The bus driver from Bulawayo grins and shrugs in typically Zimbabwean fashion as he explains the difficulties of feeding his family and keeping his five children in school. But he insists: ”I am going to see the problems through to the end. Nothing lasts for ever.”
The driver, Never, plies the busy route between Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, and Francistown, Botswana, ferrying droves of Zimbabweans trying to find work in the neighbouring country. Amid the busy cross-border traffic, he leans against his 12-seater van, which sits in the no man’s land straddling the border.
”I am out of fuel. Fuel is short again in Zimbabwe, can you imagine! So these women are walking across the border with these chigubus [20 litre plastic containers] to get diesel in Botswana and bring it back so we can drive all the way to Francistown.”
He chuckles at the absurdity of the situation. As we talk, he remembers my expulsion from Zimbabwe. ”They put you in jail, put you on trial. And when you were found innocent they threw you out of the country anyway. Don’t worry, [Information Minister Jonathan] Moyo and [President Robert] Mugabe can’t last for ever. We will get over our troubles and you will be able to come back.”
Two Zimbabwean border guards toting automatic rifles approach through the tall grass and begin climbing through the rows of barbed-wire fences. They shout at the young women carrying the fuel containers and motion with their guns for them to come back for questioning.
”You better go now,” says Never. ”These guys could give you trouble. These days they do what they like. They can be rough.”
Through the field, past four barbed-wire fences, stands a much taller fence. It is the electrified fence that the Botswana government erected two years ago, ostensibly to keep Zimbabwean cattle from straying into Botswana, but really to keep Zimbabweans from flooding into the country.
Stable and prosperous, Botswana is struggling to cope with the effects of Zimbabwe’s deepening economic and humanitarian crisis. Each month its population of 1,7-million is swollen by an estimated 127 000 Zimbabweans, most of them illegal immigrants, seeking work, food and refuge, according to Botswana immigration authorities.
In the year since I was forced to leave the country, the situation in Zimbabwe has worsened in every respect. More people are going hungry, with nearly two-thirds of the population reliant upon international food aid in recent months. State brutality has become more systematic and more widespread. Thousands of young Zimbabweans have been trained in torture at the militia camps and are inflicting their skills on the population, particularly anyone suspected of supporting the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
The state repression against the independent press has increased. The Mugabe government closed The Daily News, the country’s most popular paper, with a million readers. Other newspapers have been threatened with closure and 75 journalists have been arrested.
”Things are bad, really, really tough,” says Thabani (34), whose smile shows two teeth missing. Speaking at the Botswana border post, he says: ”I am a bus inspector in Zimbabwe. But the money is too small. I can’t pay rent or buy food. Here the money has power. I will take any job here, a labourer, a cleaner, a security guard, anything. Whatever money I make will go much further.”
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is evident from the black-market traders waving sheaves of the country’s rapidly depreciating currency. They offer Z$1 000 to one Botswana pula, which just a few years ago traded one for one. One United States dollar fetches Z$6 000. But one loaf of bread costs nearly Z$3 000.
A Zimbabwean man drives a battered truck with a load of folding wooden chairs which he hopes to sell in Botswana. A young woman in a straw hat tearfully pleads with the border guards to be allowed into Botswana, but she does not have the 100 pula required to enter so she is turned back.
”There are so many Zimbabweans who go from house to house looking for any kind of work. They will work for food or for a T-shirt,” said Dorcas Bogatsu, a secretary in Francistown. ”And they are well educated. Their English is good. It is very sad. Zimbabwe used to be a rich country.”
In the chilly nights, Zimbabweans with no place to sleep huddle together around small fires at the Francistown bus station. ”When I find work I’ll send money back to my family,” says Prosper, who says he once worked as a schoolteacher but was threatened by Zimbabwe’s secret police.
Along Blue Jacket Street, Francistown’s main drag, young Zimbabwean women cluster at street corners and wave at passing cars. Zimbabwean sex workers now outnumber Botswanan prostitutes and the competition has driven down prices.
Ordinarily Francistown is a placid little border town, but the scenes, the stories and the desperation of the Zimbabweans make the locals feel as if they are living next to a volcano. No electric fence can keep that unease away. — Â