The night-walkers of Uganda

11

---

No going back to Mugabe
Level 1 
l
Elementary
1
Before you read 1 Key words
Fill the gaps using these words from the headline and the text.
asylum seekers militia threaten appeal
vouchers slum refugee status deport
 
1. A 
is a very poor area in or around a city.
2. If someone says that they will do something very bad to you if you don’t do what they say,
they
you.
3. 
are people who are in danger in their own country
and move to another country and ask for the right to stay there in safety.
4. If the government allows these people to stay in the country, they have
.
5. A 
is a group of ordinary people trained to fight in an emergency.
6. If you 
against a court decision, you formally ask the court to change it.
7. When a government forces someone to leave the country, they 
them.
8. 
are pieces of paper, instead of money, that let people buy what they need.
2
Before you read 2 Scanning
Does Thomas now have permission to stay in Britain?
Read the article quickly to check.
No going back to Mugabe
by Alison Benjamin 
1
1
Three years ago, Thomas came to Britain from Zimbabwe. He was afraid for his life, because when he left 
Robert Mugabe’s youth militia, the Green Bombers, they threatened to kill him.
2
Now, he is living happily with his new partner, Tanya, in a village in East Anglia. But it has been a long, hard 
journey surviving as an unwanted visitor in Britain. And it is not over yet. 
3 
After he was refused permission to stay in 2004, Thomas slept on friends’ floors and in an empty factor in 
Manchester. One night, five white youths attacked and injured him badly. But he wouldn’t go to the police.
“I was terrified that they would send me back to Zimbabwe.” 
4
Frightened by the attack, he went to Glasgow to stay with friends, but an old illness forced him to go to 
hospital. He was afraid to give his real name, so he didn’t attend his check-up, went back to Manchester and 
slept in the bus station. The next day, he went to Refugee Action – the charity that had helped him with his 
asylum case. They couldn’t put him in a homeless hostel in Manchester because he didn’t have government 
support, so they sent him to one in Liverpool. “It was a huge room full of drug addicts,” says Thomas. “Five 
12

---

o’clock, they gave me dinner, and six o’clock you had to be in bed. I was scared of the other residents. They 
made racist jokes. I couldn’t sleep all night. The next morning I took the first bus back to Manchester.” He 
spent his second night in the bus station before another friend let him stay. 
5
At this time, the law decided that Zimbabweans would be in danger if they were sent home, so Thomas 
asked for asylum again. His claim was rejected, but his case worker at Refugee Action appealed.
6
He won the appeal, and returned to Manchester expecting to move into a hostel and have government food 
vouchers. He didn’t want to depend on friends and charity. But nothing changed for another two months.
At last, three days before Christmas, he was given a room in a National Asylum Support Service [Nass]
hostel. But it was horrible. “My bedroom floor was covered in water, the kitchen ceiling leaked, there was 
mould growing everywhere.” And the first food vouchers didn’t arrive until Christmas Eve, when the only 
supermarkets that accepted them were closed. “I spent Christmas Day ill with hunger,” he says.
7
But in the new year, life improved. Thomas was moved to a better Nass hostel, and then he heard that his 
sister, who he hadn’t seen since he escaped from Zimbabwe, was living nearby! “I couldn’t believe it,” he 
says. “She left the same night as me, after the Green Bombers beat me up in front of my family. None of us 
had heard from her.” 
8
He remembered Sonia as a big woman. Now 43, also a failed asylum seeker, she was tiny. “We hated each 
other when I was growing up,” Thomas laughs. “But now I just wanted to be with her. She is the only family
I have here.” 
9
He has one brother still in Zimbabwe; another died last year. Another brother and two other sisters are in 
South Africa, where his mother now lives, too. Mugabe’s soldiers destroyed her house in Zimbabwe when 
they were ‘clearing’ the slums. 
10
Thomas met Tanya through a friend of Sonia’s. He now lives with her and looks after her four young children 
while she is at work. “It’s the happiest I have ever been,” he smiles, holding Tanya’s hand. They plan to 
marry when Thomas has his refugee status. “I don’t want anyone to think we are only getting married so I 
can stay,” he insists. “She’s been there for me, more than anyone else in my life. She took me in when I had 
nothing.”
11 
Thomas wants to support his new family, but asylum seekers are not allowed to work. The Home Office 
has told him nothing about his case for five months, and this makes him nervous. In April, the government 
obtained permission to send failed asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe, so it could deport up to 7,000 people. 
12
What will he do if the Home Office does deport failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe? Thomas says: “It’s 
harder now. I have a family here, but I’ll have to go underground again. No way am I going back.” And 
Tanya? Without hesitation, she replies: “I’ll go wherever he is.”