom have worked in South Africa for more than 10 years, would spark a diplomatic row and would pressure President Robert Mugabe’s government to forcibly take more white-owned farms to resettle the deportees.
“If the South African government goes ahead with this unprecedented move, the government (of Zimbabwe) will gazette more farms to resettle these people. When we do that we do not expect anyone from South Africa to raise their voices,” the paper quoted a government source as saying.
“But this could mark a beginning of a furore against South Africa and its whites,” the source warned.
The Zimbabwe government has controversially already listed nearly 90% of white-owned farms in the country for compulsory acquisition to resettle landless blacks.
South Africa’s white farmers were given until Monday to clear Zimbabwean workers from their properties or face huge fines for contravening labour and aliens control laws.
Faced with an ailing economy and unemployment levels of up to 60% at home, many Zimbabweans turn to neighbouring South Africa for work — legal or otherwise. – AFP