LIFE looks gloomy for the San people in Tsholotsho North. A Southern Eye crew which visited the one-time hunter-gatherers in the Mazibulala and Dlamini villages under Chief Tategulu on Wednesday, discovered the area faces a severe food crisis with a number of San families literally living from hand to mouth.
SILAS NKALA STAFF REPORTER
Mazibulala village head Gedion Moyo said although the entire village was currently plagued by food shortages, the San had been hardest hit because they were finding it difficult adjusting from their life of hunter-gatherers to that of farmers.
“These people are seriously starving,” he said. “Even if you give them work to do, they are not used to the kind of hard work we do.”
Moyo said sometime back, San subjects used to hunt kudu and barter the game meat for maize with villagers, but since hunting is now illegal, they have been struggling to survive.
When Moyo took the Southern Eye crew and the Creative Arts and Education Development Association director Davy Ndlovu on a tour around several homesteads of the San, an elderly woman Gogo Kudukwa Mvundla, who does not know her age and only said she was born during the Sindibhuzwa or Mgarapasi years, told the crew that her life is a living hell.
Mvundla, who stays with her son Mahwitha (54), said she sometimes goes for up to three days without eating anything as hunger stalks the district.
“As we speak, I have not eaten anything since sunrise,” she said.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
“Men used to hunt and bring meat for the family when I was still young, but that is no longer the case these days.”
MaMvundla has eight grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.
Mahwitha said their fields had turned into bushes as they had no implements or draught power.
He said they were sometimes abused by other villagers with draught power who made them work in their fields during the tilling and planting season only to be given limited resources in the dry season as a form of payment.
“We fail to harvest as a result,” Mahwitha said.
“We survive through begging and doing piece jobs. Can the government and donors please assist us? Life is just a nightmare here.”
At another homestead, Elizabeth Ncube staying with five orphaned children, said she survives through selling thatching grass although customers are few.
“You see this grass! It has been here since June and no one is buying it,” she said. “We now only get food when someone gives us.”
Ncube said they used to buy maize from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) through the grain loan scheme after selling chickens, but since they no longer have any chickens left, they just starve like the rest.
Moyo revealed that the San last got GMB maize supplies last year.
Elizabeth Ncube said she struggles to pay fees for her five grandchildren enrolled at Bayane Primary School.
Kuhle Leonard Ncube (71), who stays with his wife Babili Mpofu, said they had not had anything to eat on Wednesday and “we will just sleep and wait for our death”.
He said it was a nightmare just to get a single meal.
Nduna Tshuma (72) and his wife Juliah Masuku (72) said they only get a little food when they work for other people.
“We have six orphaned grandchildren. I sell axe and hoe handles or do piece jobs to try and sustain the family,” Tshuma said.
Twitter feedback @silasnkala
