Africa, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

ZIMBABWE: Now a 'Factory for Poverty'

Ephraim Nsingo

HARARE, Jan 20 2009 (IPS) - Over 75 percent of the people in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe are living in desperate poverty, with children bearing the brunt. And with rival parties still deadlocked over implementation of a power-sharing agreement signed four months ago, things are likely to get worse before they improve.

Talks to rescue the stalled power-sharing deal resumed Jan. 19 at the Rainbow Towers Hotel with all three signatories Sep. 15, 2008 power-sharing agreement are taking part.

The latest talks were being facilitated by South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, who is also currently chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, who was appointed by SADC to facilitate dialogue between rival political parties in Zimbabwe, and Mozambican president Armando Guebuza, the Deputy Chairperson of the SADC organ on politics, defence and security.

Speaking to reporters just before he entering the closed-doors meeting, Arthur Mutambara, leader of a smaller faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said the leaders had no option but to resolve the impasse.

"Now is the time for finding common ground among Zimbabweans. It is time for flexibility, compromise, and pragmatism," said Mutambara, who would become one of two deputy prime ministers under the power-sharing deal.

However, 12 hours of negotiations yielded no progress, with the MDC-Tsvangirai and Zanu-PF failing to agree on the allocation of key ministries and the balance of power between the two principal parties in a government of national unity.

SADC executive secretary Tomasz Salomao said the impasse would be referred to regional leaders at a special summit next week.

The urgent need to establish a functioning government is clear from a report released by Save the Children (SCF) which found that 10 out of the 13 million people still in Zimbabwe live in abject poverty, struggling to access food and other essentials. A local alliance of non-governmental organisations said the figures could be higher than that.

"Many children are going without education – around 75 percent of state schools are not functioning properly because the majority of state teachers are not working as they are not paid enough to survive and have to look for or work for food. Many poor families are being forced to send their children out to find work or wild foods and simply can no longer afford to send them to school," adds the report.

The Advocacy and Public Policy Manager of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), Fambai Ngirande, said the reality on the ground is actually "way beyond those figures and the situation is worsening".

"A largely man-made, preventable and grossly unnecessary situation, the result of years of failed policies and the self-seeking actions of the ruling political elites whose corrupt and undemocratic tendencies have worsened the situation by heightening the levels of inequality to alarming levels."

Ngirande said hunger was now forcing many people to resort to desperate measures like prostitution and child labour, while others were now eating poisonous roots and wild fruits.

Commuter fares in urban areas now change twice a day, forcing most workers to camp at their workplace during the week and go home only on weekends. Skilled professionals are also quitting their in droves to take up menial jobs.

Although middle class professionals like nurses and teachers have been left unable to subsist because of the crisis, Ngirande said "it is vulnerable groups such as the elderly, People Living with HIV/AIDS, orphaned children, the disabled and others that have been hardest hit".

The Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) secretary general, Raymond Majongwe said the state of poverty among teachers was a scandal.

"If you want, I can take you to Cheziya bus terminus in Gokwe, and show you a fomer headmaster who is now a rank marshall at the terminus," said Majongwe, referring to a sprawling agricultural town in the Midlands Province.

He accused the government of deliberately ignoring the plight of teachers, who have repeatedly been labelled as opposition supporters.

"It is so embarrassing the authorities continue to take this business-as-usual approach when the national fabric continues to decay. Teachers’ salaries have plummeted to several points below the poverty datum line.

"Where on earth have you seen a teacher who cannot afford to buy a packet of milk from his salary? Go into any classroom right now, you will find a teacher selling sweets and other small foodstuffs in order to survive, that’s not proper."

Ngirande says the country is paying a high cost in development terms.

"The desperate competition for scarce resources that has been precipitated by this poverty and inequality is breeding grounds for civil strife and social unrest especially given the present politically volatile situation."

Because while the poor continue to sink deeper into poverty, a small section of Zimbabwe’s elite are enjoying every moment in Zimbabwe. They access foreign currency at official exchange rates from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for a song, which they then use for mostly illegal deals like buying and reselling cars, and dealing in gold and diamonds. The well-connected are able to import vehicles duty-free, and resell them at high prices in foreign currency.

In Harare this elite is not difficult to identify. They drive the latest fancy cars, dine at expensive restaurants such as KwaMambo in Avondale, and frequent expensive clubs like "Room 10" in plush Borrowdale Brooke, where they spend hundreds of U.S. dollars on an evening's entertainment.

But with a third of Zimbabwean children undernourished, the failure of water and sewage infrastructure triggering a cholera epidemic that has already claimed 2,200 lives, and hyperinflation officially acknowledged to be at 243 million percent – in reality much, much higher – humanitarian workers are describing Zimbabwe as "one of the world's most active factories of poverty".

Save the Children says it has scaled up its work in the areas of education, health, livelihoods, protection and food provision.

(*Updates progress of negotiations on power-sharing agreement. Story first moved Jan. 17, 2009.)