Trying to flee Zimbabwe

Last Modified: 22 Mar 2007
By: Jonathan Miller

Britain believes that this year will bring political change in Zimbabwe and is making preparations for Robert Mugabe's departure.

Our foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller reports from the South African/Zimbabwean border close to the crossing of Beitbridge, where Zimbabweans have been fleeing their country in their thousands.

This is how Zimbabwean refugees in Johannesburg saw out a national holiday here last night - a holiday to celebrate "Human Rights Day," of all things.

'If Mugabe unleashes his men and realises you are part of it, you are labelled opposition traitor'

The flotsam and jetsam of Robert Mugabe's repressive regime were cramped cheek by jowl in a church.

Their struggle is still unrecognised by the South African government. A groundswell of public opinion is now damning its policy of quiet diplomacy as the sound of an unforgivable silence.

Beitbridge is the official crossing point to Zimbabwe. So desperate are its people to flee poverty and chaos that every day some jump off Beitbridge, into South Africa, often breaking their legs in the process.

Hundreds of jumpers and fence-busters are rounded up every day too while thousands are detained and deported; but it's a revolving door, most make it through in the end.

People smuggling

People-smuggling is big business up here in the bush.

Last month, Godknows Nare, a Zimbabwean film-maker, documented the hazardous journey made by 20 of his compatriots fleeing the Mugabe regime.

Border jumpers have been taken by crocodiles in the Limpopo river; they also run the gauntlet of bandits.

This group was robbed of all they had and the attack secretly filmed.

Then, it's through the fence. They have to dodge or bribe police and army patrols on both sides of the frontier.

Those crossing though are becoming more brazen now; all this in broad daylight.

Frontier

The three layers of razorwire demarcates the 200 mile frontier which is a relic of the apartheid regime which was designed to stop anti-apartheid guerrillas getting in. Today it's failing to keep Zimbabweans out.

We trailed a pickupful of fence jumpers on a border patrol road. We wanted to talk, but they didn't.

Further along, a man on the other side. He would talk.

There is now only one way a western journalist can speak to a Zimbabwean inside Zimbabwe, through a razorwire curtain.

A people-smuggler took us through a well-known crossing point. We hid in the bushes, watched and waited, no one crossed. So after an hour, we crossed the other way.

It was not a blind spot for Zimbabwean soldiers though, we'd been spotted. One began to give chase.

'Our people smuggling guide said: 'run!'
Jonathan Miller

Our people-smuggling guide just said "Run!" One of the soldiers came halfway across; I tried to engage him in conversation.

Another man who thought it time to get out, showed me his scars from the razor wire.

He arrived six weeks ago and says he was a Major in the Zimbabwean Army; disgruntlement now so widespread he says, they're deserting in droves.

He told me he'd personally witnessed many beatings, torture, even the murder of an opposition activist.

Major "Shorty"

"I was right there seeing it with my own two eyes, you cannot intervene, nothing. They will turn on you too."

"The thing is, if Mugabe unleashes his men and realises you are part of it, you are labelled opposition traitor, a sell out, Tony Blair's son, all of those things automatically. Yes you might prevent it, but when you go home, you find your house is gone."

Amid rumours of an imminent coup, we spoke to other deserters, who, like the major believe Mugabe's days are numbered.

C44 News cannot independently verify these men's stories for fear of endangering them or their families back in Zimbabwe. But we believe their stories to be true.

Razorwire

Nearly a quarter of the Zimbabwean population is now thought to be in South Africa - many in Johannesburg's rougher areas.

Only a handful have been granted asylum, most are classed as economic migrants. They have no legal rights or protection.

Not all the border-jumpers head south though; some get jobs on the big farms that line the Zimbabwean frontier. They're paid pitiful wages.

At 6am yesterday morning, on one of these farms we met a man who'd cross just hours earlier. He had just been given an old newspaper.

Zimbabweans will continue to pour through the razorwire to escape the catastrophe wrought by Robert Mugabe. Even diehard supporters deserting the dictator now.

A nation is upping and leaving in order just to survive, clambering over and under the fence that South Africa sits on -- resolutely.