They say that when Zimbabwe sneezes, the whole region gets a cold.
While observers this week were talking up the imminence of regime change in Harare, the country continued to haemorrhage economic migrants to neighbouring countries.
The respected International Crisis Group think thank speculated earlier this week that divisions with Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF over the 83-year-old leader’s bid to extend his term for a further two years represent ”a realistic chance” for change.
”After years of political deadlock and continued economic and humanitarian decline, a realistic chance has at last begun to appear in the past few months to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis,” the report said.
For the thousands of Zimbabweans who flee their country’s economic meltdown each week, change cannot come quickly enough.
On a hot Sunday morning near the Beitbridge crossing with South Africa, a young man wriggles under the second of three razor-wire border fences.
The approach of our car sends him crawling backwards on his elbows into Zimbabwe. From there the 27-year-old, who did not wish to be named and is from the eastern city of Masvingo, says this is his second time in five days to attempt the crossing. He was arrested and deported the first time.
He has neither food nor money and is hoping to get a lift in a truck to Johannesburg, where his brother lives. ”There are no jobs back home,” he said, using an expletive to describe the state of industry in Zimbabwe.
When an army jeep pulls up transporting some just-nabbed illegal migrants — two youths and two women, one cradling a small baby — he melts back into the bush.
Mass exodus
The riches-to-rags transformation of the one-time breadbasket of Africa has spawned a mass exodus of desperate migrants.
With inflation in Zimbabwe running at a record 1 600%, four out of five without a job, and basic necessities such as bread and fuel in short supply, even women with small children are risking life and limb to quit the country.
Although Zambia is also witnessing an influx, most head for regional powerhouse South Africa, home to an estimated three million Zimbabweans, or one-quarter of Zimbabwe’s population.
Some cross the border legally on a visit visa and then overstay their permit to look for work. Those unable to obtain a passport because of a shortage of government money to process a backlog of 300 000 applications try their hand at border jumping.
The journey into South Africa is extremely hazardous.
”They are running away from wild animals, they are running away from the amagumaguma [thieves], they are running away from soldiers and farmers,” says a Zimbabwean woman who shelters illegal migrants in the border town of Musina.
People in the area tell of seeing migrants crossing the Limpopo River on the border being eaten by crocodiles. Dierk Lempertz, who runs a game reserve outside Musina, found a Zimbabwean woman naked, ”nearly dead”, on his land. She had been robbed and raped, allegedly by amagumaguma.
”We gave her food and water and when she was strong again, we said she had to leave the farm,” says Dierk.
Brothers Stephen (23) and Joseph (26), from a village in central Zimbabwe, show ugly welts on their arms and legs where they were beaten by thieves. ”They took off all the clothes, the money. If you have nice shoes, nice watches, they take these,” they say.
Better life
Despite the hazards of the journey and the costs incurred — at least a month’s salary for a lift to the border and to pay a human smuggler to be guided across — most illegal migrants say life is better in South Africa.
As farm labourers in Musina, Stephen and Joseph earn R400 a month, a fraction of what locals earn but about four times the salary of an office worker in Zimbabwe — and ”enough to buy a cow” back home.
With a little money in South Africa they are also sure of being able to buy food. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s disastrous land-reform programme — which saw white-owned farms left fallow after being handed to cronies in the government and military — combined with caps on food prices and drought, has sparked widespread food shortages.
Illegal migrants at risk of deportation stock up on basics such as cooking oil before returning home.
As the meltdown of Zimbabwe begins to be felt throughout Southern Africa, the ”quiet diplomacy” of South African President Thabo Mbeki vis-à-vis his liberation-era ally Mugabe is being increasingly called into question.
”We should not pretend that all is well in Zimbabwe,” Zambian Foreign Affairs Minister Mundia Sikatana said this week, urging the Southern African Development Community to mediate between Mugabe and the European Union to end Zimbabwe’s isolation. — Sapa-dpa