“It’s because I am hungry” was the answer from 12-year old Stembiso (not her real name) after being caught stealing a packet of biscuits in a supermarket at a local business centre. The owner of the shop did not hesitate to give the young girl an immediate disciplinary beating, but from a spectator’s view the girl did not look repentant or even apologetic. Was it a case of juvenile delinquency or could it be hunger? This was the question that pushed the humanitarian worker who narrated this story to me to have a discussion with this child.

Stembiso and her young brother Vuso, who is 10 years old, live with their grandparents. Being orphaned at an early age, these siblings have stayed with their aged maternal relatives for most of their lives. Life has never been easy, she says. Her grandparents cannot work to sustain the household, so she has been doing the running around.

The Zimbabwean economy has collapsed, with unemployment at over 80 per cent and 12-digit inflation, and the drought has been severe. The majority of households that usually rely on agriculture for a livelihood now have nothing. The extended family net is failing to give any assistance because they are all in a similar situation. Stembiso’s household is surviving on handouts from the local miller, who gives them leftover mealie meal once in a while, but mostly they eat chakata (a wild fruit). On this particular day Stembiso had managed to scrape almost 2kg of mealie meal from the leftovers and was holding on to it as if her whole life depended on it. The teachers’ strike is a blessing in disguise for he, as she can afford to wake up early and spent more time looking for enough chakata to share with their grandparents, rather than go to school with no teachers or books.

When asked when last they ate a proper meal of sadza and vegetables, she says almost two weeks ago.

In their quest for survival, the children are adopting negative coping mechanisms. Stembiso’s case mirrors that of thousands of Zimbabwean children who have been orphaned mainly due to the HIV and AIDS pandemic, and have been left in the care of grandparents or to fend for themselves. The HIV prevalence rate is currently more than 15 per cent. The education system is collapsing and children do not attend school. This puts them at even more risk of hunger and poverty in the future.

Oxfam’s programme in Zimbabwe is registering vulnerable households like Stembiso’s for food aid in the Midlands province. The objective of the project is to improve the food security of the poorest households affected by the food crisis and reduce the uptake of negative coping mechanisms.

More from the Oxfam Press Office at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/news