Climate refugees who abandon drying agricultural lands in frontier countries and head to South Africa to seek new livelihoods are encountering crushing hardship in this country.
‘Crop yield, livestock failed. That’s why we came to South Africa confident of a fresh start,” says Joshua Tuso (41), an undocumented migrant from Zimbabwe.
But “it has been an ugly reception here”.
He bemoans two cold choices he now faces in South Africa: returning to impoverished lands in Zimbabwe, or being constantly on the move around South Africa to survive “under the table”.
Blighted land
In 2024, we followed a dozen refugees from Zimbabwe, Malawi and other regional nations who had paid to be smuggled into South Africa via the notorious forest paths that line the Limpopo River at Beitbridge.
A common thread ran through their stories: the extremely punishing drought of 2024 (fuelled by the El Niño weather effect) was not a one-off event but a growing phenomenon of extreme weather wreaking havoc on small-scale rural crop and livestock farming families in frontier countries such as Zimbabwe and Malawi.
“We are being whacked by the weather. Everything is in peril – topsoil, groundwater and grazing grass… the farmer’s family that must sell their assets, move to cities or down to South Africa,” says Chimwene Phiri (35), a former rural carrot and maize cultivator from Shire…
