Posted on 07/23/2002 3:27:11 AM PDT by Clive
A NEW breed of street children is visible in most urban centres, joining the generation which moved in around 1984. That generation comprises young adults, all men. Girls rarely remain street urchins beyond the age of 10. Nobody seems to care about their whereabouts as soon as their breasts begin to sprout.
The new arrivals, aged between two and five, are accompanied by their ashen and frazzled mothers. They jump at every car from traffic islands and street boundary lines. Their requests are often simple: coins, empty bottles and scraps of food.
The street men, here for almost 20 years, have seen it all. They have heard top officials, the late Sally Mugabe, former mayor Solomon Tawengwa and others, promise them manna, housing, schools and a decent lifestyle. Nothing happened but the numbers kept on swelling.
As agile, streetwise and enterprising but forgotten men, the street gangs have virtually occupied every parking lot, claiming to be in the business of guarding cars for a small “service fee”.
Their deportment and language are vulgar and openly uncouth. They spew all kinds of obscenities to innocent motorists, especially women, without any moral fear of, or respect for, the society around them.
Hunger has begun to displace ordinary Zimbabweans away from places they used to call home to towns and cities. Theft, prostitution and child labour are some of the coping mechanisms that people are resorting to for survival.
Children, supposed to be in schools, work either as prostitutes, petty traders or as gold panners as part of the wild search for relief.
Begging has long ceased to be a humiliating practice that the majority, including workers, are now openly asking for help.
Information on poverty-induced migration and other internal movements will remain sketchy, given the transient style of the hungry, complicating any effort to target them for organised relief.
An assessment in May by the Internally Displaced Persons Unit of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs called for attention to an urgent need to fill “important information gaps”. The office seeks to locate and quantify the people who left their homes because of political violence or economic hardships.
The Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe surveyed 235 large-scale commercial farms, 10 percent of all farms in the provinces of Mashonaland West, Central and East and Manicaland. The Trust found that, as of 16 May, about 52 000 had left. Political violence displaced around about 30 000, according to human rights groups.
The number of Aids orphans is estimated at between 900 000 and 1,2 million. Most are wandering around, which makes enumeration difficult.
The Farm Orphan Support Trust says there are an average 12 orphans at each commercial farm in the three Mashonaland provinces and Manicaland.
This means there is a significant increase in child- headed homes. In the villages, most grandmothers are desperately trying to raise thousands of children without food, income, medical drugs or answers.
A third category, the survey suggests, includes those encouraged to invade farms in the early stages of the chaotic land reform programme but are now being evicted as new owners move in.
The true story of the impact of hunger, HIV/Aids and social instability remains untold. Families and individuals have all been thrown into a jitterbug of misery, into a climate of fear, silence and bewilderment because the drought and the unending political crisis.
A serious paucity of vision, covered by an obsession to destroy reason and force loyalty to Zanu PF, has clouded debate on Zimbabwe’s fate. No one cares anymore about the toddlers in the street.
The sheer weight of the public responsibilities facing the government is so much that President Mugabe and his government alone no longer have the energy to lift a finger.
The social welfare system has collapsed and no one is talking about it. Those who must show leadership and rekindle discussion watch helplessly as the government equates open debates to treason and regards critics as traitors.
The national agenda is lost in a jungle search for food that has forced all to defend themselves and allow for a simplified version of the complex issues affecting this nation.
This is a strange country with a strange people. We are burying thousands weekly, families are breaking up, there are no jobs, people are bullied and assaulted daily and the economic crisis is deepening.
An entire generation of parents faces the risk of being wiped out by Aids and, despite Mugabe’s election promise, there are no retroviral drugs in public hospitals.
The signs of starvation are all over the show: join a food queue and look into people’s sinking eyes, feel their lifeless hands, or check their swollen bellies and you know a serious phase is on its way. Food prices, despite the so-called price controls, continue to rise.
But there are no public forums at which these matters are debated and unpacked; there are no open expressions of anger; there is no visible movement against the severity of the blows on our very existence. There is fear even to whisper a dissenting tune.
The government is getting away with a notion and definition of the opposition as a foreign-inspired concept which deserves nothing but hate, not as a partner.
Foreigners, especially the British, are seen as the main enemy using a willing coterie of traitors and avaricious puppets, not the glaring reality of bad governance and shoddy economic experiments.
With close to six million completely famished, the nation continues to let the binge carry on. We need to stop the orgy by shouting back, demanding accountability, respect and a fair deal from a speeding driver whose eyes are firmly stuck on the rear view mirror.
In life and in politics, success and power comes from a vision, not the past. The past, for the experience it offers, can only be relevant if it tenders wisdom and guidance to a sitting generation.
Family stability and the rescue of street children is only possible through economic prosperity. That prosperity is a by-product of democracy. And, democracy comes from tolerance, which is an expression of love and morality. Sadly, that is missing in Zimbabwe.
Voters must realise that they can never be safe as long as their opponents are persecuted and denied breathing space by a government which they either elected or not.
Zanu PF supporters will fail to show off with their supposed victory until the MDC gives them the blessing to do so.
In the meantime, more people - including the newly resettled farmers - will abandon their homes for cover.
Democracy comes from the rule of law, not by the rule of tyrants.
Morons. They actually thought they were going to get to keep that land. Ha!
D'you think all this was discussed at the UN Conference on Children, Clive?
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