As dawn breaks over Zimbabwe, Douglas Foster and five other men crouch behind a fence, waiting for a South African border police patrol to pass. Shivering in the cold September rain they wriggle their way through three sets of fences to enter South Africa illegally. Desperate to escape the spiralling poverty in Zimbabwe, they risk everything to join millions of other African immigrants in one of the continent’s most economically prosperous nations.

No one knows how many illegal immigrants there are in South Africa. A recent census suggested 1.1 million, but the real figure is almost certainly far higher. They come from all over the continent - Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo - but their growing numbers are causing a major backlash, leading to what some describe as a second apart-heid. Xenophobia is on the rise and in the past three months more than 32 Somalis have been killed.

Article Length: 516 words (approx.)