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"Gone
to Egoli": Economic survival strategies in Matabeleland - A
preliminary study
Solidarity Peace Trust
June 30, 2009
http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/index.php?page=reports
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Executive
Summary
There is not much likelihood
that the formal economy in Zimbabwe will recover any time soon.
It is likely to take over a decade before industry begins to recover
in any meaningful way, and in the interim, Zimbabwe will continue
to lose her youth to the diaspora, and those left behind will struggle
to survive. Particularly in rural areas, grinding poverty is likely
to be a factor for the indefinite future.
Diasporisation is escalating
exponentially, with our sample families reporting a one hundred
fold increase in the rate at which family members are leaving, between
1990 and 2009. However, there is not proving to be a corresponding
return in remittances for rural families in Matabeleland.
While 59% of Zimbabweans
in the diaspora are under the age of 30, only 4% of these send goods
or money home on a regular basis - three times a year or more. Goods
and money sent home do not lift families out of desperate poverty.
76% of families with members in the diaspora received NO money at
all in 2008, and many of the remaining 34% received less than R100
a month. Goods sent home could amount to as little as 2 kg of sugar.
When asked to describe the impact of having family members abroad,
only 20% spoke of remittances. Most people referred to death, disease,
criminal habits, broken marriages and diaspora orphans.
Families have been driven
to bartering in the almost total absence of foreign exchange and
goods for sale in rural areas. This has been ruthlessly exploited
by the unscrupulous and at the end of last year, people in some
parts of Matabeleland had to barter cows for 50kg maize meal each.
Urban families have also resorted to barter as poverty overwhelms
them. The prospects are bleak for Zimbabwe's poorest citizens, and
for the nation's youth. The next few years are unlikely to see the
massive growth nationally that is needed to create the jobs that
could change this reality. What is more likely, is that Zimbabweans
will continue to stream across the borders - to be confronted in
turn with the hardship of life on the streets in South Africa.
Zimbabwe's poor are getting
poorer, and the degree to which remittances from abroad can mitigate
against this, has been overestimated when judged against the findings
of this study.
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