Democratic Alliance exposes SA government over Zim refugees

By Tichaona Sibanda
23 August 2007

The opposition Democratic Alliance party in South Africa on Thursday released a damning dossier drawn up five years ago, that proves the government had worked on contingency plans to deal with refugees from Zimbabwe.

The DA said the government was acting as if it never recognised there was a problem in Zimbabwe but Marike Groenewald, the media officer for the DA, said the evidence proves the government knew there was going to be a crisis of refugees streaming across the Limpopo, to seek refuge in South Africa.

Groenewald told Newsreel that despite their government’s reluctance to admit to the Zimbabwe crisis, in 2002 it had undertaken research into the possibility of setting up a refugee camp on the Zimbabwean border.

‘We are in possession of a public works document drawn up five years ago for the Home Affairs that outlines contingency plans for a refugee camp in Musina that would have catered for 50 000 refugees,’ Groenewald said.

She said the document describes a farm identified as Antonvilla, which could provide proper sanitation for the refugees within eight months of the start of construction. The farm was previously used as a military base.

She added; ‘Now we have three million refugees from Zimbabwe and the government tells us the situation hasn’t amounted to a crisis yet. There is evidence everywhere to see that the situation in Zimbabwe has rapidly deteriorated.’

Groenewald warned the situation could deteriorate to a point where the Thabo Mbeki government would find itself overwhelmed with Zimbabwean refugees.

‘What is not clear, however, is why government has done absolutely nothing about implementing the plan in the five years since the report was concluded,’ she said.

Human rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba said the influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa started as early as 2000 and has escalated ever since.
The South African based lawyer said it has now become difficult to define who was an economic or political refugee, because people in both categories were running away from the same problem, Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF.