Zimbabwe Misery Starts Riots in South Africa

The sad state of Zimbabwe has been a regular topic of discussion in this journal. The Mugabe regime is corrupt, incompetent and is not preferable to anarchy. Zimbabweans have, for years, been sneaking into neighboring countries looking for jobs and food. While the American media has said nothing about them, there have been riots in South Africa for a week and a half caused by deportation of “illegal” immigrants from Zimbabwe.

Choba is a squatter camp (a refugee camps without help from global charities) about 20 miles south of Praetoria. In addition to at least three dead, there are now burnt-out cars and smoking ruins of what was someone’s shanty in Choba, which Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports are the results of 10 days of the worst rioting since the end of apartheid.

Official figures from Mr. Mugabe’s own government say that a quarter of his country’s 13 million citizens live outside the country, and 1.2 million of them have gone to South Africa (virtually none of them with papers in order). On a per capita basis, this rivals America’s illegal alien problem, as there are 44 million South Africans. Unlike in the US, South Africa has its own employment problems, with a quarter of the work force out of a job.

The Telegraph reporter, David Blair, spoke with Timothy Mbanda, a regular South African guy who talks about Zimbabweans like any red-neck from Texas talks about Mexicans. “The Zimbabwean people steal, in the night they kill and they take money. People here want to work for 60 rands (£5.60, or US$10) per day. But the Zimbabweans will work for 30 rands or 20 rands so the businessmen hire Zimbabweans and they take our jobs.”

Now, that the violence has returned to South Africa, the government may finally have to face up to an unpleasant fact that it has avoided out of revolutionary solidarity. The situation in Zimbabwe is now affecting that country’s neighbors, and none of them can afford it. The South African government has handled Mr. Mugabe as the Reagan-Thatcher crowd handled the racist regimes of South Africa, “constructive engagement.” Translated, that means, “turning a blind eye.” It can do so no longer – one hopes. Zimbabwe cannot persist as it is without South African support, and it shouldn’t.


© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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