Impoverished Zimbabweans turn to scrap metal trade as inflation bites

By Nyasha Chingono

HARARE (Reuters) – Shepherd Chowe pushes a cart full of tins, iron rods and different metallic objects down a dusty pathway in Hopley, a poor settlement about 15 km west of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

It’s 11 a.m. and Chowe, 46, has arrived at a scrap yard the place dozens of metallic scavengers await to promote their wares. For 2 sacks, Chowe will get paid $6.

“I begin shifting across the township at 8 a.m. … asking individuals for scrap metallic or something metallic they don’t seem to be utilizing anymore,” Chowe mentioned, including that on a great day he takes residence $40.

Chowe is amongst Zimbabweans promoting scrap metallic for survival as the price of dwelling soars, piling strain on a inhabitants already going through meals shortages and excessive unemployment, stirring recollections of financial chaos years in the past below veteran chief Robert Mugabe’s close to four-decade rule.

Annual inflation, which hit 256.9% in July, has forged a shadow over President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s bid to revitalise the financial system.

By promoting scrap metallic, Chowe can afford to pay lease, purchase meals and pay college charges for his two daughters.

“Scrap metallic has given us hope,” Chowe mentioned.

Zimbabwe’s metal business has been struggling because the collapsed of the Zimbabwe Iron and Metal Firm (Ziscosteel) greater than a decade in the past.

Nevertheless, in recent times, small metal producers working with scrap yard sellers are selecting up the items.

“These scavengers assist the metal business which we provide. Generally they (metal makers) lack cash to pay us, however the metallic is at all times accessible,” scrap yard proprietor Fungai Mataga mentioned, as employees loaded metallic right into a truck headed for Kwekwe within the Midlands, the house of metal manufactures.

Mataga buys forged iron for $0.15 per kg and delicate metal $0.22 per kg from scavengers.

“All of them come right here to promote (metallic) for survival,” he mentioned.

The scrap metallic commerce isn’t unlawful in Zimbabwe, however has raised issues about vandalism of infrastructure together with that of state-owned Nationwide Railways of Zimbabwe, which has referred to as for the commerce to be regulated.

As Chowe leaves the scrap yard, 19-year-old Mike Mavhunga arrives saddled with sacks of tins.

Day by day he wakes up at 5 a.m. to stroll 10 km to Glen Norah, a township west of Harare, his looking floor for metallic.

“My goal is to get at the very least two luggage of scrap metallic which supplies me $6. However on a tough day, I get $1 or $1.50,” Mavhunga mentioned. “That is how I survive.”

(Enhancing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Alison Williams)