Zimbabwe Cane Cutters Fume Over 'Slave' Wages
by Godfrey Mutimba
"They spend the
whole day in the fields in the scorching sun."
This article was originally published in The Standard, Zimbabwe's Sunday newspaper.
Workers with
blackened faces carry huge bundles of burnt sugar cane in the scorching heat of
the Lowveld sun. Their clothes are tattered and their buttocks
exposed as they go up and down the fields barefoot and with little food to eat.
Ironically, their new employers sit relaxed, wining and dining on the verandahs
of the mansions they grabbed from former owners of the land.
Welcome to Hippo Valley in Chiredzi where memories of the
slave trade, when Africans were subjected to forced labor on white-owned
plantations, easily come to mind. Farm workers employed by the newly-resettled
farmers in the sugar cane industry in the Lowveld claim they are getting a raw
deal from their new paymasters - a paltry $200,000 a month.
[Readers note: Currency in Zimbabwe has become so
inflated, Zimbabwean dollars can be measured in small fractions of U.S.
pennies.]
The cane cutters say they have been reduced to destitution
as their meager pay is not enough to buy a two-liter bottle of cooking oil, at
$800,000 on the black market. They spend the whole day in the fields in the
scorching sun, battling to reach their targets: ten tons of cane a day, which
fetches $360 million for the new farmers.
"'We are living in poverty since these war veterans took over
the farms,' said Justin Chauke, who works for a war veteran known as Comrade
Satan."
Disgruntled cane cutters say they were better off under
their previous employers, the white commercial farmers. "We are living in
poverty since these war veterans took over the farms," said Justin Chauke,
who works for a war veteran known as Comrade Satan. "They pay us a meager
$200,000 a month, and we do not know how they expect us to survive." Chauke said: "This is tantamount to
slavery. We have nowhere to go since some of us are not educated. Our former
employers, though white, paid us handsomely and we and our families could
afford a decent life."
The Zimbabwe Sugar Milling Industry Workers' Union said they
were aware of the pathetic plight of cane cutters.
Secretary-general Admore Hwarare said they had engaged the
new farmers to review their workers' pay in compliance with government
regulations. Hwarare said: "As a union, we are proposing $1 million as the
minimum for a worker to afford a decent living." A number of the cane cutters said they could
not afford even a bucket of maize-meal, now $350,000.
"I failed to pay school fees for my
children," said another cane cutter, "and had no option but to have
them join me as farm laborers, so that we could get more money for our upkeep.
"Instead of getting $200,000, my three children and my wife and I get
$600,000: we combine the salaries so that we are able to buy enough food."
Melanie Dominguez is lead organizer for the Katal Center for Equity, Health and Justice.
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