Dateline ACT

Southern Africa 06/02

Zimbabwe's drought and poverty rob children of their education

Gutu Province, November 13, 2002
By Rainer Lang

The three young boys are resting in the shade of a small tree after a long and hard day’s work as farm laborers on Muungani farm in Gutu Province, southern Zimbabwe.

Late as it is in the day, the sun still burns down, sapping the earth of its moisture and baking the soil into a hard, barren crust. *

One of the youngsters, 10-year old Shebad Mazhangara, who has been working on the farm for about a year now, explains that they do not go to school because their parents cannot afford the school fees. Shebad says he works to help his parents and seven siblings survive.

Shebad and his two friends, Timothy Shajactimwe (17) and Tatenda Matare (13) each earn about $1000 Zimbabwean a month. "That is nothing", says Leston Zhou from the Lutheran Development Service (LDS), a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International. He adds, "that is not more than one US dollar." But Shebad and his friends are adamant that they are grateful to be employed.

The three youngsters live in Gutu Province in the southern part of Zimbabwe, an area hit hardest by the recent drought that has devastated the whole of southern Africa. The majority of people in the province are subsistence farmers, cultivating small plots of land. LDS and Christian Care (CC), also a member of ACT International, are both helping people whose lives have been devastated by the drought and factors such as the political instability in the country and the HIV/Aids pandemic.

The three boys work alongside several adults on the farm, preparing the fields for the coming season. "Last year’s drought affected this year’s harvest", explains Farai Wadzanai, one of the older farm workers. "We hope for rain", he says, looking up at the sky, adding that he no longer has enough food to feed his family. Yet Farai insists on sending at least two of his four children to school, finding the Z$24 per child in school fees. This is far too much on his salary as Farai only earns Z$2000 a month – an amount that does not stretch very far when a 20kg bag of ground maize costs Z$1800

To supplement his income, Farai resorts to borrowing from his employer or asks his neighbors for help. The longer the drought lasts, the more he is caught up in a cycle of poverty.

The chief of Chingombe Village, Garal Gonese, who works as a teacher, is worried about the impact of the drought on the educational system. Food prices have shot up so dramatically over the last few months, that parents are faced with a stark choice –to feed their children if they still can, or send them to school, he explains. "A year ago a loaf of bread cost Z$45" says Gonese. "Now, it has gone up to Z$140."

At Batanayi School, where Gonese teaches, 170 students of the original 540 have left school to find work. "They work for a meager salary of between 100 to 300 Zimbabwean dollars a week on the fields or they go to the forest to gather wild fruits to sell," says Gonese. "It is terrible."

One sees children everywhere trying to make ends meet. Along the main roads, they cluster together selling laundry detergents. They consider themselves lucky – in the mornings they attend school and then join their parents at the selling points in the afternoon. However, for Shebad and his friends’, the future is a bleaker one. The loss of education they are suffering now will inevitably have a severe impact on their lives. Without an education their prospects will simply dwindle to a few limited options later in life.