Immigration Laws: January, 2002 - Number #17

South Africa. Western Union suspended all services in South Africa in December 2001 because of local cash-flow and foreign exchange problems when local agent Union Africa Money Transfer (UAMT) was unable to satisfy local banking regulations. The rand has been one of the weakest currencies of 2001, falling 11 percent since the beginning of December and 30 percent since the beginning of the year from $11 to $1. The falling rand has been another economic disappointment for the government, which hoped that foreign investors would create jobs with foreign direct investment.

The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) released a survey that found that the government has created ballooning expectations of social delivery that it will find difficult to meet. The share of South African blacks who consider water supply a "serious problem" rose from one percent in 1991 to 25 percent in 2001. The government's main accomplishment, according to the survey, was to build one million houses, but even in housing, expectations rose faster than supply.

Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe, in office since Zimbabwe (Rhodesia until 1980) became a country in 1980, named four new justices to the Supreme Court, and they plus one holdover in December 2001 agreed that the government's "fast-track" land nationalization program was lawful and "sufficiently complied" with the constitution.

As a result of the violence associated with the land invasions and the upcoming election, the economy is in tatters, and black professionals and white farmers are emigrating to Australia, Britain, South Africa; a few white farmers are moving next door to Mozambique. Mozambique won its independence from Portugal in 1975.

Some blacks in Mozambique worry that the white farmers will steal their land or bring back the oppression they experienced under Portuguese rule which ended in 1975. Others fear that the violence will follow the white farmers from Zimbabwe to Mozambique. Mozambique's economy has expanded 10 percent a year since 1997 and is self-sufficient in food production, but corruption associated with privatizing banks may have contributed to an upsurge in crime.

Somali Bantu. Some 133,000 Somali Bantu (Mushunguli), descendents of persons captured along Africa's eastern edge of present-day Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania by Arab slave traders, are living in refugee camps along the Kenya-Somalia border. Although born in Somalia, most say they cannot return there, since they have no warlord to protect them- Somalia has been divided among rival warlords since 1991.

Zanzibar and Mozambique, where there are Bantu residents with similar languages, have refused to accept the Somali Bantu. The UNHCR is processing the Somali Bantu as refugees, and many hope to be resettled in the US; the US declared the Somali Bantu a persecuted group in 1999.