Parched and pillaged – Zimbabwe gets even worse

Just when you thought things could not get any bleaker in Zimbabwe – they do. A sober section in the Middle East and Africa Section of The Economist offers a tale of increasing financial woe for the weary citizens who now cannot even afford to communally pray in the numbers they once did – they're simply too poor to travel to church. Those same people are almost certainly on their knees at home in supplication for some kind of divine intervention. – Chris Bateman.By Thulasizwe Sithole.It's the worst economic crisis in a decade. In this command economy, finance ministers flail about, rendering themselves hypocrites overnight as they change policy more often than the taps run with clean water (once a week), and corruption cripples the country, particularly when it comes to the pricing of alarmingly-scarce maize. Harare's reservoirs are leaking from lack of maintenance and the chemicals needed to keep the remaining water clean cannot be bought due to lack of foreign currency..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Electricity runs for a quarter of any 24-hour period, petrol stations are either empty or have long queues and, the really scary prediction by the usually-reliable World Food Programme is this; about half the population (now estimated at 7,5 million souls), will battle to eat one meal a day by early next year. That's because scant rainfall has aggravated the man-made economic crisis, crippling a main power station near Kariba due to low water flow levels and drying up maize production to a frightening trickle. (The Grain Marketing Board has six weeks-worth left, according to Eddie Cross a veteran opposition MP). Annual inflation is now running at an estimated 500%. A desperate government blames the whole shebang on Acts of God, (especially Cyclone Idai back in March), while its people pray for a miracle. Buying power from Eskom might be an option, except that Zimbabwe languishes near the bottom of the list, along with South African municipalities unable to pay their debt. It's not as if Eskom is exactly in a position to extend credit..Unlike in 2008/09, when Zimbabwe printed bank notes with zeroes marching off into the horizon, the government recently started using a keyboard, crediting banks' books with electronic "Real-Time Gross Settlement" (rtgs) dollars, which it initially said were equivalent to real dollars. However, these electronic notes, or "zollars", had no backing and it soon became impossible to withdraw cash. Black market zollars traded at various fractions of a greenback, in spite of Mugabe's usurper, Emmerson Mnangagwa claiming that a zollar was worth a dollar. From October 2018 black-market prices spiked and Mgangagwa and his not-so-merry men seemed to give up this fiction. They first ring-fenced real dollar deposits, an admission that zollars were, in fact, a new currency and in February went a step further, allowing banks to trade between the two. The zollar lost 90% of its value versus the dollar from February to June this year and perhaps most dangerously, civil servants and soldiers saw their earnings evaporate as the government on June 24th announced that foreign currencies should no longer be legal tender, within months undermining its own policy by allowing certain businesses exceptions to the ban..Mnangagwa and his government continue to drag their feet on political reform in spite of America and other powerful Western governments insisting on this before offering any economic insistence. They've even outlined exactly which laws must go, but the ruling party remains obdurate. Rule by fear (the military have done nothing to restore or create a civilised reputation) and hunger seem to be the order of the day..The congregant-thin Bishop profiled at the beginning of the Economist's article, meanwhile sends out biblical WhatsApp verses to his congregation – from Exodus, no less.

Parched and pillaged – Zimbabwe gets even worse

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