At 1.40pm on Thursday, Timashe Lungah, who had queued for four days to get back to work in SA from his home in Harare, was turned away from the Beitbridge border.
“I have Covid. I’ve just tested positive; I don’t know how it happened. I was negative when I joined the queue. They say I must come again in 10 days.”
Dejected, Lungah turned and walked back towards his country of origin.
When the Sunday Times visited the 462m-long Alfred Beit Road Bridge which separates the two countries in Beitbridge, the Limpopo health department said 104 people in the queue had tested positive, putting thousands of migrants standing with them in contact with the virus.
By this time, the volatile scenes of thousands of Zimbabweans squeezing through the single-lane road had dissipated somewhat after a visit by home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi on Monday.
But while the scenes from SA’s side of the border had settled, on the other side of the bridge the kilometres of vehicles carrying thousands of people seeking aid, income and a better life snaked into the distance.
The practice among travellers was to leave drivers in vehicles and go through the border on foot, but with vehicles taking up to five days to enter SA, the roads on either side of the border were lined with hundreds of people who had slept rough overnight, waiting for their lifts. On Wednesday, border authorities ended this practice, essentially leaving throngs of people waiting in Zimbabwe.
Soldiers posted at the border spoke of desperate men entering the country illegally by climbing down ropes off the side of the bridge, no mean feat when the raging Limpopo River lies many metres below.
The west bank road was impregnable, with soldiers posted at the entrance, but the eastern river bank — which requires a 34km detour through Musina — was accessible.
For kilometres this stretch of river is used to cross in and out of SA. Three wire fences — including the new, controversial R37m, 40km fence built by the public works department — fail to keep out desperate people.
Soldiers stationed on the bridge said Zimbabweans wade through the waist-deep water, forming a long human chain across the 300m-wide river to prevent them from being washed downstream.
“They make noise so the crocodiles don’t come. There are more crocodiles on the South African side, though,” a soldier said.
Banks have been eroded from foot traffic coming and going across the shallower stretches of the river. Simon Zhangazha, from Harare, and his friend, Lovemore Chinamare, from Masvingo, work on a farm on the river bank. Neither have been home since the lockdown in March.
They make noise so the crocodiles don’t come. There are more crocodiles on the SA side though
— Soldier at Beitbridge
“You won’t get people crossing today,” Zhangazha said. “We had huge rains [on Wednesday] and the river can swell quickly. On days like these you can only cross on boats with engines.”
A ferry charges R100 to cross but a canoe crossing costs only R50.
Chinamare said: “These people are suffering. They come through here mostly looking for food.”
There are innovative ways of smuggling food reserves — hiding packets of food items such as puffed-maize chips, cooking oil and flour in the bushes for Zimbabweans to collect.
Back on the bridge, migrants proceed to a point where they collect Covid forms and then queue for a Covid test.
Dumara Sithole from Bulawayo was waiting for his test. He arrived at the border queue on Monday and had been sleeping in his car.
“I work in KwaZulu-Natal but I came home to my wife and two kids for Christmas,” he said. “Of course, I’m worried about Covid. I’m worried about this second strain, it gives me sleepless nights.”
Next to him in the queue was Priscar Mpofu, a single mother of three who works as a domestic worker in Johannesburg. By Thursday, Mpofu had been waiting in the queue for five days and was now under the shade of a tent erected for Covid testers, which was packed with migrant workers. After the Covid test, people go to have their documents stamped and then head into SA.
Mike Nyone and his friend, Werthington Ncube, both drivers for a company in Johannesburg, were sitting in the shade of an old VW Caddy.
“We’ve been in the queue since Monday and we haven’t eaten,” Ncube said. “Now I’ve been told I can’t cross because I don’t have a permit — but I have a passport, so I don’t understand.”
Nyone, who had all his papers in order, said the two would probably have to return to Victoria Falls, 759km away.
“But we have no more petrol and no money for petrol,” Ncube interjected.
“Hopefully someone can help us,” Nyone said.
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