Officials: Zimbabwe instability could double South African immigration

Officials: Zimbabwe instability could double South African immigration

Zimbabwe's impending collapse will serve to double immigration from South Africa this year, absorption professionals in Israel and Johannesburg told Haaretz Sunday.

On Monday, 100 newcomers are scheduled to be welcomed at Ben-Gurion International Airport, after arriving on the largest flight of its kind from South Africa, leaving earlier Monday morning.

In the past few years, Telfed (The South African Zionist Organization), Israel's largest organization for former Southern Africans, has seen an annual average of 150-200 new immigrants. Basing themselves on a recent record-breaking demand for services by prospective immigrants, Telfed officials are expecting up to 500 new arrivals by the beginning of 2009.

Monday's new arrivals will attend a two-day welcoming and orientation seminar at a hotel in Jerusalem, prior to taking up residence across the country.

"The recent ethnic violence that has spilled from Zimbabwe into South Africa has created a xenophobic atmosphere within South Africa, and [Jews' discomfort] was magnified when they suffered crime-related personal attacks," said Dave Bloom, Telfed's Zimbabwe-born vice chairman.

Bloom was referring to a wave of anti-foreigner violence in May, in which angry locals in townships across South Africa butchered dozens of foreigners from Zimbabwe who had fled their homeland to escape political censorship and destitution in a dictatorship with a failed economy and no public services.

"You have to understand that people were burned alive on the street here," said Omer Rabin, an emissary to South Africa working for the Jewish Agency, which organized the flight. "Of course it affected the Jewish community's feeling of security here."

Rabin added that the flight will carry three families from Zimbabwe. "The largest group onboard comprises singles and young adults, who make up about 30 percent of the whole flight," he said.

Bloom and the Jewish Agency's senior emissary to Johannesburg, Ofer Dahan, added that the xenophobic riots coincided with a number of ailments in South Africa, including frequent electricity and water shortages, rampant street crime, monetary devaluation and political concerns.

"The situation in Zimbabwe also accentuates the lack of confidence people are starting to feel concerning the man who will probably become South Africa's next president - Jacob Zuma, who represents a more radical left-wing side of the ruling party, the African National Congress," Bloom said. "There is some concern that he might become another [Zimbabwe President Robert] Mugabe, initiating land grabs and appropriating possessions."

Dorron Kline, Telfed's director of Project Development, said he was less convinced about the link between the surge in violence and immigration from South Africa's 60,000-strong Jewish community. "The riots were another nail in the coffin, but they were preceded by a huge buildup," he said. "I was there three months ago, before the riots, and demand for immigration [to Israel] was already at a high."

All the interviewees stressed that in addition to the factors driving people away from South Africa, there is also a strong attraction to Israel. "As the number show, this is one of the most Zionist communities in the world," Rabin said. "South Africans make up the highest proportion of participation in short- and long-term programs in Israel."

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