Police burn blankets and legal documents of Zimbabweans in S.A.

By Tererai Karimakwenda
11 August 2006

The Reverend Dr. Martine Stemerick, who is in South Africa on a fact finding mission and documentary project reports that the police burned blankets and legal and medical papers belonging to Zimbabweans at an established settlement on the outer edge of downtown Johannesburg last Thursday. It was the coldest week of the year so far and the police decided to raid all areas known to house refugees. Dr Stemerick said the temperature was minus 4 degrees and there was snow on the ground. That meant the desperate families living there slept in the open and many were rounded up for not having legal papers.

Dr Stemerick has been interviewing Zimbabweans who have fled to South Africa and she has been travelling to different locations with organisations that provide food and other assistance to refugees. It was on one of these trips that she visited the Johannesburg community that had been raided by the police. She told us it was a very family oriented and organised community that included the elderly and very young children. They were all left in the cold after the police raid.

On Thursday Dr Stemerick visited the Lindela Detention centre and saw first hand the suffering of Zimbabweans there. She said busloads of refugees, many of them Zimbabwean men who had been rounded up from all over South Africa, arrived while she was there. She interviewed 22 Zimbabwean women and discovered that 3 of them had escaped from home after being brutalised by state agents and 19 had fled for economic reasons.

Soon after she left Lindela Dr Stemerick said a doctor they were travelling with received a phone call informing him that some Zimbabwean men there had just been assaulted by security guards. The men had been planning to protest their forced deportations and to lobby for more time to present their cases. All refugees used to have a two week period during which they were processed before being deported back to Zimbabwe. But Dr Stemerick said these days they are being rushed through because of the large numbers needing to be processed. Many come right back after being deported.

Next week we will be bringing you the actual interviews being conducted by Dr Stemerick with Zimbabweans in South Africa.