Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Zimbabweans watch soberly as blitz starts to wane
Dianna Games, Business Day
August 13, 2007

http://allafrica.com/stories/200708130524.html

IT IS a sorry day when a country runs out of beer, especially one that has so much need for it right now.

Drinking away the realities of life in Zimbabwe is one of the coping mechanisms that people had access to until that, too, became a casualty of the government's latest price-slashing drama.

The supermarkets in Harare last week were a woeful sight as the price blitz really began to bite. One supermarket, in a relatively upmarket area, had no power and shoppers wandered up and down half-empty shelves in the gloom to see what they could find.

Watching over them was President Robert Mugabe, from a portrait high above the entrance.

There are millions of dollars chasing very few goods at this stage. A joke doing the rounds in Harare suggests that there are three things you should never tell a Zimbabwean woman: that she looks like a million dollars (only about R30), that you will stand her to a candlelit dinner, or run her a bubble bath - the last two references to extensive power and water cuts.

Business people report the presence of police in factories, forcing industries to produce, or to raise their production. But production can only continue, they say, as long as they have raw materials.

A lack of foreign currency for imported inputs and a shortage of fuel are constraining their ability to produce and the bankrupt government is not in a position to help out.

So where does it end? In a way it already has. The government is already starting to increase prices as factories threaten closure.

Last week the state-owned newspapers (the only kind you can get daily in Zimbabwe) have reported that the farmer price of beef has been increased to lure boycotting farmers to sell, and that the state-owned Cold Storage Commission is courting private abattoirs, which recently had their licences withdrawn, to provide beef to butcheries. The next price control to go was on beer - just in time for the Heroes Day holiday today. This was joined by bread, cement and maize meal and more are expected next week.

The government has backed down as a result of talks with the private sector to find a compromise on the price freeze, and it is expected that more concessions will be announced soon.

The government will then portray itself as the saviour of business as a way of saving face, Zimbabweans predict.

There seems to be a prevailing view that the crackdown, which the government insisted would continue until the year-end, was a misplaced election tactic. But it has backfired and it will take a lot to paper over the cracks it has left.

It was unsustainable in an environment where the private sector had already had so much of the life sucked out of it. Companies, unable to survive on volumes in a depressed economy, were relying on high margins to keep going - and that is exactly where the government hit them.

Business people maintain that there is no capacity in government to understand economic issues and the few who do, such as Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, were anyway opposed to the cuts.

The fuel crunch is also biting and people predict the next climbdown may be the reversal of the decree that only the bankrupt state fuel parastatal Noczim can import fuel.

The reason for the deregulation of the fuel market a few years ago was the inability of Noczim to provide fuel, and nothing has changed.

As one businessman said: "It's one thing not to learn from others' mistakes; it is another not to learn from your own."

The government spin doctors have had their work cut out for them trying to convince the population that this is all one big western plot. Ironically, Mugabe last week asked a forum of journalists what led reporters to publish misleading information and sway the truth to suit powerful interests. I am surprised that he had to ask - he is the master.

I find it disappointing that many Africans say Zimbabwe, despite its problems, it is still in better shape than many other African countries - as if that somehow makes it all right.

Zimbabwe in 2007 reminds me of Zambia in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Shelves were bare, foreign currency was scarce, the kwacha was worthless and skills flight was rampant.

Now Zambia is booming and Zimbabwe is down where its neighbour was nearly two decades ago.

The tendency to benchmark Zimbabwe against Africa's failures rather than its successes is surely holding back the continent's development.

If Africans are not outraged by Zimbabwe's demise, they will not hold their own governments accountable for similar declines and poor leadership will triumph.

Games is director of Africa @ Work, an African consulting company.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP