further study was therefore undertaken, focusing specifically on those who reported 2005
Zimbabwean displacement, to gain a better idea of how people have come to end up so far
from Zimbabwe over the last five years, and what their accumulated losses might have been
during this time. This study aims to record precise movements of respondents over the last
five years, and also the employment patterns of individuals over that time. Living conditions
prior to OM and immediate impact of OM on access to basic services has also been recorded.
Working conditions in De Doorns were a focus of the previous study, and are not dealt with
again here.
Respondents
The group of 118 interviewed in April was not drawn directly from the 456 interviewed in the
February 2010 study. Displaced populations are highly mobile, and work long hours, which
shifts their availability: hundreds of people had already left the camp between February and
April, as the season was tailing off, and PASSOP was being denied direct access to the camp by
April.71 This meant that they had to reach interviewees from among those who came to their
legal advice centre around the corner, who also expressed a history of OM and were willing to
take part in the interviews. The 118 interviewees for this second study should therefore be
considered a new data set from the same general population of displaced Zimbabweans, and
demographics have been reassessed accordingly. A wide cross section of people pass through
the advice centre, which is also something of a social venue, and selecting from those
accessing the centre is therefore unlikely to have biased the data set very significantly,
although the mode of accessing respondents needs to be borne in mind.
I.
Demographics
1.
Gender
Female:
54% of interviewees
(64 women)
Male:
46% of interviewees
(54 men)
Mean age was 34 years, with the youngest being 19 and the oldest 54 years old. There was no
significant difference in ages of men and women.
2.
Marital status
Only 15% of interviewees were single, with 64% married, 14% widowed and 7% divorced.
In the February study, the finding of married or previously married respondents was much
lower, being 50% married and 8% widowed – this may indicate that single people are more
mobile and that with the season drawing to a close, there were proportionally fewer single
people left behind in the camp.
3.
Children and caregiving
92% of respondents reported that they had children (108).
71 PASSOP is regarded as trouble‐making by the camp authorities, as they have encouraged residents to stand up
for their rights.
57
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