'I have little sympathy for South Africans' Eddie Cross says

Leading economist and former Bulawayo South Member of Parliament Eddie Cross says hedoes not feel sorry for South Africans who are crying foreigners taking their jobs because they were not there when Zimbabwe needed their help.

Writing on his blog Africa Herd, Cross said, "I have little sympathy for the South Africans because, when we needed their influence to halt the excesses of the Mugabe regime, the South African government ignored the deepening crisis north of the Limpopo and now suffer the consequences. It must be recognised within the region, that it has never been possible to secure progressive change in Zimbabwe, without South African pressure and influence."

The former MDC Senior leader says, "Xenophobia is a real problem which the South African government is struggling to come to grips with. Very often the response is to simply arrest undocumented migrants and put them on trains back to Zimbabwe, where they are unloaded onto the station at Beitbridge and promptly try to return to South Africa."

"It must be recognised by the South African authorities that the Zimbabwean migrants in their midst are not only a source of skilled manpower in every field, but also that they fill many jobs that their own people do not really want."

Cross argues that if South Africa wants to see an end to the influx of Zimbabwean immigrants, they must the country in growing its economy.

"If regional states want to see the plague of migrants from Zimbabwe come to an end then they should pay more attention to working together with us to secure growth and development. No country in Africa is an island except for Madagascar and Mauritius, the rest of us have neighbours and to a very large extent our individual prosperity depends on how we work together to achieve progress.

"Instability in one country is a problem for all of us. We cannot therefore stand aside when we see Al Shabab destabilising northern Mozambique. The landlocked states of southern Africa depend on the ports of the coastal states for access to global markets and if they become unreliable for one reason or another, then we all feel the consequences. When South African mobs wrecked much of the commercial infrastructure of Natal including the port of Durban, or when xenophobic mobs burn Zimbabwean trucks on the main highways, this is an issue which should concern all of us. The same applies to Renamo ambushing vehicles on roads in central Mozambique."