ELEMENTOS PARA UN PERFIL COLECTIVO

In pre-colonial Zimbabwe, childhood was an important category of experience and marked a stage in the life course of an individual characterised by rituals to mark the transition to adulthood. The Ndebele nation regulated youths through initiation and military service (Bhebhe, 1979, cited in Kesby et al, 2006) while the Shona did the same through marriage.

45 Children (in the same manner as women) gained resources through their guardians and had limited access to decision-making processes in the community. Children held a central position of importance in society such that a childless marriage could lead to divorce or the woman’s family offered a compensatory second wife or a brother would secretly

impregnate his sister-in law.

Graves (1988) states that ‘before all else in Shona life, a person is a member of the community’. This can be extended to the whole of Zimbabwe. Strong intimate bonds develop and in turn strengthen family ties from early childhood to adulthood. Mothers, in particular, occupied a very important position in early childhood as a small child was kept close to the mother who carried him or her in a comfortable sling. This exercise could go on for up to two years. Dependence on the family for sustenance and protection could be extended to three to four generations. Those who have plenty are obliged to share and when in need there is an expectation of help from family members. This is true in many African societies and in particular the Ndebele society whose heartland is Bulawayo where the study was carried out. Nyathi (2005) describes how the traditional Ndebele society was organised with members of the family working together in all aspects of life.

Zimbabwean researchers like Chinyangara et al (1997) state that children in the African traditional context did not belong exclusively to their parents but also to the community and the broader group of kin. Article 31 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ARWC) recognises this aspect. As implied by Graves (1988), a child has obligations first to the community and kinsmen and then, after these, to their parents. In traditional African societies the community had authority over parents and thus in principle was able to protect children against abuse, neglect and exploitation by parents or other members of the community. It was a well-established tradition that the community and the extended family provided for children whose biological parents were unable to take care of them. Orphans were relatively easily adopted within families through kinship systems.

46 Wusu and Isiugo (2006) acknowledge the strength of a closely knit group of relatives in many African societies who share the costs of rearing children in terms of emotion, time, finance and other material support. A child was the responsibility of the family,

community and the nation before the natural parents (Chinyangara et al., 1997; Kesby et al., 2006).

Grier (2006) argues that in colonial Zimbabwe childhood was a racialised concept that meant that lives of black and white children had expectations placed on them by the

colonial state; white farmers and their families were entirely shaped by racist ideology. The childhood of settlers was organised in a different way from the childhood of Africans. One key aspect noted by Grier (2006:29) is that the colonial state (1893-1980) ‘used the belief that children should contribute to the material reproduction of their households - a core aspect of the construction of childhood among the Shona and Ndebele at the end of the nineteenth century’. In essence, childhood carried a class outlook and even today there are marked differences in childhoods of the elite (the majority of them are blacks) who moved to occupy the white-settler privileged space at independence) and the working class and the vast rural population in Zimbabwe.

The fact that there were no children living on the streets of major cities until well after independence in 1980 was largely due to strict laws and restrictions on who lived in towns by the colonial administration. It was almost impossible to see children working as

vendors, car washers or begging prior to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 as municipal by-laws restricted such activities and were vigorously and brutally enforced. However, Grier (1996) cites examples where in the 1920s and 1950s native boys aged 10-14 years were attracted to the towns, mines and other centres where they found wage employment as domestic workers and gardeners in white and black households. Others worked as cooks and cleaners for ‘senior’ black miners in the company’s single sex compounds. This classification differs from the common definition of street children of boys and girls for

47 whom the street has become a place to live and work. Nonetheless, it signifies a trend for children and young people finding the attraction of city lights which has become a world-wide phenomenon. After independence, enforcement of by-laws and restrictions of the pre-independence administration were eased and gradually street children appeared on the streets of major towns and cities forcing the government and local authorities to act. The numbers kept increasing and street children became more visible although there were no accurately recorded numbers.

Children living and working on the streets are, therefore, a challenge to concepts of childhood and ideas of what constitutes childhood. This lends weight to the argument that children (and indeed street children) experience childhood differently and their experiences are unique and rich in terms of what goes on in their formative years. Street children all over the world constitute a unique group of children who often defy norms of what childhood should be as they exist outside what is often considered by many as ‘normal’

childhood often characterised (in the developed countries) by the ‘family, school and play’.

Children living on the streets are not unique to Bulawayo but a common feature in many cities in Zimbabwe and in many developed and developing countries around the world. In many respects such things are ‘unAfrican’, that is, not consistent with long established traditions around childhood and child care where a child belonged to and was raised by the community with a collective responsibility. The extended family network has been under strain (in Zimbabwe) and in many cases has no capacity to fulfil many of its traditional functions. The emergence and dominance of the concept of the nuclear family in many urban areas has weakened the extended family support network and the traditional safeguards around care of vulnerable children (German, 2005). In some way the phenomenon of street children may be viewed as the ugly face of colonisation and industrialisation or modernisation in the African context which has transformed the traditional way of life and eroded its protective mechanisms. Many children and families

48 are grappling with poverty and starvation in a country where families have been decimated by HIV/AIDS. For example, a survey by Mashumba (1995) found that relatives were struggling to care for AIDS orphans while Foster et al (1995) postulate that the emergence of child-headed households’ show that the extended family is under stress.