The response of the international community to the Zimbabwean exodus has been timid. Generally, international organizations—including UNHCR—have sought to pass the buck and avoid adopting the influx as “their” issue, princi-pally because of the absence of designated staff or financial resources to address such a situation. The Zimbabweans have been within UNHCR’s existing man-date insofar as they are holders of asylum seeker permits. However, the organi-zation has tried to reduce its role by seeking alternative channels, outside the refugee regime, through which to address the influx. Interviews with UNHCR
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staff members in the Regional Office highlighted their despair at the pressure created on the organization and their personal workloads in the context of the influx. They have argued that the majority of Zimbabweans are not refugees;
they have avoided invoking the OAU Refugee Convention in way that might have brought the Zimbabweans within the refugee regime; and they have advocated for special immigration exemption status as a way to alleviate pressure on the asylum system.
In advocating in this way, UNHCR has consistently maintained the same posi-tion as the South African government. In its own justificaposi-tion of its role—in its internal evaluation, for example—it consistently highlights the coincidence of interests with the government: “Like South Africa itself, UNHCR considers the majority of Zimbabweans not to be refugees,” and “UNHCR and the South Afri-can government had a common interest in avoiding a situation in which a mixed migration scenario is turned into a refugee problem” (Crisp and Kiragu 2010, 21, 24). On the one hand, one could suggest that moving toward an alternative mechanism for addressing the influx was eminently sensible. On the other hand, UNHCR’s advocacy position enabled it both to minimize its own responsibility for the situation and to avoid overtly contradicting the government. Médecins Sans Frontières (2009, 9), for example, raised concerns about the motives under-lying UNHCR’s advocacy of an immigration exemption permit: “The 12-month permit will be issued under the Immigration Act [rather than the Refugee Act].
This may allow the UNHCR to abdicate its international protection responsibil-ity. This potentially means that there is no one responsible or accountable for addressing the needs of Zimbabweans in relation to shelter, for example.” As well as its capacity constraints, UNHCR has, like South Africa, a strong disincentive to be seen as directly or indirectly critical of the government of Zimbabwe. The organization has effectively been compromised in its position to advocate for Zimbabwean rights in South Africa by needing to preserve diplomatic ties with Zimbabwe and protection space inside the country for other groups of refugees, not least the Congolese refugees in the Tongogara refugee camp. 26
The coincidence of interest between UNHCR’s advocacy position and the government’s own position raises the question whether UNHCR had any sig-nificant autonomous influence over the direction of either its role or the wider policy developments toward the Zimbabweans. UNHCR has argued that it played an autonomous role in shaping the development of the April 2009 pro-posals: “UNHCR’s Pretoria office has played an important role in advocating on behalf of effective refugee protection and migration management strategies in South Africa. Those efforts appeared to have come to fruition in April 2009, when Home Affairs Mosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula announced a major change in the government’s existing policy on mixed and irregular migration” (Crisp and
Kiragu 2010, 22). However, the fact that the proposals for immigration exemp-tion permits were not fully implemented reinforces the sense that UNHCR’s in-fluence over policy has been extremely limited and that UNHCR has been more of a follower than a leader of South Africa’s policy toward the Zimbabweans. In other words, UNHCR’s own mandate has “stretched” to address survival migra-tion only insofar as the government’s own policy has been prepared to adapt and frame UNHCR’s role and involvement. The sense of weakness felt by UNHCR is reinforced by the fact that in UNHCR’s own evaluation, one staff member likened his job to “constantly banging your head against a brick wall” (Crisp and Kiragu 2010, 22).
Conclusion
The Zimbabwean influx represents an archetypal case of survival migration.
People have been displaced by a complex variety of factors and have had mixed motives for migrating. However, underpinning most people’s decision to leave has been their inability to maintain the most basic conditions of life for them-selves and their families in their country of origin. Yet because the majority have fled the interaction of state fragility, food insecurity, and the absence of liveli-hood opportunities—rather than political persecution per se—most have fallen outside the definition of a refugee.
The South African response has been at best ad hoc, representing an interme-diate response in comparison with the other cases addressed in this book. This domestic refugee regime has been more adaptive than in Botswana and Angola but less so than in Tanzania and Kenya. For much of the period, Zimbabweans have been liable to arrest, detention, and deportation. Yet there have been two ways in which the refugee regime has partly stretched to mitigate this. First, the quirk in the asylum system that enables anyone who wishes to do so to acquire an asylum seeker permit pending refugee status determination has given hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans the temporary right to remain on the territory, move freely, and work. Second, in April 2009 the government temporarily sus-pended deportations and even proposed some form of temporary protection, al-though the implementation of these proposals was patchy. However, throughout the period, there was no adaptation of the refugee regime to provide anything like adequate humanitarian assistance, food, and housing to those who needed it. Meanwhile, the international response similarly stretched only partly. UNHCR reluctantly covered part of the protection gap for Zimbabweans to the extent that South Africa’s own policy framework brought Zimbabweans within the asylum
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system. However, its role was confined to oversight and legal advice within the asylum system rather than more substantial humanitarian assistance.
The limited regime stretching that took place can be explained by South Afri-ca’s concern to uphold respect for human rights and limit international criticism.
On the other hand, the domestic constraint created by increasing xenophobia and the international constraint posed by South Africa’s desire to maintain a close bilateral relationship with Zimbabwe placed limits on any adaptation of the regime. Both of these factors created strong disincentives for politicians to assume the kind of leadership role that would have been required for a more coherent adaptation to the new circumstances. The international community’s timid role can be explained by the fact that actors such as UNHCR sought to limit their involvement (and resource commitments) as much as possible, while also avoiding confrontation with the South African and Zimbabwean govern-ments. The outcome was a passive and halfhearted adaptation that left hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean survival migrants in desperate conditions.
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