”I pay R120 a month for my piece of shack floor in Phillipi. There are 15 of us, sleeping like animals on the ground. But I never complain; every night I lie down, I think of my five kids back in Harare.”
Patience Moyo (52) is one of hundreds of Zimbabweans flocking into the Cape Town townships. Most are women, Moyo says, and many are professionals or others who had well-paid jobs until their country’s economic meltdown.
The women arrive carrying big plastic bags filled with knitted tablecloths, sitting-room seat-covers, home-sewn clothes and cotton curtains, which they sell door to door in the townships.
In Phillipi and Guguletu I met a Zimbabwean schoolteacher, a nurse, a hotel chef and two secretaries. All left their homes and children to make money for groceries that they can’t get, or can’t afford, in their own country.
Until four years ago Moyo was a maths teacher in a Harare high school. As with thousands of other Zimbabwean civil servants, her salary has been rendered almost worthless by hyper-inflation.
Explained Moyo: ”My husband is a qualified electrician, but he’s got no work and I couldn’t find him any in Zimbabwe — we looked everywhere. We’ve got five kids and we’ve got a nice big house in Harare. But we’re starving there. We can’t afford even basic foods any more.
”Apart from teaching kids maths, the only thing I can do is knit. I started knitting tablecloths to sell, but people at home don’t have the money. That’s why I came here.”
It is not something she enjoys. She and the other Zimbabweans hate the high crime and the xenophobic hatred they encounter in South Africa –mainly from young people. ”Every day people shout ‘kwere-kwere’ at us. Lots of people say they like my things, but they won’t give money to kwere-kweres from Zimbabwe. It hurts me but I say nothing because I’m so needy of their kindness and money,” Moyo said.
South African women are the most sympathetic. ”They know we are desperate, that we are also mothers and that we don’t want to be here,” said 43-year-old Sylvia Khumalo, who shares a backyard wendy house in Guguletu with 19 other Zimbabwean women. Slightly smaller than a single garage, the house has no ceiling.
Cape Town is not the only destination — they told me that ”busloads” of Zimbabwean women arrive in Johannesburg every day. They enter South Africa on a legal one-month visa, stay here for a month, go home and return a month later — effectively spending six months a year away from home.
The bus trip from Harare to Johannesburg takes 14 hours and costs R200. An economy train ticket to Cape Town costs a further R200.
Explained Harare native Pretty Tekere, who shares a one-bedroom shack with six other women in Khayelitsha: ”We don’t stop in Johannesburg; too many Zimbabweans are already there. Durban, Pietermaritzburg, East London, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein are full of Zimbabwean women selling stuff. Cape Town is far and it’s expensive to come here — so it’s not too crowded yet.”
In many Cape Town townships, residents rent out backyard shacks or wendy houses to these women for as much as R400 a month a head. The women interviewed by the Mail & Guardian pay between R30 and R50 a week for sleeping space on a floor, the use of an outside toilet and an outside room with a cold water tap and a basin, which serves as a bathroom. If they want hot water, they boil a kettle on a fire and wash themselves in a plastic bowl.
Said Tekere: ”There are landlords in the townships who built rooms in their backyards especially for us, and they make a good living — their places are always full. We never say no to a woman who wants to stay. It’s really dangerous out there if you’re a foreigner.”
The women insisted that their shack should not be photographed; they are terrified they might be evicted if their accommodation is identified.
Tekere said wistfully that ”people in your country have more money than we have. You have a stable government and food is much cheaper here”. But she is no uncritical admirer of South Africa: ”So much else is wrong here. A lot of our sisters are raped here. We get robbed. If people want your bag, they stab you. Even the kids here have guns. You have a very scary country.”
Sam Parks (not his real name), owner of a four-room brick house in Guguletu, rents a shack the size of large tool-shed in his backyard to up to 20 Zimbabwean women. He charges a weekly rent of R35 a head, but denies rack-renting: ”I’m not renting out my backyard shack. The people staying here are my family and you are not welcome,” he said, shutting the door in my face.
Travel from Harare to Cape Town and accommodation cost the women R500 a month each. If they work seven days a week and sell one bag full of doilies, they can make up to R1 500. But they have to collect about half of their earnings on future trips because their customers can only afford to buy on credit.
”Some people pay R10 a month; some R20 per month. I can only come every second month, which means we have to come back for as long as one year to recoup the cost of one tablecloth,” 58-year old Barbara Kasani said.
As they earn, the Zimbabweans buy groceries — mainly oil, sugar, maize meal, salt and flour — which they take back to Zimbabwe. They take no cash home. ”If you take money into Zimbabwe, you have to declare it at the border. If you take food, they let you through. We buy food here and we pray that it will last for the two months until we return to South Africa,” Kasani said.
She feels she is on a treadmill. ”We’re trapped, and it’s terrible to feel that way. While I’m here, I mainly eat pap and cabbage; once a week we buy some chicken heads and legs.
”But I have to save every cent I make to buy groceries, otherwise it doesn’t pay to come here. We’re Zimbabweans — we like meat. Eating pap and cabbage and sleeping on the floor makes me feel so depressed I don’t want to wake up in the morning.”