Enoch Hungwe’s long walk to what he thought would be a better life ended in the arms of burly white South African farmers. After five days of walking from Zimbabwe, he tried to make a run for it close to the border but his exhausted body failed to respond.

Instead, as he dropped a plastic bag containing all his worldly possessions, he was caught by members of the volunteer border patrol force. “Don’t run away, there’s no point, we’ll just get you next time,” said Andre Nienaber, who runs a game hunting farm for wealthy European tourists, as he marched the 23-year-old illegal immigrant off to a pickup truck to join half a dozen of his compatriots.

Enoch meekly held out his wrists to be bound with plastic cable ties. They were then threaded through a hoop on the back of the pickup to prevent him making a run for it.

Tired, hungry, demoralised, he sat disconsolately and watched as two of the group of four “illegals” that he had been walking with scampered over a barbed wire perimeter fence and made off into the veld [bush].

“They will wait until we have gone and then come back to the road,” shrugged Marie Helm, regional organiser of the local farmers’ union. “We only apprehend a tiny fraction, but the name of the game is visibility. Everyone supports us – the local black population the most, they are affected by the insecurity created by this influx.”

As conditions in Zimbabwe – where inflation is about 5,000 per cent and unemployment 80 per cent – reach meltdown, the daily influx into South Africa, the continent’s wealthiest country, has reached proportions described as a “human tsunami”.

No one knows exactly how many come each day, estimates vary widely from hundreds to several thousand. But one thing is certain: the authorities are completely overwhelmed. Most try to get work on local farms, others turn to crime and petty theft to survive. A handful makes it to the big cities to join an estimated three million Zimbabweans now living in South Africa.

All tell the same story of unbearable hardship back home and vow to return if deported. “I have been walking for five days. In Zimbabwe things are very bad, so I was coming here to look for work. I just want food and work,” Enoch said. Others crammed on to the back of the pickup. “We are running from hunger. We have no money to buy food, no jobs, and things are getting worse every day. Our children are crying, Zimbabwe is crying. I was praying to find a better life here,” said Goodwill Maposa, 35.

The farmers, all of them white and wearing the telltale uniform of the Afrikaner farmer – tight shorts and khaki shirts, pistols at the waist – are members of the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU).

They have formed military-style units, known as Plaaswag [farm patrols], to police the border. They say that they are there to protect themselves from crime but critics say that they are little more than white vigilante groups trying to reassert their dominance. “We are not a vigilante group, we are not here to take away the rights of people just to protect ourselves. The TAU looks after our members because we feel that the security forces are not [doing] the job,” said Ms Helm.

The farmers blame the Zimbabwean influx for at least 30 per cent of the crimes which take place in the area and say that in the absence of government action they have no choice but to make citizen’s arrests and protect their interests. In two days at the border, The Times saw only two police vans and no official border patrols, but several dozen illegal immigrants.

“We are here because the state has no political will to sort out this problem. I don’t want to do this, I am a farmer, I want to farm,” said Gideon Meiling, the head of the TAU’s security and safety unit. Statistics of attacks on white farmers in the Limpopo border area trip off his tongue.

“Zimbabweans were responsible for the death of Sue Bristow a few months ago, she was killed with a pitchfork. I live on a farm 39 kilometres (24 miles) from the nearest police station. If I call them, they don’t even come, but the other farmers do,” he said.

The farmers hand over their daily catch to the local police who deport them – most of whom simply slip over the border again a few days later. The farmers often sympathise with their plight and buy them milk and bread before handing them over.

“This is a human tragedy, they are not criminals just illegals, but we cannot just sit back and do nothing. We are filling a void created by the state’s irresponsibility,” explained Ms Helm.

The Government admits that more needs to be done to thwart the influx. Aziz Pahad, the Deputy Foreign Minister, said: “If we don’t begin to assist the Zimbabweans to solve their own problems the flow will increase.” he said.

Human rights groups are enraged by the farmers’ actions, which technically fall under the Government’s own description of community policing. Only 13 years after the end of apartheid, the sight of white Boer farmers speeding around the country arresting black people touches a raw nerve.

Jody Kollapen, of the South African Human Rights Commission, said that the farm watch initiative was little more than a paramilitary organisation behaving in a racist manner.

But one police officer, who happily took possession of seven Zimbabweans, told The Times: “This is very good, this is community policing at its very best, we can’t do this on our own.”

Troublesome neighbour

— A loaf of bread costs 50 times more in Zimbabwe than it did a year ago

— Zimbabwe’s GDP shrank by an estimated 42 per cent between 1998 and 2006

— It is estimated that 3.4 million Zimbabweans – a quarter of the population – have now fled the country

— South Africa sends more than 4,000 illegal migrants back to Zimbabwe every week

Sources: CIA World Factbook; avert.org; hungercenter.org; capetown-online.de

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