Zimbabweans lashed and deported as border jumping intensifies

By Tererai Karimakwenda and Warren Moroka
26 October 2005

Twenty-two Zimbabweans were lashed and deported from Botswana last Thursday as police intensified efforts to contain the ever-growing number of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants. According to the police, the accused persons ranged from 16 to 34 years of age.

Several groups of Zimbabweans have been arrested by the Botswana Police Services in the last two weeks as part of a widening campaign aimed at increasing security in the easily accessible border areas. All of them appeared before a customary court near Ramogkwebana, the border post village in which they were arrested.

A customary judge sentenced each of the 22 to a lashing before the state courts ruled to deport them back to Zimbabwe. According to police in Botswana, officers have been deployed to rural villages in the general border area in anticipation of an increase in border jumping by Zimbabweans seeking menial jobs that come with the farming season.

Many Zimbabweans tend to take advantage of the generally poor police visibility in the Botswana countryside and find odd jobs while living illegally in outlying villages. They have complained that Botswana citizens take advantage of the cheap labour offered by foreigners and are notorious for refusing to pay even the smallest amount once the job is done knowing they have no recourse. In some cases, they even call the police to report the presence of an illegal immigrant just to avoid paying.

It is much more difficult for Zimbabweans to get legal status in Botswana than it is in South Africa, which processes no more than a dozen a week while hundreds of thousands remain illegal. But the plight of Zimbabweans in Botswana has received much less publicity compared to those below the Limpopo.