MIGRATION-AFRICA: In Johannesburg, a Little Maputo

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lucas Ledwaba

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 30 2005 (IPS) - Music pounds from a ghetto blaster underneath the makeshift stall where Mozambican national Simiao Chichava* earns his living fixing radios and selling music cassettes.

The setting for all this activity is Ivory Park – a low-income settlement northeast of the South African financial hub of Johannesburg. Casual passers-by could be forgiven, however, for thinking themselves in the heart of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo.

Jokes are cracked in Portuguese, Shangaan and other Mozambican languages, while hawkers display dried, smoked fish that provides a taste of home for those who once lived along Mozambique’s coast.

Carpenters from South Africa’s eastern neighbour work diligently on the pavement, producing colourful kitchen cabinets. Other migrants weld car exhausts, or run “spaza shops” – informal stores that sell bread, milk and other basic foods.

Many, perhaps most, of these expatriates are in South Africa illegally. But even as they dodge arrest and deportation, the migrants often show impressive skill in surviving within a harsh economic climate. Others have found their new home less than welcoming.

During Mozambique’s 16-year civil war, hundreds of thousands of people fled to South Africa to escape the fighting, swelling the ranks of those who were crossing the border to find work in South Africa’s gold mines.

Research by the Forced Migration Studies Programme of the Johannesburg-based University of the Witwatersrand indicates that 240,000 war-time refugees decided to stay in South Africa rather than return home when the conflict in their country ended in 1992.

Since then, high levels of poverty in Mozambique have ensured a continued flow of illegal economic migrants to South Africa – although the Department of Home Affairs was not able to give IPS an estimate of the number of Mozambicans living in the country without proper documents.

Those who make their way to Ivory Park set up shop wherever possible.

“In Mozambique there are few jobs, so people learn to do business at a young age,” says 26-year-old Manuel Pedro, a hawker who traveled between his rural home in Mozambique’s northeastern Inhambane province and the capital, Maputo, before crossing the border illegally in 2001 to live in Ivory Park. His uncle also stays in the settlement.

Last year, Pedro was arrested and deported to Mozambique. He promptly set his sights on returning to South Africa: two months later he was back in Ivory Park.

Pedro rents a one-room tin shack for about 23 dollars a month. Upon his arrival in South Africa he worked for a paving company, but moved on after a year. Now he leaves home every morning to walk three kilometres to the new, middle income suburb of Ebony Park, where he tends gardens.

In a good month Pedro makes around 77 dollars – but sometimes counts himself lucky simply to have covered his rent. Life in Johannesburg has not proved as lucrative as he had hoped, says Pedro; on occasion, his clients refuse to pay him.

“Sometimes you do work for someone and when they are supposed to pay as agreed, they tell you many stories. They know we can’t report them to the police because we don’t have papers.”

Still, returning to Mozambique is out of the question.

“You know, back home there is nothing. People plough or fish, but there is no money. Why must I return to such a life?” he asks.

Pedro is now in the process of starting a construction business. Last month he got his first client in Ebony Park, who asked him to erect a security wall around his property. To do the job, Pedro employed two of his countrymen who are skilled builders, at a salary of about 15 dollars a day.

Back at Simiao Chichava’s tin and wood stall, a similar tale emerges.

Chichava, 32, came to South Africa two years ago with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. He had hoped that there would be jobs in abundance in Mozambique after the war, but now finds himself in Ivory Park. During a good week, he earns approximately 46 dollars.

“There is peace in Maputo now, but we are struggling with jobs. My brothers back home are fishermen, but there are too many people doing that kind of work. The money isn’t that good,” says Chichava.

According to the latest Human Development Report, issued by the United Nations Development Programme, more than a third of Mozambicans –-37.9 percent – live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

But success can be a mixed blessing. Last year, a mob that had accused Mozambicans of stealing jobs and monopolising business in an informal settlement near Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg, torched a small grocery store. In the process, its owner was burnt to death.

The incident was just one example of a rising tide of xenophobia in South Africa that is closely associated with the country’s high level of joblessness. Latest figures from the national statistics institute, Statistics South Africa, put the unemployment rate at 26.5 percent, although unofficial estimates say it may be closer to 40 percent.

At a conference held in Johannesburg earlier this month, delegates noted that the situation of foreign nationals had been worsened by police hostility towards legal and illegal migrants, and the consistently negative portrayal in the media of migrants from certain countries – notably Nigeria.

Faced with a combination of poverty at home and hostility in South Africa, Mozambicans in Ivory Park and similar settlements find themselves in a delicate situation. For the moment, though, putting down tentative roots in their adopted country seems preferable to going home.

* Names have been changed to protect the identities of those concerned