Exploring rural household strategies to keep children in school : the case of Nyamande village, Murewa, Zimbabwe

M.A.This dissertation is about how poor households struggled to keep children in the school system during a protracted political and socio-economic crisis in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The setting of the research is Nyamande village in Murewa District, Zimbabwe. Fieldwork was conducted between May 2010 and July 2010, at a time that many believe to be past the peak of Zimbabwe’s crisis in 2008. In-depth interviews and observations were used to collect qualitative data from families and households in Nyamande village. My findings revealed that even when such households did not get surplus produce, they still sold what they had in order to obtain income to fund their children’s schooling. Households supplemented their farm produce with off-farm activities such as casual labour on plots, informal trading and sale of assets. Child labour was also employed as a means of supplementing family income in order to meet schooling requirements through activities such as casual labour on farms and roadside selling of produce. The introduction of the multi-currency system or dollarisation (as it was commonly known) in April 2009 improved the conditions in Zimbabwe to some extent; however complexities experienced in Nyamande village included access to the US dollar and Rand currencies. These challenges led to the re-emergence of the barter or exchange system during and after dollarisation as most households adopted this as a strategy to provide for their children’s schooling. Although households displayed various forms of resilience in their efforts to keep children in school, interventions regarding the viability and sustainability of some of these strategies should be considered. Various stakeholders including government, private sector and non-government organisations need to play an active role in uplifting rural communities in promoting children’s schooling