Desperate Zimbabweans living on the streets of Musina say municipality makes their hard lives worse
Published: 1/Jul/2021
Source: GroundUp (Cape Town)
By Bernard Chiguvare
Between the N1 and the Musina Refugee Reception office is an open space dotted with trees. One of these is a small baobab. This is home for Dickson Bwititi. He sleeps here on blankets.
Bwititi, like several people trying to survive on the streets of Musina, told GroundUp that bylaws and municipal police enforcing them make their lives even more difficult. The municipality says there are shelters and they should go there.
Bwititi is 18-years-old and from Rusape in Zimbabwe. He looks frail and dejected. He dropped out of school in grade six after his mother died. He had no siblings and his father remarried. The new family called him “all sorts of words” he says.
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Moyo, also from Zimbabwe, says her home fell apart when her family divorced. “At the age of ten, I dropped out of school. No one really could take care of me,” she says.
Moyo’s parents failed to register her at birth in Zimbabwe. Her mother didn’t have a birth certificate or a Zimbabwean ID either. Now Moyo has three children – aged 2, 14 and 15 – and they are also not registered.
“I wish anyone could assist me to obtain these documents, so that I can also register my children,” she says. She wants to break “the chain of unregistered generations”.
Moyo says it is hard to find employment without any form of identification.
“My aim is to work for myself and my children. If I make some money I would love to go back to live in Zimbabwe. At the moment I cannot go back since no one will take care of me and my children,” she says.
Read further: https://www.groundup.org.za/article/i-thought-i-had-grabbed-a-way-of-living-but-i-now-live-by-scavenging-from-bins/