By Cheryl Robertson
I’m among the Zimbabwean diaspora, having left the country in 1987.Periodically I return home from my Dubai base, and last month’s visit was to establish how one organisation was helping pensioners unable to support themselves.
Many of these people lost homes and livelihoods after the government introduced a land redistribution policy whereby commercial farms were taken from some and given to others those loyal to the government.At the same time pensions and savings were wiped out as the Zimbabwean dollar reached an annual inflation rate of 231 million per cent (back in 2008).
Having no state support there is little they can do apart from start a business or find a job, not easy at 70-plus.Enter Hannes Botha, who, along with his brother Attie and volunteers from the Zimbabwe Pensioners Support Fund (ZPSF) non-profit organisation, regularly deliver basic food parcels to 1,650 pensioners.
Most have somewhere to live but even so it is difficult to survive on $19 a month, a typical pension.Some don’t get anything at all.So the ZPSF team source, collate then every 6 to 8 weeks deliver two truck-loads carrying about 20 tons of non-perishable food from Malelane in South Africa to 28 old age homes, private homes and feeding kitchens in Zimbabwe.
Pastor Attie, aged 64, and volunteer driver Boet Holmes, 68, picked me up in Harare in a 16 ton Nissan diesel UD 90 and we headed to Chinhoyi, a town 115 kilometres to the northwest.At Sunningdale Trust in Chinhoyi 36 boxes were off-loaded for pensioners here and in the Karoi and Kariba areas.Each box included small bags of maize meal, rice, sugar and oats; spaghetti, cooking oil, jam, coffee, salt, peanut butter, soup packets, yeast, candles, matches, a tin each of pilchards, baked beans, Vienna sausages, mixed vegetables and corned meat; plus one bar of soap and chocolate.The residents clad in hand-knitted jumpers gathered around the truck and looked for their boxes although some including two over 80 had already left for work.
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