Source: Fix our living standards first, Mai Chinomona, then we’ll have more babies! It is disgraceful when leadership is detached from the people. Speaking at a ZANU PF Women’s League event in Murehwa West, Senate President and party Secretary for Women’s Affairs, Mabel Chinomona, issued an astonishing directive to Zimbabwean women.To directly receive my articles […] The post Fix our living standards first, Mai Chinomona, then we’ll have more babies! appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation .
Source: Fix our living standards first, Mai Chinomona, then we’ll have more babies!
It is disgraceful when leadership is detached from the people.
Speaking at a ZANU PF Women’s League event in Murehwa West, Senate President and party Secretary for Women’s Affairs, Mabel Chinomona, issued an astonishing directive to Zimbabwean women.
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Stop using family planning methods, throw away your contraceptives, and give birth to more children to build our nation’s workforce.
Dismissing worries over food security, she flippantly remarked that feeding additional mouths is never an issue because children will simply eat whatever is available at home.
To top off this dangerous detachment, she vaguely promised that the government would be asked to assist families with child-rearing costs.
These remarks are profoundly reckless, tone-deaf, and betray how utterly divorced the ruling elite are from the daily struggles of the people they claim to lead.
Zimbabweans are not having fewer children out of spite or a lack of patriotism; they are making responsible choices in a country where economic survival is an everyday battle.
As an only child, I always envisioned raising a large, vibrant family.
However, when my son was born in 2003, the reality of our collapsing socio-economic environment set in.
Though limiting our family was initially a conscious decision, the relentless freefall of the Zimbabwean economy transformed that choice into a hard necessity.
Over the past two decades, we have endured massive unemployment, vanishing opportunities, and an unbearable cost of living.
Even today, as state officials preach about growth on paper, ordinary citizens experience no such prosperity.
Taking care of my single child—who is now in tertiary education—demands every resource I can scrape together.
How could I possibly afford more children?
How would I guarantee them a decent future?
My family’s experience reflects a nationwide reality, as validated by grim economic data.
According to IMF international poverty metrics, extreme poverty—defined as those surviving on less than $2.15 a day or earning under $65 a month—rose from 30.4 percent of the population in 2017 to an appalling 42 percent in 2025.
Similarly, general poverty, encompassing those living on less than $3.65 a day or earning under $110 a month, climbed from 61.6 percent in 2017 to 64.5 percent today.
When examining upper poverty—those living on less than $6.85 a day or under $200 a month—the figure rose from 83 percent in 2017 to 85 percent in 2025.
How can a nation where over two-thirds of households earn less than $200 per month desire more babies?
The endlessly hyped state empowerment programs are clearly not empowering anyone; they are mere holding patterns designed to keep citizens barely afloat and prevent outright starvation.
Even formal workers are drowning.
While the lowest-paid civil servant earns around $375 on paper, their actual take-home pay after taxes and mandatory deductions drops as low as $150, placing state employees firmly within the poverty bracket.
Before lecturing mothers on fertility rates, Mai Chinomona needs a swift lesson in basic human dignity.
A child is not a doll or a mere statistic to populate future labor forces; a child is a real human being deserving of a quality life, proper nutrition, medical care, clothing, and a decent education.
Would Mai Chinomona be comfortable walking through our communities to see thousands of malnourished children or school-aged youth wandering the streets simply because their parents cannot afford tuition?
The figures are already damning.
According to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, approximately 22.3 percent of school-age children nationwide are out of school, translating to anywhere between 400,000 and nearly one million children.
Data from UNICEF Zimbabwe and the Global Hunger Index outline an even more terrifying crisis among our youngest.
Stunting affects between 23.5 and 27 percent of children under five, leading to irreversible cognitive and structural development delays.
Furthermore, approximately 580,000 young children live in severe food poverty, surviving on two or fewer primary food groups daily and facing a 50 percent higher risk of life-threatening malnutrition.
Overall, less than 10 percent of Zimbabwean children consume a diverse diet containing the necessary food groups required for healthy growth.
Are these the tragic statistics Mai Chinomona wants to see worsening as we bring more children into this country?
Her casual suggestion of government assistance is pure fantasy.
Where is this government right now when millions of children are already suffering from stunting, hunger, and a lack of schooling?
If the state cannot take care of the children already here, how will it manage a birth boom?
If the ruling elite want higher birth rates, they must first fix the economy, create real jobs, lower the cost of living, and restore dignity to Zimbabwean homes.
Fix the economy first, Mai Chinomona, and the babies will follow.
***Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or ***mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com
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