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Children after helping smugglers mile in a computer shop
at the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border
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By Ray Mwareya in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe
Mozambique´s
vast porous borderwith east Zimbabwe is now a boon for beverages, medicines, used
car tyres, and combustible fuelsmugglers who are out to dodge Zimbabwe´s
punishing prices and a biting cash shortage crisis.
An
illustration: a crate of Coca Cola soft drinks costs a whopping18US$
here. Just ten miles across the border in Manica, Mozambique, the same sells
for 10$. The price of a two-litre bottle of cooking
oil, used daily by the majority of Zimbabwe´s households,
has recently tripled to 10$. In Mozambique, 4$ would fetch the same.
This
disparity has become both a curse and blessing for businesses and smugglers in Chimanimani,
a district in east Zimbabwe. Chimanimani sits alongthe granite peak mountains
and thick forests that loosely act as the demarcation line with the neighbouring
republic of Mozambique.
Here, local Zimbabwe
businesses, communities, and smugglers unite in a scheme where lorries, river canoes
and motorcycles are cranked up mainly at night and in the mornings, and rumble by
without any immigration checks—no border, frankly speaking—into Manica or
Espungabera towns in Mozambique to scoop consignments of beers, clothes,
medicines and soft drinks for onward posting to Zimbabwe.
Foreign syndicates
thrive by paying bribes to Mozambique border police to gain passage. Their
consignments flow back to Zimbabwe by same route – totally avoiding paying
customs duty and in the end helping to ground somelawful Zimbabwe beverages
sellers who cannot match the artificially low prices of illegal imports.
On Haroni River, I meet Isaiah. He says he is 36. “I´m the border king here in Chimanimani,” he boasts, his hands oily from hauling 20-literjerry cans of petrol onto a wobbling motorbike. He lives in a rural village outside Espungabeira, on the border of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. He dumps fuel, cartons of flour and a crate of beers into a small wooden canoe. He then rows the canoes acroass the muddy Rusitu River that buffers Zimbabwe and Mozambique in Chimanimani. He has to be steady.
“But, look, diesel and petrol costs 60 US cents a litre in Mozambique. In Zimbabwe fuel is charged $1,40 a litre,” he reveals. “There is a high demand for smuggled fuel. I earn 75 US cents for each illegal run. In a good hour I make $6.”
“My smuggling is a good deed. I keep my community going,” he adds.After all, scores in Zimbabwe are sleeping in fuel queues as shortages leaves gas stations empty.
Lorries come from Chimoio town, 130 kilometres
away, loaded with 30-litre drums of petrol. Isaiah and a friend, Gondai, 33 – also
a “river sailor” – transfer the petrol into sub-divided ten-litre jerry cans and
load them into their canoes. Minibus and van drivers across the river on
Zimbabwe side stand in anticipation, smoking cigarettes as the operation sneaks
towards them.
It is a five-minute trip by canoeto the Zimbabwean side. Here, there is a frenetic effort to get the petrol into trailers as fast as possible. Drivers live in fear of raids, fines and seizures that may be conducted by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra).But so far, no customs officers from the Zimra have visited the river site. “Chimanimani district is too dusty and forgotten,” laughs Major, a minibus driver who receives goods on the Zimbabwe side.
Once safely back in Mozambique, Isaiah and Gondai scrape the river mud from the soles of their gumboots.
This is December. Their operations get a jolt in the arm. Lorries coming from Johannesburg, South Africa, are locked in their own smuggling trick. “Their real destination is Zimbabwe. But they head to Mozambique here instead, and lie to customs that they will offload their goods here in Mozambique. They proceed to Zimbabwe border to dump their wares across the river by canoe and quickly drive back to South Africa,” says Gondai.
This three-country smuggling racket is an act of necessity because customs duty at Zimbabwe borders are so expensive. In October, Zimbabwe’s finance ministry declared that all customs duty on imported stuff will be paid in hard currency greenbacks.
Smugglers’fortunes are also helped by beliefs that car fuel manufactured in Zimbabwe is sub-standard. “Diesel, petrol produced in Zimbabwe burns 30 percent faster inside engines because it is blended with sugarcane ethanol. Mozambique´s fuel stays longer in vehicle tanks,” claims Major.
School children ditch classes for smuggling
Profits are
so tempting that some primary school-going children on both the Mozambique and
Zimbabwe sides of the border are forfeiting their studies to become river canoe
handlers.
Promise* says he is 15. He lives on the banks of the smuggling river.
“When I gave up school, it took me four days to
learn how to steady a wooden boat,” he says, proud. He smuggles 20 litres of
diesel and an assortment of beers at a time.
“School is boring, uneventful,” he grins.
“Smuggling earns me money. Mother and I went hungryuntil I left school to work
with smugglers.”
Promise maneuvers the river and this time successfully
brings a consignment of dangerously worn-out tyres.
Adozen minibus smugglers on the Zimbabwe side mill
around him, inspecting the load. He is paid in US dollars. Isaiah says the tyres
are polished with black wax to fool customers that they are new. They are
fitted onto used Japanese cars and sometimes used to make rubber soles. Brand
new tyres in Zimbabwe cost US$100 each, so there is a thriving market for run-down
tyres from Mozambique, which sell for US$20. But this causes dire road mishaps,
he admits.
Local economist Wallace Hlobo says that, “Zimbabwe´s
dysfunctional economy means we not only harm out our thin tax collection base
by smuggling, but we also sell around substandard clothes, machinery, and even
dirty smuggled fuels.”
Antonio Gama, Secretary for Public Schools in
Manica Mozambique National Organization of Teachers union, says that, “In this
province bordering Zimbabwe, up to 10,000 children never finish primary school.
Smugglers are stealing school time for child workers.”
Intoxication
But although
business is booming on the Mozambique side of the border, the knock-on effect
is creating a bad outcome for Zimbabweans. Counterfeit beers, and toxic or
dubious medicines are flowing in the smugglers consignments.
In Zimbabwe, many people cannot afford the fees
charged at hospitals.Doctors are on job action. On 5 December, the
Pharmaceutical Society of Zimbabwe president, Portifa Mwendera, told parliament
that their members charge forproducts in U.S. dollars, which most locals don’t
have. This is because, “The crisis that we are in is critical. We have
shortages for painkillers, anti-diabetes medicines,” he said[KT1] [RM2] .
One popular brand carried by smugglers from across the
border in Mozambique is called Tsunami.The yellowpills have flooded the streets
of Mutare, Zimbabwe´s biggest border city with Mozambique. Tsunami is hawked as
a multipurpose treatment for flu, skin pimples, malaria, migraine headaches,
and even syphilis. “It´s such a dangerous joke. None of us medics knows the
origin of this street pill,” says Dr. Laxton Majoni, an infectious diseases
expert in Mutare.
But buyers don’t care. "Lawful hospitals need $5
up front. Then they reveal to you they don't have drugs," said Charity
Kanyekanye, a diabetes and cholesterol patient in Mutare. "Here, I just
pay $2 and I can drink my medicines without a hassle."
At one street-side stall, the most expensive items are smuggledpills
that the seller claims are "cancer drugs". They cost around $2.50 but
the price is negotiable.
"All my medicines are for a dollar, except for
those ones that treat cancer," says Bla
John, the smuggler."My tsunami pills are for stomach problems. They came
from afar: India,” he claims. "If you crush my tsunami pills and drink with
hot milk, this could triple your sperm count. If your gearbox is down.”
People like Bla John say they are small runners who get various goods
from Mozambique, clothes, food, fuel and medicines and sell it forward on the
streets of Zimbabwe. They don’t see themselves as sophisticated organized crime
syndicates although, without knowing it they are, in a small way, enabling the
transnational movements of counterfeit and unchecked medicines.
They
are not so keen to tell us the source of the medicines. “We buy our pills from
back street traders in Manica town, Mozambique, for a marked up price. This
pill is for malaria, this for STIs, this for flu, colds, is all they say and
send us away back to Zimbabwe,” says Bla John.
They say it could be that some of the medicines are stolen from public clinics and charity stockrooms in Mozambique or originate from the many Asian (mainly Indian and Chinese) import businesses that flourish in sea-connected Mozambique.
Nearby, revelers are gulpingKarango,
a popular illegal intoxicating whiskey. Itis smuggled from Mozambique. Its
alcohol contents are not listed, butBla John gives a clue: “We´ve lost five
friends who finisheda cup of Karango without diluting it with water.”
This story was produced by The Zambia Analyst News site as
part of theReporting Transnational Organised Crime, a media skills
development programme run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in partnership with
the EU funded ENACT programme. . More information at http://enactafrica.org/. The programme funders are not
responsible for the article’s content. The content remains the editor’s sole
responsibility.
*not his real name
