Police and CIO resort to intercepting border jumpers
By Lance Guma
10 November 2006.

Walking around the border town of Beitbridge without a national I.D that shows you were born in the area has resulted in many Zimbabweans being picked up by police and Central Intelligence Organisation frontier forces in the past month. Lionel Saungweme in Bulawayo reports that the upcoming rainy season is one of the major reasons for the increased patrols. Hundreds of desperate border jumpers drown every year while trying to cross the Limpopo River while others are eaten by crocodiles, and this is bad press for the government. It’s also thought the flood of economic and political refugees into South Africa has become a public relations nightmare.

Some of the routes the border jumper’s use are being staked out and hundreds of desperate unemployed youths are being caught while trying to cross into the ‘promised land.’ The ‘Malaicha’s’ who are responsible for facilitating these illegal crossings told our correspondent the authorities have never before been this determined to bust their operations, but now things have changed. The border patrols are now monitoring foot tracks and crossing points at the Limpopo River and the manpower to do so has been increased. The local Shangani and Venda people in the area play a key role in smuggling people across the border and the CIO are playing an active role in trying to smash some of the rings, Saungweme was told.

The new moves have merely increased the number of Zimbabweans using fake passports or those who simply bribe their way through the formal crossing points. Newsreel was told the level of desperation is so high people are finding a way around the patrols somehow. Recent reports say South African police at the border are playing a key role in facilitating border jumping. They are allegedly taking bribes from Zimbabweans in order to supplement their meagre incomes.