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Blind beggers the visible face of human trafficking
Charlene Smith, The Sunday Independent (SA)
February 26, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=13895

The blind people we see begging at traffic lights are the most conspicuous face of human trafficking, yet there is nothing the police can do about it, they say. Last year the Johannesburg Metro police decided to round up the beggars who proliferate at Johannesburg and Sandton traffic lights. They were following the example of Bob Giulani, a former New York mayor, who brought crime levels down dramatically by first removing street hawkers and beggars. The metro police "loaded a bus up with more than 300 blind beggars. Most were Zimbabweans who were here illegally, so we gave some to the Lindela repatriation camp, and then released the others because it was not such a serious crime and we didn't know what to do with them. So we released them within 48 hours," Wayne Minnaar, the spokesperson for the metro police, admits. "We knew these were people were trafficked into the country and we suspect there is someone behind this, although we have no proof. They are very happy to come here because they make a living, get food and can send some money home to their families."

For Tekler Maruta, 60, who has been begging on Johannesburg streets for a year, life is hard but it is better than in Zimbabwe. "At least we can eat here and send money to our families". She has high blood pressure - her latest reading is an alarming 214 - but she says she has no option but to walk up and down at traffic lights from 6am to 6pm six days a week. Joseline Shumba, 44, a mother of three children, two of whom are with her in South Africa, was knocked down in a hit-and-run incident at an East Rand traffic light and it took her a year to recover, though she still limps. She says other blind women pooled together money to pay for her rent (an average of eight women live in grimy, two-bedroom flats in Hillbrow and Joubert Park, and pay anything from R65 to R200 a week each) and care for her children. Her concern is that she is unable to put her two boys, aged two and five, into daycare while she begs at traffic lights. The women don't want to talk about how they came into the country. Some say the border guards felt sorry for them and let them through, others say they paid couriers to get them across the border, and yet others talk of men who "helped them come to South Africa" - it is to these men that they pay their exorbitant rentals. Selina Tom, 55, claims they average R30 to R50 a day begging.

Members of the police's organised crime unit, speaking on condition of anonymity, said disabled and blind Zimbabweans were "brought over the border, claiming they are coming here for treatment, taken to places to stay and paid a salary at the end of the month. "Each morning they are taken to traffic lights were they meet 'escorts', often South Africans, who walk them up and down vehicle lanes. At night they are fetched, they hand over the money, and they and the escort go their separate ways until the next day." The unit echoes the frustration of the sexual offences unit and the narcotics unit who come across trafficked people. "There are no laws against human trafficking in South Africa, so the only legislation we can use is the Immigration Act, and that penalises the person trafficked, not the trafficker. They go before court, get fined R70 or R100, get told to get their papers in order and are released." Police say it is "very difficult to prove trafficking. People coming in are foreigners, they can't speak South African languages, we can't communicate with them. The only police translators are in Pretoria, and we could wait a day or more for them to come out. We can't hold people if we don't know they are part of a crime".

Police say the Zimbabwean and Mozambique borders and Johannesburg international airport are entry points. At the airport, for example, "people will be told to go to gate one, an arrangement will have been made with corrupt officials who are told, as an example, '12 people are coming', and he or she will let them pass. Once through, they will be told to go to a certain place where a taxi will pick them up. These taxi drivers are used only by organised crime. The taxi will take them to Bruma Lake, for example, where they will be told to go to a fast-food restaurant. From there someone else picks them up. If we question that person, he or she says they were helping the people because they appeared lost and he or she could speak their language. The taxi driver will say he knows nothing about these people, he is just doing his job as a taxi driver." Rodgers Mudarikwa of the Zimbabwean Action Support Group says: "South Africa refuses to accept economic refugees but it does not stop people coming. Every Saturday [the department of] home affairs processes 1 000 people at its Rosettenville office." He and Oliver Kubikwa of the Zimbabwean Political Victims Association say refugees battle to legitimise their status here and to find work, medication and food. "There is no way to find work or get decent medical care in Zimbabwe and so many of those who come here are desperate. We really need help," Kubikwa said.

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