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Packed trains leave SA
22/05/2008 08:56 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Just before the Zimbabwe Express pulls out of Johannesburg Central, Baron Hwata leans out of the window to deliver his verdict on a city he hoped would provide a safe haven from violence back home.
"Where we have been staying I was afraid and it (the violence) is spreading all over," says the 38-year-old who he left Zimbabwe two months ago to seek work in the building trade.
"My family were saying 'please come home it's not ok there'... We are supposed to be all as one, all Africans."
Hwata was one of hundreds of compatriots who piled onto the 18:10 train out of Johannesburg on Tuesday night, headed back for the border into Zimbabwe from where up to three million people have fled an economic catastrophe.
Violence spreads
But as xenophobic violence, which has already claimed at least 24 lives since last week, continues to spread, Zimbabweans and immigrants from other neighbouring countries are now deciding that they are better off back home.
At the entrances to the platforms at the city's main train station, large numbers of police have been deployed while the exits have been blocked to protect passengers hauling heavy bags and boxes onto the trains bound for the borders with Zimbabwe and also Mozambique.
Zhaheer Kassim, who works in the ticket office upstairs, said armed gangs burst into the station earlier this week looking for foreigners in their final minutes in Johannesburg.
"There were people running up and down with spades and hammers looking for foreign people. Some of the staff went home early," he said, adding that security managed to drive them out before damage was done.
Ticket sales to Mozambique and Zimbabwe this week have gone through the roof.
"The numbers of people on the train has been like Christmas and New Year put together," he said.
It's the same situation in the bus station where a snake of people stand waiting to buy tickets for Pioneer Coaches, a bus company advertising itself as "The Gateway to Zimbabwe."
Gruesome sights
"I just can't wait for it to happen to me. What I've seen is so gruesome," said Ron, a 35-year-old Zimbabwean who comes to South Africa periodically to sell cheap Chinese products.
Miriam Rerayi, another of the thousands of Zimbabweans who come to South Africa to sell cheap goods on the street, said she could no longer work and people were refusing to pay because of her nationality.
"When we are working in the streets, if they see you are carrying a bag then they think you are Zimbabwean. One of my friends with a baby was attacked."
During the night, she claimed the building where she was sharing a flat with 21 other Zimbabweans was raided by people with weapons looking for immigrants.
Thandi Mokolei, who sells tickets for Pioneer Coaches, said the demand for trips back to Zimbabwe has surged.
"From last week the buses were full, they were packed," he said.
Newspaper pictures of people being necklaced, a notorious way of killing police informers during the apartheid era by placing a burning tyre over someone's head, leaves many of the fleeing migrants in no doubt about the dangers they face.
'Just like Zimbabwe'
Bernard Sithole, a Zimbabwean construction worker on the train, said his South African colleagues suddenly turned against him when the violence broke out at the beginning of last week.
"For South Africa, for now, all I can say its out of the question to stay. Maybe I'll try Namibia," he says.
Going back to Zimbabwe, where inflation is officially running at over 165 000% and unemployment at 80%, holds little appeal.
"South Africa is just like Zimbabwe now. I can't differentiate between the two, I have the same problems here as there."
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