SOUTH AFRICA: Churches offer refuge to troubled Zimbabweans

A church in South Africa has opened its doors to Zimbabweans fleeing their own country. The Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg is now swamped with refugees who would rather sleep on its floors than stay in Zimbabwe and struggle with rising levels of poverty there. Thirty-four year old Godfrey Charamba is one who was desperate to escape the wreckage of President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The church is now his home and his story depressingly familiar to many Zimbabweans who have watched their once prosperous land lurch from crisis to crisis as its economy spirals deeper into depression. Charamba says everything in Zimbabwe costs more than people can earn - school fees, food, clothing, medicines - so he had no choice but to get out. When Mugabe's government, facing inflation of close to 5,000 percent, ordered companies to halve prices of basic goods and services a month ago -- effectively demanding that they operate at a loss, many were faced with the prospect of homelessness and hunger in their own country. It is unofficially estimated that 4,000 Zimbabweans leave, most of them illegally, every day. Bishop Paul Verryn, of the Central Methodist Church, says the high cost of goods is not the only reason why people are leaving. "I've sensed that from the stories that I hear people feel far more afraid about their safety, particularly people who are engaged in opposition politics," he said. Mugabe's decision to launch violent seizures of white-owned farms seven years ago is partly blamed for Zimbabwe's economic and political troubles, which sent unemployment soaring and resulted in the highest inflation rate in the world. The result has been that many Zimbabweans like Charamba are choosing to 'vote with their feet' and opting to leave the country of their birth in search of greener pastures abroad.

ITN Source | August 1, 2007

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