Zimbabwe’s worsening fuel crisis has occasioned some unusual social customs. Of these, the daily activities of Golden Chamisa (20) certainly rank among the more desperate.
Chamisa earns a meagre wage jobbing for the truckers congregated in the Zimbabwean border town of Beit Bridge. Not that he is paid for cleaning and servicing the large pantechnikons loaded with fuel and goods.
As fair exchange for his services the truckers simply allow Chamisa to siphon-off the last dregs of fuel from the empty tankers they are returning to South Africa.
”Why should I be afraid of the police?” Chamisa asks laconically as he watches a modest flow of fuel drain into an open drum. His contempt is palpable.
Chamisa dips a finger into the retrieved liquid and then tastes it.
”It’s a leaded blend,” he says authoritatively, moving off to drain another exit pipe.
On Zimbabwe’s burgeoning black market for fuel, Chamisa’s moderate fuel stash promises him rich cash rewards. Depending on the availability of fuel, which nowadays is erratic, Chamisa’s price will vary between Z$20 000 and Z$25 000 for five litres.
His price is (on average) double the official rate, which in October was set at Z$2 550 a litre.
Analysts estimate that Zimbabwe consumes 1,7-million tonnes of fuel a year, and spends approximately US$55-million a year to import this fuel. Most of the fuel is imported through a pipeline from Beira to Mutare and Harare, or via road or rail from South Africa, where it is stored in depots at Beit Bridge, Feruka and Harare.
The National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) manages all these petroleum imports. In December 1999 the company’s inability to service its foreign debts resulted in a number of oil companies closing off supplies to Zimbabwe.
Even the country’s arrangements with Libya’s Tamoil Trading ended when Harare ran short of foreign currency reserves. According to one recent estimate, Noczim currently owes its foreign creditors about US$305-million. Seen against this backdrop, Golden Chamisa’s actions are tellingly emblematic of contemporary Zimbabwe’s despairing scavenger economy.
Commenting on the visible manifestations of this problem, Tafirenyika Wekwa Makunike, a Johannesburg-based business consultant, wrote a scathing opinion piece in a recent edition of the Zimbabwe Independent.
”It seems we have been converted from an industrialising nation into a nation of street vendors,” he caustically observed. Makunike’s opinion is amply vindicated in the far northern South African town of Musina, in Limpopo .
There Zimbabwean street vendors sleep rough on the streets, while earning a pittance selling empty plastic drums to traders and taxi drivers en route to Zimbabwe.
The drums enable the passing vehicles to transport extra loads of personal fuel into Zimbabwe.
For Mary Phiri (42), her 20-litre and 25-litre plastic drums are far more important than their utilitarian purpose would suggest. The drums, which she retails for R30 and R35 respectively, provide this mother of five with sufficient money to keep three of her children in school.
”I usually go home every three weeks to visit my kids,” says Phiri. After a pause, she adds: ”But this is my home now.” She points to a rock garden littered with plastic drums and overripe red tomatoes.
”I have a five-roomed house in Mutare,” Mary later reveals, ”with electricity”. In Musina, however, the local Spar has become her kitchen, the 24-hour Engen garage her toilet.
”It’s a good business,” remarks Margaret Sibanda (42) from Masvingo, another roadside hawker. ”I came to South Africa in June this year to earn rands. At first I used to sell sugar and tea leaves.
”However, people from Zimbabwe were always asking me about cheap containers to transport petrol — even white men. Now I only sell plastic drums.” Sibanda claims she sells between nine and 12 drums a day.
The popular demand for these containers offers a refracted view on the Zimbabwean government’s recent decision, in August, to relinquish Noczim’s monopoly on fuel importation and allow oil companies to directly import and sell fuel.
The immaculately maintained BP service station just outside Beit Bridge, on the main road to Harare, suggests that little discernable benefit has been derived from this change in policy. The BP has not had fuel in the past six months.
As for individuals such as Golden Chamisa, their desperate entrepreneurial bravado will probably be rewarded by a profitable wage for a while yet.