The treatment of Zimbabwean citizens and other people from the region who migrate legally and illegally to neighbouring countries mainly Botswana and South Africa is often catastrophic, raising underlying questions about xenophobia. In most cases their human rights are systematically and grossly violated. The question of ill treatment and violent malpractices on illegal migrants has taken on a new urgency in the wake of recent reports on the flogging of some 100 Zimbabweans who illegally entered Botswana.