My parents’ retirement is in my plans. The thing with our generation is that the economy has failed us. Our parents by the time they were my age, had great jobs, were paying NSSA and had access to facilities that enabled them to procure property at a young age.
I am 28 and I have never been in a job where I got a formal payslip where I am contributing towards NSSA. I don’t even get medical aid. When you graduate in Zimbabwe, you become an intern or graduate trainee which is code for cheap slave labour. They will tell you that it’s all well and good because you are getting experience. Experience at the the expense of the best years of your life.
My mother has started talking retirement and as the first born, its giving me sleepless nights. I can barely look after myself on the salary that I get what more my mother and the expenses that she is currently handling? Zulugirl5 is only in Form 3, automatically her varsity tuition is my baby.
Our parents are put in a tough spot, they have experienced two extremes of the Zimbabwean economy. They incessantly worry about us and how we will make it through these tough times. Our parents are tired and they have reached retirement age but they cannot stop working because we will all die of hunger.
My mother would come home from work when I was unemployed and she wouldn’t put me under any pressure about being unemployed because she understood the struggle. We were both frustrated because these were circumstances beyond our control. She invested in my education and it should be paying out right about now but that’s not the reality on the ground. It’s a bad place to be, something’s gotta give. Until then, let us alone to seek instant gratification and drink away our sorrows.
