Running
Dry
IT
IS DAWN on a warm December morning, and Joshua
Tuso, 41, is huddled with some 20 undocumented
migrants in a disused warehouse in Zimbabwe’s
Beitbridge Town, which borders South Africa.
Some of the migrants — who have traveled here
from across Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Somalia — are
smoking cheap cigarettes in the dim light to
calm their nerves. Others recite prayers from
small Bibles distributed by the nonprofit
Gideons International. A few appear drunk and
aloof about the risk of their impending trip.
Tuso crouches near his bags, vigilant about
their contents, as a guard stands outside,
keeping an eye out for border police.
Beitbridge
Town, home to 58,000 inhabitants, is very dry.
The town and its surroundings, which are marked
by parched earth and thorny trees, is the last
foothold of Zimbabwe before one crosses into
South Africa. But not everyone traveling across
the border goes through the high-tech
immigration and customs gates at the official
Beitbridge crossing, where shiny cameras capture
faces, and every traveler is fingerprinted.
That’s
because Beitbridge is located next to the
Limpopo River, which meanders eastward along the
Zimbabwe-South Africa border before passing
through Mozambique and emptying into the Indian
Ocean. The town’s booming formal economy is
fueled by legal cross-border haulage and
warehousing. Its informal economy is built
around smuggling migrants and cargo into South
Africa across the riverbed, and to a lesser
extent, out of it, for those coming back.
“In
Beitbridge, humans, cars, and donkeys don’t
sleep, [constantly] ferrying humans and
merchandise to and from South Africa. Let me be
clear: No one is coerced here. Needy migrants
pay to be trafficked down south,” says Wilo, 40,
who leads the small group of smugglers (or
“spotters”) guiding the undocumented migrants
across the river. “It’s team-work,” says Wilo,
wiping a spot of sweat from his brow. (Wilo
declined to divulge his legal name for fear of
being targeted by law enforcement officers and
other cartels.)
Tuso
is one of those migrants. He has spent the last
week making the 600-kilometer trip here from his
home in Birchenough Bridge, a semi-arid district
in rural eastern Zimbabwe. The exhausting
journey required negotiating for cheap fares in
haulage trucks heading down to South Africa. He
is fleeing drought and the hardships it has
brought on him and his family of five children
and two wives. (Polygamy is relatively common in
parts of sub-Saharan Africa).
Though
climate change is driving Tuso south, that’s not
where its impact ends. Climate disruption is
also easing the final stretch of migrants’
difficult journey into South Africa — and
contributing to rising tensions across the
border.
To tell this story about
the plight of climate refugees, journalists
Nyasha Bhobo and Tsitsi Bhobo followed a
group of migrants as they crossed the Limpopo
River into South Africa with the help of
“spotters.” |
