“Thank you sir for welcoming us to South Africa. Thank you for your hospitality for the next five years. Thank you, sir.”
“Zimbabweans to South Africa, here we go! The move is permanent. No documents needed to be signed. The move is imminent.”
When President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulated Zimbabwean President Emmerson “The Crocodile” Mnangagwa for winning re-election last week, he triggered a flood of cynical attacks on social media — an expression of Zimbabweans’ outrage following the country’s recent polls.
But it was also a reflection of the deep despondence felt in that country. “I may never vote again,” Harare resident Pearson* tells the FM. “What is the point of voting when Zanu-PF is going to win?”
The feeling is pervasive among those the FM canvassed for this story. After 43 years of ruinous Zanu-PF rule, “born-frees” dared hope for political change on August 23. Instead, hopelessness has set in.
“I will starve to death or get killed by a bullet,” says Budiriro resident John. “Either way, death is waiting.”
Others are less fatalistic, if no less despairing.
“I want to leave now that Zanu-PF has won,” says Harare resident Wilma, adding: “Anywhere but here is good for me.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Willis — one of the last of his social work class still in the country — and Tendai, a second-year student and single mother. It’s better to leave and take on care work elsewhere than remain in a country in a death spiral, she says.
It’s an opinion that’s rife on social media, too.
It’s no great surprise. Zimbabwe’s economy is in free fall — the result of a toxic combination of inflation (77% year on year in August), a lending rate of more than 150%, a rapidly devaluing currency (Z$5,300/$ on the official rate), and foreign exchange shortages. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions puts unemployment north of 70%; statistical agency ZimStat has it at 46.7% on the expanded definition. It’s a struggle just to get by in a country where earnings — such as they are — are in the pitiful local currency and deindustrialisation has dampened economic opportunity.
Even before the election, the country’s economic collapse was driving desperate citizens to leave for South Africa and Botswana “as the most functional of the close neighbours”, says University of Pretoria analyst Sithembile Mbete, “creating tensions and contestation around jobs, around opportunity, around housing”.
Quite how many Zimbabweans are in South Africa is difficult to ascertain; home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi refers to the figures bandied about as pure guesswork. Those estimates go as high as 5-million and are overstated, particularly by populists, says Chris Nshimbi, head of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation at the University of Pretoria and an expert on the political economy of migration. Research shows migration patterns to be mostly circular, so the figures will also be in flux.
Stats SA put the number of migrants as a whole — regardless of country of origin and legal status — at 3.95-million in 2021, which makes the higher estimates of Zimbabweans in the country unlikely.
Based on its 2022 census, ZimStat recorded emigrants in 13.5% of households. Of the roughly 909,000 recorded, it puts 773,000 in South Africa. But that number is based only on emigrants with households still in Zimbabwe at the time of the census, so it’s still something of a spitball.
Nonetheless, the figures show an uptick since 2017, the year Mnangagwa unseated long-term dictator Robert Mugabe in a coup. And emigrants, by far, cite economic opportunity as their motivation for leaving.
Will the flawed August 23 poll change things? Nshimbi believes most Zimbabweans wanting to leave the country have already done so. Nonetheless, he expects an uptick in cross-border movement in the wake of the election.
Other analysts believe there may be a fresh wave of immigrants to South Africa. Given the consequences, “it’s heartbreaking”, says Democracy Works Foundation founder William Gumede.
The democratic election that wasn’t
Late last Saturday, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) declared Zanu-PF’s Mnangagwa, 80, the winner of the presidential poll with 52% of the vote. Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa secured 44%. In the National Assembly ballot the ruling party won 176 seats (63%) — including those designated for women and youth — against the CCC’s 103 (37%).
It didn’t take long for the opposition to call foul. Not least because international election monitors, in their preliminary findings, suggested that the poll was deeply flawed. They variously cited voter intimidation, a problematic voters roll, undelivered ballots that delayed voting in some districts, a biased state media and the banning of opposition rallies prior to the election.
“There was clearly deliberate manipulation,” says Gumede. “A kind of manipulation we’ve seen across the continent, where ruling parties just don’t want to let go, and they find all sorts of sophisticated ways to rig elections.”
Chamisa, for his part, has called the outcome “a gigantic fraud” — a sentiment shared by many Zimbabweans. (Zanu-PF insists the result mirrors its support.)
Lorraine, for one, is adamant the elections were rigged. “In Harare, we were denied the right to vote and ZEC won’t avail the raw data to explain how they arrived at those votes,” she tells the FM.
The CCC and the US state department have called on the ZEC to publish raw data on a polling station-by-polling station basis. Instead, even the aggregated results of the elections have been removed from the ZEC website.
Simon also tells of a lack of ballot papers in districts near his own — as well as of intimidation “before the polls and when people went to vote. The FAZ [Forever Associates Zimbabwe] were waiting outside the polling stations conducting what they called exit polls to know who you have voted for.”
Several videos have emerged of the FAZ — a shadowy group linked to Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation — running what appear to be exit polls near stations. More than that, it’s alleged that a number of people in rural constituencies were coerced by the FAZ into claiming they were illiterate so they would be assisted in making their mark at the ballot box — in favour of Zanu-PF, in other words.
Not helping the CCC has been its own lack of structure and organisation, Zimbabwe expert and University of Johannesburg professor David Moore tells the FM. He believes it’s something of a one-man band under Chamisa; it has yet to put in place the organisational structures that will allow it to operate more cohesively as a political party.
Still, “the fix” lies in the longer term, Moore told a post-election webinar hosted by the South African Liaison Office. In particular, he flagged the fallout from a delimitation exercise.
For example, the Harare constituency of Glenview was reconfigured to include urban and peri-urban areas — leaving some voters to walk upwards of 5km to reach their polling stations, only to find that ballots hadn’t been delivered. Others arrived to find their names weren’t on the constituency voters roll, as a result of the redrawn boundaries.
Many doubt whether these voters would have made their way to their old constituencies to vote — or returned the next day, once voting was extended.
Gumede adds factors to the longer-term narrowing of the democratic space: restricting the media through the enactment of repressive laws, preventing foreign funding to civil society groups and restricting civil society oversight.
Says Munyaradzi Chitauro, a Zimbabwean lawyer based in Cape Town: “From the delimitation, campaigning that saw [opposition] rallies being banned, the presence of FAZ in the constituencies before and after voting [to] voter suppression, it was a sham election.”
More to the point, as Mbete puts it: “The election that [the CCC] was fighting wasn’t against Zanu-PF, it was against the ZEC. So no matter how well Chamisa would have tried to play this, if you’ve got an entire system rigged against you, there’s actually not much you can do.”
Except leave.
Meanwhile, back at home (affairs)
One of the concerns raised by analysts is the effect that increased emigration of Zimbabweans may have on the social fabric of South Africa — and what the authorities are doing to mitigate the effects.
Sanusha Naidu, senior researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue, tells the FM “it’s going to be quite an issue in terms of the pressures [Zimbabwe’s slide] will create on the South African state. Are we going to see more refugees, migrants, economic migrants? More people leaving Zimbabwe looking to find a way out to get some kind of material benefit outside the country?”
Concerns broadly relate to increased contestation over scarce resources, and an increased risk of instability given South Africa’s own parlous economic position and xenophobia.
As Mbete explains it, this is not a foreign problem; it’s a distinctly local one. “The crisis there is [affecting] social services in South Africa — on housing, on jobs and on contestation over jobs.”
But, she adds: “Whether this is true or not, factual or not — that foreigners are stealing people’s jobs — that doesn’t matter. The point is that the perception of it is ... having a very real effect on our political rhetoric and also on the actions that people take.”
It’s a salient point, given how immigrants have become a political football. One need look no further than last week’s devastating Joburg fire, in which 77 people died. “What we saw with the fire [was a] horrible kind of rhetoric coming out, blaming illegal immigrants for being in a situation where they died in a fire,” she says.
It stems from South Africans’ misguided perceptions around immigrants’ contribution to crime and unemployment.
The truth, of course, lies elsewhere. An Africa Check report, for example, notes that undocumented migrants made up just 2.27% of total prison inmates from 2017 to 2021. And a brief from the Helen Suzman Foundation, collating data from Stats SA and a 2018 Organisation for Economic Co-operation/International Labour Organisation study, shows how immigrants contribute to the country — and not just in terms of the tax they pay. Those who have been in the country for fewer than 10 years add to employment and incomes of local workers, as they’re often entrepreneurs. Depending on skill level, immigrants as a whole add between 2.2% and 2.8% to per capita GDP. And they have little significant effect on local jobs — in the formal sector they’re often on critical skills visas; those who have entered “by the back door” work in more transient professions, with less job protection.
Many of these are concentrated in the construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors, says Nshimbi. Moreover, immigrants provide a substantial boost to the economy as cross-border traders. Indicatively, he says, cross-border traders account for 30%-40% of all trade within the Southern African Development Community (Sadc).
Still, South Africa’s economy is struggling too. Unemployment on the expanded definition is at 42.1%, there’s a cost-of-living crisis, and the GDP outlook is dire, at 0.3% this year, by the Reserve Bank’s estimate, and 1% next year. Any way you look at it, South Africa is hardly a land of opportunity, and any immigrants — just like South Africans — will struggle to make ends meet.
Taken together, as Mbete has pointed out, it makes this a very specifically South African problem.
Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi may be more aware of that than most. He’s spent the past four years getting to grips with a portfolio — with an issue — that has serious implications for the country.
Migration poses a particular challenge — not least because of a poorly articulated, poorly implemented legal framework. As Motsoaledi tells it, there are three different acts related to immigration, amended more than five times. The legislative framework is scattered, sometimes contradictory and haphazard at best. Which is why the entire raft of legislation is set to be repealed.
Motsoaledi is to present to the cabinet a white paper on migration that contains a single piece of legislation to deal with all aspects of migration — and tighten South Africa’s laws.
It’s been a long time coming. As Motsoaledi tells the FM, in the early days of democracy there was hardly an influx of immigrants. Then, in 2002, as the political temperature began rising, 16,000 Zimbabweans entered South Africa legally. “By 2006 the number increased to 53,000 ... and still, it was manageable,” he says.
When Zimbabwe hit the skids in 2008, he says, “all of a sudden” about 200,000 Zimbabweans arrived. The result was the decision in 2010 to put in place what is now known as the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) — a special, temporary programme allowing Zimbabweans to live and work in South Africa.
Eleven years on, Motsoaledi tried to scrap the ZEP, giving permit holders until the end of 2021 to regularise their stay by applying for the correct visa, or return to Zimbabwe. It’s a decision that affects about 178,000 people. (Motsoaledi’s decision was successfully challenged in court — a ruling he’s currently appealing.)
South Africa’s legal regime on migration is arguably as porous as its borders. It’s called forum shopping: when individuals fail to enter the country using one law, they simply try another. Ditto the visa system: if one visa is denied, there are 17 others to try. And that’s for the migrants entering the country legally.
A flawed legislative regime is not the only problem — home affairs is also notoriously corrupt. Motsoaledi says he was taken aback when he put in place an anti-corruption unit to investigate errors in the handing out of visas — and about 14 officials penned a petition to halt the probe.
He then had a team examine all visas granted since 2004 and report back to him. The findings, he says, showed those 14 staffers were behind some of the wrongdoing.
It’s mind-boggling: the probe found, for example, that 16-year-olds were receiving retirement visas. In fact, thousands of people under 55 have received such visas, Motsoaledi says, in part because the act doesn’t specify the age of retirement.
The white paper and legislation that will flow from the team’s findings are set to “radically overhaul” the country’s immigration laws, he says.
But what good is a stronger legislative framework if the border remains so porous?
Motsoaledi admits that the new Border Management Authority has been a long time coming (10 years). But 200 border guards were put in place in July last year and a further 400 are being recruited. It is still far from enough to manage the more than 4,700km land border, but it is a start.
Since the 200 became active, about 35,000 people have been stopped from entering the country illegally, he says, and 95,000 people who overstayed the permitted period were caught.
When it comes to the Zimbabwe issue, Motsoaledi tells the FM that his department closely monitored the border in the run-up to and aftermath of the election. What it found was somewhat surprising: unlike Christmas and Easter, there was little cross-border movement ahead of the election.
“We waited for them to go home to vote, but they never did ... we only saw a fraction. Why did they not go home to vote?” he asks.
Of course, that could speak to the precariousness of employment for many immigrants: taking a leave of absence may put their jobs on the line — never mind how to pay for the trip in the first place. And that amid uncertainty over whether they would be allowed to vote at all.
While Motsoaledi questions why South Africa should be solely responsible for solving the problems in Zimbabwe, he does acknowledge the broader impact of the issue.
He says there is a direct correlation between the political stability of a country — the strength of its democracy — and migration. That much is clear, he adds, if you consider the different levels of migration to South Africa from Zimbabwe, on the one hand, and Botswana and Namibia on the other.
“Of course we have an interest, we want [Zimbabwe] to be a stable, peaceful democracy that doesn’t chase away its own citizens. But our response can only be controlled by the laws we have and those we are bound to,” he says.
Effecting change
Central to the debate is that, as much as this may be a domestic issue, there is an international dimension that needs to be addressed too.
The ZEP in its earliest incarnation, for example, was a means to regularise the stay — temporarily — of Zimbabweans in South Africa. But as Mbete explains, this has simply dealt with the symptoms rather than the cause. One really needs to consider the meltdown of Zimbabwe itself, and what South Africa may be able to do to mitigate that.
On that count, the country has been found wanting.
Another problem she flags is a blind spot around analysis of the Zimbabwe problem. Going back to Mugabe, the focus has been on the individual rather than networks of power and patronage in Zanu-PF. It’s a pattern, she adds, that’s simply being repeated with Mnangagwa.
The point is picked up by Moore. To understand Zimbabwe’s predicament, it’s necessary to understand the deeper issues — the networks of accumulation that feed into and are fed by the structures of power. And, Gumede adds, it’s about understanding that the military is at the centre of everything: this isn’t a traditional political party — it’s a military party in power.
Political analyst Rejoice Ngwenya, for one, certainly doesn’t trust South Africa’s stance on Zimbabwe. “South Africa’s regional diplomacy has always been rotten,” he tells the FM. “I doubt if the ANC does it to ‘benefit South Africa’. It’s just blind nationalist camaraderie.”
It’s a point that is raised across the board: the extent of ties between former liberation movements that are now ruling parties, and their support for each other — they “look after each other, prop each other up, defend each other”, says Gumede.
Mbete, for her part, believes former liberation parties such as the ANC and Namibia’s Swapo “need to start seeing that it’s in their own interest for the situation in Zimbabwe to be resolved. They need to actually start taking responsibility for trying to engage their counterparts in Zimbabwe, because ... it’s highly likely that the situation is going to get worse after this election. And the people who are going to be most affected by it are going to run to the neighbouring countries. You can’t just ignore that issue.”
The problem is that South Africa largely has ignored it — though that may be changing. On Friday, ANC international relations subcommittee chair Obed Bapela told Newzroom Afrika that the former liberation movements would soon be meeting to discuss this exact issue. Given the reaction to the election so far, however, it seems doubtful much will come of it.
When it comes to the country’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe — and the rationale of supporting an autocratic regime next door — analysts are dismissive. Mbete, for one, says the government under Ramaphosa has largely disengaged from Zimbabwe — in part through “not knowing what to do with it, and almost kind of ignoring it and hoping it will go away”.
That could be because it was South Africa that in many ways legitimised the 2017 coup, she says. It wasn’t just broadly supportive; through some fancy linguistic footwork, it wasn’t characterised as a coup — which meant Zimbabwe could retain its membership of the AU, for example.
It’s possible that business relationships also factor into the mix. For example, Ramaphosa’s security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi, is chair of Zimplats (which is itself majority South African-owned), she says. “So I think that there are quite strong both political but also economic relationships that make it difficult for the government to stand up to Zanu-PF.”
For Gumede, there’s simply a lack of rationality in allowing Zimbabwe to become a basket case. But the problem is that South Africa’s foreign policy is based on historical connections, personal connections or emotions. Consider, for example, its position on Russia — even if its stance in that instance undermines its economic interests.
If anything, Mbete adds, there’s more clarity on, and effort and resources — financial, human and intellectual — going into South Africa’s position on Ukraine and Brics than on Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean analysts are sceptical that Sadc’s unusually critical preliminary report on the elections is likely to carry much weight — or that South Africa will use any leverage it may have to effect change.
“South Africa is in a quagmire. It’s in a transition phase from being the democratic and leading democracy in Southern Africa ... to involving itself in global geopolitical matters such as siding with autocratic regimes like China and Russia, and that is diminishing the credentials of the ANC and South Africa,” says independent political analyst Rashweat Mukundu.
“South Africa can’t speak on free and fair elections in Zimbabwe while not speaking the same on its key geopolitical partners like China and Russia.”
In any event, as Mbete explains, multilateral bodies such as Sadc are only as strong as the political support of their member states. So between Ramaphosa’s listless response to the election and ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s enthusiastic support of Zanu-PF, things don’t look too good on that front — even if Sadc’s critical stance is a welcome break from the past.
Or, as Gumede explains: “Giving a bland statement and saying nothing says everything ... What we need to do as a country is to adhere to our own constitutional values.”
Sadc’s criticism offered just this opportunity. Sadly, South Africa missed the gap.
The cracks that let the light in
Where does this leave Zimbabwe?
Having given up on a legal challenge, citing a captured judiciary, Chamisa will hope for a rerun, though it’s unlikely Zanu-PF will yield to pressure — particularly given the ready support of countries like South Africa (Ramaphosa this week attended Mnangagwa’s inauguration).
In the longer term, analysts have mixed opinions on the issue. Naidu, for example, wonders if the 2028 election will be a watershed, and whether a civic-rooted, UDF-type movement won’t best move society forward. Externally, could South Africa leverage its relationship with China to push for change? Given that country’s investments in the region, stability is in its interests.
Mbete doesn’t rule out a coup, while Gumede believes it’s unlikely, given how embedded the security apparatus is. At worst, he sees a “doomsday” scenario, where the country really reaches rock bottom. That in turn could lead to a groundswell akin to the Arab Spring. On this, though, Mbete offers a word of caution, arguing that one of the lessons from the Arab Spring is that such youth uprisings can be hijacked by more cynical political interests.
In any event, one point of agreement is that outside forces may have some influence, but for political and democratic change to truly take root, it has to come from inside Zimbabwe — and from within Zanu-PF itself. Most positive here would be the ageing out of the “geriatrics” in the organisation in favour of a more moderate, younger cohort, who may be more likely to accommodate the opposition.
Still, in Moore’s view it’s too early to tell how the outcome of this election will play out. But even with some kind of compromise — “co-operation, not capitulation” — Zimbabwe will take at least 15 to 20 years to right itself.
That leaves people like Tawanda and Josiah in limbo, leading a life in South Africa framed by xenophobia, precarious employment, exploitation, a cost-of-living crisis, crime. Most Zimbabweans, Josiah says, would return to Zimbabwe “given a chance”. But the window of hope seems to have closed; the “toxic, bitter and deadly” politics of Zimbabwe has won out again.
“Every day we dream of home,” Josiah tells the FM. “Every day our thoughts are back home with our loved ones ... We always hope one day we will come home for good. Always.”
* Some names have been changed.
According to statistics agency ZimStat’s 2022 census, Zimbabwe’s emigrants are primarily male (59%) and in the 20- to 24-year age bracket (28%), followed by 26- to 29-year-olds (20%) and those aged 30-34 (13%). Sixty-four percent have completed a lower secondary level of education, 18% have completed primary education and 7.6% hold a tertiary qualification.
Ninety percent are unemployed at the time of leaving the country. So it’s unsurprising the vast majority (84%) leave for employment purposes, followed by family (8.5%) or educational (4.7%) reasons. Less than 1% leave to settle elsewhere, permanently or on a long-term basis.
The 84,000 Zimbabweans in jobs are primarily classified as professionals (26%), service and sales workers (19%) and craft and related trades workers (13%)
Primary destinations included South Africa (85%), Botswana (5%) and the UK (2.5%).
— Who are Zimbabwe’s emigrants?
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