itself, and the hosting country is left with very expensive stadiums and many debts.97 All of
this could point to a mini recession, or at the very least, a reduction in job opportunities after
July 2010. Currently, many Zimbabweans – and South Africans ‐ are employed as the
workforce involved in building stadiums and roads across South Africa – and once these
projects are completed, it is likely that resentment towards migrants competing in a shrinking
job market could once more rise.
There are talks of an election in early 2011 in Zimbabwe. If this in fact takes place, political
violence is extremely likely to surge – and so will the numbers of Zimbabweans arriving in
South Africa. The reduction in South African jobs after the WFC, combined with yet another
influx of Zimbabweans, could be a very dangerous combination. The South African
government needs to be planning now for this eventuality.
It seems that South African government and city departments, and international NGOs such as
Unicef and UNHCR remain ill prepared to deal with the scale and nature of the Zimbabwean
influx that began in 2003 and continues to date. Xenophobic attacks have not been limited to
the widely publicized events of May 2008; they began more than a decade ago and continue
on a weekly basis. At the time of releasing this report, thousands of Zimbabweans are living in
appalling conditions in De Doorns in the Western Cape, as a result of xenophobic attacks and
displacements in November 2009. After a few months of relative support from various
quarters including the UNHCR and Red Cross, they have once more been abandoned to their
uncertain fate. Once more, they are nobodies, living nowhere.
J.
Zimbabwean migrant workers displaced
by xenophobia in De Doorns, Western Cape
1.
Overview
The largest outbreak of xenophobic violence since May 2008 occurred in the Breede Valley in
the Western Cape on the 14th and 17th of November 2009. In the farming area of De Doorns,
an estimated 2,500 Zimbabwean contract farm workers were displaced violently: their
dwellings were destroyed and their possessions looted.98
The xenophobia in De Doorns raises many critical issues. Alarmingly, the pattern of behaviour
and response to the attacks on Zimbabweans here, was similar in key ways to the pattern of
xenophobia in Gauteng in 2008. One of the more serious similarities was that the authorities
once more failed to respond to early indications that a major xenophobic incident was
brewing.
The xenophobia did not begin in November 2009: seven Zimbabweans had been burnt to
death in their huts in the same area in February 2009.99 In De Doorns itself, the first night of
violence on 14 November resulted in only 68 Zimbabweans being displaced – but nothing was
done to prevent the violence intensifying and spreading, leading three days later to the
displacement of a further 2,500 Zimbabweans in the space of a few hours. Formal meetings
97 The experience of Greece and the Olympics is one such example.
98 Jean Pierre Misago: Migration Policy Brief 2: “Violence, Labour and the Displacement of Zimbabweans in De
Doorns, Western Cape”; FMSP; December 2009.
99 Op cit page 7.
37
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