The situation in Zimbabwe has far reaching consequences for business in South Africa and is already doing serious damage to much more than the economy of the border town of Musina.

The chairman of the Musina Chamber of Commerce, Mr Jason Rana, said in an interview this week that, overall, business and trade in the town has dropped by some 50% since the beginning of this year. This can be directly blamed on the further deterioration of the inflation situation in Zimbabwe.

Apart from the usual local end-of-the-month rise in business in Musina, the continued significant stream of cross-border traders from Zimbabwe has been visually drying up during the past months. This drop in trade can be linked directly to the drastic reduction in the value of the Zimbabwean dollar (Z$) during the past few months.

Mr Rana said the entire socio-economic situation along the border, and especially in Musina, is being adversely affected by the lack of a meaningful response from the South African government to the unabated daily flood of thousands of economic refugees from Zimbabwe.

"Because of the insufficient provision to process these refugees in a realistic and humane way, they are automatically criminalised into illegal immigrants, who will do whatever is necessary to survive. This, in turn, has serious, far-reaching adverse consequences for the entire South African community. This unbridled flood of jobless and homeless, desperate strangers tends to swamp the available scarce housing, rob local residents of equally scarce job opportunities and places an additional overload on the already insufficient infrastructure and services such as health and education.

"Their survival crisis adds to the already unacceptable levels of crime and the increasing threat to the property and safety of especially the rural and farming communities. The resulting uncertainty adds to a further decrease in meaningful economic activity," Mr Rana said.

Mr Rana said in Musina it is already generally accepted that at least one third of the available RDP housing in town is possessed by "illegal immigrants" who have bought themselves South African citizenship by means of forged IDs. This perception results in tension and potential further violent crimes in the local community."