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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Price Controls and Shortages - Index of articles
A
tale of two Zim supermarkets
Fanuel Jongwe, iafrica.com
July 10, 2007
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/202165.htm
The shelves may be bare
in most of Harare's supermarkets but in Borrowdale Brooke, home
to Zimbabwe's rich and famous, everything from lobster to single
malt whisky can be bought - at a price.
As shoppers in townships
such as Chitungwiza have to endure a stampede for groceries in the
wake of price cuts ordered by President Robert Mugabe's government,
customers at the Spar supermarket in Borrowdale can fill their trolleys
with luxuries to a background of soothing piped music.
"You can get anything
you want here," said a women who identified herself only as
Lindi. "It's just the prices that are too high." Indeed
the prices are beyond not only the pay packets but the wildest dreams
of most Zimbabweans who are trying to cope with the effects of the
world's highest rate of inflation and an 80 percent unemployment
rate.
A two-kilogram box of
prawns imported from neighbouring Mozambique is currently on sale
for ZIM$9.5-million ($38 000 at the official rate but $86 at the
parallel market rate) which is the equivalent of three months' salary
for a schoolteacher.
A large packet of imported
potato chips cost $459 000, which is what an average family pays
their housemaid for a month.
Other shelves groan under
the weight of imported goods such as nappies, dog food and children's
toys which were struck off most shopping lists long ago.
"If you check on
the shelves you find almost everything you can no longer find in
an ordinary supermarket," Lindi said. "While everyone
else is crying about the shortages, life goes on for those with
money." Borrowdale, with its rows of mansions, has traditionally
been home to the country's elite, such as central bank governor
Gideo Gono and tennis star Byron Black. Mugabe himself also has
a private home in the neighbourhood.
The opulence of Borrowdale
is only a 20 minute drive from Chitungwiza, one of the poorest townships
in the country where the stench of raw sewage can be smelled several
kilometres away.
In one of its local supermarkets,
the TM store, the shelves are devoid of even basics such as sugar,
salt, rice and cooking oil - let alone lobster.
The power has been switched
off from all the fridges bar one deep freezer where tubs of ice
cream are stacked. There are few takers as electricity in this part
of town can be blacked out for hours every day, giving rise to fears
about food safety.
The scrum of shoppers
trying to pack their baskets with the little food that is still
available battle for space with an army of shop assistants who work
round the clock repricing goods in line with a government directive
to slash the prices of all products.
More than 1750 shop owners
and business executives have been arrested since the government
edict came into force a fortnight ago for defying the price freeze
which they claim makes their business unviable.
One assistant, speaking
on condition of anonymity, worried that he would soon be joining
the long ranks of the unemployed as the shops run bare and business
instead reverts to the increasingly thriving black market.
"Our worry is whether
we will still have our jobs because the stocks are running out and
no fresh deliveries are coming in," he told AFP.
Crack teams of inspectors
are on patrol throughout the capital to ensure stores keep their
prices in line with the government controls.
Members of the public
are also encouraged to ring toll-free hotlines to report any violations.
Announcing the freeze
on 26 June, Industry Minister Obert Mpofu accused manufacturers
and supermarkets of colluding with the country's foes in the west
to increase price and ignite a revolt against Mugabe.
The price freeze was
intended to counter the impact of the galloping inflation rate,
now estimated to be running at well beyond 5000 percent, which has
meant prices rising several times a day.
But main opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai and Mugabe's former information minister Jonathan
Moyo have dismissed the crackdown as a "desperate" propaganda
ploy ahead of elections due next year.
"It is
only a clueless government driven by a desperate political party
supported by a corrupt and partisan police, national intelligence
and national army that can even entertain the inherently foolish
thought that pricing in the national economy of a modern society
can be run in an effective, efficient and sustainable way on the
basis of commissariat commands and decrees," Moyo said in article
in the privately-owned weekly, The Zimbabwe Independent. -- AFP
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