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Originally published by Citizen DigitalDecember 15, 2025
2h ago
The price of going home: Christmas boxes and the final return from South Africa to Zimbabwe
The price of going home: Christmas boxes and the final return from South Africa to Zimbabwe..
✨ Key Highlights
Every December, Zimbabwean injiva, migrants working in South Africa, return home to Bulawayo for Christmas, bringing remittances and a temporary boost to the city. Alongside these festive returns, a more somber movement occurs: the repatriation of deceased Zimbabwean migrants for burial in their homeland, a deeply significant cultural and spiritual act despite the immense financial and bureaucratic challenges.
- An estimated 1 million to 3 million Zimbabweans reside in South Africa, with many driven by Zimbabwe's economic collapse in the early 2000s.
- The journey from Beitbridge border post to Bulawayo on the A6 highway is traversed by both festive returnees and coffin-shaped trailers carrying the deceased.
- Funeral parlours like Doves, Kings & Queens, and African Pride, along with formal and informal burial societies, are crucial in managing the complex logistics and costs of transnational death repatriation.
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