MUSINA, South Africa: Perched on weathered wooden rafts, small groups of people hauled themselves and their bundles of cargo hand over hand along a rope strung across the crocodile-infested Limpopo River.
Minutes later, they were in South Africa, having bypassed the border post at Beitbridge, a short distance away.
By the time patrol officers spotted them, the clandestine migrants had disappeared into the thorn scrub.
The short crossing is one of countless illegal passages along South Africa’s porous border with Zimbabwe, where migrants and smugglers routinely slip through efforts to seal the busy frontier.
At the official border post, streams of people moved in the opposite direction, heading across a bridge over the Limpopo and into Zimbabwe — part of a flood of foreign nationals fleeing deadly anti-immigrant protests in South Africa.
