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Living in a queue and praying for freedom
Surika van Schalkwyk, Mail & Guardian (SA)
August 10, 2007

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=316289&area=/insight/insight__national/

It's hard to imagine what Freeman* must be feeling. He hasn't been able to move more than 100m for the last two months at the risk of being arrested. He's gone all that time without a bath or a change of clothes and he complains about being covered in lice.

Freeman is just one of the more than 500 Zimbabwean asylum- seekers who live in the queue outside the home affairs office in Marabastad, Pretoria. Apart from the fear of losing their places in the queue -- only 200 people are issued with Section 22 asylum-seeker permits each week -- they have been warned that if they leave the vicinity of the home affairs office, they will be arrested as illegal immigrants.

"I have been sleeping in cardboard boxes outside home affairs for weeks. We don't have access to toilets or running water. If we go as far as the nearby river to take a bath or to the market to buy food, we get arrested and deported," Freeman told the Mail & Guardian.

"If we are lucky, we eat once a day. I regularly see people faint of hunger," said Johannes*.

The asylum-seekers also say that the dreaded Gumba-Gumba gangs, which control illegal border crossings from Zimbabwe, work in collusion with the department of home affairs.

"If you pay the Gumba-Gumba R500, you are taken to the front of the queue. If any of us resist, we get beaten up or threatened with knives," said Jonathan*. The asylum-seekers claim home affairs officers and the gangs then share the bribe money paid by queue jumpers. They add that the gang also steals their cellphones, money and blankets. Jonathan added that the South African police are not doing anything about the current situation.

But those waiting in the queue have also experienced some kindness. Gilbert* expressed gratitude to the South Africans who donate supplies to the hundreds of exiles living in the queue at Marabastad. "Even though there are not a lot of donors, we are very grateful to those who give us food and firewood."

* To protect the interviewees, only their first names have been used.

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