Crackdown in Zimbabwe drives an exodus

21 April, 2008 in Zimbabwe

source: International Herald Tribune
The New York Times

ALONG THE SOUTH AFRICA/ZIMBABWE BORDER: Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair.

She said she had seen gangs loyal to the longtime president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, beating people – some to death – in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters.

“It was terrifying,” said Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper.

Last week she waded across the Limpopo River, bribed a man fixing a border fence on the other side and slipped into a nearby South African farm.

She was among the latest desperate arrivals in what the biggest daily newspaper in South Africa is now calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami” – a wave of more than 1,000 people every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South Africa.

When a shallow, glassy river and a few coils of razor wire are the only things separating one of Africa’s most [continue reading]