Refugees seek food, not asylum

2004-06-19 11:48

Johannesburg - Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who have left their economically-ravaged homeland for neighbouring countries either legally or illegally are not seeking refugee status but only a means to earn a livelihood.

The migration is voluminous and hard to ascertain but according to official figures in Harare, more than three million Zimbabweans live overseas.

Meanwhile, every day illegal Zimbabwean immigrants are expelled from neighbouring South Africa, Botswana or Mozambique where they had gone to seek a chance to feed themselves and their families.

Many return only to be re-expelled.

Zimbabwe, led by President Robert Mugabe since its 1980 independence from Britain, is facing the worst crisis in its history.

It has in recent years been in the throes of political, economic and social instability with sky-high inflation, recurring food shortages and an unemployment rate of nearly 70%.

South Africa, Zimbabwe's southern neighbour and the economic powerhouse of the continent, has since the end of apartheid in 1994 attracted immigrants in hordes, including people from its northern neighbour.

Last year, 55 000 Zimbabweans living illegally in South Africa were expelled to their country.

"Those people who claim asylum among all the Zimbabweans that come into the country are a small minority. Most of the people say they have come to make some money to go back to feed their family," said Melita Sunjic from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The refugee status is also hard to obtain.

Uptil September last year, only nine Zimbabweans had been granted refugee status. There have been a total of about 1 500 applications seeking asylum and these are being examined.

Similarly in Mozambique the number of Zimbabweans with refugee status is next to nothing.

According to some observers, the low numbers of those seeking asylum or refugee status could be linked to the perception that many of the neighbouring countries would be unwilling to grant Zimbabweans refugee status as it might be construed as their disapproval of Mugabe's authoritarian regime.

"The South African government has been unwilling to consider (Zimbabwe) as presenting the conditions that would warrant refugee status being granted to its nationals," Graeme Gotz and Loren Landau said in a study published on Thursday on "Forced Migrants in the New Johannesburg".

"Nationals from Zimbabwe have, therefore, almost always been regarded as economic migrants and ineligible for asylum, even when they have been victims of systematic rape, torture and economic deprivation," they said.

- AFP