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From breadbasket to basket case
Geoff Simms, Sydney Morning Herald
July 27, 2007

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/from-breadbasket-to-basket-case/2007/07/27/1185339254829.html

They came into Barry's trading store in an isolated part of a Zimbabwe a bit over a week ago: two men waving rifles, saying they were acting on Comrade Mugabe's instructions that all prices be marked down by 50 per cent.

Barry told them he was barely scratching a living as it was. Villagers depended on him to bring in basic food supplies - mielie, or maize meal - and other essentials.

The armed men shouted threats at him, one putting a gun to his head. Then the armed men cleaned out the store's shelves, took the mielie and sugar, candles and soap, his precious fuel and sped off in a ute.

"Borstards!" Barry said, they way they do. His staff were terrified. Would the robbers come back?

Whether the gunmen were police, officials or opportunists is impossible to tell.

Barry, a middle-aged African born in East Africa, has lived in most countries all the way to Cape Town. Barry is not his real name, of course. He's been around, run stores and garages, learnt most of the trade skills, does a bit of engineering work, makes ends meet. He's no angel, but lives in basic harmony as a white man in black Africa.

A month or so ago, Barry supplied some fuel and food when we rode through Zimbabwe - four blokes on motorbikes, my wife on the back with me, and the wife of one rider and her friend in a back-up car. His prices were reasonable and he was helpful.

You could be reasonably certain other business people - black and white, small and large - have faced the same sort of opportunistic hold-ups since Robert Mugabe's latest insane dictate to deal with inflation.

"There is no law here," another businessman says. "So many regulations, but no law."

For the past two years at least, Zimbabwean business people of all sorts have had to adjust all their prices daily because of inflation. That means every price tag, every job estimate, every quote. Foodstuffs were already in short supply, fuel near impossible to get, before this latest act.

Last month inflation in Zimbabwe was 2200 per cent a year; it was 3713.9 per cent a month later - officially. By the Government's figures, the rate was doubling every month.

Even at that rate the worthlessness of the Zimbabwe dollar was staggering.

One collective hotel "extras" bill was $US125 ($143). Foreigners have to pay in US currency, but that amount equated to $Z3.6 million. In 1980, when Mugabe came to power, the Zimbabwean dollar and the US dollar were about on par. By April last year, the rate had gone off the scale. Mugabe ordered his bankers to reprint all bank notes with the last three zeroes taken off. So $Z3.6 million was actually $Z3.6 billion - and that's doubled again and
again over the past month or so.

In any case, the notes are labelled "bearer cheques" and cease to be valid after this month. They will probably remain in circulation, but they could be officially worthless - literally not worth the paper they're printed on.

Crossing the Zambezi River from Zambia, with Victoria Falls on the right and a couple of tourists bungy jumping from the old steel bridge into the void below, it is straight to the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge. A tourist bus leaves, full of Americans waving at and photographing a "warrior" in feathered headdress who is chanting to them, waving a spear.

He might have been calling everybody silly buggers, but the first impression was: here was a country riding a tourist wave.

Package tours bring foreigners in from Johannesburg. They see the falls, have their pictures taken, eat well, stay a couple of nights and are driven back to the airport. Tourism Zimbabwe starts and finishes with Victoria Falls and whatever hotel the tourists stay in.

The once bustling Victoria Falls village of curio shops and eateries, truck drivers and prostitutes, moneychangers and pickpockets, squatters and beggars, was near deserted. Only eight years ago it was chaotic, but at least it was alive. The squatters, the stallholders, the jobless, the desperate, were all cleared out in one of Mugabe's purges. More than 6million Zimbabweans have fled into South Africa, most of them illegally.

In the lodge, one waiter's name tag reads "Confidence". It is the only indication of it. Confidence is a nice young man, immeasurably luckier than most Zimbabweans in that he has a job, but if this last outpost of tourism collapses, there is nowhere to go.

On the road out of town, African craft huts stocked with wood and soapstone carvings, many of them exquisite, are empty of buyers.

Lake Kariba, a huge, man-made waterway on the Zambezi, is as spectacular as ever, surrounded by magnificent bush. The lake was once bustling with pleasure craft and anglers. Now, a few rusting houseboats sit by the shore, abandoned.

Hwange National Park, an international drawcard less than a decade ago, was a similar story. The lodge has 100 rooms, 95 of which are empty.

Yet the game is abundant. One herd of more than 20 elephants comes out of the bush almost immediately. A short drive away there are lion, buffalo, sable antelope, kudu, impala, wart-hogs, baboons.

One impala ram is barking to keep his females in line and to warn off other interested rams. Bheki, the game guide, says it's the "rutting season", but he pronounces it "rooting" and is pleased with an Australian's response, though he doesn't know why. He is delighted just to have people to drive around.

There is little traffic anywhere. Fuel is in such short supply, vehicles are left abandoned, trucks and trains are lined up to take coal from the Wankie Colliery for export, but there is no diesel fuel to power them. The few motorists share the road with goats, donkeys and cattle, and very occasionally a bus with a zigzag chassis and loaded well above the roofline.

Everywhere the crops have failed. People depend on Government handouts of mielie, but in this area of Zimbabwe the population has been punished for supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's once prosperous second city, has become just another down-at-heel African town. Overloaded buses belch smoke; a leftover old white man rides an ancient bicycle through a red traffic light and is almost flattened by one of the buses. Men push broken carts with firewood in them.

The shops are mostly empty. The once manicured parks have returned to bush.

The Bulawayo Chronicle newspaper ("the nation's liveliest") reports: "The House of Assembly yesterday adjourned prematurely after failing to constitute a quorum" because Mugabe's politicians couldn't be bothered turning up.

The newspaper also reports an incident to show how common Barry's later experience has become. Two uniformed policemen have been arrested for armed robbery, using an AK-47. Their names are Die Not Madoro and Righteousness Kafesu. There isn't much else funny about it, but at least they were arrested.

How does the place function at all? The black market, or "parallel economy", flourishes for those who can get their hands on any sort of cash. There's bartering (if there's anything to trade), there's subsistence (if anything can be grown) and there's bare survival for most.

Children in rags throw rocks into the giant baobab trees along the road. Some bring down the seed pods and dig out the powdery pulp that's used to make cream of tartar. "This is breakfast," says an older boy. It may also have been lunch and dinner.

Others carry slingshots to try to bag a bird or perhaps a lizard.

The story in the capital, Harare, may be different, but Zimbabweans travelling from there tell a similar story of food and fuel shortages, blackouts and lawlessness.

On the approach to the border at Beit Bridge, there is a police roadblock. Two uniformed policemen do the usual passport checks. Then two other plain-clothes police appear, members of Mugabe's "special" service. It is very hot as they sniff around the bikes, tweak this pannier and that, run their hands over the tank bag.

It is a tense moment. In the bag is a television camera, used to shoot a piece for the ABC's Foreign Correspondent. Luckily, their curiosity is not aroused.

South Africa opens its arms to what was once an unlikely freedom, and the Zimbabwean border closes again. A few travellers have come and gone, seeing just a little of what the President/tyrant wants no one to report.

It's a country on its knees, waiting for Mugabe to pass. People say: "It can only get better." You have to hope they're right, but in Africa, one tyranny often follows another.

Footnote:

When we first crossed into Zimbabwe from Zambia, I listed my occupation as "retired". Journalists are banned.

In the crush at the immigration counter, a black man pushed in front of me. He was wearing a black polo-style shirt. On the left breast it had that familiar ABC symbol, with the words "ABC TV News and Current Affairs".

I must have done a double take because the man seemed unable to take his eyes off me. Was I being set up or what? I couldn't move.

Bang! The immigration official pounded my passport with his stamp and we were in.

Who the man in the ABC shirt was, and how he got it, I'm sure I will never know. Had it been a gift? Had he mugged the last ABC correspondent to pass this way?

Whatever, he disappeared before the boom gate went up.

Geoff Simms is a reporter for ABC TV.

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