Hazel Marimbiza
Tinashe is not afraid of contracting coronavirus when he leaves home each day with door mats to sell at Bulawayo’s Hillside Shopping Centre.
But the 11-year-old street vendor does fear not being able to provide for his family if he fails to earn enough money.
“My mother is sick so she depends on me,” he told B-Metro in the afternoon while selling his wares under the scorching sun with little to eat or drink.
Tinashe left school last year as his mother could not afford the fees, and joined the growing ranks of children sent or forced to work and trade goods on the streets amid the pandemic.
“I do hear about Covid-19. They say the virus is dangerous,” said Tinashe, who was not practising social distancing while selling the mats.
“But we are not afraid of it because we are told that it does not kill Africans.”
While the country has not been particularly hit hard by Covid-19 the ensuing economic fallout has driven more children to sell goods on the streets, campaigners said.
Street children are a common sight in the country and child labour on the streets is becoming more prevalent in Zimbabwe.
Prior to the pandemic, the number of child workers globally dropped to 152 million from 246 million in 2000, according to the UN International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Yet the Covid-19 fallout has put millions more children at risk of underage labour — due to school closures, job losses and deepening poverty — and jeopardised a UN global goal of ending the practice by 2025, leading child rights experts have warned.
On the streets of Bulawayo, children as young as seven can be seen selling food and water to passersby.
Many are orphans or alone as a result of insecurity; others are put to work by their parents to help make ends meet.
Lilian, 10, said she only sells doughnuts on the weekends when not at school while 14-year-old Nothabo explained how she managed to juggle her trade in scones with an education.
Yet such cases are rare as most children on the streets are out-of-school and without any support, several activists said.
The ability of Zimbabwean families to take care of children has been compromised by the harsh economy, compounded by Covid-19.
The Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation in Zimbabwe has estimated that over 20 000 children have turned to vending as a means of survival since the Covid-19 lockdown.
According to reports, child vendors in the city of Bulawayo mostly sell fruit and vegetables. And in the capital, Harare, they sell a variety of goods from vegetables to used clothes and shoes.
The phenomenon of child vendors in Zimbabwe has been topical for some time. But the situation appears to be worsening.
There are no statistics about how much income vendors make, due to the informal nature of this business and a lack of centralised co-ordination of their activities.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that poverty is the reason children are on the streets. But in their efforts to help their families, they are exposed to risks such as exploitation, abuse and missing school.
Child rights advocates said the situation calls for a critical conversation about the capacity of families to protect and care for their children and the role of social protection policies in the country.
“Children aren’t being adequately protected from child labour and the risks they face, including exploitation and abuse.
When children spend hours of their day in the streets or at the market, they lose a portion of their childhood that will never be regained. They miss out on education, play opportunities and other childhood activities. This has far-reaching effects on their development,” said Doctor Getrude Dadirai Gwenzi, an early career researcher in the sociology of child welfare in Africa.
She urged the Government to prevent child vending through identifying families that are at risk of losing their livelihood.
“Social policy programmes need to be expanded to cover more people. This implies increasing the social protection budget to cater for growing numbers of families with children in need.
“Policymakers and social service practitioners must consider adopting a bottom-up approach and work collaboratively with the affected and at-risk families. This can be done through participatory approaches such as workshops to hear from the community how best the issue of child labour can be tackled in this economy,” said Dr Gwenzi.
