same. South Africans are not happy [about Zimbabweans], even those who are not working. They are too jealous.157 We were told by these four workers that Zimbabweans on the farm in Doreen had engaged in an illegal strike in 2001 over being made to do more demanding work than their South African co-workers. Many undocumented migrants to whom Human Rights Watch spoke either at police stations where they were detained and awaiting deportation or on the road returning to Johannesburg or Pretoria said they had jobs in the construction sector and that they were paid substantially less than South African workers. Three Zimbabwean men whom we met on the N1 highway en route to Pretoria described how they had just walked some 20 kilometers from a farm in Doreen. All three had worked there for only three days and had left after being assaulted by the foreman. The men, all in their mid-twenties, were seeking work in South Africa for the first time. One, whose carpentry shop in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe, had been destroyed during Operation Murambatzvina,158 said: I was hired by Mr. [name provided]. I met someone who told me Mr. [name provided] is employing people. So I went there. My job was pruning grapes. The food on the farm gave me and the two others with me diarrhea so we could not work properly. We were going to the toilet every hour. The manager [foreman] was angry. He said: “We can’t work with you like this.” The manager was a black man [name provided]. When I got back from the loo, he beat me, saying: “Where were you?” He beat me three times. Then he expelled me saying, “We can’t work with you when you’re not fit.”159 Human Rights Watch talked to a 52-year-old Zimbabwean from Beitbridge who has worked on a farm in Tshipise since 2004 and who has a work permit. He said he had been beaten by four private farm security officials who arrested him, another Zimbabwean, and three South Africans: 157 Human Rights Watch interview with four documented Zimbabwean workers, Doreen, April 30, 2006. Operation Murambatsvina was an unprecedented government campaign of forced evictions and demolitions in the urban areas of Zimbabwe. See Human Rights Watch, “Zimbabwe: Evicted and Forsaken.” 159 Human Rights Watch interview with three undocumented Zimbabweans, on the N1 highway near the Tshipise turn-off, April 23, 2006. 158 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOLUME 18, NO. 6(A) 44

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