Thomas is hunched over a car engine, busily dismantling it, his hands covered in grime. He seems so adept that a casual observer might mistake him for a veteran mechanic. But, nothing could be further from the truth.
Now 21, Thomas has been serving as an apprentice mechanic for a mere six months. For two-and-a-half years before that, he was part of the legion of children living and working on the streets of Zimbabwe’s urban centres.
Thomas’ fortunes took a turn for the worse when his father died and his grandfather forced both him and his mother to leave the deceased man’s house. ”My mother was not employed and could not look after me,” he says. As a result, Thomas dropped out of high school and ended up on the streets.
He describes life there as ”tough”, not least because of the rough treatment allegedly meted out by police to street children: ”Sometimes they would set their dogs on us or beat us up, and if a crime was committed on the streets we were always the prime suspects.”
A police officer, who wished to remain anonymous, said it was difficult to comment on these charges without more specific information. ”But,” he added, ”those children are not supposed to be on the streets, and we round them up every once in a while. Also, some of them do indulge in crime.”
Some members of the public were also very hostile, says Thomas. While he admits that certain street children worsened things for themselves by behaving badly, he insists that not all are delinquents. ”Now that I am employed,” Thomas chuckles, ”even the girls who would not talk to me are now friendly.”
Thomas credits Streets Ahead, a drop-in centre for children living and working on the streets, for putting his life back on track. Based in the capital — Harare — this organisation is one of several non-governmental groups that are trying to provide assistance to the country’s growing number of street children.
An assessment carried out by the Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children in December 2003 and January 2004 estimated that some 5 000 children were living and working on the streets of Harare and nearby Chitungwiza, alone.
The report cited Zimbabwe’s declining economy as the main reason why children ended up eking out a living on the streets. Five years of political turmoil, economic mismanagement and a controversial land redistribution scheme are amongst the factors that have led to high unemployment and spiraling inflation in Zimbabwe.
The Aids pandemic is also adding to the numbers of street children, as it is creating a generation of orphans who often find themselves with no place to go, (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids puts HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe at almost 25%). A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2005, estimates that by 2003, the number of orphaned children in Zimbabwe had already reached 980 000.
Streets Ahead invites runaways and orphans to drop in during the day, take a shower, have a meal and engage in activities such as art, drama or basket making. At the end of the day the children go back onto the streets.
The organisation’s director, Patience Musanhu, says an outreach task force from Streets Ahead also goes onto the streets during the day and at night to invite children to the centre — and to check on their welfare.
One of the organisation’s priorities is to re-unite children with their families. But, desirable as this end may often be, the path there is fraught with difficulties.
Musanhu says a lack of funds prevents her group from visiting and counseling the families of runaways before returning the children to these homes — and from ascertaining whether the families are where children left them. This has led to situations where the outreach team has taken a child to an address, only to find that their relatives no longer live there — and that nobody knows where they have moved to.
In other instances relatives are, for one reason or another, unwilling to take street children back in. The situation of Lovemore is a case in point.
Streets Ahead tried to return the boy to his uncle in Chinhoyi, about 120km north of Harare, but the man refused to take charge of him, describing the boy as a thief. Instead of Lovemore having a bed and a roof over his head that night, it was back to the shop entrances and bus shelters that serve as bedrooms for most street children.
Although his father is alive, Lovemore says he does not get along with the man — or with his stepmother: another reason to live rough.
Musanhu says some families also reject children because they simply cannot cope with having an extra mouth to feed. She cites the instance of a grandmother who could not take in her grandchild because she already had ten other orphaned children to look after: ”She said she had nothing to give him, and asked us to take him back to Harare.”
Then there are the cases of children who — after being re-united with their families — revert back to life on the streets. Some find the routine and discipline of life at home oppressive after the relative freedom of life on the streets — even though this freedom may come at great cost to their health and safety.
Others leave home a second time in search of money: on the streets, they can earn a few Zimbabwe dollars by begging, or washing and guarding cars.
These obstacles notwithstanding, Streets Ahead has helped re-unite more than fifty children with their families since August — both within the capital and further afield.
”The issues of children living on the street is a national issue, so our re-unification programme is at a national level. We also network with organisations in other towns dealing with children on the streets,” says Musanhu.
Streets Ahead is lauded by many, including Tranos Masengwe — a senior projects officer with the Harare Task Force on Children Living and/or Working on the Streets — who describes their efforts as ”positive and sensible”.
Nonetheless, he feels the idea of a drop-in centre is problematic.
”I think the rehabilitation of the children should begin once they have a home, otherwise they end up not keen to go anywhere knowing they have somewhere to go in the day where they are looked after,” Masengwe noted.
For Musanhu, having the children frequent the centre provides Streets Ahead with opportunities to counsel them, and prepare them for a return to family life. She says visits to the centre also give counselors a way of assessing how much a child wants to be re-united with his or her family: ”If a child comes in on a regular basis, it’s a sign that he or she is ready to be in a family situation.”
Those children who do not receive assistance from Streets Ahead — or similar organisations — may end up in government institutions.
Musanhu says the Ministry of Social Welfare, though pressed for resources, is playing its part by placing some children in state care. ”They also help when the children fall sick on the streets,” she adds. — IPS