Zimbabwean child waste-pickers work ‘hazardous’ jobs to help their families

Boys as young as six scout for scrap metal to sell in a country where 14 percent of children have jobs.

Harare, Zimbabwe – On a drizzly Sunday evening in the Zimbabwean capital, three boys aged between six and nine scout for scrap metal just as the informal welders in Siyaso Market are about to close for the day.

Early the next day, the boys return to the informal steel fabrication market, which is now partly turned into collection points for discarded metal components, to pick up the scrap for reselling.

“We are only afraid of the dogs that can chase you, but usually we are safe, and no one suspects us [of stealing],” says eight-year-old Takudzwa Rapi. “Sometimes they allow us to pick the scrap whenever they have something they no longer want.”

Takudzwa stops by the roadside to buy doughnuts with the previous day’s earnings. He keeps some for his older sister back at home in Matapi flats, dilapidated council-run apartments that were plagued by a bedbug outbreak last year.

Siyaso is located near Mbare, a low-income neighbourhood just south of the city centre of Harare. Mbare is a bustle of activity with scrap metal-pickers – mostly unemployed people or those from poor backgrounds – in search of any discarded metal.