South Africa Fights Unending Battle to Stop Tide of Illegal Immigrants

KOMATIPOORT, South Africa —  Moses Mutembo took what should have been a grim ride with a smile and a joke.

“See you next week,” the 18-year-old told guards on a government train hauling him back to the border for deportation to Mozambique.

South Africa’s immigration officials aren’t laughing. But they concede the difficulty of trying to halt the flow of impoverished Africans to the strong economy and loose borders of South Africa.

Mutembo, a burly youth who trained as a construction worker in South Africa, was one of hundreds put on a “repatriation train.” The 12-car special runs from the Dyambu holding center near Johannesburg to Komatipoort, a border post with Mozambique, 280 miles to the east.

The trip is no fun. Wearing sneakers, denim and light cotton in the early summer heat and carrying belongings in small bundles, the deportees are guarded closely by armed police on the overnight journey. Forget about refreshments.

At each station, they must bow their heads below window level. That prevents them from figuring out where they are or how to escape, said Frans le Grange, a repatriation official.

Some do jump out when guards doze. Others are back in South Africa within days, or even hours.

Col. Daan Lotter, commander of the army’s border patrol near Komatipoort, said his soldiers had arrested one man seven times trying to get into South Africa.

“The names change. One day it’s James, the next it’s Francisco. But the fingerprints are the same,” said Michael Nkosi, Komatipoort’s senior immigration officer, as he stamped hundreds of deportation warrants.

Lotter’s men patrol a 42-mile stretch of border that runs through rolling hills and sugar plantations. Towering coils of electrified razor wire mark the frontier, and computers pinpoint breaks or short circuits.

When the monitors signal a break, Lotter’s motorcycle unit scrambles to catch the illegals immigrants.

His men also look out from hilltop observation posts, watching Mozambicans disappearing into the sugar cane to wait for passing taxi vans or prearranged transport.

Using forked sticks to lift the electrified wire, and often helped by experienced guides charging a lucrative fee, they can get through the fence in about 2 1/2 minutes, Lotter said.

“We don’t have long to get them,” he sighed.

Although pleased with his capture rate--probably 90% of those spotted--Lotter knows countless more “economic fugitives” slip into South Africa after trekking from as far away as Mali and Nigeria in West Africa.

Officials compare the repatriation program to bailing out a leaking boat with a teacup. The government estimates that more than 4 million illegal immigrants live in South Africa.

“There’s really no way of knowing, when you think of the risks people will take to get in and stay in,” said le Grange, who works at the Dyambu holding center.

He said illegal immigrants swim flooded, crocodile-infested rivers and cross minefields left over from years of regional wars. They also trudge through nature reserves, sometimes falling prey to wild animals, such as a Mozambican mother and child killed by lions while trying to sneak through Kruger National Park on Dec. 30.

On the train back to Mozambique, Pedro Simango, 27, told how he crossed illegally into South Africa in 1989 and found work as a laborer in a bottling plant. He was caught in a random police check.

“I came for a better life,” said Simango, who earned 920 rand a month--about $195--in South Africa, nearly four times the average annual income in impoverished Mozambique. “This is much better than my country. It’s more advanced.”

He was clear about his future.

“I won’t get work in Maputo,” Simango said. “I’ll come back. I have no alternative, but I’ll try and get some papers.”

South Africa has agreed to let illegal immigrants from the other 11 member states of the Southern African Development Community apply for permanent residence if they have lived in the country at least five years, have full-time work or have children born in the country.

That will not help everyone.

Jackson Mafwala, 40, is from the central African nation of Zaire, which is not a member of the group. He describes himself as a businessman who fled to South Africa to escape the turmoil in his homeland.

“Being a refugee doesn’t mean you are poor,” he said. “When South Africans ran away from apartheid, we didn’t chase them away.”

South African officials say deportees get access to independent refugee agencies for screening, but they concede that some deserving cases may go unnoticed.

“We’re under pressure,” le Grange said. “It’s a huge problem to plug all the holes.”