In the Shadow of a Conflict: Crisis in Zimbabwe and its effects in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia

8. Finding Shelter and Work in the Communal Areas of Limpopo: Zimbabweans in rural South Africa

207 Introduction South Africa’s communal areas have become the homes and work places for significant numbers of Zimbabweans. As elsewhere in South Africa, newly arriving Zimbabweans come in search of employment, housing and an escape from suffering and insecurity. However, the realities of life in the communal lands provide a different context for obtaining shelter, security and work.2 We suggest that the life stories of inclusion of Zimbabweans in communal areas expand the range of narratives currently used to explore and understand how they have become part of a complex and highly differentiated South African nation. Currently , there are several co-existing narratives which attempt to capture how the situation of Zimbabweans in South Africa should be understood. These narratives include the human rights violations experienced by Zimbabwean asylum-seekers, the exploitation of undocumented Zimbabwean farm workers, and the xenophobia that exists in many parts of South Africa.3 While academic research, human rights accounts and media reporting has been focused upon Zimbabwean immigration to the cities and commercial farms of South Africa, less attention has been given to those seeking shelter and work in the communal areas. There is a significant unknown and highly mobile number of Zimbabweans in Limpopo Province and in other communal areas throughout South Africa. This chapter describes how Zimbabweans seeking work and shelter in communal areas in the Elim area of northern Limpopo Province see themselves and their lives in South Africa. Despite the ongoing official hostility to undocumented Zimbabweans and human rights abuses toward them, they continue to make a life, if only an insecure one, in the communal areas. The chapter is based on mixed methods. Aside from reading the history and studies of immigration, we visited the temporary offices set up by the 8 FindingShelterandWorkintheCommunalAreasofLimpopo Zimbabweans in Rural South Africa1 Bill Derman, Anne Hellum and Shirhami Shirinda In the Shadow of a Conflict 208 Department of Home Affairs in the showgrounds of Musina to observe and to interview Zimbabweans and Home Affairs officers from 2008-12. During this period, we visited and interviewed officials of the various organizations who were attempting to assist the tide of Zimbabweans (and others) coming across the border. These included the International Office for Migration (IOM), South African Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Musina Legal Assistance Office. We interviewed farm owners and Zimbabweans living in the area, in addition to the 42 Zimbabweans living in the communal areas around Elim we interviewed on a more systematic basis in 2009. The latter interviews, upon which this chapter is based, took place at a special time; it was when Zimbabweans could apply for asylum and when deportations were brought to a halt during the southern winter of 2009. It is quite possible that the security that many then felt about building a new life in South Africa might not last. While Chapters 7, 9 and 10 in this book focus on Zimbabweans working on commercial farms in Limpopo, the location for this research is in and around Elim and the former homelands of Venda and Gazankulu. The chapter proceeds from describing some general features of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa to their passage through the border town Musina to illustrating life in the communal areas around Makhado and Elim. In adding to the range of experiences, we point to the lack of research concerning the communal areas of South Africa and the ways in which such research may deepen and enrich our understandings of the Zimbabwean diaspora. Lastly, we discuss the new immigration policies toward Zimbabweans (and other Africans) and our fear that these policies will fail to assist Zimbabweans in communal areas in their hopes of securing livelihoods, work and housing. Zimbabweans in Limpopo Province Of South Africa’s provinces, Limpopo is the most rural. In addition to agriculture , there is forestry, mining (with substantial prospecting continuing), tourism and formal and informal trade. The major data for Limpopo Province comes before the great increases in emigration by Zimbabweans.4 As a consequence , this data does not capture the Zimbabweans in the province.5 The poverty rates of South Africa’s nine provinces differ significantly, as do those of the urban and rural areas of the country. In 2005-06 the poverty rates ranged from 24.9 per cent in Gauteng and 28.8 per cent in the Western Cape to 57.6 209...