ople. Where do these people get their information from? If this is the best the ANC can produce by way of future leaders, then the future for this country is bleak indeed – as well as for our own.
If Mugabe is doing such a good job for his people why are they flocking to South Africa? Why are they swimming across crocodile-infested rivers? Why are they putting up with abuse from employers who are exploiting them because they have no documentation? Why are they sleeping in their thousands on pavements and in filthy tenements if life at home is as rosy as the ANC would like to believe?
These people don’t seem to understand that for a man to give up everything he has, his home, his family, to walk over 1,000 kilometres is proof that things are not okay in Zimbabwe. Why is it that South Africans are not moving in the opposite direction to live in Zimbabwe?
If the ANC doesn’t know what’s going on – let Magaisa tell them. Life is unbearable in Zimbabwe. We are all hungry. Even the basics in life are unaffordable now for most people. Companies have closed down. There is massive unemployment. We cannot afford to be born. We cannot afford to die. If we try to demonstrate – well, you know what happened to the ZCTU and MDC leaders a few weeks ago. And that has been going on for a long time. Ask the WOZA women. It didn’t only happen a few weeks ago.
A quarter of the Zimbabwean population now lives outside the country in exile. This is the highest number per capita anywhere in the world.
Maybe the good Phikile Mbalura, the ANC youth leader who told the world how much he loves Mugabe, would like to swap places with Mai Magaisa for a week. I’ll offer him my house in Mbare and he can try living there for a few months. Let’s see who he will love then (it better not be Mai Magaisa either!)
Somebody in South Africa must be aware of the huge numbers of Zimbabweans who are here and the burden that is placing on society, even if Mbalura lives in blissful ignorance. The authorities announced this week the introduction of a huge deposit payable to their Embassy in Harare by all those wishing to visit this country in future.
The deposit, more than Z$100,000 new money, is beyond the means of most – except of course the Zanu (PF) fat cats and their hangers on.
What it means for the average Zimbabwean is that coming to South Africa legally from now on is out of the question. All this move will do is put more money into the hands of the people-smugglers who are already making their own little fortunes, modest by Zanu (PF) means, out of the abject people-misery that Mr Mbalura loves.
Perhaps he would care to visit me and my fellow Zimbabweans in our shack here by the railway line for a little lesson in reality.
Post published in: News