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Between
a rock and a hard place: A window on the situation of Zimbabweans
living in Gauteng
Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project, IDASA
September 09, 2005
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Introduction
The evolving and inter-related social, economic and political crises
in Zimbabwe have contributed to an unprecedented exodus of Zimbabweans
from all backgrounds away from their home country. The majority
of Zimbabweans are in South Africa, Botswana and the United Kingdom,
with most believed to be in South Africa.
Exactly how
many have left the country and for what reason remains unclear,
and there is only limited empirical evidence, with much of this
focused on the 'brain drain', as skilled Zimbabweans seek alternatives
in the context of economic collapse and repressive authoritarian
nationalism. Increasingly, many unskilled Zimbabweans are also on
the move in a desperate bid to escape a deteriorating situation
that appears to have no end in sight. In 2004, one senior official
involved in the Zimbabwean government's 'Homelink' initiative that
aimed at facilitating remittances of foreign exchange from the growing
diaspora, estimated that between 60% to 70% of Zimbabwe's economically
active population had left the country.
Background
The Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project (ZTVP) was established in January
2005, to address growing concerns that many Zimbabweans who had
left the country were victims of organized violence and torture
(OVT), and as such were in need of medical and psycho-social assistance.1
Zimbabwean human rights organisations have recorded several thousand
cases of OVT relating to incidents that have occurred since 2000.
To date, the
ZTVP has provided assistance to over 120 victims / survivors of
organised violence torture from Zimbabwe. The Project wanted to
develop a clearer sense of how many potential clients they might
have to deal with, and as such, wanted to get an impression of what
proportion of Zimbabweans currently living in Gauteng might potentially
qualify in terms of need.
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1. There is considerable
evidence from within Zimbabwe that there are many victims of organised
violence and torture, and not only from the present crisis. Here see
the reports of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum [www.hrforumzim.com],
where there are 47 monthly reports since July 2001, and 22 more analytical
reports on aspects of human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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