Zimbabwe's desperate farm migrants

Every day hundreds of Zimbabweans cross into South Africa desperate for work, and many of them head for the farms near the border. The BBC News website's Justin Pearce went to the border region to look at what awaits the migrants.

Most deported Zimbabweans cross the border again into South Africa

There is a new wall at the Musina police station. More than two metres high and topped with barbed wire, it surrounds a small yard within the police compound in South Africa's northernmost town.

The wall is there to detain the migrants - people left jobless by Zimbabwe's shrinking economy who have come looking for work in South Africa.

About 100 pass through the facility each day, according to station spokesman Inspector Jacques du Buisson.

A leafy tree is all that shades them in temperatures that regularly rise above 40C here in the Limpopo valley.

But they do not stay long.

Several times a day, a large white truck with mesh on the sides drives the Zimbabweans, 30 at a time, the 16km to the Beit bridge border post, and drops them off at a police station across the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe.

Round trip

Inspector du Buisson confirms that many of the deportees have already been deported previously, and are likely to be back in South Africa sooner or later.

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"I don't think we can contain the numbers - the numbers are so vast, and the area is so vast," Inspector du Buisson says.

Police do regular identity checks in the town, on the roads and in the surrounding bush, stopping those who look suspicious, he says.

"You can often tell by the clothing or the bags they are carrying - sometimes they have on three or four T-shirts at once, and that's all the clothing they have."

Outside the holding area an Ethiopian Bible lay tattered in the dust, apparently dropped by someone who had passed through recently.

Aside from the Zimbabweans, Inspector du Buisson says the station sees up to 10 people of other nationalities each week.

"We've found people from Egypt, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, coming over from the Zimbabwean side."

'Good life'

But Zimbabweans are by far the biggest group.

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"I crossed in the forest two days ago," said Blessings, 22, who was trying to hitch a ride from one of the trucks that roared past on the road south from Musina, looking for "a job, money and a good life".

"I don't have the papers to work on the farms, and I want to stay for six months."

It is not hard to find where people like Blessings crossed the river, usually late at night.

Drive out of Musina and along the Limpopo River, and the border defences look impenetrable: Three parallel fences, each over three metres high and topped with barbed wire coils, running along the river bank.

Many educated Zimbabweans end up picking fruit

But the fences come to a halt where the Sand River, a usually dry tributary, joins the Limpopo.

Beyond that, there is a single rickety fence with a generous gap at the bottom where the tarred road surface has been eroded away.

From there, some like Blessings will try to hitch a ride to the towns further south, while others, like Justice, 23, will go in search of a job with a nearby farmer who is prepared to get them a work permit after they arrive.

'Peanuts'

"Even if they give us peanuts we'd appreciate that," said Justice, who despite having passed A Levels is now pruning fruit trees.

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He began the job without knowing how much he would be paid - a practice that Shirhami Shirinda of the Nkuzi Development Association says is common where non-South African labourers are concerned.

Mr Shirinda says there are clear reasons why South African farmers are giving jobs to Zimbabweans rather than local South Africans.

"They want to exploit them and avoid the amendments to the Labour Relations Act," he says.

These changes brought South Africa's labour legislation into line with the human rights provisions in South African constitution, not all of which apply to non-citizens.

"Those Zimbabweans, if they were South Africans with the skills they have, they wouldn't be working on farms."

The single border fence has a generous gap at the bottom

Peter Nicholson, a farmer in the region, says there is a shortage of South African labourers in an area that was historically under-populated.

He says the Zimbabweans are protected by the same wage legislation as South African citizens, but agrees that the migrants are willing to take what is on offer.

"The Zimbabweans are going to entry-level jobs because they are prepared to.

"It's normal economics, an absolutely natural situation.

"What is not natural is the political situation in Zimbabwe that is forcing them out."