Calvin Manika
Gertrude Mpala, a 34 year old mother of three lives in Hwange, where she works as a second hand clothes hawker. She has been in Hwange for two years after coming from Diki, a village 20 kilometres away from Hwange town. She started as a vegetable vendor, travelling to and from Hwange every day until she decided to settle in the coal mining town where she has found a new home.
“The situation was unbearable at the village. We could not harvest enough to feed the family. I have a family of three children, all of us we were in the village. We had no support from my late husband’s family and Hwange is always affected by drought and low harvest,” says Gertrude.
Many women are leaving villages for greener pastures elsewhere with high hopes to change their current life, which is characterised by poverty, misery, and at times abuse. Climate change effects have exacerbated rural to urban migration.
“I wanted to go to Zambia but I do not have a passport. I ended up coming here in Hwange. Hunger pushed me out of the village,” continues Gertrude.
Hwange, under the agro-ecological region 4 and 5, has been hit by climate change in recent years, negatively affecting the yield harvested by residents in that locality. Women mostly bear the brunt of these resultant challenges, while men have tried to resort to working in mines, piece jobs and brick moulding. However, the remuneration and working conditions are poor, resulting in women opting to go out to seek opportunities to also contribute to the family’s sustenance. Women migration is ensuring household survival by maximising and diversifying the household income through remittances.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says, despite the intention of women in rural areas to migrate to urban areas and other countries, for those living in remote and isolated areas other obstacles include lack of proper identity documents and difficulties in accessing transport or information. Besides the fact that information sources on migration may be scarce in rural areas, rural women, who constitute the bulk of the world’s illiterate people, face increased difficulties in accessing reliable information on legal and safe migration channels.
Gertrude’s story is one of many stories of women in and around Hwange who are moving out of villages seeking better opportunities after successive years of drought. A visit to villages shows the extent with which young and middle-aged women are going out as evidenced by many children left in the custody of grandmothers and aunties.
According to Inter-Agency Task Force on Rural Women, a global civil society organisation, rural women makes up one fourth of the world’s population. Due to structural, cultural, social and economic barriers, they fare worse than rural men, urban men and urban women in virtually all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Another factor that plays a vital role in the marginalisation of rural women is lack of land ownership security as some women leave the village after their land has been forcibly taken by their deceased husband’s relatives. Land rights and women ownership has been an under explored area in Zimbabwe. Rural women are major contributors to agriculture through providing labour. Although they do most agricultural work, men, for the most part, often own the land.
Melody Tshuma shows how unfortunate it is for one to be a widow in a village where men make agricultural decisions supported by patriarchal social systems.
“I was happy with my husband. We bought everything including cattle, but my husband passed away, his relatives took all the cattle and ownership of the land. I was left with nothing. I started piece jobs on other people fields to feed my family. It was not paying enough due to low harvest caused by climate change. Ultimately, I decided to migrate to town. That is how I came to Hwange,” says Tshuma.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) states that rural women may also perceive migration as way to escape traditional gender roles, gender-specific discrimination or gender-based violence. These three push factors all have a very specific dimension in rural areas. For example, in the face of numerous difficulties in securing property titles in rural areas, some women may migrate to cities where prospects to acquire property are assumed to be better.
Hwange rural women often lack access to infrastructure and productive resources, represent most the country’s illiterate adults, are often excluded from waged employment and struggle to access health care. Their experience of migration can significantly show the inequality of opportunities in the face of climate change and poverty in rural areas. Migration can indirectly help alleviate poverty by raising productivity, opportunities, and income of women and their families, all key in reducing inequality and poverty in the home as in the case of Christine.
“My husband got ill when he was working at local company and was also working on three months contract basis resulting in the discontinuation of the job. I have three children going to school. I tried farming but I harvested small quantity due to erratic rains, so I decided to go to Hwange and try to work in Chinese companies. Besides the notion of equal rights, it is hard for women to find jobs. I finally got it, where I work as a cook. So, I now send back food and money home to sustain my family,” says Christine Ncube.
On the other hand, migration can also lead to trafficking in persons especially those who go to urban areas through a third party.
“My aunt invited me to town after she visited us in the village and saw how bad our situation was. I accepted the offer and went to town but the situation was not healthy. I worked as a maid. But was not treated well by my boss, I tried to engage my aunt but she ignored my concerns despite of having looked for me that job, I was over worked, under paid,” says Pretty Dube.
Tsitsi Masengure, a lawyer working with children and women said women migration is characterised by push factors rather than pull factors.
“Women usually stay home, in the village due to patriarchal nature of our society. But, in the case of an ill husband, deceased husband or hunger itself, they are forced to augment the family income. And in the interests of the children, women try to work and support the family. We have also noted that there is abuse of women in the process of migration including trafficking in persons. Migration is a very crucial decision which one needs to consider various factors,” says Advocate Masengure.
However, among uneducated women, migration tends to be more a common phenomenon of married women accompanying their husbands. Hwange rural women migration to other places especially urban areas offer a diverse range of advantages that can be associated with financial and social empowerment such as independence, economic attainment through trading, and networking to find better economic opportunities.
