Zimbabwe: Social collapse

Zimbabwe’s crisis is not only political and economic; the signs of social disintegration are everywhere, says this article on the site www.sokwanele.com. “Nightly, street children as young as five or six seek the “protection” of older children who act as pimps; cold, hungry and homeless farm workers huddle against each other on the roadside where they have been dumped like a pile of rubbish; a young girl of sixteen with a blank stare cuddles her baby, conceived when she was raped in a youth militia camp; an adult rushes her dying parent to the hospital, because it is cheaper to transport the living than the dead; she will not return when the parent dies, because she cannot afford to bury her; an elderly grandmother weeps when told that a foreign donor will no longer supply food aid – her thirteen grandchildren whom she is keeping have nothing else to eat.”