PERHAPS THE most remarkable fact in Zimbabwe’s current economic crisis is that inflation is only 70 percent a year. The figure may well undershoot reality, since although the key basket of commodities that is used in inflationary calculations points toward this figure, analysts are lacking other important data. The Zimbabwean monetary authorities are believed to be under reporting the level of new bank note issuance and anyway, much of the shattered economy has moved out of money and into barter.
For many Zimbabweans, the awful truth is that they can hardly afford to the basic necessities of daily life.
Yet gallingly, the evidence of the opulent and comfortable luxuriousness enjoyed by the party hacks and supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s is all too clear for most to see. Luxurious, gas-guzzling Mercedes limousines speed through the streets of the capital Harare. On a single journey the cost of the fuel they burn up may well exceed the monthly income of Zimbabwe’s fast growing army of impoverished citizens. The latest blow to strike the country has been the announcement that fuel prices are about to be raised in line with the official rate of inflation. The last price hike, of 15 percent in October was a bitter enough pill to swallow. The government has pegged prices since then, but that has only served to increase the misery when the inevitable price revision came.
President Mugabe’s sentiments were always toward a command economy. Zimbabwe was one of the very last black African countries to throw off the yoke of white colonial rule. The then Premier Mugabe and his colleagues had had plenty of opportunity to see how similar Socialist experiments had led to economic chaos, if not ruin, in a score of other African states. But they pressed ahead all the same with their own version of African socialism. Now the ordinary people of Zimbabwe who greeted Mugabe’s taking power 21 years ago, with huge enthusiasm, now rue the day. But it has not simply been the failure of already discredited command economy policies. There has also been mismanagement, much of it perhaps inevitable in a new state that was still finding its feet. But most tragically, there has been extensive venality. A few thousand key people within the administration have come to behave in the same sort of oppressive and exploitative manner, which they themselves once claimed was used by the white rulers of the former Southern Rhodesia.
Once again the ordinary black Zimbabwean is bearing the brunt of this misconduct. It is also of course hitting Zimbabwe’s whites. But the irony is that those whites who chose to stay in the country after the end of white minority rule, were the very people who had generally opposed extremist white policies. Most of the racist bigots and dyed-in-the-wool colonialists sold up and shipped out as soon as they lost power. This huge increase in the cost of fuel is a reflection of extensive gas shortages. These have come about because Zimbabwe no longer has sufficient foreign currency to import enough crude or refined product. It is selling gas at the pumps in local currency which is daily losing value against the US dollar, which the government had to spend to bring the fuel in. With the export sector, particularly white-dominated agriculture, hardly even ticking over, there is little spare cash anywhere. Most foreign aid has been cut off and there are reports that some units in the armed forces and police, upon whose support the government relies to face down street protests, are already owed back pay.
President Mugabe has always been careful to look after these formations. If the reports are true, then it suggests that matters are becoming extremely serious. The fuel price hike, plus the ever-soaring cost of basic foodstuffs, is sure to find thousands of angry Zimbabweans protesting the economic mess at planned street demonstrations. The administration has few tricks left up its sleeve. Before the police and army finally abandon them in the face of a tidal wave of popular protest, the president and his friends would do well to reconsider their position.
