2006, with most of these being Zimbabwean.10 This amounted to between 12,35% and
14,5% of Johannesburg’s total population of around 3,9 million. CDE acknowledges that
since 2006, the numbers of both South Africans and foreigners in Johannesburg will have
grown, as a result of continued internal and international migration. The current authors
would agree with this, particularly in light of our own findings in 2009 that Zimbabwean
diasporisation was increasing almost vertically by early 2009.11 It seems realistic to estimate
that there could be at the most 600,000 to 650,000 Zimbabweans in Johannesburg at this
point.
The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at WITS University estimates that around
double this figure is in South Africa as a whole, putting the national figure at 1,2 to 1,5
million.12 There are large numbers of Zimbabweans in Limpopo province in particular,
working as farm labourers, and also Zimbabweans in greater Gauteng, apart from
Johannesburg. Zimbabweans have by now dispersed throughout South Africa, with
measurable groups in the Cape and KwaZulu Natal.
2.
South African Government figures: how many Zimbabweans?
Official government figures for Zimbabweans in South Africa have fluctuated wildly over the
years. In 2004, the South African Department of Home Affairs (DHA) claimed that there was
no influx of Zimbabweans, only the long established cross border job seeking that has existed
since the 1970s, particularly from Matabeleland in southern Zimbabwe.13 Major refugee
reports published as recently as 2003 did not even list Zimbabwe as a country that was a
source of refugees in South Africa, although up to 500 Zimbabweans per week were then
crowding out Refugee Reception Offices, wanting asylum.14
Yet within the last few years, South African officials have adopted a figure of 2,5 million
migrants in Johannesburg alone, a vastly exaggerated figure, being a four‐or‐five‐fold
overestimate, and meaning that 64% of Johannesburg’s population is estimated by these
officials to be foreigners!15 Zimbabweans are seen as making up most of this group.
10 CDE, ibid, 2008.
11 See “Gone to Egoli” SPT, June 2009. We found that for every one person going to South Africa in 1991, there
were one hundred going by early 2009, with most of this exponential increase being in 2008/9, coinciding with
the violence of 2008 and the total economic meltdown.
12 Email correspondence 2009, and interviews, March 2010. Also FMSP press release, 3 March 2010.
13 See comments by Barry Gilder, then Director General of Home Affairs, in “No War in Zimbabwe”, SPT, page 39.
14 CASE: National Refugee Baseline Survey: Final Report, November 2003. However, it was obvious that at that
time there were already thousands of Zimbabweans in South Africa, with 45,000 deported in 2004. By 2005,
deportations of Zimbabweans had grown almost fourfold, to 150,000 annually, at an estimated cost to South
Africa of over R3 billion per year. See “No War”, ibid, for more on context of 2003/4.
15 This figure, or a figure of 3 million Zimbabweans, is routinely quoted now in media articles, and by
government officials in South Africa. CDE, ibid, reported that 32 high level officials in Johannesburg stated on
average that there were 2,5 million immigrants in Johannesburg. As recently as 2 March 2010, the Gauteng
Provincial Police Commissioner told Parliament that there were 3 million foreigners in Gauteng – FMSP press
release notes this, 3 March 2010.
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