Zimbabwe refugees keep hope alive in South African church of refuge!!!

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Frightened, desperate and pregnant, Shylet Chakanetsa, 18, paid a truck driver to smuggle her from Zimbabwe to South Africa.

She and three other young women were hidden in a trailer as the truck entered South Africa through the northern Beitbridge border post.

"I was scared the police were going to catch us and we would have to go home again and start over," the quiet young woman said in an interview.

"Lots of guys are coming that way. Some say they can come through the fence. We didn't want to go that way. Some say there are cases of people being raped. We were scared so we just had to pay," she said, a hand gently stroking her baby girl wrapped in a bright yellow blanket next to her.

Massive inflation, food and fuel shortages and a crackdown on political opposition to President Robert Mugabe's regime have sent Zimbabweans fleeing by the thousands, leading to mounting concerns that the region will be swamped with destitute refugees.

Recently, Zambian immigration authorities reported that the number of Zimbabweans crossing into Zambia at the southern border city of Livingstone had risen from 60 to 1,000 people a day, and that they feared the influx threatened security.

While there are few reliable figures on the number of economic migrants crossing through South Africa's borders, estimates consistently refer to three million Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

Some, like Chakanetsa, pay truck drivers to smuggle them in. Others cross legally, then let their visas expire. A few go first to Botswana or Mozambique, then cross more porous borders into South Africa from there.

Most choose to leave Zimbabwe by crossing the crocodile-infested Limpopo River and entering through holes in the poorly patrolled border fence, often paying exorbitant fees to guides.

Recently farmers on the border were accused of waging a vigilante campaign against the illegal immigrants, accusing them of theft and of scaring foreign tourists from game lodges along the border.

Chakanetsa says she paid the driver 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars, which is about 40 U.S. cents and buys three loaves of bread or a cup of coffee at Harare airport.

She and her friends were dropped about 560 kilometres from the border in Germiston, east of Johannesburg in January. From there they took a taxi to downtown Johannesburg and found the Central Methodist Church, where she was reunited with the father of her child.

Bishop Paul Verryn's church, tucked next to the High Court in the heart of the city, has become a centre of refuge for more than 1,000 Zimbabweans.

As the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe deepens, some 20 to 30 Zimbabweans make their way to the church every day. Most are men, but an increasing number are women and unaccompanied children. Like Chakanetsa, they all have tales of worsening hardships that force them to flee in search of work and a chance to help their families survive.

Chakanetsa's mother is a widowed nurse who was battling to look after her daughter and three-year-old son. "It was getting tougher everyday. Working back home is useless. The money is useless," she says.

Home is now a tiny patch of space in the crowded vestry, wide enough for a mattress of folded blankets and a few belongings. Chakanetsa shares the wood-panelled room with seven other mothers and their young children. "The church is trying their best to help us. If it wasn't for them I would probably be on the streets," she says.

Chakanetsa, who is hoping to find a job as a domestic worker, has not had any luck yet. She occasionally makes 30 rand a day (US$4.21) distributing flyers on the rough streets of Johannesburg.

"The first question they (employers) ask is if we are from Zimbabwe, then they turn their backs on us," she said.

At night the four-storey building with its warren of rooms is a sea of sleeping bodies, head-to-toe on the stairs, corridors, in doorways. Everywhere, except the pews, are exhausted people wrapped in whatever they can find to ward off the winter cold seeping up through the hard tiled floor.

But by day the floors are swept clean and bundles of possessions are secured to railings, waiting the return of their owners while a ground floor hall operates as a soup kitchen and meeting place.

In front of a television playing music videos, those who have not been able to secure work for the day mingle, playing with a card deck that pokes fun at Mugabe and his cronies - similar to the famous Saddam Hussein pack.

Upstairs a group of sick men huddle around a heater waiting for the volunteer doctor. Around the corner students are waiting their turn on four laptop computers in the light and airy education centre.

With a large number of teachers in the building and a variety of skills, the first rule of staying in the church is that residents must be involved in education - either teaching others or studying further.

"That's where the professionals have got themselves organized and it's gaining more momentum. They are determined that nobody is going to slip through the net," says Verryn, sitting in his third-floor office, a queue of people waiting outside to see him.

A veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, Verryn says the increasing number of Zimbabweans on the streets of Johannesburg is a problem that can no longer be ignored.

Verryn is involved in the registration of each person who comes to his church - about 3,500 people in the last 18 months.

"If we don't do this there is a danger that they will become a nobody," he says.

Other rules include: no smoking, drinking or fighting and no sex in the building for single residents. Residents are also expected to attend the church service every night.

The refugees have organized themselves into a variety of committees governing life in the centre.

"It was their initiative. People think we've got a bunch of stupid thugs in this place but we really have a fairly sophisticated community," Verryn says.

The residents each contribute five rand (about 70 cents) a week to pay for cleaners and fund two nurse's aides. There is a lift operator to ensure the aging elevator does not get overcrowded and soon someone will be employed to watch over the toilets.

"Conflict managers" are posted on each floor, but there are complaints of thieving as well as fighting and there have been two alcohol-related deaths.

Verryn says the conflict is minimal, given the stress inherent in "about 1,000 people living on each others' toes, with their feet in one another's soup.

To let off steam, there is netball, ballroom dancing, karate and book and chess clubs.

The refugees have called their organization Ray of Hope Ministries.

"Here is not a prison but a place of hope," says chairman Godfrey Charamba, who left Zimbabwe in 2004. The 30-year-old lay preacher, temporary teacher, and truck driver works as a security guard.

Ahead of the evening church service, Charamba is going to fetch someone from Johannesburg's central train and bus station, where many arriving Zimbabweans spend a few nights before being directed to the church.

News of the church has reached Zimbabwe, so some, like Chakanetsa, head straight for it when they arrive. Others turn up robbed of everything after roughing it on the streets.

Neither Verryn nor Charamba like to entertain much discussion of how many more people the church can accommodate.

"As a church we will never get full," says Charamba. "We have no choice. We can't close the doors for people. Where do they go? Only the house of God can they go to."