Zimpapers Logo

There could have been agreements between the omalayitsha involved and the parents of the children to send them (children) to South Africa. However, people should be warned as there are many cases of trafficking that occur across the border.

It must be noted that the life of a child is precious and as such it must be respected. Besides, people should not put the security of their child in the hands of an individual who is transporting them illegally and without proper documentation.

The UN defines human trafficking as, “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another                  person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

According to Consultancy Africa Intelligence, “close to 800 000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Many more are trafficked within their own countries”.
This is done for different reasons, but whatever the reasons, trafficking is against the law. As revealed by the definition, human trafficking infringes on a plethora of human rights which include:
l Freedom to choose one’s residence
l The right to not be tortured
l The right to decent work
l The right to security.
l The right to freedom from slavery
l The right not to be subjected to degrading and inhuman treatment.
l The right to liberty of movement
l The right to peace.

Children are most vulnerable to trafficking for the purpose of commercial sex work, child labour, and use of their private body parts for ritualistic uses. Young girls are the worst affected since it is believed they bring more revenue through commercial sex work.

Even older women have been lured into the trafficker’s trap. The major reason why some people have fallen into that snare is poverty. Some of our sisters have been carried away by the belief that across borders there is a better life yet they often end up entrapped in slavery and a life as sex workers.
Cross-border human trafficking such as that cited above, is worsened by corruption at the border posts where immigration workers accept bribes so that people are smuggled across. Trafficked individuals are exploited for no payment. The trafficked people are caught and arrested on the assumption that they are criminals when the opposite is actually true.

Last week, a Bulawayo man was                           arrested for attempting to smuggle a group                       of 29 border jumpers from Bulawayo, among them 24 undocumented children, into South Africa through Beitbridge Border Post. The children’s ages ranged between four and 12.

The suspect was arrested following the interception of his car, a South African registered Nissan Hardbody pick-up, at a roadblock mounted near Malala area along the Beitbridge-Bulawayo highway.
Some of the trafficking, which is rife in West Africa, takes people, mainly young girls to Europe, with Italy being the prime destination.

A recent report by an international broadcaster said:
“Many of the African girls and women who are trafficked to Europe end up on the streets. Italy is one of their prime destinations. There are tens of thousands of foreign prostitutes on Italian streets, many of them African and particularly Nigerian, and some just girls. Promises of jobs as babysitters or waitresses evaporate as the women arrive and are put to work.”
The other form of trafficking, which is difficult to decipher and control, but can be as devastating as cross-border trafficking is internal trafficking. This is when people are trafficked within a country. For example, due to hunger and poverty rural people can be trafficked to farms for agricultural labour or domestic servitude.

In Zimbabwe, all those who have been trafficked for servitude or are threatened with the same, should use the Labour Relations Amendment Act as it prohibits forced labour and prescribes punishments to perpetrators. The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act also forbids buying a person for unlawful sexual conduct in or out of the country.

Recourse to the law should be sought as this will discourage people from getting into or continuing with this appalling business of trafficking people. In addition to that, incisive punishments should be put in place for those who are caught practising human trafficking.

Police, through the Victim Friendly Units, should work flat out, first, in carrying out thorough investigations into any instances of trafficking and secondly, by helping those that fall victim to trafficking. Police can also be instrumental in making sure that traffickers are severely punished.  
The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare is also key to the effort to stamp out                           human trafficking. It should stretch its awareness programmes especially to orphans and children to alert them to the vice of trafficking.

In general, people must shun involvement in deals that could eventually lead them to be abused. It includes things like illegal migration. People should be wary of false employment syndicates and report any case of exploitative labour conditions to police.

* Jonah Nyoni is a development journalist and motivational speaker. E-mail: [email protected]. Web: www.jonahnyoni.blogspot.com. Tel: 0772 581 918