The living conditions of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa have shocked a group of Zimbabwean pastors on a week-long fact-finding mission in the country. They have likened the Lindela Repatriation Centre, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, to a “concentration camp”.
The group’s spokesperson Reverend Vimbabyi Mugwidi told the Mail & Guardian: “Zimbabweans flee terror in Zimbabwe to come to misery in South Africa.”
The pastors are from the Zimbabwe National Pastors Conference (ZNPC), a network of clergy, pastors and priests.
“To say we are horrified by the conditions Zimbabwean immigrants here are living under is a huge understatement,” said Mugwidi. “It’s one thing to read about the plight of the Zimbabweans, many of whom are considered illegal, and totally another to witness their reality with one’s own eyes. It is heart- rending.”
The pastors intend to improve the squalid conditions and treatment of refugees, together with South African authorities, and have already held talks with authorities in the Department of Home Affairs.
“We have met Zimbabweans who have been granted the official refugee permits. But their permits are routinely torn apart by the police who round these people up and deposit them at Lindela,” said Mugwidi.
She said they had learnt of a man who died after walking 40km to his home in Zimbabwe upon being dumped at the Beit Bridge border post by South African authorities.
Cases of sexual abuse of young girls by the police are also rampant. One 16-year-old girl told the pastors how she had been arrested by police in Hillbrow and detained in the back of a bakkie for the whole day.
She said the police vowed not to release her until she agreed “to make a plan” — meaning to offer them sexual favours.
The pastors said they had met people who were homeless and had no access to food or any of the basic necessities for survival. But still these people could not return to Zimbabwe because many feared for their safety.
The situation was particularly dire for children, some of whom had reached South Africa with their parents only to find themselves on the streets.
Reverend Nicholas Mkaronda of the Anglican Church said South African authorities regularly told Zimbabwean immigrants that they should go back to their country because “it’s not at war”.
The pastors have repeatedly condemned the destruction caused by Operation Murambatsvina and have themselves been detained and questioned by Zimbabwean police for doing relief work in the transit camps set up for the displaced.
This week, Southern African civil-society groups gathered in Gaborone, Botswana, were barred from addressing Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders on the situation in Zimbabwe.
In a communiqué handed to the SADC summit in Gaberone this week, the NGOs called on Harare to accept the findings and recommendations of the United Nations special envoy to Zimbabwe.
“In the past, they [the leaders] pretended that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. But now they acknowledge that there is a problem, but are reluctant to discuss it,” said a civil- society spokesperson, Tor Olsen.
Earlier this week SADC executive secretary Prega Ramsay and Botswana President Festus Mogae, the regional bloc’s incoming chair, indicated that Zimbabwe would not be discussed because it was not a regional problem. In his address to the summit, Mogae hailed Mugabe for honouring the vision of the SADC founding fathers.
Additional reporting ZimOnline