Police raid church where Zimbabweans were hiding

South African police descended on a Johannesburg church where Zimbabweans had taken refuge, taking people in nightgowns and pyjamas to a police station in scenes reminiscent of apartheid-era raids.

Bishop Paul Verryn was hosting some 1,200 people at the Central Methodist Church, which has become a haven for Zimbabweans fleeing their own country’s political and economic meltdown.

Mr Verryn said police arrived around 11pm (9pm Irish time) last night.

Two hours later, police were still taking people by the van load to the central police station.

Police at the scene could be heard asking people taken from the church for their residency permits.

“I saw people assaulted when they were put in the vans,” Mr Verryn said. “When I said, ”You can’t do this’, they told me not to interfere. They pulled me down the stairs by the scruff of my neck and one police officer kicked something at me.“

Mr Verryn said he had been told police were looking for illegal immigrants, drugs and weapons. He added police damaged doors and windows in the church as they searched it.

Outside the church, where about another 500 Zimbabweans sleep, hundreds of men, many barefooted and bare-chested, lined up in an orderly fashion before being marched off into the vans by police. A teargas-like smell hang in the air and some of the men said police had used the mace sprays they could be seen carrying.

A handful of men tried to run away but police chased after them. One man was dragged back by his arms and legs and was left unconscious in the street.

A church official eventually removed him.

“This is a church. We thought we were safe,” said Fredrick Chibungu, who has been in the country for seven months and is waiting for his asylum papers to be finalised.

“They are going to deport us. There is nothing we can do. It is better to go back home and make a plan to come back,” he said.

After about an hour police allowed about 100 women, whose documents and papers had been found in order, back inside the church where they were looking after a number of children.

After the last police van left at 2.30am (3am Irish time) a group of several hundred men, whose documentation was also approved and who had been separated from the others were also allowed to return to the building.

Inside the dark church, blankets and bedding lay abandoned on the floor where those seeking refuge sleep crowded next to one another.

A number of doors, including one adjoining Mr Verryn’s office, showed signs of being forced and cupboards in a kitchen had been opened and food left on the floor. One of the chapel’s windows had been smashed.

In the room used as a sick bay, suitcases had been left open or turned upside down after police searched them, leaving their contents in messy piles.

Mr Verryn, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, said it was the first such incident in the four years since he opened the church’s doors after seeing increasing number of Zimbabweans on the streets of Johannesburg.

Word spread, and soon the four-storey building was home to more than 1,000.

Mr Verryn said the Zimbabweans organised themselves, with teachers among them holding literacy and other classes and others enforcing rules such as bans on smoking, drinking and fighting in the building.

Disruptions to the agriculture-based economy that began with the government-ordered and often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms in 2000 has sent Zimbabwe into freefall.

Zimbabwe’s inflation rate is the highest in the world, and food, fuel and jobs are scarce.

President Robert Mugabe has also cracked down on his political opponents, beating and jailing dissenters.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have left their homeland, many for neighbouring countries.

South Africa is believed to have one of the largest communities of Zimbabweans, with estimates consistently referring to three million Zimbabweans living there.