Grace Mutandwa

Blog Action Day: Take action and make poverty history

Politicians and donor agencies speak of poverty in romantic tones. When they pour out facts and figures in passionate voices you almost believe they are actually going to tackle it in a sustainable manner.

As a journalist, I used to write equally passionately about poverty. I actually believed I was making a difference. Just like the donors and politicians, I simply spoke or wrote about poverty. I had never gone to bed on an empty stomach or failed to pay for my children's education or foot their health bills.

Today I know first hand what poverty means. I have just had to buy five bags of maize for my extended family so that they can at least survive until the new year. From a life of priviledge, I have seen some members of my family plunged into poverty. When the politicians roll out the numbers, members of my family are included in the growing list.

I have several relatives who have one meal a day or every other day. They can not afford to get proper medical care. A cousin needs Z$45 000 to fill a prescription, that is if she pays cash but if she pays by cheque it swells to Z$2.5m. She is unemployed and her husband has not had a job in five years. They have four children who until their father lost his job, were well fed, went to school and lived a life of hope. They used to be classified as middle-class. Now they are poor.

The middle-class has disappeared. People are either rich or poor and the ranks of the poor are swelling everyday. Everyday you forgo one thing or the other so you may live to see tomorrow. Eventually there is nothing to hold onto and you fall into the huge poverty hole.

My maternal grandmother is stuck in our rural home and I and two cousins have been the only people who have been able to visit her. She has 29 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. She has three surviving children and they are all pensioners, surviving on the little doled out to them by their children. Their pensions of less than US$1 a month are worthless.

I have an aunt who has a son studying and working in the United Kingdom. That young man can not even start thinking of getting married let alone start his own family. He looks after his mum, three adult siblings, several aunts and cousins. His siblings are all out of school but they have never worked and have absolutely no hope of ever working.

I am not yet classified poor but I am surrounded by so many relatives who are, at times I feel poverty is just a stone's throw from my own doorstep. I live in fear of poverty.

It is very easy to talk of poverty in an abstract way, but it is hard when you actually have to deal with it everyday. It is there and stares you in the face all the time.

You only need to walk the streets of our capital city, Harare, to see how much of a toll poverty has taken on Zimbabweans. In the heat of the summer, you walk past masses of people who have probably not had a bath in a month. Soap, deodorant and toothpaste have become a luxury. That is poverty.

When three urban settlements get hit by cholera, killing 18 people, you know the country is not ready to make poverty history. With annual inflation now above 200 million %, reality on the ground tells you that Zimbabwe is facing; "poverty for all by the year 2010".

We have a whole generation of children who stand to be ruined because for the first time in history all the children in government schools have, according to the Zimbabwe Progress Teachers Union, had 23 days worth of education in the whole year. Teachers have spent more time on industrial action or in bank queues battling to get their worthless salaries, than teaching pupils. Some of the teachers have run away from the rural schools where they were terrorised by ruling party members in the run up to the disputed presidential run-off.

Surely it means Zimbabwe is facing unprecedented levels of poverty when the country has recorded a 78% food deficit with no real hope of the country being able to import enough grain to offset the deficit. More than five million people face starvation. And that is the number on record. There are plenty more who will die quietly and unnoticed.

The World Food Programme has appealed to donors to give several hundreds of millions with which to import food to help feed millions of Zimbabweans who can no longer feed themselves.

Poverty is surely something that most Zimbabweans are currently experiencing first hand and at the moment with the economic and political situation in a tailspin there is no hope of fighting it effectively.

We have had no substantive government for almost seven months now. With no one in control except Robert Mugabe, there are clear indications that we have a national disaster on our hands. A few will be fed by Mugabe's ZANU PF if they prove their loyalty but many will go hungry.

For us in Zimbabwe, poverty is no longer something donor agencies hold workshops over or something that you only read of in newspapers. It is very real and we see it everyday. We interact with poverty at every turn. We have seen our country turn from being a regional bread basket into a basket case. We have witnessed our country go from riches to rags. Where at independence in 1980 we had hope, we now have despair.

Yes, for Zimbabweans poverty is a painful reality and the adage; "The poor will always be with us," rings very true for us. With a good political leadership we would be a very rich country and any country that adopts Zimbabwe's ruinous policies will easily accompany us to doom. As citizens we need to reclaim our future and play a positive role in eradicating poverty.

If we do not take action and stand up now, we will fail to make poverty history - it will simply fast become our way of life.

Posted at 14:05 15 October 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[4]