The CPC research into children in Musina reported that deportation was a constant threat for Zimbabwean minors, especially for the boys, and many of the children interviewed in their study had been deported at least once in the recent past.171. Several of the children reported working for extortionist rates, and then being threatened with deportation by employers on pay day, so that they had to flee without pay. We also interviewed four boys aged 17 who had been deported from Musina and had returned within hours. All the descriptions of deportation from these minors were consistent; in the process they were stripped of all their possessions either by those who arrested them or by adult detainees being deported in the same overcrowded trucks, which may have had up to 80 people on one truck. The deportation conditions were so crowded, the children reported fear of suffocation. The girls reported being deported less often, because they were able to pay soldiers and police in sex in order to stay. These stories of deportations all ended in the same way – the children were back across the border and in Musina within hours of being delivered in Beitbridge. The deportation process was thus a very costly one in material and personal terms for the children, causing anxiety and distress - but the one thing it did not prevent was the immediate return of the deportee to South Africa, usually within the same day. Deportation of parents without their children The director of a child care centre in down town Johannesburg told the authors that she has a large number of Zimbabwean children in her care. From time to time, she will find herself with unclaimed children at the end of the day, and will then hear that the parent/s have been picked up and are in Lindela. She is then left literally “holding the baby” until the parent/s have been deported and have made it back to Johannesburg, a period in her experience of around two weeks to a month, depending on how long they are held in Lindela prior to deportation.172 6. Back in Zimbabwe: the deportees on arrival Zimbabwe police The authors went to Beitbridge to witness the process of repatriation for themselves. The police in Beitbridge do not have the resources to cope with thousands of deportees a month. The biggest influx of deportees is that associated with the deportation train once a week or fortnight, which arrives at the border on Thursday mornings. A thousand detainees or more can arrive at one time, ferried across the border in South African police trucks. On the day we observed, in August 2004, the Zimbabwean police dealt with the deportees one truckload at a time and gave a short speech, in which they appealed to them not to re-cross the border, before dismissing them. We observed that the detainees did not even enter the police station, but were dismissed from the driveway, and remained in police “custody” for around 5 minutes. At one time the police did fine deportees, but in recent years, since the weekly deportations have become so huge, they simply cannot do so; if somebody is fined and cannot pay the fine, then 171 172 CPC, August 2003, op cit. Interview, July 2004. 75