Single men's hostels in Zim

from the Herald....

One of the ignored reasons for the HIV epidemic in Africa: single men's hostels because they were forbidden to bring their families with them to work in the mines etc.


Of course, since there were no old age pensions, and the land was owned communally, unless a man left his wife to farm the fields, the tribe would take back the fields for another, and leave him high and dry when he retired or was injured.



Now this report says that the hostels are slums with families renting a corner of the room and the gov't is trying to figure out how to make things better.
but of course, Mugabe destroyed 70 thousand homes in his "operation clean out the garbage", including destroying Sister Patricia's HIV clinic, a mosque, and the convent of Sister Winfreda in Queque... under the guise of "slum clearance"..the article doesn't mention this because the Herald is run by the government...

Real War Veterans suffer

from IC Publications:

A few years later, Mugabe launched the Gukurahundi campaign. Its name means "the wind that sweeps away the rubbish", and Mugabe's rubbish was the Ndebele minority.

Between 1984 and 1987, around 20,000 people were killed in massacres by security forces, when Nkomo agreed to a Unity Accord that folded his followers into Mugabe's party, which became the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

Within the cooperative, one faction joined ZANU-PF, but Makwelo still speaks cautiously about the Gukurahundi.

"There were disturbances," he said. "We were not very much affected."

The decision to back Mugabe did bring rewards: new money to build a hospital, staffed with government medics and drugs.

They prospered until 2000, when Mugabe launched a violent campaign of land reforms and his supporters staged deadly electoral attacks that turned Zimbabwe into an international pariah.

The violence was spearheaded by self-styled "war veterans", many of them far too young to have seen combat. Their actions tarred the reputation of these real war vets, and donations dried up.

Meanwhile, the farm sector collapsed and dragged the rest of the economy down with it.
...

BBC looks at Zim's forgotten children

at link, a film about Zim's street children by Xoliswa Sithole

New Social sector data

fromUNICEF

...The data showed a 20 per cent increase in under five mortality since 1990, the baseline year for the Millennium Development Goals, with children in rural areas and those in the poorest one fifth of the population being the most vulnerable. Major causes of death of children under 5 are HIV/AIDS, newborn disorders, pneumonia and diarrhoea.

The survey also showed startling data that 1 in 2 pregnant women in rural areas were now delivering at home and that 39 per cent nationally were not accessing the requisite medical facilities for delivery, while 40 per cent where not attended to at birth by a skilled attendant posing huge dangers for both mothers and newborns. These findings confirm the result of previous research indicating that user fees and other financial barriers are limiting women’s access to life-saving obstetric services.

In addition data from the national survey which had a sample size of 12,500 households in Zimbabwe, revealed stark disparities between the rich and poor with the lowest quintile being the hardest hit in terms of access to critical services in health and education.

Current data also revealed limited support to the country’s orphaned and vulnerable children, with 79 per cent not receiving any form of external assistance. Further, around two-thirds of all children in the country do not possess birth certificates....