Unemployment and poverty are some of the most pressing issues in Zimbabwe today. As the inclusive government enters its 10th month, The Zimbabwean's Chief Reporter, Gift Phiri, spent the day with a house-to-house vendor struggling to feed her family. HARARE It is six o’clock in the morning and Amai Mandimutsira’s alarm clock starts beeping. It’s the start of a long day for this 56-year-old woman who is the sole breadwinner for her family of seven in Budiriro.
Her husband and sons cannot find jobs.
Unemployment is the most serious economic and social problem in Zimbabwe now, and the UN says 94 per cent of the population is unemployed. The nine-month-old inclusive government formed by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe promised more jobs but so far it has failed to deliver.
“They make promises when we go and vote for them. They say ‘We will build new schools and give you jobs and piped water’. But when they win they completely forget us,” complains Amai Mandimutsira.
After the bleak days of economic meltdown last year, there is now more money around but there is no disposable income for the very poor. Zimbabwe saw hyperinflation reach 231 million per cent last July until the unity government adopted the use of multiple currencies to replace a worthless local currency.
But although supermarket shelves which were emptied when Mugabe ordered price cuts in 2007 have largely restocked with imported goods, most people cannot afford to buy the goods because of low incomes.
Rich/poor gap widens
Government workers, who form the bulk of the employed, earn an average US$150 per month and struggle to pay for food, transport and accommodation.
“The gap between the rich and poor is widening,” says Ronald Shumba, a political commentator.
Finance minister Tendai Biti told Parliament last Wednesday when he presented a pro-poor budget, that the country’s population has been reclassified into three distinct categories “The submerged and drowning-poor representing 85 per cent of the population, the 13 per cent floating or dog-paddling middle class, and the 2 per cent prawn-eating free-stylers.”
This 2 per cent live in suburbs such as Greystone Park and Borrowdale Brooke, on the edge of what Harare residents call the “dale-dales”. These are the plush northern suburbs populated by the capital’s elite: ministers, army generals, bankers, new Chinese investors and whites who have managed to withstand a decade of economic turmoil.
Almost 10 months after the formation of the inclusive government, Mugabe’s party, accused of blocking political reforms, repeats its rhetoric about helping the dispossessed regain land stolen by colonialists and to totally empower the masses – but the disparity in wealth is still striking.
“Things are getting worse by the day for me,” says Amai Mandimutsira.
Hope for the future
Despite her scepticism, she sees hope in the future.
After a quick breakfast on the floor of her tiny kitchen, she dons her white outfit for the long journey to the other end of the city. Six days a week Amai Mandimutsira goes to sell knitted paraphernalia at the houses of the wealthy in Greystone Park and Borrowdale Brooke.
It takes her more than an hour just to get to work – a journey that involves taking two buses and walking for kilometres.
Borrowdale Brooke is another world, where billboards advertise designer watches and expensive electronics Amai Mandimutsira could never dream of buying. At the Borrowdale Brooke Spar supermarket, fresh food packs the shelves and the shop looks resplendent with its gleaming aisles.
The store’s car park is packed with BMWs, and Hummers.
Today she’s selling “madhoiri”(doilies) in a swanky apartment near the Borrowdale Brooke Spar supermarket that belongs to an interior designer. Her customer is making cappuccinos for her guests looking extremely glamorous in a bright pink headscarf, matching pink sandals and a long white shirt.
This well-dressed woman has never been to the high density suburb of Budiriro where Amai Mandimutsira lives; it’s a far cry from her modern apartment complete with a balcony decorated with glittering fittings, hanging glass lanterns and chandeliers.
When it comes to lifes worries, these two women have totally different perspectives.
It can take Amai Mandimutsira days to sell one of her crotchet sets.
At the end of a long afternoon of trying to sell her wares, Amai Mandimutsira counts the day’s takings and disappears into the streets of Harare where her poverty makes her invisible. Just another poor woman going back to Budiriro.
As she walks under billboards in the city centre advertising expensive gadgets, she’s just hoping there’ll be a government that will do more than just pay lip service to the problems of the poor.
Concepts like political freedom mean little to someone who’s still struggling to feed her family in a country with the second biggest platinum reserves in the world.
Biti said the challenge of economic transformation in Zimbabwe is a “developmental challenge seeking to improve the lives of the 85 per cent drowning poor and their cousins the dog-paddlers, that way giving them equal say and access to the wealth of the country.”
“This means transforming the lives of thousands of women and youths who form the bulk of this class,” Biti said.
Post published in: Politics