Zimbabwean teenage asylum-seeker learns the high cost of freedom

When 18-year-old Tsitsi Makwiyena looks down at her son Desmond in her arms, she sees not just a one-week-old perfect baby boy, but also the high price she paid to escape her home country of Zimbabwe and start a new life in urban South Africa.

With a family too poor to let her finish high school, the girl, then just 17, decided to head to South Africa last year in search of a better life and a chance at further education. She and two older women managed to get a ride with some South Africans driving a truck from her impoverished homeland back to South Africa.

At the famous Beit Bridge crossing, the driver promised, they, like so many others, would be able to sneak across a weak link in the border fence to enter South Africa illegally.

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