deported.140 Other groups working with refugees report that in the Musina area, Zimbabwean girls who are semi resident there, are routinely expected to give sexual favours to police and army in return for not being deported. 141 2. Life in the Big Cities: Johannesburg and Durban In the course of this report, there has already been repeated mention of some of the issues that make life difficult for Zimbabweans in South Africa. The section following will therefore take the format of describing a cross section of what we observed for ourselves on field visits to apartments or places where refugees live. Life for illegal immigrants in South Africa is predictably hard. Living conditions are crowded and often unsafe. Large numbers of Zimbabweans live in Hillbrow and Yeoville in Johannesburg, where the rent is low and the crime rates high. The groups we visited were in some instances obviously all political refugees, and in other cases, all would fit the description of cross border trader, or economic migrant. In other cases, the division was not so clear-cut, with a mixture of “purely” political and economic exiles sharing a space. Economic migrants are the Zimbabweans most subject to deportation, and their large numbers mask and undermine the claims of political asylum seekers.142 For these reasons, the authors made a point of identifying and interacting with a few small cross border communities in both Johannesburg and Durban. Johannesburg: political exiles We visited a two-bedroomed apartment in which 26 (!) young political exiles lived. All were activists who had fled after torture and harassment. Several are on the records of NGOs in Zimbabwe as having been tortured and given medical assistance in the last few years, prior to fleeing. Most had multiple stories of arrest and abuse. Only four had asylum seeker papers, although all had tried to access them. Those without ASPs lived in dread of deportation, and in the course of researching this report, one of them was picked up by the police and transferred to Lindela detention centre pending deportation. He was an individual whom we had witnessed for ourselves queuing outside Home Affairs all night, trying in vain to access the office to apply for asylum. He managed to get a message out to a lawyer, who went to Lindela and secured his release. But in terms of the Regulations to the Refugee Act, no person who indicates to the police his intention to seek asylum can be deported - he should not have been taken into detention. In the course of researching this report, several others who live in this apartment had to bribe police in order not to get sent to Lindela. This group of talented, angry youngsters are very aware that they are wasting the prime of their lives without access to skills training or jobs, and miss their families and homes very much. However, they are unable to return because of the high risk to themselves of being tortured again – and in any case, back in Zimbabwe they would still have no access to skills training or jobs. Even though their lives in Johannesburg are tough, they see no alternative to exile. 140 Interview with LHR lawyer, October 2004. Appendix One, Case Seven for interviewee claiming assaults by army. The Mail and Guardian, 3 October 2003, op cit, gives similar details linked to border crossings. 142 As we have already indicated, in our opinion economic exiles are also political exiles, but in the absence of a test case supporting this view, in practical terms they will continue to be considered illegal immigrants, and get deported. 141 59