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Children who are begging on our streets also need survival, protection, education, safety from harm and inclusion in socio-economic issues

Hildegarde The Arena

The million-dollar question is, since these begging children live on the fringes of society, what opportunities are available to them? What mechanisms of inclusion into mainstream national affairs are available to them?

I vividly recall what used to happen in our village and other surrounding villages many moons ago, which are under Region IV of the country’s five agro-ecological zones where a good season could give you between 450mm to 650mm of rainfall.

The rains were also erratic and the soils poor in comparison to other regions.

During the rainy season, as children, we would sing the rain song “Mvura naya, naya tidye mupunga”, which was an oxymoron of things obtaining on the ground, for we rarely had rains that would enable people to plant rice, and we also did not have wetlands.

We experienced our first drought season when I was doing my Grade One, resulting in our school being placed under a supplementary feeding programme.

We enjoyed the food, but did not understand its meaning and implications on our lives in future as adults.

Many of us had never been to our home town Fort Victoria (now Masvingo), let alone the capital Salisbury (now Harare).

If the begging phenomenon that is now commonplace was happening then, we did not know, for we were shielded from it, meaning that none of us ran away from home to the city to end up as street children.

The limited exposure was a blessing in disguise, for the village protected us from the vagaries of such a life, where anything goes in order to survive.

I also remember that when the season was really bad, just like it is right now, we would have women coming from our neighbouring district to beg.

One year, we had one such woman who moved from one homestead to another, singing and dancing as an expression of her plight. It was demeaning, and although I was now doing my Grade Six, I could not understand why she had to reduce herself to that level in order to get something to feed her family.

Her act was the personification of poverty, lack and want, and our elders would always caution us never to laugh at someone facing challenges, since the probability of ending up in a similar situation could never be ruled out. They always said, “Seka urema wafa.”

The woman used our homestead as her base for a week, and this enabled her to go and beg in surrounding villages.

These haunting scenes of yesteryear have made me understand how easy it is to lose one’s self-esteem, and why also you cannot “hold your head high” while your hand is stretched out, begging.

While the begging we see in most parts of the central business district is not new, the caveat is that it has taken a new twist. During the summer season, children as young as four years old, and some 10-year-old girls with children strapped on their backs diced with death daily on major intersections like Samora Machel Avenue and Leopold Takawira Street, and/or Julius Nyerere Way and Kenneth Kaunda as they approach motorists, begging for anything from money, food and drink to water.

The demand for water for example was very high a few months ago when temperatures were extremely high.

Most of us have called these people and the children who are begging on our streets names.

Some children have been called delinquents who have run away from home and school, while their parents are accused of laziness.

As the El Niño-induced drought conditions affecting the whole nation continue unabated, with reports of people requiring food aid published on a regular basis, there are some among us who still think that the current begging phenomenon is a sign of laziness.

We are not condoning it, but this reality must be viewed in its proper context.

Now as temperatures continue to drop, you also wonder how they are managing. These children need hot food, warm clothing and a roof over their heads. As we went around to get accompanying pictures, the people were not at their usual points — children and their mothers.

It is not because they have been chased away, but it might be because of the cold weather conditions. The cash crunch might also be another compounding factor.

Notwithstanding, these children that are begging need a decent life and all the basic human rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says: “All children deserve the chance to be happy and healthy, explore their world safely, and reach their full potential. Yet the rights of millions of children are blocked by deprivation and discrimination based on factors beyond their control — their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, place of birth or whether they live with a disability, for example.

“When children do not have a fair chance in life, significant inequalities emerge between those who have the most and those who have the least. Those inequalities are passed from generation to generation in a vicious circle that has significant economic, political and social consequences — leading to an unequal and unfair world.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. With smart investments and targeted actions, every child can have a fair chance in life.”

They also need survival, protection, education, safety from harm and inclusion in socio-economic issues.

The state of the economy is a trendy topic, with cash shortages, adoption of bond notes and plastic money being among the issues discussed.

The million dollar question is, since these begging children live on the fringes of society, what opportunities are available to them? What mechanisms of inclusion into mainstream national affairs are available to them?