Runners, Smugglers, Transporters

It's got to be said, this sad, beautiful country of ours has treated its citizens so shabbily.
There are already all the problems we are so familiar with - disrepair, the closure of hundreds of companies, a failing health system, over taxation, destitution, illness, education demands, but of all of these, unemployment is possibly the most horrifying.

Zimbabweans have always been known for their fortitude, their resilience and their ability to 'make a plan' but every plan our people come up with, is met with harsh treatment.

Take the cross border traders, the runners, the smugglers, the transporters. Unable to find employment, even with a good education, they, like the informal traders, have had to 'make a plan'

Its a big business cross border trading.
Yes its illegal, its fraudulent, its denying hundreds of thousands of dollars from going into the taxman's pocket, but its being done because, there is nothing else!! No other way to make a living for families already living lives of quiet desperation.

Yes we are all guilty of it, smuggling is an accepted art in Zimbabwe. But it is being done because thousands of people have not other way to make a living. Christmas is always horrifying time at our countries borders. Thousands of our people working outside Zimbabwe, flood home to be with their families at this precious time. Countless hours are spent queuing like animals in the boiling hot sun, some paying bribes to get through faster, some standing silently, meekly, patiently, waiting to get through the chaos.

I know they drive us crazy, the cross border combis with trailers, laden to the sky, perilously dangerous, we hate them, we loathe them, but they too have their tale.

This Christmas has been particularly horrendous for countless men and women who have been trapped at the border, some for up to six weeks as our tax afficionados find more and more ways to extract from the populace, what, in all fairness, yes, is probably legally theirs.

But these runners, transporters, smugglers, have had to virtually camp at the border posts, subject to punishing new duties, living under conditions with very little sanitation, no food or water, days waiting in the baking sun, doing a job that they hate, and they are only forced to undergo this punitive way of seeking out a living, because their own country has let them down so very badly. And they have chosen this unlawful way to make a meagre living, to save their families from the reality of surviving exhausting, desperation-inducing poverty

The Bible says 'The meek shall inherit the earth', my heart breaks for the Meek.