Defying the scourge of child labour

Written by Tapiwa Zivira

Friday, 27 November 2009 09:51

HARARE -- At a very tender age, she was ushered into the harsh world of child labour, picking tea with other kids at Arda Katiyo estate during the weekends to raise cash to supplement their school fees. (Pictured: Linda Jangano - It was difficult mixing work and school.)
If chances of ever escaping the hard toil of the estate in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands were slim for Linda Jangano, then the chance of her ever enrolling at a university or pursuing a successful career away from the sprawling tea plantations were virtually non-existent.
After soldiering on from grade one to seven – dozens of her colleagues simply dropped out of school tired of playing school kid during the week and fulltime plantation labourer by the weekend -- Jangano had lost all hope of making it in life.
“I had taken it that life for me was meant to start and end on the farm,” she told The Zimbabwean on Sunday last week. And it could easily have been the end for Jangano. But thanks to the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe’s (GAPWUZ) Jangano is now in her third year at the Midlands State University (MSU) studying for an Honours Degree in African Languages and Culture.
“In 2000, when I was in form one (first year at high school) I was introduced to the GAPWUZ’s child labour elimination programmes and I was interested so I joined in,” she said. The programmes were meant to eliminate child labour especially in the farms where the practice is still rampant and GAPWUZ was taking the initiative to uplift the livelihoods of farm children by campaigning for quality education and an end to child labour.
The projects involved providing funds for the children to purchase snacks to sell at school. The proceeds would then be channelled towards the payment of fees for the disadvantaged children. ? In return the assisted children were mandated to campaign against child labour and all the other forms of abuse through dramas, poetry and school clubs.

Relief
For Jangano the programme came as a relief. “Before, it was difficult mixing work and school and there was nothing to do because my father could not afford the fees,” she narrated. “My younger sister and I often had to go to school on empty stomachs and the money we worked for was seldom enough to cover the basic needs.”
Little known to Jangano was that her enrolment with the GAPWUZ child labour campaign was the beginning of greater things to come. In 2003, she was nominated to go for an international convention in Senegal to represent Zimbabwean working children. “When I came back from Senegal I started educating the others about my experience and I can say that also really helped many of them to have a positive attitude towards life.”?
In the same year she also successfully set for her GCSE examinations achieving seven passes. ? “My determination was the strongest factor to my passing,” Jangano said. She added: “You know that at a rural school we are always told that we cannot pass, even the teachers sometimes pour cold water on our spirit when they talk about poor our schools are but instead I always told myself that even if it means that one pupil was to pass at my school, I had to be the one.”
Since there was no Advanced Level School near the tea estate, Jangano’s auntie offered to stay with her in Highfield where she enrolled at the then AEC College, taking up arts subjects. In 2004 she was again nominated to represent working children but this time in far away Sweden.

More to life
She went for an exchange programme between GAPWUZ and a Sweden’s Forum Syd group.? In the same year Jangano sat for her A’ level examinations and passed with nine points.
In 2006 the spirited girl worked for Save the Children for six months and in May 2007 she enrolled at the MSU for her degree programme.? Jangano is currently an intern at GAPWUZ and she believes that to life there is more.
“There is more to life and I urge the government and NGOs to step up assistance programmes especially for girl children in the poor communities because apart from dropping out of school, they are vulnerable to all forms of abuse by those who take advantage of the poverty,” she said. The government has put in place facilities like the Basic Education Assistance Module which has however not effectively cushioned the rightful beneficiaries and surveys have revealed that either the money is not availed or it is embezzled before it reaches the beneficiaries.
The lack of assistance for children in underprivileged communities has seen Zimbabwe’s child labour for 2006 going up to over 34 percent, a figure which the Coalition Against Child Labour Zimbabwe says is likely to shoot even higher because of persistent economic hardships – a key driver of child labour.

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