An elderly white man sits behind the steering wheel of an old van with “National Railways Zimbabwe” emblazoned on its doors. As he and the group of black men with him disembark from the van, people start pointing and passing comments about him.

Slightly unkempt, with a rough beard and a stooping back, the old man trudges to the Bulawayo offices of National Railways Zimbabwe (NRZ) – once the envy of other rail companies in sub-Saharan Africa but now a run-down shadow of itself after years of mismanagement.

Someone in the crowd of onlookers at Bulawayo station asks why the old man is still around when so many whites have fled the country to settle elsewhere, after the ruling ZANU-PF threw them off their farms in President Robert Mugabe’s land-grab policy.

Another man says he is surprised the railwayman is actually an employee rather than employing others as has generally been the case in this former British colony.

The responses come fast and furious, “He is from that group of poor whites who have nowhere to go”; “He has no choice but work for the NRZ or he would be out on the streets as a vagrant”; “He never owned a farm because if he did, he would have left the country after it had been taken over by the war veterans.”

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