However, the transaction took an unexpected turn into the profound. As I approached, she was having her dreadlocks retouched, a detail I had somehow never truly noticed before. I found myself astonished by their length, and when I remarked on them, she offhandedly mentioned that she had begun growing them in 2015, back when she was still completing her A-Levels.

That single sentence acted like a wrench thrown into the gears of my mind. I didn’t say it aloud, but the cogs began to turn with a violent, uncomfortable friction. In a functional, thriving society, would a woman who successfully navigated the rigors of A-Levels—a qualification that once guaranteed a seat in a lecture hall or a comfortable trainee position in industry—be sitting on a dusty pavement in the heat of Kwekwe, selling atchar to passersby?

This woman is not an isolated case of misfortune; she is the living, breathing epitome of what Zimbabwe has become. She represents the tragic “mismatch” of a nation that produces world-class minds but offers them a third-class existence. We have become a country where the livelihoods of millions have been cast into a deep pit of despair, with over 80 percent of the population forced into the frantic, hand-to-mouth survival of the informal sector.

I never even asked if she eventually obtained a degree or a diploma, but in the current Zimbabwean climate, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had. The tragedy is already complete in the fact that her A-Levels, which represent years of discipline and intellectual investment, have yielded a career in street vending. In a normal country, this lady would be earning a dignified living in a formal role, protected by social security and the promise of a pension that actually holds its value.

Instead, she is part of a “lost generation” of intellectuals who are overqualified for their daily struggle but under-resourced to change their circumstances. Even for those few who have managed to cling to formal employment, the “dream” has become a nightmare. The majority of the workforce earns well below the poverty line, leading to the heartbreaking irony of the “working poor.” It is why, even today, our nurses are on strike.

They find themselves in a position where their meager salaries cannot even cover the cost of the commute to the hospitals where they are expected to save lives. The contrast between the present and the past is a jagged pill to swallow. I think of my dear late mother and her generation of nurses.

They were the backbone of a robust middle class; they could afford to purchase suburban houses, drive reliable cars, and provide their families with a life of comfort and dignity. They were respected professionals with a clear path to upward mobility. Today, that path leads directly to the airport.

Our highly trained medical professionals, the literal lifeblood of our healthcare system, feel compelled to migrate abroad to work as carers in foreign nursing homes—not because they lack the skill to be nurses, but because they lack the means to be humans in their own land. This economic meltdown is not a natural disaster or an act of God. It is a man-made catastrophe rooted in the twin evils of systemic corruption and the brazen looting of national resources.

Zimbabwe is a land of immense wealth, sitting on some of the world’s most sought-after minerals, yet the dividends of this bounty never reach the vendor in Kwekwe or the nurse in the ward. Instead, they are siphoned off by a predatory elite, leaving the national treasury hollowed out and the industrial base in a state of terminal decay. Poor economic and political policies have acted as a slow-acting poison, stifling investment, killing job availability, and ensuring that those who do work are paid “slave wages” that insult their expertise.

The social and political impact of this high unemployment and wage suppression is devastating. When you have a highly learned population with nothing to lose, you create a society simmering with a quiet, dangerous resentment. The social contract is not just broken; it has been shredded.

When education no longer serves as a ladder for social mobility, the very foundation of societal progress collapses. Parents no longer see the point in sacrificing for school fees, and the youth begin to view “hustling” or migration as the only viable career paths. Politically, this leads to a dangerous cocktail of apathy and volatility. A government that cannot provide the basic framew