By Tendai Chisiri.
South Africa. (News Of The South) – Whilst economic and political problems in Zimbabwe have led to significant increases in migration to Botswana and South Africa since the early 2000s, victimisation has not spared undocumented migrants either.
In search of green pastures , my journey to Selebi Phikwe in Botswana to play for a premiership out fit Nico United FC resulted in this writer witnessing how Zimbabwean migrants were being mistreated in the neighbouring country.
Training with Nico United during the late afternooon , left this writer with ample time from the morning to visit the shopping mall in the town regurlarly.One day a white man aproached me and asked if I could find a builder to construct a driveway at a service station and also have the fuel pumps changed.
I obliged and called a Zimbabwean guy with knowlegde in building. After Mernard the Zimbabwean guy had finished the work in a week’s time, the white man coincidentally knew that Mernard had overstayed in Botswana according to the immigration stamps on his passport.He then called the Botswana police to arrest Mernard for deportation.
Fortunately the Botswana police were kind to Mernard since the white man was a contractor from South Africa.The police ordered the white man to pay Mernard his wages and said if they happen to come across Mernard again that is when they would arrest him.
Mernard’s situation is the order of the day in Botswana as Batswanas engage foreigners to do menial jobs knowing they donot have work permits and later hand them to the police or traditional chiefs in order to evade paying the wages.
“Botswana are very cruel, they take advantage of our plight to abuse us.We do menial jobs for them but when pay dates are near, they call the police or chiefs’ police who thoroughly beat us before having us deported”, revealed a lady on condition of anonymity as she was searching for menial jobs in Selebi Phikwe.
Although brouhaha has been brought about by diplomats from Zimbabwe, the intervention of International Organisation of Migration (IOM) can ease the burden of migrants.
In July 2016, Senator Damian Mumvuri as the chairperson of thematic committee on Peace and Security of the Country’s borders came face to face with problems faced by deportees.
Senator Mumvuri as quoted by The Herald during one of his committee’s fact finding mission at Plumtree Border Post witnessed a group of Zimbabweans at the no man’s land between Zimbabwe and Botswana who had been deported.
They could hardly walk and had wounds all over their bodies.They submitted that they had been beaten up by both the Botswana police and the traditional chief courts”, said the Senator in The Herald.
The Senator blamed the Registar – General’s office as it should decentralise its offices to district levels as this will reduce the number of people travelling without passports.
Recently a furore has been sparked by South Africa’s Police Minister Fikile Mbalula as he warned South African farmers against employing undocumented Zimbabweans whom he blamed for engaging in variuos criminal activities in South Africa.
The debacle emanated when he was responding to questions from an opposition Democratic Alliance MP during the release of annual crime statistics to South African Parliament.
The South Africa Police can not contain the criminal activities transpiring and are now blaming the illegal migrants from Zimbabwe.
“But equally, there are farmers who are wrong because they employ people from Zimbabwe as cheap labour and exploit them and then those people turn against them and kill them, and then it becomes a safety question”, said the South African Police Minister in Parliament.
However the reverse is true and sources close to the farms say the farmers employ illegal migrants because they want cheap labour and do not process work permits for their workers.
The sources also said instead of farmers contacting immigration authorities to have his workers be given work permits, they turn a blind eye on the situation.An illegal worker can not complain to the police if a farmer refuses to pay him/her because the police can arrest him/her for working without a permit.So farmers opt for illegal workers whom they can abuse and later chase away.
Farmers shoud be fined for underpaying their workers rather tha blaming illegal migrants for the wrongs they have not done.
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