Key topics:
- Zimbabwe faces prolonged economic collapse, power cuts, and water shortages.
- Corruption thrives as officials earn exorbitant salaries amid city neglect.
- Illegal mining devastates infrastructure, with a bridge destroyed for gold.
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
By Cathy Buckle
Dear Family and Friends,
At a time when there is so much international upheaval and turmoil, I feel almost uncomfortable to be writing to you about life in Zimbabwe. Our story of a nation in crisis has been going on for 25 years but just as you have watched and supported us, we are also watching you now, listening and trying to understand global events currently taking place because what affects you affects us, ripples in the water, spreading ever further.
My Letter From Zimbabwe today is a snapshot of seemingly unrelated events but all are connected because they are the end result of decades of disputed elections, widespread corruption and repeated cycles of economic collapse. After decades of disastrous policies which destroyed food production, caused massive unemployment and collapsed manufacturing in the country, we are now reaping what our government sowed while we watched.
It’s very early in the morning and smoke begins to rise in my suburban neighbourhood. An owl hoots one last time before it lifts silently out of the branches of the Msasa tree and disappears into the pre-dawn silhouettes. Zimbabwe’s Mums are out there already, breaking sticks and twigs and feeding them into their fires to heat water for bathing and to make tea and porridge for breakfast. The call of a red winged lourie fills the dawn while young women walk past on the road carrying buckets to the nearest public hand pump to get water. This is the reality of life here: 25 years into Zimbabwe’s turmoil and 45 years after Independence we generally have no electricity for 12-18 hours a day, no water in our taps and every day we wonder what crisis lies ahead for us in the latest economic crash.
Driving through my home town this week I glanced across at the closed, run-down branch of Truworths shop on the main road and let out a heavy sigh. This week we heard that upmarket clothing store Truworths, a leading clothing retailer has collapsed. Truworths began operating in Zimbabwe in 1957, was listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in 1981 and had over 100 branches by 2001. Sixty-seven years after they opened Truworths is now being sold for just one US dollar. Media reports describe the end of Truworths as a reflection of the deep crisis in Zimbabwe’s retail sector.
Across the country in Bulawayo came news that Mpilo Central Hospital had no electricity for two days after thieves broke into an electricity substation and stole cables and ‘critical infrastructure.’ Relying on 10 backup generators which consume 3000 litres of diesel a day it is costing the hospital US$4800 a day to maintain its functions.
Next came the snapshot from Harare with this outrageous news. During a Commission of Inquiry the Mayor of Harare, Jacob Mafume, revealed that the City of Harare Council’s Executive ‘is collectively pocketing half a million US dollars in salaries each month.’ (New Zimbabwe) The Town Clerk is earning a massive US$27,000 a month and the lowest paid member of the executive is earning US$15,000. To put that in perspective government teachers, nurses and other trained professionals are earning around US$200 to US$400 a month. It is obscene that Council salaries are so massive while in the cities they manage the roads are crumbling, potholes are craters, storm drains uncleared, taps are dry, street lights haven’t worked for decades and mounds of garbage lie festering on the roadsides.
Lastly came the snapshot from Matabeleland South recently. The Secretary of Presidential Affairs, Tafadzwa Muguti, was in Matabeleleland South looking around catchment areas of major dams to see the environmental devastation being caused by illegal mining. They came across a 150 metre bridge over the Umzingwane River, or what was left of the bridge. It turned out that a Chinese company called ‘Friends of the Environment’ had partnered with EMA, (Zimbabwe’s Environment Management Agency) saying they were going to fix the damage caused by illegal miners. Mr Mugutu said it was “later found out that by day they [the Chinese] were closing the pits… and by night they were mining. They destroyed a whole bridge while looking for gold,” he said.
I end my letter this week with this thought, relevant to Zimbabwe, Sudan and the DR Congo, to Israel and Gaza, to Ukraine, America and Russia and to all the peacemakers, researchers, journalists and writers trying to expose the real truth and to save us from ourselves. In 1996 a few months before his death, American astronomer and scientist Carl Sagan said: “If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.”
There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website.
Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 24th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting. My new evocative photobook ‘Zimbabwe’s Timeless Beauty The 2024 Collection” and my Beautiful Zimbabwe 2025 Calendar are now available. Visit my website or follow the links below.
Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)
Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.co.zw/
Read also:
