Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children: a brutal reminder

Tonight’s BBC 4 programme Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children is a sobering reminder of just how deprived this beautiful country, and its people, have become.

Reporter and producer Xoliswa Sithole took 9 months to shoot 90 minutes of eye-opening footage, under the guise of filming a programme about her own childhood there. She stresses throughout just how much trouble she would be in should the government find out her real agenda and we even see her being checked by Mugabe’s “secret police” (or Central Intelligence Organisation).

The reality of exactly how children in Zim are struggling to survive is shocking. When they’re not caring for young siblings, parents or their grandparents, some resort to bone collecting and gold panning as a way to find money for school fees – the latter is strictly illegal. Nearly 90% of the children at one government-run school are sent home because they can’t afford it.

And if they’re not already orphaned or decide to leave home, they live on the streets in shelters like ruined cars or old ticket booths. Inevitably, they face more starvation and the dangers of crime, corruption and HIV.

You can see all this for yourself – watch it again on on Wednesday 3 March at 10:45pm on BBC 4 or find it on iPlayer. The power of this programme is in the pictures. Obviously Xoliswa’s commentary and reflective pieces to camera help shape it, along with the essential subtitles of the children she follows.

But seeing the skeletal figure of a dying mother and the despair in the eyes of a boy unable to go to school doesn’t require – or warrant – any words. The programme is powerful because it’s so uncomfortable to watch. And it’s effective because it stirs up anger at the injustice and exhausting prospects of recovery facing Zim.

As Xoliswa points out need, the generation forced to bear the burden of Zim’s downfall demands our attention. While regular news programmes can touch on the issues – perhaps more so now that the BBC can officially report from Zimbabwe, it’s undercover and in-depth filming like this that really starts scratching the surface.

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