After the departure of many white people, those who remain in the country often face economic hardship.
By Joseph Nhlahla
An elderly white man sits behind the steering wheel of an old van with “National Railways Zimbabwe” emblazoned on its doors. As he and the group of black men with him disembark from the van, people start pointing and passing comments about him.
Slightly unkempt, with a rough beard and a stooping back, the old man trudges to the Bulawayo offices of National Railways Zimbabwe (NRZ), once the envy of other rail companies in sub-Saharan Africa but now a run-down shadow of itself after years of mismanagement.
Someone in the crowd of onlookers at Bulawayo station asks why the old man is still around when so many whites have fled the country to settle elsewhere, after the ruling ZANU PF threw them off their farms in President Robert http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3453’s land-grab policy. Another man says he is surprised the railwayman is actually an employee rather than employing others as has generally been the case in this former British colony.
The responses come fast and furious, “He is from that group of poor whites who have nowhere to go”; “He has no choice but work for the NRZ or he would be out on the streets as a vagrant”; “He never owned a farm because if he did, he would have left the country.”
Everyone has an explanation for the apparent oddity of a white man holding down a “proper” job alongside blacks. The increasingly common sight of white men working on the railway is taking locals some time to get used to.
The plight of white people has changed ever since Zimbabwe’s current political and economic crisis set in. Some say it began with the seizure of white commercial farmland in 2000.
For many whites, the going has never been this tough since they settled here decades ago.
Although the minority white group continued to enjoy some of its class and race privileges into the post-independence period, members have also borne the brunt of President Mugabe’s anger. He has frequently accused them of stealing African land in the past, and also of working with his political foes to depose him.
In 2003, former government junior minister Jonathan Moyo, who has since fallen out with Mugabe, said whites should leave the country because they were behind the creation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
These accusations stemmed from reports that the MDC was being funded by white commercial farmers, with state television showing footage of MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai allegedly receiving a cheque donation from white farmers.
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