“I just wish to meet them”: Zimbabwe’s forgotten migrant workers face old age without family or country
- They arrived from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia to work in mines and farms. In old age, with no pensions or families, they now live out their days in near anonymity.
Image description: An elderly man sits alone in a vast, desert-like landscape, his back turned as he faces a collage of old postcards, letters and faded photographs. Scattered around him are worn suitcases and a solitary broom, symbolizing memories and past labor.
About 42 kilometres east of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, stands Melfort Old People’s Home, a retirement facility for elderly men and women with nowhere else to go. Most residents are men, many of them lifelong bachelors. The home also houses women, largely widows. Many of the residents have no surviving children or close relatives. A significant number came to Zimbabwe as migrant labourers, having spent their working years on farms, in mines, or in domestic service.
Established in 1979, the home was created specifically for destitute seniors. Among them is Brand Jamba, who was admitted to Melfort in 1999. At 106, Jamba calls it his “final resort.”
Born in Malawi, Jamba migrated to Zimbabwe with his parents during the colonial era. But before he turned ten, he lost contact with them under circumstances he still struggles to recall.
“I never established a family, [no] spouse or children in my life,” Jamba tells Minority Africa, adding that he never owned property in Zimbabwe either.
He believes he began working at age six, in 1925, as a janitor and sweeper at Shabani Mine, once one of Zimbabwe’s largest asbestos producers. His duties included cleaning the mine premises, but he can no longer remember when or why his job ended—his memory, understandably, is now fragmented with age.
Shabani Mine was one of several institutions dependent on migrant labour. Between 1911 and 1951, nearly 250,000 African migrants worked in Zimbabwe’s mining, agriculture, and construction sectors. Jamba was one of them. After his job at the mine ended, he took on menial work for various employers. But as the years passed, physical exhaustion and dwindling opportunities rendered him unemployable.
“As I grew older, I became weary and no one was interested to hire me anymore,” Jamba says in a frail voice, struggling to piece his thoughts together. “I no longer wish for anything since this is now my last home and I have found a family here until death.”
Still, life at Melfort is not without its challenges. Many of the migrants watch their Zimbabwean peers receive regular visits from relatives, deepening their sense of abandonment and invisibility.
“This doesn’t sit well with the rest of the older people,” says Daniel Francis, Melfort’s Administrative Manager. “Everyone wishes they still had loved ones around. They always feel lonely.”
Nad Musendami, 81, another resident of Malawian descent, carries a different but equally heavy burden. He still yearns to reconnect with family members he believes are living in Rusape, a town 170 kilometres east of Harare.
“I just wish to meet them, not to live in their homes,” Musendami says. “The problem is, I don’t know exactly where to find them. I would have visited, or they could have visited me here.”
Like Jamba, Musendami never established his own family or owned property in Zimbabwe. Before arriving at Melfort in 2022, he worked as a security guard at a garage in Ruwa without a salary, compensated only with food and shelter by the owner.
Even those migrants who did start families with local women sometimes face rejection in old age, due to traditional beliefs around death and burial. In Shona culture, for instance, burying a “stranger” at one’s home is believed to invite bad omens or pfukwa (avenging spirits).
“As soon as they see someone is too old and might die—but can’t go back to their original home—families chase them away,” explains Marck Chikanza, Director of the National Age Network of Zimbabwe (NANZ), a coalition of 16 organisations focused on aging.
Currently, Melfort houses 20 elderly individuals, including native Zimbabweans and former migrants primarily from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. Many of them face old age without pensions, exposing them to severe poverty.
While they are entitled to receive monthly social welfare grants such as the Harmonised Social Cash Transfer (HSCT), which ranges from US$10 to US$25, a 2018 report noted that payments are not consistently disbursed, undermining the scheme’s reliability.
“I just wish the government could give me at least $10 for pocket money every month so I can buy whatever I want,” Musendami says. “I have no one who visits me or gives me even a dollar.”
Unlike native Zimbabweans, who often retire to their rural homes, former migrants like Jamba and Musendami have no such option. Zimbabwe’s land ownership laws make resettlement nearly impossible, while their countries of origin, long disconnected, are now unfamiliar and unreachable.
“They are caught in a very precarious situation,” Chikanza says. “They can’t return to Malawi, Mozambique, or Zambia, most people there have forgotten them. And they’re not fully accepted in Zimbabwe either. Yet they contributed significantly to the economic development of this country and are now treated as lesser citizens.”
This sentiment is echoed by Fadzayi Mutyasera, the former focal person for older persons in the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare. She has called for policy reforms to grant permanent residency and retirement support to migrants who spent their lives working in Zimbabwe.
“If a person has lived and worked in Zimbabwe, there should be policies for permanent residency so they can get land and prepare adequately for retirement if they choose to stay here,” she says. “They deserve the full benefits of Zimbabwean citizenship based on their contributions.”
Edited/Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Illustrated by Rex Opara.
