ninme

A post! Because you can always rely on Zimbabwe to rescue you from even the slowest of news days.

(Just keep “Mexican” in your mind when you read “Zimbabwean” and “Hispanic” when you read “black”. (Okay, not in all cases, not in this instance, for instance:

All tell the same story of unbearable hardship back home and vow to return if deported. “I have been walking for five days. In Zimbabwe things are very bad, so I was coming here to look for work. I just want food and work,” Enoch said. Others crammed on to the back of the pickup. “We are running from hunger. We have no money to buy food, no jobs, and things are getting worse every day. Our children are crying, Zimbabwe is crying. I was praying to find a better life here,” said Goodwill Maposa, 35.

Because that would be ridiculous, too.))

The Times – White farmers patrol border to stem the exodus from Zimbabwe

“We only apprehend a tiny fraction, but the name of the game is visibility. Everyone supports us – the local black population the most, they are affected by the insecurity created by this influx.”

As conditions in Zimbabwe – where inflation is about 5,000 per cent and unemployment 80 per cent – reach meltdown, the daily influx into South Africa, the continent’s wealthiest country, has reached proportions described as a “human tsunami”.

And:

The farmers, all of them white and wearing the telltale uniform of the Afrikaner farmer – tight shorts and khaki shirts, pistols at the waist – are members of the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU).

And:

The farmers blame the Zimbabwean influx for at least 30 per cent of the crimes which take place in the area and say that in the absence of government action they have no choice but to make citizen’s arrests and protect their interests. In two days at the border, The Times saw only two police vans and no official border patrols, but several dozen illegal immigrants.

“We are here because the state has no political will to sort out this problem. I don’t want to do this, I am a farmer, I want to farm,” said Gideon Meiling, the head of the TAU’s security and safety unit.

And:

“This is a human tragedy, they are not criminals just illegals, but we cannot just sit back and do nothing. We are filling a void created by the state’s irresponsibility,” explained Ms Helm.

And of course:

Human rights groups are enraged by the farmers’ actions, which technically fall under the Government’s own description of community policing. Only 13 years after the end of apartheid, the sight of white Boer farmers speeding around the country arresting black people touches a raw nerve.

Jody Kollapen, of the South African Human Rights Commission, said that the farm watch initiative was little more than a paramilitary organisation behaving in a racist manner.

But one police officer, who happily took possession of seven Zimbabweans, told The Times: “This is very good, this is community policing at its very best, we can’t do this on our own.”

So, always some ridiculousness.