Cathy Buckle: Shelling maize and dodging roadblocks – A winter journey through Zimbabwe’s tough realities

Key topics:Zimbabwe now requires a $92 annual car radio licence feeDrivers face multiple police and ZBC roadblocks for enforcementDespite harsh taxes, rural life remains rooted in subsistence survival.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Cathy Buckle.Dear Family and Friends,On a beautiful winter day in Zimbabwe I set out to visit a friend 100 kilometres away. Life is very tough here now and I had a big bag of fruit for her on the back seat of the car and a few dollars tucked away in my pocket to buy some of her home-made goodies because every dollar counts when you are struggling to stay afloat. The sky was blue and the sun warm and the view from the window was gorgeous: tall golden grass, blue mountains on the far horizon and bright red flowers opening on Lucky Bean trees. Many trees are starting to lose their leaves now including the wild oranges which are laden with green cricket ball fruits and the beautiful Mukwa trees covered with fried egg pods.On the roadside plots which were once big farms, the view now is of small subsistence families, maize cobs laid out drying in the sun. I pass a plot where a group of women and youngsters are sitting working in the sun. The sight brings me an instant flashback of shelling maize by hand when I first started out farming. It’s hard work and very tough on your thumbs but an immensely satisfying way to spend a warm winter morning, sitting in the sun, laughing, chatting and watching the bowls and buckets filling up with kernels one by one. It’s all thumbs on deck at this time of year, making sure your thumb pushes out every pip and hoping that your harvest will be enough to get you through till next year. One of the women looked up as I passed and I waved, then everyone looked up and there were waves and smiles all round. Oh Zimbabwe, so much has happened to us all these last 25 years, how tough all our lives have become with no end in sight as our government finds ever more ways to suck us dry.My progress along the highway is slow, the roads are full of trucks, tankers and container lorries. With Zimbabwe now 25 years into not being self- sufficient in food and countless other items, most imports come into the country by road. In 2024, Zimbabwe's total imports were valued at US$9.53 billion. Major imports are fuel, mineral oil products, machinery, mechanical appliances, cereals, foodstuffs, manufactured goods and vehicles. All of those imports make for extremely busy highways, the majority of which are single carriageway roads and all of which have numerous police road blocks.On my 100 kilometre journey there were five police road blocks; only two had a ‘police’ sign, the others consisted of two or three police sitting under a tree and one police detail standing right in the middle of the road. This week they also have ZBC (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation) personnel inspecting your car radio licence disc after the government made it law that every vehicle has to have a car radio licence. It’s an annual fee of US$92 and the only way round it is a form, a sworn affidavit declaring there is no car radio fitted in your vehicle and a Commissioner of Oaths to verify it all. Once your form is submitted to ZBC, if it’s approved they will issue you with an Exemption Certificate. This is Zimbabwe’s latest cash cow and there’s no way round it. It doesn’t matter if you only listen to music on your phone or ipod I was told, you are ‘using our airwaves.’ If you don’t buy the radio licence you are not allowed to renew your vehicle licence or insurance. In 2024 there were 827,000 licensed vehicles on the road in Zimbabwe. The government owned ZBC have just made themselves a cool US$76 million with their new radio licence law. The government gets ever richer on the taxes they charge us while people still carry water on their heads, drive ox drawn carts and sit in the sun and shell maize by hand. This is Zimbabwe in the winter of 2025 where time goes backwards.There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website.Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 25th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)Love Cathy 5th June 2025. Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.co.zw/If you like my stories about Zimbabwe’s wild places look for my ‘Zimbabwe Timeless Beauty’ evocative photo-books which are available to order from my website https://cathybuckle.co.zw/ or www.lulu.com/spotlight/cathybuckle2018. Please visit my website for further details on all my books, to link into my social media sites, to contact me or to see pictures that accompany these Letters.

Cathy Buckle: Shelling maize and dodging roadblocks – A winter journey through Zimbabwe’s tough realities

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