Story

Along the Edges

It's sometime past 8 a.m. on a Friday morning in Musina, a town about 11 miles from the Zimbabwean border, and we're breakfasting with our fixer Godknows (or "Godknows the Entertainer," as he sometimes prefers). Between bites of scrambled eggs and toast he tells us a joke:

George Bush, Tony Blair and Robert Mugabe die at the same time in a freak accident, meeting in hell. Bush and Blair, anxious for news from home, ask the devil if they can use his phone to dial long-distance. The devil agrees and Bush goes first, chatting quickly about the economy and state affairs with Washington. "How much do I owe you?" Bush asks the devil, and the devil charges him thousands of US dollars for the call. Blair goes next, speaking only a few frantic minutes with London. "How much do I owe you?" Blair asks the devil, and the devil bills him thousands of pounds for the call. Mugabe goes next and he lingers on the phone for well over two hours, chatting about this and that, catching up on Harare gossip. At the end of the call Mugabe asks, "how much?" and the devil bills him one Zimbabwean dollar. Bush and Blair are furious. "How can you charge us so much and charge him so little?" they demand. The devil shrugs. "He called from one hell to another," he says. "It's a local call."

Godknows delivers with classic deadpan, cracking a smile only after he's finished. "A local call," he repeats, laughing. He's from Zimbabwe originally but has lived in South Africa for years, busy filming documentaries and reports on the prison system and the troubled border region. He knows this place better than anyone. "I'm the mayor of Musina," he boasts, and we almost believe him.

Once our eggs and toasts and coffees are finished we pile into the rental car and head north to the border. The fence that runs along the South African side of the Limpopo river is wide and winding and filled with hippos and crocs. The road that runs alongside it isn't much smoother, and our little rental jostles and jolts over the bumps and potholes.

We've come to South Africa to report on migrants, refugees and xenophobic violence, and this long strip of scrappy, patchy fence is where so much of the story begins. As we drive along, our windows down and Capricorn FM pop hits blasting, we notice the traffic. Military officers in fatigues patrol in twos and threes. Sometimes we see them with clusters of adults and children, women with babies tied to their backs, most of them toting small knapsacks and bags. These are the freshly arrested, and they'll be taken to the detention center for the day. Further still, we see the freshly crossed, their faces tired and anxious. Every day there are more and more of them, wading in from across the river, from across the mangled border fence, away from that place Mayor Godknows calls hell.