In this series SW Radio Africa journalist Alex Bell examines the voluntary return packages offered to Zimbabweans living in the UK and questions whether the packages are making it harder for asylum seekers to remain in the UK.
After first speaking to Noble Sibanda from the UK’s United Network of Detained Zimbabweans she also caught up with Sarah Harland from the UK-based Zimbabwe Association and asked her if the skepticism around the IOM packages was justified.
Interview broadcast 28/09/10
Sarah Harland: My worries are that it’s all very well having a package to help people reintegrate but if the problems haven’t been addressed which led to them leaving the country in the first place. Most of the people we deal with are here for political reasons.
Looking at the situation in Zimbabwe, none of those have been addressed. The same people are in charge of the military, intelligence services, no-one seems to, well I don’t think anyone thinks that there’s rule of law operating properly there.
Now if you are giving people packages to return and they’re starting to invest in their homeland again, starting to put their energy, all that back in, at the back of their minds there’s the thought that if they build up something decent at anytime someone else can come and take it away, someone from a different political party, someone who just likes what they’ve done.
That kind of anxiety, it’s a bit like you see termites building hills, you know people don’t build unless they feel that there’s some kind of stability. Now a few times in the past, back in 2005, a lot of people, well relatively, a reasonable amount of people went back at that time, set up tuck shops, all that and then along comes Operation Murambatsvina.
Everything is sort of destroyed again, all that investment, money, time, energy is gone and I mean listening to the people who were talking to us was really, really interesting. To me it came out really clear they were people who felt that they were OK to go back either because of their families or their connections or whatever reason but they didn’t feel it there.
They felt that they could do something and they could build up and fine for them but then I don’t think it’s true of the majority of people I come into contact with.
AB: The concern of course the IOM has said repeatedly that this kind of package is a voluntary programme, people must volunteer for it but having it around, doesn’t it make it just that much harder for people in the country then?
SH: How do you mean? Sorry I don’t get…
AB: For asylum seekers in the UK I know there is this concern that having the package available to them is going to make it that much harder for them to get asylum if there is an ulterior package available to them.
SH: Well if we look at the country guidance test, the last one which said, it’s still current our end although there is a new case coming up in October, that said that it’s only people who couldn’t show that they had no allegiance to ZANU PF who would be at risk on return.
Now if those people did claim asylum and failed to get it and decided that a voluntary return was their best option, in a sense they’ve proved the accuracy of that country guidance. It never said everyone was at risk, it just said those people who haven’t got ZANU PF links and things like that.
I think that a lot of people will, people have taken up their voluntary return packages at various times, some of them have gone back thinking that that is the way forward, some of them have sent back, a couple might have sent back a father ahead of the wife, some people have had really negative experiences but the problem is most people that I’ve spoken to, if something goes wrong in the situation having taken the IOM package, they won’t go to IOM to complain about it.
I’ve begged them to go and sort of complain and get something done but they tend to say look if I go and complain about what’s happened it will just draw more attention to my family, they may be targeted, we may get into worse trouble and that seems to be the attitude.
I was speaking a couple of weeks ago to a lady who had gone back in late 2007 and had had to flee to South Africa during 2008 and I sort of said to her when you went, when you had to leave did you contact IOM and let them know that things had gone badly for you. She said no, no.
The only thing she was interested in doing was getting across the border and there seems to be a perception among some people that the events seem to have returned, IOM are interested in the new people coming and not necessarily so interested in people who have been there for a period of time because this particular lady, she went back and after she’d returned, she had a return package in Zimbabwe dollars.
Then the Zimbabwe dollar ceased to be and that whole return package was like nonexistent, it sort of vaporised and obviously as an organisation, they’re not able to keep giving people more money because the currency vanishes or something happens so I can understand them being in difficulties. But I keep hearing examples by people burnt by their experiences so it was nice to, well it was interesting to hear people giving the more positive view.
The other thing about the people we heard the other day was that as far as I could make out some of them had been back comparatively recently, I think a couple of them 2010, that kind of thing, and in the past problems start to emerge quite often at six months up to a year, those kind of periods, it’s quite a short period to think it’s all OK but that’s said there are people who have missed their families, who have been parted for a long time and maybe it is the right decision for some people but not everyone.
AB: There is the cynical argument of course Sarah that these kind of packages, they provide good statistics from the UK side to show that there’s so many people who have returned and it’s really good for people like the border agency to have those kind of statistics. Is that a fair judgment to make?
SH: It is worrying that because obviously the UK border agency will use the statistics to prove that it is alright to go back to Zimbabwe but sometimes the people who are choosing to access those return packages, they’re not, their individual situation is quite different to the majority of people that we are dealing with.
AB: Definitely.
SH: Do you see what I mean? There are many Zimbabweans in this country today who have been through the court system and who have been found not credible but other Zimbabweans know that the person has spoken the truth, they know that the person is what they have claimed to be. Sometimes a system just doesn’t recognize that and there are people who haven’t been represented at all. There are all sorts of reasons for why people’s cases fail and it’s frightening to think that vulnerable people might be pushed on false premises.
Ah sorry I get so frustrated about it because it’s just that people are very different. Sometimes you’ll hear of maybe there’s a person who is completely apolitical who has been a student here for years and years and years, doesn’t fancy going back to Zimbabwe and just sort of claims asylum as a kind of delaying mechanism and then that doesn’t work so they take a return package and it’s just not comparing like with like.
AB: Is there anything you think that the IOM in particular can do to at least try and counteract these kind of conceptions and what they’ve said is misinformation? How can they actually protect the reputation that they’re supposed to have to help people to return safely?
SH: They have an uphill battle, they, if they are returning whatever it is, say they are returning 150 to 200 Zimbabweans a year at the sort of times when it’s been highest, it seems difficult for them to be able to stay in contact with all those people regularly. People will drift off, people will go off the radar. They cannot guarantee people’s safety for year on year on year but we would still like there to be slightly more concern about people’s safety and the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe.
As a sort of moral stand, when you think of sort of being complicit in sending, OK they only send people back or assist people to return voluntarily but that assistance has a kind of knock-on effect to other people who may then be forced to return and it’s that forced return to a country which, it just cannot be described as being stable. I don’t think anyone could describe it as a stable country.
AB: Well that was Sarah Harland from the Zimbabwe Association. Sarah also pointed out that the money thrown at voluntary packages could be better spent. She said it would be better to prepare people for sustainable return when conditions in Zimbabwe to return are actually right.
Well that brings us to the end of tonight’s show. Next week I’ll be speaking to the International Organisation for Migration to give them a chance to react to the concerns raised today.
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