Disabled senior citizens in Zimbabwe pummeled by poverty

By Jeffrey Moyo

MUREWA, Zimbabwe (AA) - At age 85, Tongoona Murapa uses a wheelchair to get around, along with his wife Sarudzai, 76, after they were involved in a car accident that claimed their son’s life.

The couple worked as teachers before they were injured in the horrific accident 22 years ago.

Their late son Edison, who drove the vehicle, had been working as a doctor for three years before the crash.

- Dependent

Now the ailing couple has to depend on their two remaining children for help, one staying with them at their village home in Murewa, a remote district in Zimbabwe located 75 kilometers (46 miles) northeast of the nation’s capital, Harare.

Their daughter, 45-year-old Belinda, said with no job, she has to struggle to care for her physically impaired parents.

Their son Nervious, who is 42 and lives with his own family a stone’s throw away from his parents’ home, said he has made sure to provide food for them.

Yet as their parents contend with poverty, Belinda and Nervious have also not been spared.

Though both earned college degrees, they claimed they have never been permanently employed.

As a result, caring for their disabled parents has not been easy, with Nervious and his family having to engage in subsistence farming on communal land to feed his parents.

“I’ve trained as an agricultural extension officer, but I’ve never been able to get a job since I finished my courses in 2004,” he told Anadolu Agency.

His sister, who is resigned to her fate as a caregiver for their parents, said even though she qualified as a beauty therapist, she has also not been able to find a job or the capital to start her own business.

- Useless pension

That has meant bad news for the parents, whose monthly pension payouts from their teaching jobs years ago have been eroded by Zimbabwe’s rampaging inflation, which currently stands at 257%.

Their monthly pension of 15,000 Zimbabwean dollars ($46) each has forced the couple to solely rely on their jobless children, who said that at times, they have to swallow their pride and take on informal, part-time jobs in order to support their parents.

“You can see, both of our parents can’t walk. But this is made worse by their poor pension payouts, which surely can’t buy anything reasonable, as inflation has meant that the money is now worthless,” Belinda told Anadolu Agency.

- Well-wishers

In order to shield their parents from hardships, said Belinda, they also have to depend on the kindness of well-wishers who have become regular food and clothing donors to their parents.

As many handicapped senior citizens like the Murapas contend with poverty, quite many disabled aged persons are heavily pummeled by it.

In fact, in both rural and urban areas, disabled elderly people often have to be confined to their homes, where they say they rarely have access to well-wishers to help them.

“Fortunately, we have here our daughter and son helping us, without whom life would have been more unbearable,” Tongoona told Anadolu Agency.

Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare puts the number of handicapped aged persons at 210,000 nationwide, 87% of which live in poverty.

Despite being retired teachers, Tongoona and his wife have long joined the ranks of Zimbabwe’s aged citizens wallowing in destitution.

Yet the suffering of the southern African nation’s disabled aged persons like the Murapa couple often takes place in the secrecy of their homes, which they can’t leave owing to physical immobility.

- Little notice from authorities

For civil society activists like Jameson Vambire fighting for the rights of aged citizens in Zimbabwe, the suffering of the country’s aged disabled persons is happening with little notice from authorities.

In fact, said Vambire, most of Zimbabwe’s senior handicapped citizens are suffering with little or no help reaching them where they live.

With this happening, in 2019, the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee reported that more than 5.5 million people needed humanitarian assistance, showing a link between disability and poverty in Zimbabwe in particular.

In Zimbabwe, the elderly population accounts for 6% of the country’s estimated 15 million people, according to Help Age Zimbabwe, a leading organization fighting for the needs of senior citizens.

This amounts to 760,000 elderly persons, with 80% of them living in abject poverty, based on data from the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT).

But most senior citizens are not counted, as they live in rural parts of the country.

With 90% of Zimbabwe’s population jobless, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Vambire said the disabled elderly population are feeling the heat.

Such are many like 89-year-old Siyazini Ndlovu, who is blind, and his physically impaired wife, 79-year-old Simiso, who live in their rural home in Midlands Province, where kind villagers have taken turns feeding the lonely couple, whose four children died.

- Grueling poverty

Battling disabilities, the Ndlovus have also had to contend with grueling poverty.

“We are poor because there is very little we can do on our own. We have to wait for other villagers here to help us,” Siyazini told Anadolu Agency.

NGOs fighting for the rights of elderly persons in Zimbabwe have come out blaming the authorities for sidelining the country’s disabled aged persons.

“Abuse of disabled senior citizens in Zimbabwe is rampant. The neglect is particularly done by authorities in government with the powers to disburse tax money and how it should be spent but unfortunately leaving out aged disabled persons,” Jonathan Mandaza, chairman of the Zimbabwe Older Persons Organization, told Anadolu Agency.

In 2012, Zimbabwe approved the Older Persons Act, which called for granting social welfare benefits to the country’s aging population, including the disabled.

A decade later, that has hardly been implemented, with many activists like Vambire saying the country’s poverty levels have grown increasingly worse among handicapped senior citizens.

Veteran teachers but now confined to their rural home, poverty has not spared the Murapas, who have been battling disabilities even as they contributed to saving for their own pension payouts over the years.

Now, the handicapped couple have resigned their case to fate.

“We can’t do anything about our situation. We just live for each day as it comes,” said Sarudzai.

As they contend with disabilities in their old age, the Murapas boast a rusty scotch cart in their yard as their only worthy possession.

Their home, made up of three thatched huts, is dilapidated following years without repair as resources dwindle, which tells the wretched story of its residents.

Nostalgia is all they have as they battle physical impairments that caught up with them in the prime of their years.

“I can tell you for us, life was good when we were still teachers earning money with value, sending our children to boarding schools. But now that is no more, worsened by our disabilities,” said Tongoona.