By Edward Makuzva
Plagued by nightmares, flashbacks and unpleasant memories, the 33-year-old mother of three narrates her ordeal.
“I was raped by four men”
The horrendous story of this Marondera born accountant who is one of Zimbabweans living as destitutes at a desolate homestead that has been turned into a home-cum-shebeen in Botswana where every kind of social ills are wild and flagrant is so touching.
She is HIV positive.
Clad in shabby and ragged dress with callused toes poking through tattered snickers, Elizabeth feels scared, ashamed and lonely as she leans on a moribund house with draughty corridors that allow cold air to seep under the door like the tide on the frigid desolate beach.
Elizabeth recounts:
“Two men approached me when I was at a restaurant in Gaborone and asked me if I knew how to do dressmaking. I told them I was an accountant by profession and they asked me to accompany them to Francistown the following day for a big contract they had had struck”, recounts Elizabeth who left Zimbabwe for Botswana in search of greener pastures when COVID-19 struck the world leaving many developing countries in a quandary.
“They came the following day as per our agreement. They had promised me a lot of money. Little did I know these men were up for something”, says the former Ecobank teller who was left jobless when he got retrenchment in 2020 following the outbreak of COVID-19 which forced many companies to close.
“We traveled about 100km when one of the two men moved closer to me. He took a white cloth and blindfolded me. I asked him what was going on but the man did not respond. He sprayed something on my face that made me dizzy and only regained consciousness later on. I found myself in a very big house facing four men, one of them holding a gun”
“One of them came and took me to another room and ordered me to undress. I tried to resist but he threatened me with a very big knife that was in that room and I complied forthwith to save my life. He raped me and left me lying prostate in the room. After I regained some strength, the other man came and raped me once more. This happened for several days”.
According to Elizabeth, the rapists would leave him locked in the house and come back and take turns to abuse him. She escaped from that house when she found a window and broke it with a chair.
“I then jumped the security wall that surrounded the property that is when I realized that I was in the midst of a very big farm. I started running until I got to a train station where I met a Zimbabwean man. I told him my story and he brought me to this place here in Serowe. Im happy I managed to escape from those men”, said Elizabeth as she broke down uncontrollably.
To put it perfectly, the place where Elizabeth and other foreign nationals live is an abomination and unpleasant sight.
Young children could be seen playing with used condoms and due to lack of Sanitary Pads, women in that area use pieces of dirty cloths that are disposed of in the open.
Serious drug shortage including anti retroviral drugs is a major cause for concern as almost all residents at that place need medical attention.
The place is overpopulated and has only small two rooms that are shared by more than 30 people. They use one mobile toilet that was donated by a well-wisher.
Sometimes it gets so full leaving these people to relieving themselves at a nearby bush along the banks of a stream.
Severe outbreaks of diarrhea are very common because the nearby fecal contaminated stream is their only source of water.
Covid-19 affected millions of people dependent on the informal economy and contract and casual workers in the formal sectors, with women being the most affected.
According to World Health Organization(WHO), the pandemic has decimated jobs and placed millions of livelihoods at risk. As breadwinners lose jobs, fall ill and die, the food security and nutrition of millions of women and men are under threat, with those in low-income countries, particularly the most marginalized populations, which include small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, being hardest hit.
Closure of informal economy businesses, marketplaces and vending sites deprived the people of their sources of livelihoods and incomes. Loss of income, job opportunities, closure of schools, and child marriages were overarching challenges especially in developing countries like Zimbabwe. Many people were forced to skip the borders when their companies closed.
Due to closure of borders, many people opted to use illegal means of crossing to another countries. This led to serious abuse of undocumented migrants in neighboring countries.
According to the World Bank, about 500 000 Zimbabweans lost their jobs since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic igniting de-industrialisation.
“In 2020, the pandemic and its impacts disrupted livelihoods, especially in urban areas and added 1,3 million Zimbabweans to the extreme poor”, the World Bank said.
A report by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) shows that job losses locally were nearly 1,5 million in 2020 from both the formal and informal sectors.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported in 2021 that there were unprecedented global employment losses in 2020 of 114 million.
The Government of Zimbabwe demonstrated its commitment and political will to the vaccination program by procuring vaccines from different sources around the globe despite the fact that the vaccines were inaccessible especially to the developing world.
Zimbabwe was rated as one of the best countries in terms of Implementing measures to combat Covid-19. The lockdowns and vaccination program proved necessary as they curtailed spikes.
