Zimbabweans in South Africa use app to send food home after border restrictions

A woman collects groceries from a Malaicha warehouse during a lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in Harare, Zimbabwe. Use of the app called Malaicha – Ndebele slang for the traditional way of sending goods over the border with bus and taxi drivers – surged in April, said Magan. — Reuters

JOHANNESBURG/HARARE: Petronella Mabhena, a domestic worker in South Africa, has been paying bus drivers to ferry food to her relatives in Zimbabwe for over a decade.

As with many other families from Zimbabwe whose members depend on food from South Africa, the supplies were abruptly halted when the two countries restricted movement across their border in March to prevent the spread of Covid-19.