Zimbabweans do not have passports and continue to face violence and extortion during illegal
border crossings, and all the difficulties of being undocumented once in the country. In spite
of the moratorium on deportations, a few Zimbabweans are still being deported.
The phenomenon of unaccompanied minors from Zimbabwe has gained wide press
attention in the last six months, as increasing numbers of youngsters make remarkable and
treacherous journeys in search of a better life. This report provides a profile of some the
children who were staying in Johannesburg in 2009, and their harrowing experiences both en
route and in South Africa.
The current report also examines events around the Central Methodist Mission (CMM) in
Johannesburg, which has attracted huge media attention in the last two years. Paul Verryn,
the resident priest at the CMM, has courted controversy with his truly open door policy, in
which no‐one is turned away. The CMM has taken in an estimated 20,000 individuals over the
last seven years, mostly Zimbabwean, and seldom has fewer than 1,500 migrants under its
roof – and at times as many as 4,000. The CMM has been subjected to raids, insults, and
accusations. The CMM is the highly visible tip of a huge iceberg of Zimbabweans in central
Johannesburg, and we visited some other sites in its vicinity to compare how Zimbabweans
live around the corner. The CMM is disliked by many officials as it is situated right next door
to the High Court building, and the unpleasantness, the untidiness of South Africa’s (lack of)
diaspora policy is rubbed in the faces of High Court judges and other officials every day. By
providing basic shelter, food to the most vulnerable, and schooling to the children, Verryn has
succeeded in doing for migrants on a small scale what the government has failed to do on any
scale at all. Conditions in the church are tough, and criminal acts occur there from time to time
– inevitable with such an open door policy. But closing down the church as a place of
accommodation will not mean that the thousands passing through there melt into thin air –
they will continue to exist in increasingly desperate and increasingly invisible spaces.
Migrants are messy; their awkward twilight world stands in the way of the Johannesburg city
plan to regenerate the inner city – a plan which preceded the World Football Cup, and will
continue afterwards. Clampdowns, which have intensified in the vicinity of the CMM, will
therefore not end with July 2010, but will continue, with evictions, harassment and arrests,
into the indefinite future. State dealings with the CMM and with Zimbabwean migrants
generally, are inconsistent. On the one hand the State has shown willingness to be humane, by
planning to open a half way house for migrants in the city – which a year after initially being
promised has not yet quite materialized – and on the other hand, Zimbabweans are regularly
arrested for “loitering”, even while standing in a clinic queue awaiting medical treatment.
Even when this half way house opens, which it should shortly, it is mere window dressing in
terms of addressing the scale of the problem; it will house up to 500 people at one time, for up
to six months…
The international debate on how to deal with different categories of migrants continues, and
proposals to recognize mixed reasons for migrating and to provide more formal recognition
for so‐called “economic” or “humanitarian” migrants is being discussed at the United Nations
level, but these debates remain embryonic.5 Some commentators have argued that
Zimbabweans should be referred to as “forced humanitarian migrants”, to distinguish them
from voluntary economic migrants, and have argued that they should have rights similar to
5 UNHCR: Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration: a 10 Point Plan of Action, Geneva, 2007.
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