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Zimbabwe Cane Cutters Fume Over 'Slave' Wages

by Godfrey Mutimba

The Zimbabwe Sunday newspaper, The Standard, opposes President Robert Mugabe's government, so their report should be reviewed in a political light. However, it is clear that the cadre of revolutionary fighters who overthrew the white regime are cashing in on their sacrifice and victory - to the detriment of working people. The test of a revolution is how it serves the masses, not the fighters. Apparently, this has dramatically failed to happen in Zimbabwe. There can be no doubt that the British, Americans and other Euros have worked day and night to undermine Zimbabwe's independence, but we cannot ignore the internal problems that made a revolution go bad.

Zimbabwe Cane Cutters Fume Over 'Slave' Wages

by Godfrey Mutimba

"They spend the whole day in the fields in the scorching sun."

This article was originally published in The Standard, Zimbabwe's Sunday newspaper.

Workers with blackened faces carry huge bundles of burnt sugar cane in the scorching heat of the Lowveld sun. Their clothes are tattered and their buttocks exposed as they go up and down the fields barefoot and with little food to eat. Ironically, their new employers sit relaxed, wining and dining on the verandahs of the mansions they grabbed from former owners of the land.

Welcome to Hippo Valley in Chiredzi where memories of the slave trade, when Africans were subjected to forced labor on white-owned plantations, easily come to mind. Farm workers employed by the newly-resettled farmers in the sugar cane industry in the Lowveld claim they are getting a raw deal from their new paymasters - a paltry $200,000 a month.

[Readers note: Currency in Zimbabwe has become so inflated, Zimbabwean dollars can be measured in small fractions of U.S. pennies.]

The cane cutters say they have been reduced to destitution as their meager pay is not enough to buy a two-liter bottle of cooking oil, at $800,000 on the black market. They spend the whole day in the fields in the scorching sun, battling to reach their targets: ten tons of cane a day, which fetches $360 million for the new farmers.

"'We are living in poverty since these war veterans took over the farms,' said Justin Chauke, who works for a war veteran known as Comrade Satan."

Disgruntled cane cutters say they were better off under their previous employers, the white commercial farmers. "We are living in poverty since these war veterans took over the farms," said Justin Chauke, who works for a war veteran known as Comrade Satan. "They pay us a meager $200,000 a month, and we do not know how they expect us to survive." Chauke said: "This is tantamount to slavery. We have nowhere to go since some of us are not educated. Our former employers, though white, paid us handsomely and we and our families could afford a decent life."

The Zimbabwe Sugar Milling Industry Workers' Union said they were aware of the pathetic plight of cane cutters.

Secretary-general Admore Hwarare said they had engaged the new farmers to review their workers' pay in compliance with government regulations. Hwarare said: "As a union, we are proposing $1 million as the minimum for a worker to afford a decent living." A number of the cane cutters said they could not afford even a bucket of maize-meal, now $350,000.

"I failed to pay school fees for my children," said another cane cutter, "and had no option but to have them join me as farm laborers, so that we could get more money for our upkeep. "Instead of getting $200,000, my three children and my wife and I get $600,000: we combine the salaries so that we are able to buy enough food."

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