Thousands of foreign farm workers stranded

Thousands of farm workers from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique who have worked and lived in Zimbabwe for years but are now threatened by the land invasions may soon become homeless, the ‘Financial Gazette’ reported on Thursday. The newspaper said that countries such as Zambia were reluctant to take back nationals who had stayed and worked on Zimbabwean farms for decades but now want to return home after losing their jobs.

Some Zambians who have spent the best part of their lives on local farms said authorities in the capital Lusaka recently told them to seek Zimbabwean citizenship because they were no longer considered Zambian. Zimbabwean commercial farms employ more than 450,000 workers, some of them migrant workers from neighbouring countries. Thousands of the workers have either already lost their jobs or will lose them and their homes as the government intensifies its controversial fast-track land reform programme to confiscate white farms to settle Zimbabwean peasants.

Joel Sele, a diplomat with the Mozambican embassy in Harare, said most of the migrant workers from his country came into Zimbabwe of their own volition so it was not his government’s responsibility to follow them to find out how they were living. An official at the High Commission of Malawi said the embassy was concerned about the fate of displaced Malawians in Zimbabwe and was seeking ways of helping them. “We are watching the situation closely and getting information on the extent of the problem,” the official said.