The farm is typical of many farms across the country; full of rundown infrastructure and sad faces. The barns are weather worn and soot-soaked with a cracked structure whose corrugated iron roof has almost completely disintegrated.
We met Monday Sixpence, a white-haired man who turns 70 this August. He has three children, all under five-years-old.
“They (the children) are my grandchildren, all orphaned after the death of my two sons and daughter so I have to look after them. The other three grandchildren I look after are out there trying to find work,” said Sixpence. The absent children are 14, 15 and 16 and none of them attend school.
No hope of retiring
Having started work for a white commercial farmer at the age of 19, this year marks Sixpence’s 51st year as a farm labourer. Unfortunately, he has no hope of retiring with six small mouths to feed.
Job losses
After five decades of hard work and contribution to the country’s agricultural production, all Sixpence has to show for himself is a radio set, five chickens, four blankets and a few kitchen
utensils.
“I have moved on from five farms. I came here in 2004 and since then I have not been employed full-time so I survive on piece jobs to sustain this family.” Sixpence said hope is not a word he knows. He was heartbroken by Smith’s colonial regime and then by the ‘liberators’ who turned into monsters during the land grab.
“Tinongorarama mwanangu hapeno zvinobuda sei (We just survive, my child, and we do not know what life holds for us),” he said, brandishing a small Shona bible.
When the government took over farms in 2000, they failed to consider the plight of farm workers. Observers estimated that over half a million farm workers lost their jobs and livelihood when newly resettled farmers could not accommodate them.
To add to the workers’ plight, many of them originated from neighbouring countries like Malawi and Zambia and had no permanent homes apart from the farmers’ land on which they built their homes.
Worse still, the current farm workers’ wages are set at a minimum of $65 a month and even if Sixpence was employed permanently, the money would hardly sustain him and his six dependents.
The $65 per month figure was recently approved at the National Employment Council for Agriculture. The General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe estimates that a large number of farmers are failing to even pay this measly amount.
All in a day’s work
A large number of farmers have resorted to employing workers on a seasonal or temporary basis to avoid extra costs.
Like all the other farm workers who have found themselves without a job, Sixpence starts the day by thinking about what he can do to sustain himself and the family. A day might be spent scouring at the nearby goldfields or searching for firewood to sell.
“We do anything you can think of and it is sad that here opportunities are few. Even if we try to sell firewood, only a few individuals can buy. Sometimes we go to the goldfields to try and pan for gold but it is a dangerous area and I cannot catch up with the young ones,” said Sixpence, who had to watch his daughter go to work as a sex worker in Chegutu before she died of an AIDS-related illness.
“Imagine having to watch while your daughter goes out and you are helpless to stop her because you have not alternative source of income,” he said.
An anti-child labour organisation, Coalition Against Child Labour in Zimbabwe, estimates that the majority of children who drop out of school are in farming communities.
For Sixpence, and the hundreds of farm workers marooned at Chigwell Farm, the only positive thing they hang on to is that as aliens, their right to vote will be restored by the new draft constitution.
“We hope we will be able to express ourselves this time,” said Sixpence.
Post published in: News
you reap what you sow.
you get the government you deserve.