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Refugees thin edge of dangerous wedge for SA and Zimbabwe
William Saundeson-Meyer, Weekend Argus (SA)
August 06, 2007

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=17125

This week President Thabo Mbeki predicted, somewhat wistfully it must be said, that free and fair elections will be held in Zimbabwe next March. It is difficult to see how this scenario is likely, given the increasingly erratic behaviour of President Robert Mugabe and the deepening political and economic crisis in that country. Some three million Zimbabweans have entered South Africa illegally over the past four years. The flow is increasing: between 6 000 and 10 000 people are crossing the northern border every day. Others have sought sanctuary further afield, especially in the UK. It is estimated that a quarter of the Zimbabwean population has now found a haven elsewhere.

Since possibly half of the Zimbabweans eligible to participate in elections have already made clear their feelings towards the Zanu PF government by voting with their feet, Mugabe is therefore understandably reluctant to allow ballots to be cast abroad next year. Yet unless there was to be the forced repatriation of exiled Zimbabweans - these millions are not going to return to Zim just to vote - the opposition Movement for Democratic Change would be deprived of its most solid voting bloc and the one that is most impervious to intimidation. What is crucially at issue is whether these Zimbabwean exiles are migrants or refugees. The Zimbabwe government and, it seems, the South African government, want to define them as would-be emigrants.

Emigrants choose, for a variety of reasons, to seek a new life elsewhere. To a greater or lesser degree they transfer their identification from their home country and, by definition, they would seek their political rights in their new homeland. Refugees are displaced by hostile conditions at home. Their primary focus remains where they come from, not where they perforce have to eke an existence. They tend to feel passionately about changing the home political circumstances that triggered their exile. The DA has urged Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to set up refugee camps for the border-crossing Zimbabweans. In terms of the Refugees Act, in the event of a "mass influx of refugees", the minister may, after consultation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and various others, designate places for the "temporary reception and accommodation of asylum seekers or refugees".

Home Affairs' response was fascinating. The DA plea had identified the exodus as having its origin in Zimbabwe's "deteriorating political circumstances". Home Affairs, in contrast, carefully identified the influx as being the result of Zimbabwe's deteriorating economic circumstances. Risibly, Home Affairs claims that refugee centres would, in fact, fly in the face of the Refugees Act. "Refugees are supposed to be integrated into our communities and not kept in camps as the DA proposes," said the minister's spokesperson. "Why does the DA want us to have a separate policy that discriminates against Zimbabweans?" This semantic egg-dancing by Home Affairs is significant beyond scoring points against the DA.

The sticking point for the South African government is that refugee and asylum centres would be an implicit acknowledgement that the Zimbabwean government is acting in a politically unacceptable manner and that matters are deteriorating. The Mbeki charade, which must be maintained at all costs, is that Zimbabwe has a legitimate, democratically elected government that is merely encountering some temporary economic difficulties. Consequently, the Zimbabweans coming here are not refugees, nor legitimate asylum seekers, but economic opportunists. Their sojourn, the South African government pretends, will be brief - perhaps no longer than it takes to buy some goods to trade back home - and requires no special action.

No democratic election could have taken place in South Africa in 1994 without the participation of the hundreds of thousands - not millions, as in Zimbabwe - who had fled the apartheid state for political reasons. Similarly, no democratic election could take place in Zimbabwe without the exiled community participating. Refugee status is - for both the South African and Zimbabwean governments - the thin edge of a dangerous wedge.

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