HARARE – Zimbabwe has more than two million citizens living in South Africa, but fewer than 100,000 have so far returned home under the government’s repatriation programme in response to rising anti-immigrant tensions, local government minister Daniel Garwe said on Tuesday.

Briefing journalists after a cabinet meeting, Garwe said the pace of returns had picked up significantly since the exercise began in May, but that the government was only scratching the surface of the numbers it expected to receive.

“Zimbabwe has raised the bar in terms of repatriating people. Initially we were dealing with numbers around 700-1,500 people per day. We expect these numbers to increase, but we will not tire because these are Zimbabweans that are coming home,” Garwe said.

“We have got in excess of about 2 million Zimbabweans in South Africa and we are hoping 70 percent of that 2 million is coming home and we are ready to receive them,” he said.

There are no official figures for the number of Zimbabweans living in South Africa and estimates vary. In 2017, South Africa invited Zimbabweans to regularise their stay under the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit scheme and 250,000 registered.

Garwe’s projection would put the expected number of returnees at about 1.4 million, dwarfing the numbers processed so far.

Information minister Zhemu Soda told the same briefing that 99,418 citizens had been repatriated between May 28 and July 10 “through collaborative efforts between the inter-ministerial committee and development partners.”

“More than 70 percent of the returnees are women and children,” Soda said, adding that the government had noted that the number of Zimbabwean nationals requiring repatriation and reintegration assistance had continued to increase, and that measures had been put in place to meet the growing demand.

The repatriation exercise was launched on May 28 after anti-immigrant groups in South Africa set an unofficial June 30 deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave, sparking marches that at times turned violent.

The repatriation efforts have drawn support from the private sector and United Nations agencies, with an inter-ministerial 24-hour command centre established at the Beitbridge Reception Centre to coordinate the reception, registration and transportation of returnees.