A FEW days ago, a heartbreaking picture circulated on social media.
It showed a girl, believed to be not older than 10, cradling her baby brother — a child just a few months old.
They were living on the streets, exposed to the harsh elements, surviving on nothing but resilience and the faint hope that someone may show them mercy.
Their mother reportedly died two months ago.
Their father, battling his own demons of poverty, wanders the streets trying to find scraps of food for himself and his children.
Although earlier reports suggested the girl was from Zambia, the story struck Zimbabweans deeply.
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Because the truth is simple: we have countless children like her right here at home.
Child-headed families are no longer rare occurrences in Zimbabwe; they are becoming a defining feature of our social landscape.
Visit Gokwe, Zvishavane rural, Chimanimani or any corner of the country.
You will find them: children raising children, children parenting siblings, children forced into adulthood long before they have had the chance to experience childhood.
And in every major town or city, central business districts are choking with street children.
They move from car to car, from shopfront to shopfront, begging for anything — a coin, a piece of bread, even a moment of attention.
Many Zimbabweans now view them as a nuisance or “a menace”, but the real menace is the system that produces them.
This is what happens when a nation lacks functioning social safety nets.
This is what happens when poverty deepens while leaders celebrate imaginary economic milestones.
This is what happens when government fails the weakest, the least protected, the most vulnerable among us.
Zimbabwe’s social welfare system has effectively collapsed.
The departments meant to safeguard children, widows, orphans, the disabled, the elderly and the chronically poor are underfunded, understaffed and practically invisible.
Instead of community shelters, we have pavements.
Instead of care homes, we have bus termini.
Instead of trained social workers, we have police officers who occasionally chase these children away only for them to return moments later.
Meanwhile, those in power do not seem to be bothered.
They are not losing sleep over the fate of the hungry, homeless, parentless children growing up under streetlights and on shop verandas.
For the elite, poverty is something to be spoken about at conferences, not confronted on the ground.
Worse still, there is a disturbing belief among some policymakers that poverty can be soothed with cheap handouts — a box of fried chicken, a packet of French fries or a fizzy drink at political party rallies.
Such gestures may look good on camera, but they change absolutely nothing.
They are crumbs thrown at a crisis that requires urgent structural action.
And while leaders pose for pictures, the consequences of inaction unfold in real time.
The hundreds of children living on our streets face unimaginable risks every single day.
Physical abuse, emotional trauma, sexual exploitation, drug exposure, trafficking, malnutrition, disease, death, name it all.
The brutal truth is that the streets do not nurture; they destroy.
The vagaries of the weather do not spare them either.
Whether it is winter’s cold stings, summer’s searing heat or the rains that drench them through the night, these children have no refuge. No blankets. No shelter. No security.
Zimbabwe cannot continue pretending that rising poverty is a temporary glitch or an external problem.
It is a national emergency.
And until government confronts it with seriousness — through genuine social protection policies, investment in welfare systems, community-based care and economic reforms — the streets will keep filling with children who should be in school, not in survival mode.
Every child on the street is not just a statistic.
They are a national failure made visible.