Launch of a new book: “Road To Lindela”

“Road to Lindela” will be launched in Cape Town at 17h30 on Thursday 30 April at the Center for the Book, 52 Queen Victoria Street.

Mention the word “Lindela” to asylum seekers in South Africa and raw fear immediately clouds their faces, especially those of Zimbabwean origin who fled the government-sponsored violence and economic chaos and are living in South Africa illegally.

Lindela is the feared detention centre outside Krugersdorp, about an hour’s drive west of Johannesburg. This is where captured asylum seekers without legal documents issued by the South African Department of Home Affairs are sent prior to being repatriated to their home countries.

According to the authors of a book being launched in Cape Town this week, Road to Lindela, the detention centre has, among other serious deficiencies, “the worst health hazard conditions that human beings are expected to live under.”

“Security guards torture detainees, the place is overcrowded and dirty, and 90 percent of the detainees come out sick. It is a breeding ground for TB and HIV/AIDS … in an era when we are fighting the spread of the pandemic.”

“Deaths usually occur in Lindela or even at the nearby hospital where those who are sick are ferried…,” they write.

Historically, as the Zimbabwean crisis escalated, asylum seekers and economic migrants due for deportation were taken from the centre and put on a special train to the border under conditions which were deplorable.

Terrified of being jailed, beaten and tortured after being handed over to the ruthless Zimbabwean police, many jumped out of the moving train. Some fell to their death; others incurred severe injuries while some miraculously survived unscathed.

There are also recorded cases of seriously ill Zimbabweans dying in transit.

Today, as a result of extensive pressure, the South African Department of Home Affairs is no longer deporting Zimbabwean asylum seekers and economic migrants although they continue to face arrest and harassment from the police.

Frequently they are ill treated while being held in police cells or are forced to pay bribes to secure their release.

Despite the installation of the transitional government, desperate Zimbabweans are still pouring into South Africa to escape ongoing political victimisation or in the hope of finding work and a mechanism for supporting their destitute families back home.
In January, Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate rose to 94 percent, meaning that fewer than 480 000 people had formal employment, down from 3.6 million in 2003.
Road to Lindela has been compiled by members of The Creative Writers and Arts Workshop.

It provides gripping accounts by people who have been held at Lindela while at the same time giving a useful perspective of the background to the eight-year-old Zimbabwean crisis.

Testimonies include those of a Zimbabwean who became involved in civil activism and was forced by the Mugabe regime to flee to South Africa. He was subsequently arrested for being an illegal immigrant and found himself at Lindela.

“The place was overcrowded and horrible,” he said. “The food as terrible and the sanitation and hygiene were not something to speak of….. The security men sprayed teargas and beat us so much…. I got ill with diarrhoea and I was always coughing….”

As Road to Lindela was in the final production stages, up to 15 border jumpers were reported to be dying daily, many falling prey to crocodiles or being swept away in swirling floodwaters.

Others were being raped, tortured or killed as they walked unprotected through remote reaches of South Africa’s Limpopo province on the way to the City of Hope – Johannesburg.

The chapter, “Life in Zimbabwe”, charts the country’s decline after the euphoria of independence in 1980, the Gukurahundi (sweep the dirt) massacres of the early 1980s in Matabeleland province and the spiralling corruption of the ruling party’s elite.

This is followed by an account of the horrors of life in a Zimbabwean jail, described by a young man who joined the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party. As a result, he was incarcerated on trumped up charges and tortured ruthlessly.

The section on the country’s calamitous economic decline notes the scale of the vandalism on stolen commercial farms, the escalation of animal diseases due to lack of controls and the collapse of agri-based industries.

The political economics of change and transformation are addressed briefly, as well as the history of land reform and the government’s escalating mismanagement of the economy.

The chapters “Journey to South Africa” and “Life in South Africa” demonstrate the often overwhelming difficulties faced by asylum seekers in general and the widespread human rights abuses they suffer, despite the protections enshrined in the South African constitution.

The section on the Lindela Detention Centre, euphemistically known as Lindela Repatriation Centre, is sub-titled “the place where unwanted people wait”.

The book also reveals that Lindela is a “privately owned and operated” facility that was created to hold illegal immigrants while they await deportation to their countries of origin.

Through interviews with asylum seekers who have also been detained in conventional prisons, the South African Human Rights Commission discovered that conditions were even worse at Lindela, which the authors describe as “the final rung of corruption”.

“Sadly,” they wrote, “Lindela has become an embarrassment to believers of (former) President Thabo Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance” and “the quest to build a better life for the inhabitants of the continent.”

Despite the overwhelming pain and suffering of asylum seekers, many have displayed levels of courage, tenacity and faith that are both remarkable and inspirational.

And along the way the book mentions the kindness of the many “good Samaritans” – ordinary people who had very little themselves but were prepared to take in exhausted asylum seekers and to feed them until they had regained sufficient strength to continue their journeys.

Road to Lindela will be launched in Cape Town at 17h30 on Thursday 30 April at the Center for the Book, 52 Queen Victoria Street.

The evening will be chaired by Professor Brian Raftopoulos, a veteran Zimbabwean political commentator and director for research and advocacy at the Solidarity Peace Trust.

Braam Hanekom, chairperson of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), will discuss immigration and Ksethani Sibanda, a Zimbabwean activist, will speak on youth challenges.

Gift Kavuno, vice chairman of the Creative Writers and Arts Workshop, will read an extract from Road to Lindela and comment on the project. Mr Kavuno lectures in journalism and media studies at Vaal Technology Institute.

Road to Lindela is sponsored by the Multi Agency Grant Initiative (Hivos).

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

• Mhlahlandela is a renowned writer, poet, literary and policy critique with a BA (Hons) in politics and administration from the University of Zimbabwe.
• Gilbert Phiri has a Higher National Diploma in Business Studies and is an accountant.
• Ike Mthandazo Dube is a writer, cultural activist, poet, performer, songwriter and researcher, as well as a part-time facilitator in TV and communications.
• Gift Bengwana Kavuno is a journalist, author and performer. He is currently lecturing in journalism and media studies at Vaal Technology Institute. He is vice chairman of the Creative Writers and Arts Workshop.
• Mlamulin Nkomo is a political and social commentator, human rights and civil society activist. He studied literature and psychology at the University of Zimbabwe and migration at Wits University.
• George Mkhwanazi is the national deputy chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, currently based in South Africa.
• Giyani Dube is a writer and actor who is studying journalism at Wits University. He is the project director of “Road to Lindela”
• Austin Moyo Snr (Editor and Design) is a publisher who co-owns Khanyisa Newspaper in Mpumalanga, a politician and an information technology specialist.

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