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DEVELOPMENT-ZIMBABWE: Selling Scrap Metal to Scrape By

Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 24 2010 (IPS) - Gugulethu Mkhwananzi is another one of the many unemployed women who have become features of everyday life in Bulawayo’s poor working class suburbs as she moves from house to house, looking for “rusted gold”, or scrap metal.

Mkhwananzi sells whatever she finds to local scrap metal dealers. This has become her sole source of livelihood in a country where the vast majority of women are without formal employment. As she pushes the cart that she uses to collect the scrap, the physical toil is showing: Mkhwananzi looks much older than her 45 years.

Despite the taxing work, Mkhwananzi gets as little as 0.5 dollars per kg. Scrap metal dealers only buy in quantities ranging from 50 kg upwards. “What can I do?” she asks, the fatigue showing. “I have no formal education and this is the only thing I can do to feed my children,” laments the sole breadwinner of a family with four children.

Judith Sibanda has also found a livelihood in selling scrap metal. For her, this has meant waking up early in the morning each day to travel to other townships to look for scrap metal. “It has become something of a proper job for me,” she says.

But Mkhwananzi notes that she “has been selling scrap metal for years now but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the scrap”.

This has forced her to adopt a daring-do attitude as she traverses the city’s poor working class townships. “I have learnt to befriend total strangers just to scavenge for scrap metal in their homes. Many people do not know the value of scrap metal and readily give it away,” Mkhwananzi explains.

The demand for scrap metal has caused an increase in vandalism. Daring thieves now steal anything from taps to coffin handles, which are in demand due to soaring AIDS-related deaths.

“They melt these taps and coffin handles and these are given a new life in different shapes and sizes for new coffins,” says Hazel Phiri, who runs a funeral parlour. “I know a number of women who sell scrap metal. This is something that will be difficult to control as long as there is a need for coffins,” Phiri tells IPS.

There have also been reports of railways being vandalised as desperate people seek to sell heavy metal to dealers.

The demand for scrap metal seems huge – even by sculptors who use it to create works for exhibition.

Local companies have in the past lobbied the coalition government to ban the sale of scrap metal, citing as reason foundries suffering as the bulk of scrap metal was being bought for export and recycled.

According to renewable energy advocates, over 50 percent of the world’s steel production consists of the recycling of scrap metal, thus making it one of the world’s most recycled materials. This has helped cushion the ecological and environmental impacts of mining raw minerals from the ground.

An official at one of the Chinese scrap metal dealers where women sell their scrap informs IPS that the scrap metal is exported to China where it finds new life in household appliances and even heavy construction vehicles.

Women in Zimbabwe largely remain economically disempowered. The government’s recent poverty assessment study survey (PASS) reports that structural unemployment for women stands at 70 percent, compared to men’s 56 percent.

“Women have learnt to fend for themselves amid the country’s economic hardships. The fact that they are even found selling scrap metal highlights their dire circumstances,” says Abigail Shiri, a labour lawyer working in Bulawayo.

“There are very few economic support systems for women in Zimbabwe. Little is being done to empower those who are called ‘uneducated women’. They continue bearing the brunt of the country’s economic woes,” Shiri adds.

Commenting on the PASS, Zimbabwe’s deputy prime minister Thokozani Khuphe has said that the positive effect of the coalition government will be “measured by its ability to impact positively on the lives of women in Zimbabwe, regardless of race, religion, social class or political affiliation”.

But for women such as Mkhwananzi, rusted “junk” is all that the era of the coalition government has so far offered.