15 Mar 2018

Zimbabwe Minister of Home Affairs and Culture, Dr Obert Mpofu, has appealed to Zimbabwean refugees at Dukwi Refugee Camp to go back home.

Speaking in an interview Wednesday, Dr Mpofu said following his meeting on Tuesday, with Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Mr Shaw Kgathi and Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu, he proceeded to Dukwi to address refugees and understand their plight.

“We had two hours meeting with them,yesterday, in a cordial atmosphere. The engagements were quite open and candid and I got to understand some of the reasons we have people in Dukwi. Most of them have been here for 10 years,” he said.

There are about 687 Zimbabwean refugees in Dukwi who had been in Botswana for a while. His appeal to them, he said, was that they should go back home, as there was a new dispensation in Zimbabwe, ‘the situation has changed and we will actually ensure that they come back home without any victimisation or retribution.’

Minister Mpofu said the refugees were made to understand the Zimbabwean government’s position on the matter, ‘but they were also keen on their personal security, especially that they have lost their homes, and are displaced and wanted to know how government was going to assist them to re-settle.’

“We are saying those that are ready to come back home now, we can facilitate that. It will not be a once off exercise, but we will react to their requests as and when they come, but there are some who wanted to wait for elections to take place before they can consider coming,” he added.

The Zimbabwean government, he said, would certainly do something to facilitate the repatriation of the refugees who choose to go back.

The minister  thanked  Botswana government for its cooperation and appealed to the refugees to go back home and help re-build Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, Dr Mpofu said other issues that came up during his discussions with his counterparts revolved around Zimbabweans who are employed in Botswana with no work permits.

These Zimbabweans, he said seemed to be taken advantage of by employers who did not treat them in a manner that was within the Botswana laws. The other issue that was discussed, the minister said was the issue of cattle that stray into Botswana from Zimbabwe and get shot. He said they had agreed that the matter should be pursued, investigated and perhaps look at a more amicable solution to the issue, because most of the animals may have been stolen by rustlers or they would have been moved from one point to the other for some reasons only known to perpetrators.

For this part, Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security’s trafficking in persons deputy manager, Mr Madoda Nasha, explained that the status of being a refugee had to come to an end at one point or another.

He said there were three prompt approaches to end the refugee status. Firstly, refugees could be locally integrated into the community within which they have requested refugee status, secondly they could be re-settled to another country and thirdly refugees could be voluntarily repatriated back to their home country.

The third point, Mr Nasha said was the most preferred international durable solution and an end to refugee status ‘and this is what Minister Mpofu was here to facilitate.’

“There are development partners that we work with, for example, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and International Organisation for Migration to facilitate with orderly repatriation of refugees,” he said.

He also noted that there were repatriation programmes that existed in Zimbabwe to absorb those who go back to ensure that their repatriation is done orderly and in a manner that they become productive citizens. Ends