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Before the border was closed, Michele, 31, made a profit by buying clothes and electronics in South Africa and reselling them for a profit across the border in Zimbabwe. But when the pandemic closed most of the traffic between the two countries, he said, his income dried up and he had to try “other ways to make a living.”
Thousands of other cross-border traders in southern Africa face the same dilemma. For decades, these informal commercial networks have provided steady work for people, mostly women, in border areas. The United Nations has estimated that the industry makes up 40% of the $17 billion trade market among the 16 countries of the Southern African Development Community. But the pandemic has removed this important economic pillar for communities where job opportunities are slim and there is limited access to a COVID-19 vaccine, causing an endless financial drain.
Nearly 70% of traders in Zimbabwe are women, according to the UN, and have to find other sources of income. Some have tried to buy and sell things inside, with less profit. Some have partnered with smugglers who sneak across the border to move products, reducing their income. Some, like Michele, have begun selling sex, dorms, and friendships to truckers stuck in the city for weeks because of shipping delays, COVID screening jams, and confusion over government policy changes.
One truck driver has been staying with Michele in a small house in Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, for two weeks while he waits for permission to get back on the road to haul goods all the way to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a 15-hour drive away. She prepares meals and takes a warm bath for him every day.
“This is life – what can we do?” said Michele, who requested partial anonymity because she did not want to disclose her current employment situation. “I don’t want to think ahead. I’m working on what I want now.
Beitbridge, a trucking hub with a busy port along the Limpopo River, and other border towns have long offered opportunities for upward mobility through bustling transnational trade networks, bringing an infusion of South Africa’s more stable currency, the rand. The Zimbabwean dollar has been depreciating due to years of hyperinflation. But with restricted trade networks, the community’s economic engine was sputtering.
“The virus and its consequences happened very quickly, so women did not have enough time to prepare for the economic consequences,” said Ernest Chirume, a researcher and member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Zimbabwe, who wrote a paper on the effects of COVID-19 on informal traders.
Before the borders closed, Marian Siziba, 40, bought large appliances such as refrigerators, four-plate stoves and solar panels from South Africa to resell to a small shop in the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city. For several months, he was able to meet his needs from his services of selling foreign currency and issuing small loans, providing payments from customers with ongoing debts. But lately, many of his clients have been unable to meet their dues.
Before the coronavirus, “we were used to economic difficulties,” he said. “It’s just worse now because I can’t work.”
Fadzai Nyamande-Pangeti, spokesperson for the Zimbabwe International Organization for Migration, noted that the pandemic has hit informal cross-border trade harder than other sectors. But without government help, the financial setbacks that once seemed temporary for Michele, Siziba, and other cross-border traders are now endless.
Transportation challenges have widened wealth inequality. Either people have the means to overcome border restrictions or they don’t.
Nyasha Chakanyuka runs a popular fashion boutique in Bulawayo and says the road closure has not hindered her sales because she has long relied on air travel, which most traders who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they could not afford. In fact, the situation gave him the opportunity to expand his business: he had bought a lot of supplies in other countries and sold goods to traders who could not travel outside of Zimbabwe.
Others have become transporters who cross the land border illegally. “You can give money to someone you trust to buy things for you in South Africa, but it takes a tremendous amount of trust because the risks are obvious,” Siziba said.
Those who can’t pay someone else to move things for them will have to find other ways to make ends meet while they wait to get back to business as usual.
Adapting to the new situation, Getrude Mwale, a trader in Bulawayo and mother of five, has started selling clothes at the gate of her house, although business has been so slow that it took her a year to clear the inventory she once could. to remove in a month.
“Selling from home means you only sell to people who know you from the neighborhood,” Mwale said. “It’s not easy yet.”
Before the pandemic, Sarudzai, who is 33 and requested partial anonymity to keep his work conditions private, traveled to Malawi to buy children’s clothes sold at a flea market in Masvingo, Zimbabwe, earning thousands of US dollars each. year.
During the pandemic, he suddenly had piles of shirts, pants, and socks in his house but nothing to sell. With business stalling, he decided to move to Beitbridge.
He sells samosas, fries, and drinks, but most of his income now comes from transactional relationships selling sex and partnering with truck drivers who stay with him in a rented one-room wooden house. She now earns enough money to send her two more children to school in Masvingo, where she remains, almost 200 miles from her mother.
“I always knew truckers had money – that’s why I came here,” he said.
The Pulitzer Center helped support reporting for this story.
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