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Zimbabwe: In South Africa, Refugees Find Sanctuary And Contempt
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Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
ANALYSIS
4 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Michael Deibert
Johannesburg
As the autumn sun sets over South Africa's most populous city, the halls of downtown Johannesburg's Central Methodist Mission fill with weary figures, many far from home, seeking solace within its walls.
On every spare inch of space on the floors and narrow staircase of the mission -- and on the pavement outside -- the destitute curl up to find shelter as best they can from the chill wind that moves between the tall buildings in this city. Mixed in among them every night are hundreds of refugees from South Africa's northern neighbour, Zimbabwe, who have fled their country's slow-motion economic and political implosion.
"We sleep outside in the streets. Sometimes we spend days without eating anything; we spend weeks without working," says Owen Muchanyo, a 23-year-old secondary school teacher of mathematics and science from Chitungwiza, a town south of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.
He has been in South Africa for three months. "It's better to sleep on the streets, where my life is somewhat safe, than to sleep in a house when my life is in danger."
A good number of those who now find themselves in Johannesburg have the skills needed to help pull their country out of the morass in which it finds itself.
"There are professional people here who might help to move their own country forward, but we are coming here to suffer because of one person in Zimbabwe and that is Robert Mugabe," says Raymond Chingoma, a 32-year-old political analyst from Harare who arrived in Johannesburg in September 2007, in reference to Zimbabwe's long time president.
Zimbabwe has been in a state of limbo for more than a month awaiting results from the country's presidential poll, which pitted Mugabe against former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. General elections took place Mar. 29.
Election officials finally declared on Friday that neither of the two men had won more than 50 percent of the ballot, meaning that a run-off will have to be held within the next three weeks.
Amidst delays in announcing the outcome of the presidential vote, the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) -- the larger of which is led by Tsvangirai -- joined forces to deprive Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) of the parliamentary majority it has held for the past 28 years.
Mugabe, who was said by observers to have rigged a 2002 presidential ballot which some believe Tsvangirai won, now stands accused of using his government and party to carry out brutal attacks against those who may oppose him, a tactic that critics say they have long become accustomed to.
"I was supporting the opposition party and with election time coming I had to leave because I was afraid of ZANU-PF violence against the opposition supporters," Muchanyo continues. "My family was beaten because most of them are MDC supporters. The ZANU-PF youth came and raided our home, took everyone out to their base, and there beat everyone."
Chitungwiza, the town that Muchanyo hails from, has become a stronghold of the MDC and was one of the areas that suffered most during Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, "murambatsvina" being variously translated as "restore order" and "drive out trash".
A police action ostensibly aimed at reigning in illegal housing settlements, the operation was said by a July 2005 United Nations report to have left at least 700,000 people homeless.
For its part, the Zimbabwean human rights group Sokwanele characterised the raids as "a Zimbabwean Kristallnacht", in reference to the destruction of Jewish properties in 1939 by Nazi mobs in Germany, while the Boston-based Affordable Housing Institute referred to Operation Murambatsvina as "slow genocide by bulldozer".
Muchanyo's experience is not an isolated incident. In March 2007, Tsvangirai's swollen visage was splashed across newspapers worldwide after he and several supporters were arrested and tortured by riot police.
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"Some of the things that I hear in this office, night after night, in that chair where you're sitting, make me think that we've got big trouble coming," says Bishop Paul Verryn, who directs the Central Methodist Mission and holds church services and other outreach programmes for the Zimbabweans.
"I asked why they have left their country and they start with the litany: 'I was beaten, I was tortured, I was hit on the soles of my feet, I've got scars on my back, I can't sleep at night because of nightmares'," (see Q&A: "We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day").
The views of people inside the mission contrast sharply with those of South African President Thabo Mbeki who, on a visit to Harare in April, insisted there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe.
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