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No democracy, no bread and butter
The Economist
September 21, 2006

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7950047

Discontent is bitter but there's not the unity to harness it

THE protest was stamped upon before it could even begin. Last week, members of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions tried to organise marches in the main towns. They had a lot to protest about. Food, fuel and other essentials are in painfully short supply (shops in Harare, the capital, are even running out of bread). Power cuts are routine, three-quarters of the population have no job, inflation is at 1,200%-the highest rate on the planet. The economy shrank by nearly half in the six years to 2005, and most people now rely on remittances from some of the 3m-4m Zimbabweans living abroad.

Some union leaders were arrested as they gathered for the march and others were chased off by the riot police. Officials claimed that the trade unions were pursuing a political agenda. But the would-be marchers wanted to complain about the lack of bread and butter, rather than the flattening of democracy. The unions want a higher minimum wage, AIDS treatment for the poor, lower taxes, and for officials to stop harassing informal traders.

The poverty line-what is reckoned to be the bare minimum to keep a family of six alive for a month-stands at Z$96,000 ($384 officially, much less by black-market rates). But the unions say that the average monthly salary is less than a quarter of that, barely enough to pay for a decent pair of shoes. One adult in five may be infected with HIV, and AIDS is thought to kill nearly 500 people every day. Drugs could have saved many of them, but there is almost no money for that. People with jobs see 5% of their salaries deducted, supposedly to finance a national AIDS programme. Yet getting treated in government clinics is difficult, and patients must pay Z$3,000 for a monthly course of pills. Private treatment is much more costly.

In the past, many Zimbabweans made ends meet by trading informally: women offered small piles of tomatoes or jars of honey from the roadside; men sold flecks of gold scraped from river-beds; hawkers packed the streets of Harare. But the government's urban demolition drive last year destroyed the homes and businesses of some 700,000 people. Traders are now told to use government stalls, but few have been built and only members of President Robert Mugabe's party get places. Those trying to sell wares outside official markets are arrested and their products grabbed.

There is no resolution in sight. Clearing up the economy depends on sorting out the politics, and that depends on Mr Mugabe leaving office. He shows absolutely no sign of doing so. The police, the army and the ruling party are growing stronger, at the expense of such state institutions as parliament and the courts. Some observers believe that the situation is so bad it could become explosive.

So it could, but continued years of quiet desperation seem more likely. The opposition-the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the unions, the churches and civic groups-have failed to unite in putting as much pressure on the government as possible. They did get together in a "Save Zimbabwe" convention in July, promising mass resistance, but nothing came of it. Though other groups backed the unions' planned march, they made it clear it was not a joint action. The MDC, itself split, said it would watch with "keen interest" how the authorities reacted. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's founder, has been saying since March that mass action is in the works, predicting a "winter of discontent". But Zimbabwe's winter has passed, with much discontent, and little action.

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