Delivering hope to Zimbabwean pensioners
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Delivering hope to Zimbabwean pensioners

Hannes Botha and his Zimbabwe Pensioners Supporter Fund deliver food parcels to 1,650 needy pensioners. For the recipients, the fact that somebody cares is ‘worth its weight in gold’

hannes-botha-left-with-attie-botha-and-boet-holmes

By Cheryl Robertson

In 2002, Hannes Botha received a call for help from an elderly woman in Zimbabwe. The mother of a friend of his, she had no money or food. Botha, who is based in South Africa, went to investigate, driving his old Ford Meteor 1,000km to the country’s second largest town of Bulawayo, laden with food supplies. It was a journey he would make time and time again as he discovered there were many more needy people out there.help-food pensiooneer pensioneer

By April 2008, Botha had taken early retirement from his job in a sugar mill, formed the Zimbabwe Pensioners Supporter Fund (ZPSF) as a non-profit organisation and was delivering basic food parcels every month to nearly 1,000 pensioners.

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“When I’m asked why this situation came about in the first place, I say it was mainly inflation gone wild… completely out of control,” Hannes told me when I went to rural Zimbabwe early this year to join him on a typical delivery trip, which took three days. Hannes was referring to the state of the Zimbabwe dollar, which reached a staggering annual inflation rate of 231 million per cent in 2008 according to Zimbabwe’s state-owned national daily newspaper The Herald in October 2008.

I was keen to know more about the situation among the elderly there. After all, my grandparents farmed this land in the early 1900s, my parents worked for it, I was born there in 1959 and I abandoned it in 1987. So I encouraged him to tell me more about the financial scene and living conditions.

“The life savings and/or pension policies of a lot of ordinary people… were simply wiped out,” says Hannes. “Many ended up with absolute zero. One day a person may have had comfortable savings of say $30,000; the very next day their value would have reduced to just $3 (Dh11). It is unbelievable, but sadly true.”

Many of those who owned commercial farms were forcibly removed from their land by the Mugabe government’s controversial 2000-introduced land redistribution policy. These farms were given to war veterans and supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party, as reported by the BBC News Online in 2000.

Many of these farmers were in their 60s and 70s at the time and ended up losing their only means of livelihood. This action cost the country €8.4 billion (Dh44 billion) in lost agricultural output in the ten years up to 2009, according to an annual report issued early this August by the country’s Commercial Farmers’ Union.

The elderly – ex-farmers or otherwise – who receive a pension of between $20 and $40 per month are among the lucky ones; there are plenty of others who don’t have any income at all. Some are helped by family, but those who do not have a family have no state support either.

There is a glimmer of hope, as in July 2011 the government announced that a new Bill compelling the state to provide for its elderly population would soon be presented in the Zimbabwean parliament, according to a report in The Herald.

Providing the basics

Determined to make a difference in the lives of the needy elderly, Hannes and the ZPSF’s small team of volunteers gather, pack and deliver more than 20 tons of food sourced from people and organisations from all over South Africa to 28 old-age homes, private homes and feeding kitchens in Zimbabwe. Every six to eight weeks two trucks filled with supplies donated mostly by South African residents leave a warehouse in Malelane, a town south of Kruger National Park in South Africa, to Zimbabwe. The trip costs in the region of $30,000.

Each food parcel includes a two-kilogramme bag each of maize meal, flour, rice and sugar, a bag each of oats and spaghetti, plus basics such as cooking oil, jam, coffee, salt, peanut butter, packets of soup, instant yeast, candles, matches, a tin each of pilchards, baked beans, Vienna sausages, mixed vegetables and corned meat; plus a bar of soap and chocolate.

Hannes’ reason for helping is simple. “The majority of these people are in this situation through no fault of their own,” he says. “Most of them paid into a pension fund for say 20, 30 years and when the economy was destroyed, that was their income, gone. It’s unfair.”

Hannes hopes the ZPSF will be able to supply a parcel to every pensioner in need, but currently only 40 per cent of this is met. “Many totally rely on what they receive from donors,” he says. “The parcels serve two basic purposes. The pensioner gets a regular basic food supply and secondly, he is aware that there is someone out there who cares about him. That alone is worth its weight in gold.”

Volunteer drivers Attie Botha (Hannes’s brother), a Methodist pastor, and Boet Holmes, who’s retired, took me to the towns of Chinhoyi, Kadoma and Kwekwe, while Hannes showed me the delivery operation in Redcliff, Gweru, Hannes’s home town, and Shurugwi.

“Four years ago there was nothing left on the shelves of our supermarket in Chinhoyi,” says Pat Rogers, manager of the Sunningdale Trust in Chinhoyi [old age home]. “Since the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped in April 2009 and replaced by the US dollar everything is available – as long as you have got the wherewithal to buy it. What with them losing all they had invested – even that invested in equities – living here is now very difficult.”

Initially, only retired people were allowed to be residents of Sunningdale. “We have had to waive that rule as some of them at 80 are still holding down some sort of job to help make ends meet,” say Pat. “One gentleman here in his 80s used to drive ten kilometres to a work in butchery.”

Friendships are formed

I met Koos, one of the residents at Sunningdale, who had dark rings under his eyes. He was an ex-farmer in his 70s who was now working the nightshift in a Chinhoyi bakery. Although grateful to be receiving an income, he was tired much of the time.

Some of the elderly people had fallen upon bad times following family squabbles or were just down on their luck. Few complain, and do not appear to be bitter. Shelia, an 89-year-old frail but feisty resident of Boggies Trust in Gweru [another old age home], told me, “We have to knuckle down and do the best we can. There’s absolutely no point in moping, is there Hannes?”

She was among the many residents at the Boggies Trust Home who greeted Hannes enthusiastically; all were concerned about the triple heart by-pass operation he had had recently.

We moved on to meet two pensioners in their own houses. One was experiencing an electricity power cut so it was gloomy inside. There is no telling when, where or for how long these cuts will last – it’s just something that happens on a daily basis throughout Zimbabwe.

A retired nurse known to all as “Pickles Evans’s widow” was downcast when we reached her at the Lynbrook old age home in Kwekwe. She would have liked to use a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope to monitor the other residents’ blood pressure, so saving them the $40 they would have to pay for the services of a doctor. “Look, I don’t even get that amount for my monthly pension!” she says.

The ZPSF trucks cover two routes parting company after the notoriously tricky (when it comes to paperwork) Beitbridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe, one going via Bulawayo to Gweru and the other travelling via Masvingo to Harare. The total distance is about 7,500 kilometres, which swallows up more than 2,600 litres of fuel.

There were plenty of poignant moments on the trip. When he heard about the death of one of the people he helps, Attie said: “Two years ago these folk were just oldies but now they are friends, and their passing is a major thing to me.”

Boet was equally affected by a different scenario. On a previous trip when he delivered boxes to the Malvern Trust Home in Mvurwi, he discovered that it recommended that all new elderly residents be measured so that a coffin for them could be prepared in advance. He said he found it disturbing that a named box was made and set aside, and when the resident did indeed die all was ready on site, including a service at the home and a quick burial in a neighbouring field, which served as a cemetery.

There are a number of organisations helping the elderly in Zimbabwe including Supporting Old Age Pensioners, Homes in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe – a National Emergency, with the ZPSF mainly supporting the homes and pensioners in the rural areas, although there is some overlap.

It’s seldom a straightforward trip for Hannes. Recently he had to go alone to Zimbabwe for just over a week to sort out border permits and establish what the new regulations were regarding the import of flour. “This constant moving of the goals for permits required is exhausting. Just when you think you have it sorted, they come up with something else!” he said via the ZPSF’s Facebook page. “It’s going to make me grey before my time!”

How you can help

The ZPSF is desperate for financial help. For donations to the UK Account: Zimbabwe Pensioner Supporter Fund, Hsbc Bank Plc, Shaftesbury Branch, Account number 71282786, SORT CODE No 40- 41-01. Please email heatherbmilner@btinternet.com for acknowledgement.

For donations to their South Africa account: Zimbabwe Pensioner Supporter Fund, First National Bank, Malalane Branch, Branch Code 270952, Account Number 62239042906, Swift Code: FIRNZAJJ. Please email Linda Shultz on pensupzim@vodamail.co.za for acknowledgement.

Making a difference

Who: Hannes Botha, 58, born in Zimbabwe, now living in South Africa
What: Delivering food parcels to needy pensioners
Where: Zimbabwe

Inside info

Zimbabwe Pensioners Support Fund at http://zpsf.terapad.com and www.zimpen.co.za

Follow ZPSF on https://www.facebook.com/groups/pensupzim/

Cheryl Robertson is a Dubai-based freelancer.FridayMag

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