Tag: Zimbabwe

What Mandela means to me, a Zimbabwean

“S’khokhele Nkomo, s’khokhele Nkomo! S’khokhele Mandela, s’khokele Lorryhlahla!” (Lead us Nkomo, lead us! Lead us Mandela, lead us Rolihlahla!) we sang at the top of our squeaky voices. Up and down the maize field he made us march, brandishing our little hoes for Kalashnikovs. Our commander was my eldest brother Jabu and he did not tolerate slackers. No raspberry drink or a piece of bread for lazy “gorillas”, which is how we pronounced guerrillas. This was the early 1970s in our village in the then Selukwe District of Rhodesia. My young siblings and I had no idea who Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela were, but they sounded and felt extremely important to big brother and our mum. She was an extremely shy woman. In fact, this was the only time I remember her ululating in public.

After the umpteenth denial of my favourite drink, I just had to ask: “But who is this Mandela? Isn’t Nkomo what we call our cattle?”

The shock on Jabu’s face was indescribable. How could I not know? These two men were going to free us. Free all of us black people.

“From what?” my junior primary school-going-self was not bound by anything.

“From all of this! All of this!”

His arm swept across the entire universe in front of us. I nodded my not-so-small head. That sounded simple enough. If anyone could liberate me from hoeing the maize, carrying firewood each Thursday and fetching water from the brook too early in the morning in June, then that was alright. Nkomo and Mandela peered at me every day from Jabu’s little notebook. They had to be kept hidden in case the police and our father discovered them. Father did not like any talk of politics in our family.

Then vice-president Joshua Nkomo greets Nelson Mandela on his arrival in Harare on February 13 1997. (Reuters)

Forward to the early 1980s. I was now in secondary school. The name Nkomo had become synonymous with political ‘dissidents’; bad losers who wanted to prevent the rest of Zimbabwe from enjoying their independence. The mass media said Nkomo was bad, our lecturers at university also said he was a dissident. Jabu had already given up asking Nkomo to lead us anywhere, and was focusing on his football career instead. It was said Nkomo was not the one who had led our armed struggle for independence and freed us Zimbabweans, but the other one. I had never heard of this other one in the 1970s. We certainly didn’t sing about him on mummy’s maize patch.

Mandela was still around though, this time in colour! There was his smiley face, with the trademark dharakishon (hair parting), on his head. I learnt he was in prison. Suffering to free the people of South Africa. A few dozen of them were in my class at the University of Zimbabwe. They told me their stories. Sechaba’s father had been killed in prison, Linda’s mum beaten to death after a demonstration, Hlubi’s brother believed kidnapped and or killed by the police.

I cried each time I watched a play put on by the drama department. I read the news, books and watched television shows about Mandela and the other freedom fighters all for myself. This time I could toyi-toyi with meaning, not just because I was afraid of missing out on raspberry juice. We marched in solidarity with the youth of South Africa on June 16. Mandela’s birthday was a key feature on my calendar. On Africa Day we held vigils in Africa Unity Square in Harare. On October 7 1988, I almost lost a limb pushing and shoving to get into the stadium for a human rights concert held to call for an end to apartheid. Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, Sting, Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour performed. I voraciously read every speech and watched every bit of footage of Mandela’s wife, Winnie. I liked her wigs, which looked exactly like my mum’s. She spoke fearlessly. Beautifully. I admired her. Sometimes I forgot about Mandela; Winnie represented him.

We Zimbabweans closely followed the story of Mandela and apartheid, not just out of neighbourly curiosity. Zimbabwe supported the anti-apartheid movement, provided support and arms and gave refuge to ANC members. Just as others had done for us. As a result, there were several fatal bombings in Harare in the late 80s by South Africa’s apartheid government.

Mandela no longer felt as remote to me as he had back in my childhood. At last I began to appreciate what my brother had tried to teach me all those years ago. I rooted for Mandela and his people to achieve what we had in 1980. He was going to lead ‘us’, to freedom, and I felt led by him. The South was no longer another country.

He was released from prison on February 11 1990, a day before my 25^th birthday. There he was, just as I had imagined him, his face still as kind as I remembered. Winnie was at his side, in that wig! I did no work that day or the few days after that. I was free, too.

Nelson Mandela and his then wife Winnie raise their fists upon his release from prison on February 11 1990. (AFP)

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Nkomo has been dead since 1999, removed from this earth and largely airbrushed from history. He only gets dredged out when we need to use his name for present expediency.

And now, Mandela is gone. Each time I saw him and other older freedom struggle leaders of his generation on television, I simply thought of my dad who is now in his 80s. I wanted to rush and give them their bedroom slippers, a nice dressing gown, and a warm cup of cocoa. I am sure Mandela got that when he retired – unlike Nkomo who worked till he dropped, and others who don’t seem like they are ready for that warm cocoa yet.

I wish I had had the chance to sit on a cushion at Mandela’s feet and ask him: The Queen or Mrs Thatcher? What was with that hair cut? Boxing, seriously man? Did you miss Winnie? Otis Redding or Don Williams? Tambo or Sisulu, and don’t give me the political speak, which one did you really like? It would be just an ordinary conversation with an ordinary man who had extraordinary experiences.

I will always remember his kind face and his good leadership. (Reuters)

I think of Mandela, Nkomo and other men of their generation as reminders of where we have come from. I celebrate them, their often forgotten wives and their children. These men embodied our long and painful liberation struggles. They brought us this far, they’ve had their time. Mandela gracefully handed over the reins to the next generation and stepped away from public life over a decade ago, yet he will remain in my memory and consciousness forever. He gave me, a black Zimbabwean and African woman, something to hold on to; to believe in. He was a good leader. I will always remember him and speak of him in this way to my granddaughters when they grow up; casting him not as a man with mythical or saintly qualities, but a mere mortal like the rest of us. And I’m sure they won’t raise a quizzical eyebrow and ask: “Are you sure, Gogo? Did he really do all those things or are you exaggerating?”

I was freed from carrying firewood and fetching water from miles away and, thankfully, from toyi-toying on that barren maize patch! Thirty and some years later, the blood still rushes through my head each time I watch old footage of “gorillas” singing liberation songs. I get goose bumps when they sing “Sikhokele Nkomo! Sikhokele Rolihlahla”. When I sing it now, it’s still “Lorryhlala”, deliberately, for a good giggle. I doubt Mandela would mind.

Everjoice J. Win is a Zimbabwean feminist and writer.

11 years ago

Women dig into Zimbabwe’s male-dominated small-scale mining sector

The face of Lydia Madhoro (25) is dusted red from soil as she and her three female colleagues take a brief lunch break. They have been working since dawn on their gold mine in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central Province.

Their hand-dug shaft has reached about 10m in depth, and their conversation revolves around estimates of how much they will make from a pile of gold-bearing excavated rocks. The ore still has to be taken to a miller about 15km away to be crushed, after which it will be mixed with water and mercury to separate out the gold.

Truck operators who transport the ore charge them US$50 a ton, and casual labour used for the loading demand $10 for the same quantity. The millers charge a fifth of the gold obtained.

“We are at work almost every day of the week, going underground for the ore. This is extremely hard work that has been associated with men for a long time, but we are now used to it. We have to do it because, as single mothers, we must feed our families,” Madhoro told IRIN.

The four women formed a syndicate in 2011 to acquire their 0.8-hectare claim near Mazowe, about 50km northeast of the capital, Harare. Madhoro and her partners are certified gold miners and sellers from the mining town of Bindura, about 40km away. They paid about US$1 200 for the registration, prospecting licences from local administrators and surveyor’s fees.

In a good month, they make as much as $2 500 from the mineral, which they sell to the government-owned Fidelity Printers at $50 a gram. The money is divided among the partners in equal shares after paying the millers’ fees and transport costs; the proceeds have so far been used to build basic housing.

“Even though we are not yet making that much money, the good thing is that we have stood up as women to fend for ourselves. We are actually doing better than some men, and I am proud of the fact that I single-handedly feed my twin daughters and can afford money for their primary education, clothes and other basic needs,” Madhoro said.

“There are tangible gains for women who have joined the sector as small-scale miners, especially in gold and chrome, as they can afford household nutritional needs, pay school and medical fees, and even afford some modest luxuries.” – Eveline Musharu (Pic: Reuters)

Breaking barriers
Zimbabwe’s economic malaise, now more than a decade old, is seeing women take on work that has traditionally been deemed the domain of men. Madhoro and her colleagues’ mining enterprise is far from unique, she says. She is aware of numerous women-owned and operated mining syndicates in the province, in districts like Bindura, Shamva and Madziwa.

Eveline Musharu, president of the 50 000-strong NGO Women in Mining, which helps women start mining ventures, told IRIN: “Women are breaking the barriers by venturing into mining, an industry that is dominated by men. There are tangible gains for women who have joined the sector as small-scale miners, especially in gold and chrome, as they can afford household nutritional needs, pay school and medical fees, and even afford some modest luxuries.”

The national NGO was established in 2003, and its members are mainly drawn from the ranks of the rural poor, the disabled, widows, single mothers and those living with HIV and Aids. Musharu said women are turning to mining as an economic lifeline because, given the vagaries of the climate, subsistence farming is no longer a guarantee of putting food on the table.

Madhoro’s route to mining began when she became pregnant by a teacher, dropped out of school and gave birth to twins. Her parents disowned her, and she went to live with her grandmother. When her children were six months old, she became an illegal miner. One night, after digging for gold along the Mazowe River, she was nearly raped by a group of other illegal miners; after that, she tried to make a living as a hawker. Then she learned about Women in Mining.

When she approached the NGO for advice on how to enter the mining sector, the organization suggested she form a women’s syndicate before applying for a prospecting licence. She chose her three partners because they were already friends and stayed in the same suburb in Bindura.

Boosting incomes
The six-year-old Zimbabwe Women Rural Development Trust (ZWRDT), which has more than 500 members and operates mainly in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces, also helps women get a foothold in the mining sector. More than 100 members of the organization are miners.

ZWRDT director Sarudzai Washaya said 35 of the members, all of whom had previously worked as illegal miners, had been coached to enter the sector legally, and have seen their incomes grow as a result. According to Washaya, mining legally has several advantages, including eliminating the risk of being arrested and having one’s minerals confiscated. Legal miners are also guaranteed of a formal market where they are safe from thieves.

“There is a lot of keenness on the part of rural women to get into mining as they realize the opportunities that the sector offers. Chiefs and district administrators help our members identify and obtain mining claims, and ZWRDT facilitates the acquisition of prospecting licences, and prospective miners pay a joining fee of $20,” Washaya told IRIN.

“We have realized that it is important to build confidence in women, [showing them] that they can perform just as well as, if not better than, the men who dominate the mining sector. In some cases, the women are now employing men, and a few have even managed to buy luxury cars,” she said.

Capital often out of reach
Accessing capital for mining ventures remains one the biggest obstacles for women. Mining equipment, such as compressors for milling ore and pumps to drain water from mine shafts, are generally unaffordable, and women miners have to resort to renting equipment at high costs, eroding their profit margins.

Virginia Muwanigwa of the Women’s Coalition in Zimbabwe, a national NGO for the advancement of women, told IRIN: “Because our society is dominated by men, it is difficult for women to produce collateral when approaching banks. They don’t have title deeds to land, especially in rural areas.”

She said, “If well supported, women can use their involvement in mining to fight the many livelihood vulnerabilities they face. Women miners can benefit a lot from a revolving fund that the government and donors can help establish and from which they can borrow, as banks are unwilling to lend them money.”

The lack of equipment makes mining an even more arduous occupation. “Some of the women have given up on mining because of its high demands and gone back to face poverty in the villages. There is need for the government to give us support because, currently, we are struggling to sustain ourselves in mining,” Washaya said.

11 years ago

Techies ride Zimbabwe’s internet wave

On the benches outside the pub overlooking the cricket greens at Harare Sports Club, they hunch over laptops, selling ideas as diverse as how to sell cattle and how to help urban dwellers cook traditional meals.

It is a long way from Silicon Valley in California, but, amid a boom in social media use, Zimbabwe is seeing the emergence of a fast-growing start-up scene.

A few years ago Limbikani Makani was a bored IT manager at a nongovernmental organisation. He quit his job and set up TechZim, a tech news website that is hosting a “start-up challenge”, attended by dozens of tech developers.

The interest has grown since the first event, which was held two years ago, reflecting the growing number of developers in Zimbabwe.

“We have created a launch pad for these entrepreneurs, enabling them to accelerate their start-ups to a level where they can make revenue,” Makani says.

Teledensity, the ratio of telephones to the population, stood at 91% in February, a big jump from 14% in 2008. Over the same period, mobile access has risen from about 11% to nearly 100%.

Access to the internet
In 2000, only 0.4% of Zimbabweans had access to the internet. Now the figure has risen to 40%, according to official data.

Usage is also rising as access grows. Opera, one of the world’s largest mobile browsers, says Zimbabwe is one of its fastest growing markets, and had the highest numbers of “page views” in Africa in 2011.

Zimbabwe has been named as one of the most dynamic countries in the world, with above-average growth in information technology over the past year. (Shepherd Tozvireva)

And last week, the International Telecommunications Union named Zimbabwe among 12 “most dynamic countries” in the world that have recorded above-average growth in information and communications technology over the past year.

In the boom, developers are stirring; the numbers are growing, and so is the range of their ideas.

Last year Allister Banks set up RLMS, or the Remote Livestock Marketing System, a start-up that allows trade of livestock online.

“We have traded close to $4-million so far,” Banks says.

Paying lobola via RLMS
On his website Banks invites users abroad to pay their lobola cattle via RLMS. He has a selection of cattle on display on the site, from which, he says, a prospective groom can choose.

“If there is no space in the in-laws’ residence for the cattle, don’t worry. Each animal you choose and buy can be ear tagged, branded, entered into a national database, kept at one of our partner farms, looked after.”

And then there is ZimboKitchen, a service that delivers tutorials such as “how to make plain sadza”, and gives recipes for other popular Zimbabwean dishes such as beef trotters, or muboora, pumpkin leaves stewed in peanut butter.

There is also TestLabs, a service that provides local high school students and teachers with relevant exam revision tools.

Some of the websites and apps are already popular, but the challenge is to help developers make money.

Investors are conservative and hesitate to gamble on start-ups, most of which are run by “green, fresh-out-of-college dreamers”, as one bank chief executive described them.

Free downloads
For now, most of the apps are free to download. Developers themselves have little knowledge about how to turn their ideas into dollars, a gap the likes of Makani are trying to bridge.

“The two sides don’t speak the same language,” he says.

The techies also struggle to be taken seriously.

“Our society demands that you have an actual job,” developer Pardon Muza says, making finger quotes to show his annoyance.

Muza is one of many developers building an online payments site.

“You have to put up with being asked when you’ll get a proper job, wear a tie and work normal hours and stuff.”

But Makani says developers are now increasingly focusing on building services that don’t just sound cool, but bring solutions that can earn them money.

“Initially, we focused on pure innovation in terms of technology and utility, but this has evolved into a more practical approach where strong market potential overrides technology that is used just for the sake of using cool technology,” Makani says.

Jason Moyo for the Mail & Guardian, where this post was first published.

11 years ago

Girls, football and politics in Zimbabwe

I recently visited a primary school in my neighbourhood to run an errand. It was break time when I arrived and the chorus of children’s excited voices had reached its crescendo. As I made my way to the office that I was looking for, I was confronted by emotions that I have become used to feeling each time I enter a government institution: shock at the levels of dilapidation of infrastructure and frustration at the seeming lack of interest in improving it.

As I walked down the concrete pathway, I looked over to the school’s sports field where thick clouds of dust erupted continuously as hoards of children played football.

There used to be a green and fertile lawn on those grounds once.

A Cabinet of three women
Upon stopping to spectate, I began to notice a few other things about this match. Firstly, it wasn’t an 11-a-side affair – most informal games aren’t. In fact, I don’t believe there were even sides to begin with, seeing as there were at least 40 children on the turf scrambling for the ball. But secondly, and this more interesting to me, there was a sizeable group of girls sitting in the bleachers half watching the encounter and half engaged in their own conversations.

There were no boys in the bleachers, just as there were no girls on the pitch.

Again, there isn’t much that’s new about this scenario; it plays itself out in schools everywhere. But I began to think about it from a more pointed perspective.

A few weeks ago, Zimbabwe’s Cabinet was announced. Of the 26 ministers appointed, only three are women. This represents an 11.5% female proportion – a figure significantly lower than the 50/50 threshold aspired for by 2015 through the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. Furthermore, the announcement came at a time when Senegal had just elected feminist leader Aminata Touré as Prime Minister and Rwanda’s Parliament had recorded an unprecedented 64% representation for women in the Chamber of Deputies. While the main focus of Zimbabwe’s new Cabinet has largely been the reinstatement of an old Zanu-PF guard (with the MDC no longer a part of power-sharing), the retrogression of female political participation calls for some expedient action and analysis.

Aminata Touré was appointed prime minister of Senegal on September 1 2013. (Pic: AFP)

As women took to social media to protest, there was a very clear voice from the men – “Well, who did you want them to put?” – as if a defence of turf and territory had erupted within them.

In many ways, I feel that the soccer field scenario yields some of the answers to Zimbabwe’s present female leadership and participation dilemma.

‘Rough’ pursuits are for the boys
Why do the little girls not play football with the boys?

My first response is to say that they – just as the boys who do play – have been socialised to believe that football and other ‘rough’ pursuits are for boys. Girls are supposed to be dainty and pristine in a system that is preparing them for marriage and motherhood.

There is nothing new in this analysis and we know that it generally means that the little girl who wants to play football – or the little boy who wants to sit and talk – each face an incredible amount of pressure to conform to prescribed gendered roles and expectations. Their peers will tease them if they do not; even their teachers and parents might join in.

And with crazed amounts of homophobia in Zimbabwe, anything that sits outside the bounds of ‘normality’ is deeply chastised. I recall once overhearing a father tell his son not to touch or play with his sister’s pink teddy bear because he would “become gay”. The boy, just five, was obviously puzzled. But therein had begun his socialisation around the colour pink, teddy bears and sexuality.

But I also began to look at the football scene from a practical perspective. The playground was dusty and the boys’ uniforms were getting filthy. While already an accepted consequence of ‘playing rough’, there is another layer to the matter.

From what I have observed, most boys do not do their own laundry; a maid or mother or sister or aunt takes care of this chore, leaving the male child free to soil and damage his clothes as much as wants to. Someone else will take care of the mess.

But the same is not usually so for the girls who, in efforts towards entrenching domesticity (or is it independence?), are washing their own clothes long before puberty hits. So playing football with the boys has a few more ramifications than mere social stigma; playing football means getting dirty, and then having to clean the mess up yourself. Put simply, it means extra work. Even if the girls did start to play, they might play with a bit more caution and attention to dirtiness.

So what could, or would, happen if the school I visited decided to invest in growing back its lawn? Could a change in at least some of the girls’ behaviour be seen? Could such a structural modification challenge the socially driven aspects of their action, or inaction?

Supporters of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe listen to his televised speech during the official opening ceremony of the first session of Zimbabwe’s Parliament in Harare on September 17 2013. (Pic: AFP)

If we change the arena, we may draw a few parallels. Just like football, politics is a dirty game. And the dirtier a woman gets, the more she has to ‘clean herself up’ while facing social stigma for her stance. Furthermore, if a girl is not opened up to the possibility of parity and full participation in her childhood, we shouldn’t expect to magically see this manifest in her when she’s a woman. Even the portfolios that Zimbabwe’s female ministers hold are telling of the positions that are deemed appropriate for a woman: Women’s Affairs (Oppah Muchinguri), Small and Medium Enterprises (Sithembiso Nyoni), Higher and Tertiary Education (Olivia Muchena). Unlike finance or ICT portfolios, these are women’s ‘normalised’ roles, like sitting in the bleachers.

I do not write this to exonerate President Robert Mugabe from blame for his heavily imbalanced Cabinet. But I do write it to make clear to the men who have dismissed women’s protests that they do so from a privileged position in society where all arenas, no matter how dirty, are normalised to their needs and aspirations.

Zimbabwean society needs a social and structural shakeup for women and girls to begin to get somewhere. And this starts with the seemingly small acts that take place during tea and lunch breaks in school yards. Those girls in the bleachers hold some of the solution, as do we, their mothers, sisters, aunts and elders.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter.

This post was first published on Her Zimbabwe.

11 years ago

Zimbabwe’s coffee farmers struggle amid global boom and political gloom

A misty dawn has not yet given way to daylight in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands. Lenard Moyo, a coffee farmer near Chipinge town, is prising red arabica beans out of their trees and putting them in his bag – as he does every morning during harvest season. “It’s hard when it’s so cold outside, but we have to pick them early,” he said.

A woman harvests ripe coffee berries. [Pic: Reuters]

Zimbabwe’s coffee belt has the perfect growing conditions for the beans: high mountain peaks and cool climates, and the country used to be famous for its “super-high-quality” product, slowly sun-dried, and tasting smooth and fruity. In the 1990s it produced some of the best coffee in the world, alongside South America and Kenya, generating crucial foreign currency and a livelihood for many labourers and small-scale farmers, as well as the big commercial farms.

But today the industry is in decline: many of the mills have been abandoned, farmers are in debt, and Zimbabwe produces just 60 “bags” of coffee beans a year compared with 250 bags in 1988 – with one bag amounting to 60 tonnes of coffee.

Earlier this year the European Union announced €10m (R132-million) in aid to Zimbabwe’s medium and small-scale farmers, in an attempt to revive the industry. But there’s a catch. “Coffee is an important crop and we’ll consider funding requests from small farmers provided the land involved is not in dispute,” Aldo Dell’Ariccia, head of the EU delegation to Zimbabwe, told the CAJ news agency.

Moyo said this caveat disqualified the majority of farmers. “Most of our small coffee plots are on land being contested in court by former white farmers. We’ll simply not qualify,” he said.

The disputes began in 2000, when young militants loyal to the president, Robert Mugabe, stormed white-owned farms to reclaim the land. At the time, Moyo was what was known as an “out-grower” – a black farmer owning a small plot of land next to a large commercial farm, relying on his neighbours for finance, expertise and machinery.

Production plummets
“First, [the militants] pruned down our coffee beans and burned hectares of trees in a week of rage. Coffee drying pens were turned into nurseries for marijuana and wild vegetables,” he said. “The new farm owners wanted instant profit but a coffee tree once planted takes three to five years to mature.”

Production plummeted as the new landowners could not secure bank loans to buy fertilisers or repair ageing infrastructure. Many were new to the business, and lacked the expertise to keep quality high.

In turn, international buyers began to shun Zimbabwean coffee, and in 2010 the Mutare Coffee Mill, considered one of the best in Africa, was forced to shut down. It required at least 4 000 tonnes of coffee to operate profitably but was receiving just 300.

And while Zimbabwean coffee growers struggle, elsewhere the industry is booming. Ten years ago the average cost of a tonne of coffee was $1 400, now it can fetch up to $4,000 (R39 400), according to the International Coffee Organisation.

“Zimbabwe is losing billions of dollars annually as the price of coffee has increased to about $3 per pound, up from $1 per pound in the 90s,” Gifford Trevor, president of Zimbabwe’s Coffee Growers Association, told News24.

Most of the country’s coffee farmers lack cash reserves to support themselves when the crop fails or yields are low, according to World Vision. The charity is training farmers and offering much-needed supplies such as fertilisers, irrigation systems and pesticides. But the farmers are still unable to compete with better organised growers in countries such as Rwanda, Kenya and Malawi.

Suppliers at a disadvantage
The global coffee industry is also stacked against suppliers, with the bulk of the profit going to those further up the chain.

In August, on a sponsored trip to Johannesburg, 39-year-old Moyo tasted his first cappuccino. “I thought it was bitter lemon,” he said. He was particularly horrified to pay $3 for one cup, compared with the $5.30 he receives for a bag of raw coffee beans.

Peter Multz, a former consultant for the Dutch charity SNV, which works with Zimbabwean farmers to improve their business skills, said most of the profit went to shippers, roasters and retailers. He said Zimbabwean farmers also faced particular problems.

“Sometimes the coffee is delayed at border crossings for up to a week, and without proper facilities the beans go bad. Sometimes buyers have to pay a bribe to let their coffee shipments go through,” he said.

With a more stable economy and western governments starting to release aid, Zimbabwean farmers hope that the country’s coffee industry will recover. But for Moyo times are still hard: “I can’t even pay my farm workers and coffee pickers properly,” he said. “Sometimes we reward them with milk, soya meals, and clothes after every harvest. As we say here, cash is a crunch.”

Ray Mhondera for the Guardian Africa Network. Mhondera is editor of The Africa Scientist Magazine.