11/22/2023 0 Comments Staying afloat tinasheBuying goods like flour, sugar, and oil and paying to ship them becomes brutally expensive. One 12.5-kilogram bag of mealie meal, which will last a family one to two months, costs 140 rand ($14). Out of his monthly salary of 800 rand ($81), he usually spends between 250 rand and 500 rand shipping food back home to his family. Tawanda told me he wanted to move there in March to join his brother.įor the past two years, Tinashe has been remitting goods from Johannesburg every month, at great personal cost. In Johannesburg, the pace of life is frantic, groceries are inexpensive, and transport is easy. Tinashe’s life in South Africa seems like a different world. Conditions are even worse in rural areas, where many are slowly starving. Tinashe’s little brother, Tawanda, told me the streets were empty because everyone had gone to South Africa and that he was sorry I couldn’t meet more of Tinashe’s old friends. Frequent power cuts and spreading cholera threaten the area. In the run-down Mabvurunge home in Kwekwe, even one meal per day is hard to come by. “We are paid in Zim money, but we must pay for things in dollars or rand,” chimed in Tinashe’s aunt. Basic goods are far cheaper in neighboring South Africa. “Cooking oil, mealie meal, flour, sugar, everything we need that we can’t get here,” she explained. Pointing to the dilapidated cabinets lining her small kitchen, Margaret Mabvurunge told me that Tinashe and other relatives had sent many of the items inside. With unemployment in Zimbabwe close to 85 percent, most families have found it difficult, even impossible, to survive without remittances from relatives who now work in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, or even London. Although they are starting to fill up again, prices are too steep for many Zimbabweans to afford shopping in stores. Until recently, supermarket shelves in Zimbabwe were virtually empty. Working for pittances abroad, Zimbabweans like Tinashe toil long hours to earn small wages, most of which they send to frantic family members back home. By the time I left the country in January after a few weeks of conducting interviews, almost nothing could be bought without US dollars or South African rand, and something as simple as a cell phone SIM card could take days to locate on the black market. The Central Bank recently released a bill worth 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars. Prices in Harare supermarkets are all in US dollars, a reflection of the extreme inflation rates plaguing Zimbabwe (Varvalouca/TYG). Production on the country’s farms and mines has all but ceased, and foreign investors have packed up and left. Political instability, corruption, and economic mismanagement have brought soaring inflation, dollarization, hunger, and an escalating cholera epidemic. Tinashe is just one of millions of Zimbabweans who have fled to neighboring countries in the past few years. But while he is far from Kwekwe, his presence is still felt-in the form of groceries, money, and other supplies he sends home every month to support his family. Since then, Tinashe has had to fend for himself in Johannesburg, living on menial wages and working odd jobs. Margaret Mabvurunge has not seen her son Tinashe in over two years, when he left his small hometown of Kwekwe, Zimbabwe, to find a job in South Africa.
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