Five years ago, Ferenando watched helplessly as Zimbabwean police impounded his treasured bags of used clothing (mazitye) and locked him up in a filthy cell at a station in Chiredzi, the agricultural capital of the south-eastern Lowveld.
He joined several other Mozambican nationals who had been arrested for illegally entering Zimbabwe to sell their wares. Life in their own country, ravaged by years of bitter civil war between the Frelimo government and the Mozambican National Resistance army (MNR), had become so unbearable that they decided they could not just sit around doing nothing.
Their survival came to depend on trips into Zimbabwe where used clothing was in great demand. But the Zimbabwean police, eager to stem the entry of the despised Mozambican, known locally as makarushu-proved to be a hindrance as they harassed them constantly and confiscated their goods forcing faint-hearted people such as Ferendando to give up these lucrative trips.
But all that is history. He's back in business, thanks to the presidential election.
Ferenando, like thousands other Mozambicans, is now assured of entry into Zimbabwe as and when he wants. Three weeks before the elections, word reached his village which is close to the Sango border post that anyone not in possession of a Zimbabwean national identity card could get one easily so long as he was prepared to vote for President Robert Mugabe.
So Ferenando quickly crossed into Zimbabwe where in the Sengwe communal area he and his three brothers and sisters, who are domestic workers, easily acquired birth certificates and national identity cards.
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As part of the deal, the three stayed with relatives at Mabalauta in Chiredzi South constituency until election day when they took part in the crucial election.
"This election was important because we had been told that we would lose our newly acquired Zimbabwean citizenship if president Mugabe lost the election to Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC. So we were duty-bound to give our benefactor, Mugabe, the extra vote he needed to ward off the challenge," recalls Ferenando who is now a common feature at Sango border post, some 250km from Chiredzi town.
He now goes up and down the two countries conducting business without fear of harassment by Zimbabwean police.
This and similar stories are the kind a visitor to the south eastern part of Zimbabwe is likely to hear from people who, only a few years ago, were regarded as aliens in a country in which they had formerly been despised as hoarders of scarce commodities.
The Mozambicans who survive on the sale of goods in Zimbabwe are making a killing in the country as they bring in that hard-to-find US dollar and trade it on the black market. They then buy goods to sell back home.
"It is no secret here that many makarashu obtained Zimbabwean identity cards and voted in the presidential election. Some of them are stalwarts of Frelimo and needed no persuasion to vote for Mugabe.
"In fact, we cannot blame them because it was a deal which benefited all the parties," said a villager at Malipati Secondary School.
