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Zimbabweans finding life tough in Botswana
Gibbs Dube, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
June 04, 2006

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=11&id=990&siteid=1

GABORONE — Rebecca Tsikira sits at Gaborone long-distance bus terminus waiting for customers to snap up her Zimbabwean brands of cigarettes.

Business has been booming throughout the day and within the next few days, she will go back home, visit the illegal money market and make millions of dollars from her informal trade.

This has become part of her life as she travels to Botswana every fortnight to sell her wares, ranging from dried bean leaves (umfushwa/mufushwa), cigarettes and an assortment of goods.

Right across town in Gaborone West (G-West) another Zimbabwean, Nonsi is in a shady night business that has stood the test of time — commercial sex work.

She sells her body for between P30 and P100.

About two kilometres away at White City suburb, large numbers of people sit in groups and whenever a vehicle parks by the roadside, they move like swarms and beg for piece work. The area they occupy is now affectionately known as Harare. This is where poor Zimbabweans attempt to eke out a living.

In most cases, they move from door to door in the leafy suburbs of Phakalane and Mokolodi, searching for jobs which earn them between P400 and P600 a month. As they do not have the necessary work permits some end up on the receiving end – getting the boot from their employers for demanding their wages. Most of them are border jumpers.

This is the life of thousands of Zimbabweans who are trekking to Botswana in search of jobs but who end up in informal businesses in order to make a living. They have left their country due to the harsh socio-economic and political environment.

With inflation pegged at more than 1049%, life has become unbearable in Zimbabwe.

Tsikira says: "We have been reduced to beggars. Life is difficult back home and engaging in this informal trade assures my family of at least two meals a day. I make between P2 000 and P2 500 a trip. I have a lot of customers for Zimbabwean cigarettes, mufushwa and handicrafts."

When she goes back home, she prefers changing her money on the parallel market where a Pula fetches between Z$47 000 and Z$50 000, compared to the official exchange rate of Z$18 000.

Tsikira is among hundreds of informal traders at Gaborone Bus Terminus, where security agents are the only threat to their booming business.

"Sometimes we lose most of our wares when we are raided by the police, looking for illegal immigrants. It is difficult to resume our operations when police confiscate all the goods. In some cases, one gets stranded here for failing to get a single pula to board a bus to Zimbabwe," says another informal trader, who only identified himself as Justin.

He says informal traders who lose their wares end up causing havoc in the Botswana capital as they turn to crime in order to make ends meet.

To the majority of job seekers, life is also tough as they fight to carve a niche for themselves in the volatile employment market. Formal jobs are strictly for Batswana with Zimbabweans restricted to doing menial jobs like gardening, house-keeping and herding livestock.

James Ndiweni of Kezi has not found gainful employment for almost a month and his dry lips are a testimony to the hardships he is facing in Botswana.

He covers Mokolodi, Phakalane and Botswana Housing Corporation’s Phase Five and Phase Two residential areas on an empty stomach every day with little hope of getting a job.

His friends identified as Phakama and Judith were lucky to be employed recently as gardener and housekeeper respectively. They were promised P400 each to be paid at the end of the month but it still remains to be seen whether they will get the money or be reported to the police for working without permits.

Domestic workers are regarded as among the least paid employees in Botswana and for Zimbabweans, a paltry P400 or P600 is hardly enough to cater for a single person’s upkeep for a month in that country with few Pulas supposed to be smuggled back home for starving family members.

Life is also not rosy for Nonsi and her nine colleagues found loitering at Gaborone West Shopping Mall for purposes of commercial sex.

"We have failed to get jobs. My parents do not even know that I get money through commercial sex. It’s all because of the Zimbabwe economy that has collapsed," says Nonsi, a resident of Emakhandeni suburb in Bulawayo.

But it’s not all that easy for the cross border commercial sex workers.

"It is a question of survival of the fittest in Gaborone. You have to be ruthless to be paid for services rendered because most Batswana men always refuse to pay," one of Nonsi’s friends, who only identified herself as Nyarai from Harare’s high-density suburb of Dzivarasekwa said.

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