TREVOR Mlambo (26), his two wives and children sit at a service station in Beitbridge as their driver takes a rest after a gruelling journey from South Africa’s North West province and Pretoria.
Together with a handful of relatives from Chipinge, Mlambo hired a minibus to carry their families home to safety and loaded a few of their belongings to relocate permanently.
“I had to sell some of my things to raise money to be able to pay for my family trip home,” he said.
“We are resting for a while before we proceed to Sakwinje area in Chipinge.
“We had to leave abruptly with the little we could take after days of sleeping away from what we walked home,” he said.
“The very people to who we paid rentals turned against us and for a week, we had to run away at night.
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“I was not employed, but was a handyman and moved from place to place doing odd jobs like building, painting you see.
“But after seven years it was time to say goodbye or die.”
Mlambo, looking scruffy and weary, said he was not prepared to leave South Africa and had not taken the March and March June 30 deadline seriously.
When his landlord turned against him, he knew what it meant.
He left on June 30 on the long road back home bidding bye to the place he had called home for seven years.
“I cannot lie that I was beaten, no, but their seriousness ahead of the date was telling and I complied.”
His story is similar to that of thousands of other Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans, Nigerians and other African countries citizens who trekked down across Limpopo in search of greener pastures.
But South African nationals in their March and March anti-migrants activism have turned against fellow Africans, banishing from their country.
March and March is a South African anti-immigration movement founded by Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma which advocates strictly for the enforcement of the country’s immigration laws and the removal of undocumented foreign nationals from South Africa.
But it has also affected the documented ones, triggering an upheaval, with thousands moving to their countries in unprecedented volumes.
Zimbabweans and Malawians are coming through Beitbridge in different categories of those funding themselves and the assisted.
Beitbridge regional immigration officer Joshua Chibundu said “thousands are arriving daily since the beginning of June, but figures surged towards the deadline.”
Journalists have been barred from the Department of Social Welfare Reception Centre, where those in assisted repatriation arrive to catch hundreds of government-hired buses taking them to different destinations.
However, on a daily basis, dozens of buses arrive fully loaded with broken returnees, some carrying just plastic bags, which are not reflective of years spent in the neighbouring country.
For some time, Beitbridge has been host to thousands of Malawians fleeing South Africa.
For those who go through the processing procedure, it means they face a five-year ban into that country.
Some Malawians have nothing and good Samaritans at Beitbridge are taking turns to feed them.
Some have been robbed in attempts to avoid the official border post, where South Africa screens and does biometric procedures barring deportees access to that country for the next five years.
As a result, Beitbridge is littered with thousands of Malawians and Zimbabweans looking for transport home.
The groups include young children caught up in the chaotic scenes in a human movement never witnessed before at Beitbridge, looking like scenes from war-torn countries.
And Beitbridge, with a perennial shortage of water, is suffocated and unable to offer proper sanitary facilities.
Cases of open defecation are many and widespread at hiking spots, bus terminus and roadsides, where hundreds sit hoping miracles will carry them to safety.
“Some of these people have nothing and we have been buying them bread.
“Most affected are those from Malawi. Their situation is pathetic,” said a money changer at a food court situated along the highway from the border post.
Matabeleland South Provincial Affairs and Devolution minister Albert Nguluvhe said he hoped bus operators could be allowed to ferry Malawians to Nyamapanda.
“I wish it was possible for bus operators to ferry the Malawians to Nyamapanda and their country could take them from there,” Nguluvhe said.
“Our citizens are being catered for and these ones are stuck.”