It took two days of trekking through the bush, before navigating a crocodile-infested river and then scrambling underneath a barbed wire fence for Peter Nkomo and his family to make good their great escape from the meltdown of Zimbabwe to South Africa.
”When you have poverty and hunger staring you in the face you are left with only your survival instincts — that is flee Zimbabwe,” says 32-year-old Nkomo from the relative safety of the South African border town of Musina.
”That’s what I have been doing over the last two days, hoping to have a new beginning in South Africa.”
With 80% of the population now living below the poverty line, thousands of Zimbabweans are trying to make it across the border every day and join their two million-plus compatriots who have already made it down south.
But while all hope that they will find a better life in Africa’s richest country than in President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, they often find that life on the other side of the border is equally cruel and dangerous.
Nkomo, who comes from a village near Zimbabwe’s main southern city of Bulawayo, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that he had arrived with his wife and four-month-old baby boy with little more than the clothes on their back.
They have no money, no food and their baby has developed an eye infection which was growing angrier by the hour in temperatures of 27C.
Visibly exhausted, Nkomo said that the worst part of their journey had been their overnight trek across the Limpopo River.
”They are lucky that the Limpopo has virtually dried up now, otherwise these Zimbabweans … would have been eaten up by crocodiles,” says Abram Luruli, manager of the Musina municipality.
The normally tranquil Musina has been flooded with refugees in recent months, with Zimbabweans everywhere to be seen both in town and on the 10km road which leads to the official Beit Bridge border crossing.
Desperation
Japhet Mashuga, who spoke to AFP as he trekked along the Musina-Beit Bridge road, said he had been ready to do what it takes to leave behind a life of misery in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
”It was a question of life and death. We could not be bothered about the risks we faced,” he said as he also recounted his journey southwards.
”The desperation of a hungry man knows no bounds,” he added.
Mugabe’s order for retailers to slash prices in June was officially meant to help Zimbabweans afford basics such as bread and cooking oil but the net result has been more empty shelves as producers can no longer cover their costs.
The United Nations’s World Food Programme announced this week that it planned a
10-fold increase in the number of beneficiaries of its food aid in Zimbabwe in the next eight months in order to avert the threat of what it called widespread hunger.
But for many Zimbabweans, South Africa represents their best chance of avoiding starvation even if only as a source of goods that can then be consumed or even hawked back home.
Mother-of-six Ophadube Davies said she often sneaks over the border to buy food but her latest trip has been caught short after she was picked up without papers by border guards who are generally overwhelmed.
Davies (58) told AFP as she was marched back to Zimbabwe that she was trying to put bread on the table for her jobless husband and 10 grandchildren left in her care after their parents died of HIV/Aids and other diseases.
”I managed to cross yesterday to buy some groceries in Musina to feed my hungry children and sell some at home to make money, but today, security men stopped me from crossing the border. I feel like dying,” she said.
”At my age I should not be playing pranks at the border but the situation at home is very hard for people.”
A South African immigration official at the Beit Bridge border post said that he had every sympathy for the Zimbabweans but that a free-for-all could not be allowed.
”We pity the situation of Zimbabweans but we cannot allow them to enter our country illegally,” he said on condition of anonymity. – Sapa-AFP