Nowhere to run

The two men stared at each other for a long moment, captor and captive: a white game farmer named Andre Nienaber and a 16-year-old Zimbabwean orphan named Peter Jell.

Minutes earlier, the South African farmer had arrested Jell and four other Zimbabwean border jumpers where they sat, exhausted, hungry and demoralised, in the hope of hitching a ride 300 miles south to Johannesburg.

He hand-cuffed the five to the back of his truck with plastic ties and called the police.

"We're so frightened to go back to that hunger country, where there's nothing," Jell said as he waited.

The tide of Zimbabweans arriving in South Africa, driven by extreme shortages of food and basic goods, has grown to a flood as strong as the nearby Limpopo River in the wet season.

Zimbabwe used to be one of Africa's most prosperous countries. Its slide into economic chaos under President Robert Mugabe's regime has forced people to make heart-wrenching decisions — taking their children out of schools because they can't pay the fees, or even leaving them behind while they try to find work in South Africa.

The government of South Africa rejects the view of some activists that hunger and social upheaval in Zimbabwe are so severe that most border jumpers should be classified as refugees. The migrants are sent back to the chaos and poverty they fled.

Coloured views

The countryside around the Limpopo, which forms the border between the two nations, is a stunning canvas of red earth and green bush. But, at times, it is like stepping into the Deep South of a long-gone era. Walk into some bars around here, and you are plunged into the reflexive interracial hostility of apartheid.

You might hear someone express the view that there is no such thing as a good black; another says that "it just doesn't look right" when you see black people driving BMWs around Johannesburg. Some people profess pity for the Zimbabweans, but many farmers have run out of compassion. They go on regular patrols, rounding up Zimbabweans and handing them over to the police.

Police have stopped releasing statistics on immigrant arrests. The latest police data available indicate that in Limpopo province, police arrested 5,000 Zimbabwean border jumpers in January.

But the army alone has arrested almost 42,000 Zimbabweans this year and expects the total to reach 100,000 by year's end, compared with about 72,000 last year, according to figures provided at a military briefing to businessmen and farmers last month in the border town of Musina.

Zimbabweans speak of a disintegrating society, a place so desperate that mothers of young children leave them behind to make the terrifying journey south.

Cecilia Mapani, wizened and worn down at 25, left Zimbabwe in March because there was no way to feed her young brothers and her 7-year-old son, Tanaka.

"I was afraid, but I forced myself to come," she said. "People say a lot of things about this Limpopo River. There are crocodiles in the river. The water was powerful and I don't know how to swim."

She joined a group of about 130 people, escorted by traffickers. They were told to hold hands when they waded into the river. The waters came almost up to Mapani's neck. They walked for five hours through the bush to get to the town of Musina.

Mapani found work picking tomatoes on a local farm for $40 a month. Some would call it exploitation, but to her the meager wage offered survival and hope. Mapani is now in Johannesburg, unemployed.

Ask Mapani how it felt to leave her son behind and she gazes ahead numbly, as though seeing nothing. She left him with his father, a miner; she hopes he will be all right.

No room for sympathy

The farmers of the Limpopo say they have their own worries about making a living. Armed with two-way radios, pistols and a zeal for law and order, they launched Farm Watch patrols seven years ago to combat crime, but now focus on rounding up Zimbabweans. They complain that their game fences are cut daily, their water pipes are broken by thirsty Zimbabweans, pump and irrigation parts are stolen, fires are lighted, game killed and farmworkers threatened and sometimes attacked.

Farmers also fear that the influx of Zimbabweans will scare away international game hunters. British hunter Richard Sloggett was surprised by the numbers of Zimbabweans rustling through bushes where he was supposed to be shooting.

While hunting one morning in thick scrub, they found four border jumpers. Sloggett was told to point his rifle at the men, march them back towards the main camp and force them to lie on the ground, an adventure that left a bad taste in his mouth. Another element, Sloggett said, was the way many local whites "talk as if the apartheid era still exists".

At dusk near the Beitbridge border crossing, the sun sinks in a majestic haze of red. Stray cats and beggars scrounge for food.

There is an air of expectancy: The drivers know it is time for business. Pretty soon, says one Zimbabwean driver, people will start shambling in from the bushes to jump into taxis and make their way south.

But tonight, a soldier is patrolling the area, checking passports.

Darkness settles. Slowly, the area empties out. It is as if the border crossers can smell the danger. They won't be coming in from the bush tonight.