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Zimbabwe
groans amid shortages and spiralling inflation
Alec Russell, Financial Times (UK)
May 20, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/60dcdf9a-06fa-11dc-93e1-000b5df10621.html
The people of Nswazwi
are once again on the move. Three decades ago their tiny settlement
of thatched mud huts, a few miles from the border with Botswana,
was caught up in Zimbabwe's liberation war. Many residents fled
across the frontier before returning home to enjoy the fruits of
freedom. Now, again, abandoned huts and empty kraals
(enclosures) testify to an exodus.
Since the days of Lobengula,
the 19th-century Matabele king, lustrous cattle have grazed in this
remote corner of Zimbabwe. But now food stocks are running low;
the average household income is a few US dollars a month; and the
intimidation from the regime is intensifying. Those who remain are
clearly struggling. Local tracks are dotted with people who cannot
afford the bus fare to the local town. And so they walk for hours
in the sun, bearing scraps of food that they hope to sell or barter
- and this in a country that was until recently dubbed the
bread-basket of southern Africa.
These are tense times.
Few people talk openly to strangers, lest agents of the feared Central
Intelligence Organisation are watching. Hidden behind the corner
of a cattle kraal, a young girl said she wanted to speak out. "There
are so many who are going," she said. "They say they will
come back one day but I don't think so. It is so difficult to get
food now. We are finishing off last year's maize and then we will
have no stocks."
The situation in Nswazwi
is mirrored across Zimbabwe, where security forces tightly monitor
the main roads and most journalists, including this correspondent,
have to operate undercover. One veteran of the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), who acted as a guide for the FT, said:
"Every year we say this must be the end." He recalls how
his first car cost $Z5,000, a thousandth of what half a tank of
petrol costs now - or rather what it cost when he spoke, for
the next day the prices went up. "Mugabe can't last much longer,"
he added. "Or maybe he can..."
In the latest grim signal
of Zimbabwe's vertiginous decline, the official rate of inflation
was last week put at 3713.9 per cent. Economists believe it may
be much higher. With unemployment at over 50 per cent, three or
four million out of a population variously estimated between 12
and 15 million have fled the country in search of work. Perversely,
their remittances are a crucial prop to the regime. Yet the government
blandly delivers statistics as if inflation were four per cent and
not four thousand.
Gideon Gono, the Zimbabwean
central bank governor, said on Thursday that inflation had been
fuelled by chronic food shortages. The government attributes these
to the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the US, as well
as to the drought affecting southern Africa, and denies a link to
the land expropriations that have led to the near-total collapse
of Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture. The sanctions include a ban
on arms sales, a freezing of assets in European banks and a travel
ban on senior officials in the government and Zanu-PF.
Mr Gono said he would
continue large-scale printing of money despite the warnings of the
International Monetary Fund that this would merely increase inflation.
"We offer no apology, we offer no remorse for our intervention
in all spheres of the economy when we do the unorthodox," he
told MPs.
Some commentators have
argued that, such is the economic chaos, the regime must be near
its "tipping point". But comparisons suggest Zimbabwe
may well fall a lot lower before this happens. The country is not
policed with the ruthlessness of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nor has
it been reduced to the state of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic
of the Congo) under its late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. By the end
of his ruinous regime in 1997, many roads and railways built by
the Belgians had been reclaimed by the jungle and visitors were
routinely fleeced by officials on arrival at Kinshasa's Ndjili airport.
Despite all Mr Mugabe's catastrophic decisions in the past decade
or so, unlike Zaire in its last days Zimbabwe still somehow staggers
along with the odd vestige of normality.
One evening at the Bulawayo
Country Club earlier this month, a young white couple were discussing
their wedding plans with a caterer. "So do you want fish as
well as pâté?" she asked. "And when are you
going to do the speeches? Do you want me to wait before bringing
in the meat?" Similar exchanges have been overheard in the
club's panelled interior for years and will no doubt be heard for
years to come. But the most myopic visitor or resident could not
now miss the evidence of a society under terrible strain.
On the fringes of Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe's second city, queues form outside shops on the rumour
of deliveries of sugar or other foods. Banknotes are exchanged in
brick-sized wads. Many shops change prices twice a day. Most business
is done by barter. One world-weary businessman says that after years
of marriage he has changed his mantra to his wife. "I no longer
say: 'You are spending too much.' I now say: 'You are not spending
quickly enough.' Whenever we have cash we spend it."
For seven years since
Mr Mugabe first faced a serious challenge to his rule with the formation
of the MDC, Zimbabwe's opposition has been in a state of increasing
despair. Since 2000 there have been three elections, two parliamentary
and one presidential. With the economy in freefall, each should
have been a stiff challenge for Mr Mugabe. But he won all three
easily, relying on a formula of populism, thuggery and skulduggery
at the polls.
Now more than ever, Mr
Mugabe's back is against the wall. His Zanu-PF party is in disarray.
Ten days ago, party meetings in Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold,
and the central town of Masvingo broke up in chaos amid clashes
between supporters of the two factions vying to replace the president.
Also, his sovereignty has for the first time in his 27 years in
power been compromised: regional leaders have mandated South Africa
to mediate between Zanu-PF and the MDC ahead of presidential and
parliamentary elections due next March.
Yet barring a move from
within Zanu-PF - and insiders suggest that this, despite the
party's unhappiness, is unlikely for the moment - the earliest
the 83-year-old can be expected to leave office is after the elections.
In the meantime, the opposition is struggling to speak with one
voice and overcome regional scepticism as to its viability as a
political force. All the while, Mr Mugabe's supporters are doing
their best to ensure that it is in no state to contest the election.
"The regime has
thrown all caution to the wind," says David Coltart, a veteran
human rights lawyer and a leading MDC MP. "It has been pushed
into a corner and is now lashing out. As with so many dictatorships,
the closer they get to the end the more vicious they become. They
are deadly serious now. This isn't an aberration. This is an attempt
to crush the opposition before elections."
He was speaking shortly
after police beat two of Zimbabwe's best-known human rights lawyers
in Harare. This was merely the latest act of state-sponsored brutality
since March 11, when Morgan Tsvangirai, the head of one of the MDC's
two wings, and other leaders were beaten in the streets of the capital.
These are dangerous times for the opposition as Human Rights Watch,
the US rights group, made clear in a report this month that recorded
the summary arrest and torture of hundreds of activists since the
attack on Mr Tsvangirai.
Day by day, the fabric
of the old law-abiding and functioning order becomes more threadbare
and people more desperate. Earlier this month, on Suzanne Street
on the northern fringe of the city hundreds of people had gathered
outside a high metal gate. Briefly it opened and some bags were
thrown out. The crowd surged forward. Behind the gate was a chicken
farm. The crowd was waiting for chicken heads and feet for the pot,
or to sell on. "There is a new rule," said a pastor watching
in dismay. "If you buy it, don't eat it, but sell it, make
your mark up."
The pastor was on his
way back from delivering food to impoverished victims of Murambatsvina
(Operation Clear Out the Trash), the government's brutal 2005 campaign
to raze informal settlements in the main cities. Hundreds of thousands
of people had their homes destroyed and were then dumped in the
countryside. Now many are eking out an existence on land confiscated
from white farmers a few years ago.
Ten miles outside Bulawayo,
Edward Sibanda, 52, is living on a dusty five-hectare plot with
his wife and four children. It used to be part of a successful commercial
farm. His experience highlights the folly and crime of both Murambatsvina
and the expropriations. A decade ago the commercial farmers accounted
for half Zimbabwe's foreign currency earnings. Now most of their
land is in small plots and all but uncultivated. Mr Sibanda ticked
off on his fingers what he needed to make a go of it: "We have
no rain, no tractors, no petrol, no tools, no food."
He is one of
many who can no longer afford monthly school fees ($Z15,000 -
just over 50 US cents at the unofficial rate) for his children.
Zimbabweans were long regarded as some of the best educated people
in Africa and in his early years, Mr Mugabe rightly took pride in
his government's investment in schooling. Now, a malnourished and
uneducated generation is growing up. A nurse burst into tears as
she described the implosion of the health service. "We've got
kwashiorkor [a type of childhood malnutrition] again. I didn't see
it 25 years ago when I was trained. Now you are seeing the telltale
signs, golden hair and pot bellies."
South African officials
are increasingly concerned about the crisis on their northern border.
Western criticism of the country's policy of "quiet diplomacy"
over the past few years has infuriated Pretoria, which argues that
trumpeting its concern would be counter-productive. But privately,
officials concede the crisis sends all the wrong signals to the
foreign investors they want to attract. They also fear it risks
overshadowing the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa, which
they hope will be a showcase for the post-apartheid state.
Now they are pushing
forward with their mediation plans. They have held several meetings
with the opposition factions and written formally to Mr Mugabe seeking
his response to their mandate. Meanwhile, western agencies have
done their sums and calculated that the world will need to stump
up one billion US dollars a year for a decade after the regime falls.
The best-case scenario
is for the region somehow to force Mr Mugabe to step down in favour
of a coalition between reformist elements of the Zanu-PF and the
MDC. But no one is holding their breath. A senior former cabinet
minister believes Mr Mugabe has only one goal: to stay until he
dies and so avoid the risk of prosecution. As a senior opposition
figure concedes, Mr Mugabe knows all too well that the MDC's promises
of amnesty are meaningless.
"I think we are
in for growing violence and eventually some sort of conflagration
this year, next or even the year after," says one diplomat
with long experience of Zimbabwe. Given Zimbabweans' relative quiescence
in the face of the growing tyranny, until recently that might have
been dismissed as alarmism. Moses Nzila-Ndlovu, an MDC MP, fears
that is no longer the case.
"There
are so many people who have been traumatised and brutalised by Zanu-PF.
If the MDC were cheated at the elections again there could be carnage.
There is so much anger. And even if Mugabe goes, it may not end
there. Look at it from the perspective of the ordinary people. You
have a pot, boiling. Lift up the lid and the steam boils over."
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