For most of the last nine years, Admire Munatsi has got to his boss’s farmhouse in Beatrice, 65km south of Harare, at dawn, to begin a range of tasks from cleaning the chicken run and pigsty to washing cars. By 7am, he joins his workmates in his oversized work suit and tattered gumboots to start a 10-hour shift as an irrigator at the farm.
Al Jazeera spoke to almost a dozen labourers, but most chose to speak anonymously for fear of reprisals from their bosses. In the 1950s and 60s, there was an influx of migrant workers from neighbouring Malawi and Zambia into the Zimbabwean job market, offering cheap labour. Some local labourers were forcibly recruited, but for others, it was a choice between working for cheap or starving in their villages where there were no jobs.
This controversial occupation of Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms was accompanied by sanctions from Western countriesand record hyperinflation. This further worsened the plight of most farm workers who were earning trillions of Zimbabwean dollars that amounted to only a few US dollars.
_Business Stay tuned, Coming to SA some time in the future...
_Business African slavery is not a colonial heritage. They enslaved each other long before colonialism. They sold their own kind to white and Arab slave traders at Bunce Island and Zanzibar (amongst others) long time ago...
_Business Ihm, but the white farmers have left? No one else to blame now?
_Business My question is, how did he stay a farm worker for 9 years? He could have startes his own chicken business by now and liberated himself.
_Business Do not moan if you get what you voted for!
_Business Black people do not like to work. Lazy by nature, lazy by attitude no matter who defines working conditions and procedures. They want to be paid to sit in the sun, talk and drink.
_Business They got the land. Stop complaining.. Go celebrate. Get some putu, light the fire in the hut, and party like it's 1700 and give us a VIVA! baba 😜
_Business Lobbying for another ZEP extension?👀🤟
_Business Lol. Black Africans still whining their lot 43 years after becoming “independent”. I thought the new land “owners” were mostly black themselves now? TIA
_Business Stiil the blamegame. You should have improved by now. Realy. Incompetent to govern. Also criminal politicians? Where are all the supporters? Did they not help to build a d prosper. Whats wrong with you? Fools. Stand up build you got clever peoples
_Business Oh no! After many years under ZanuPF?
_Business But they wanted the white people gone so they could get the land. Why are they complaining now? There's no white people to boss them around anymore, thought that's what they wanted. Seems their own treat them even worse than the white farmers did. U reap what u sow!
_Business Another blessed feature. l am so proud of myself for this moment. A huge appreciation to Brandonkaren11 for helping me through Bitcoin mining investment !!
_Business But they will never admit that nationalizing everything tore apart their own country
_Business This is what they wanted, so no use crying now