A colleague of mine was talking about how so many seem to be election weary already when the date has only just been announced. He gave the example of a young man that he gave a lift to the other day.

The hitchhiker was a student at NUST, and he wasn’t aware that the election date (29th March) had been set. On hearing the news, the student became tired and defeated. He told my colleague that he had been hoping and praying that the elections would be much later in the year. Instead, he said he now had face the likelihood that his final exams, due for May this year, would be in jeopardy because of the furore that always surrounds elections.

He worked as cross-border trader to supplement his income and he struggled to pay the fees to cover his exams. And because he worked as a trader, he struggled to keep up with his course work. He was longing for his exams, so they’d be over and he could move onto the next phase of his life.

My colleague was telling me the story because he had apparently quipped back, at that point, “And what is the next phase? Unemployment?”

His young hitchhiker became even more despondent and my colleague badly regretted his unfunny joke.

But why, he asked, if elections are in March does that affect you in May?

The student replied that elections brought massive unrest to the universities. The police became hyper-sensitive to student activities and unfair crackdowns often ensued, proving anger and a state of tension at the universities. He said that previous elections, even when Mugabe ‘wins’, were usually followed by reprisals against those who dared to disobey the regime in the lead-up to the elections. But Mugabe’s men didn’t discriminate and they extended the reprisals to absolutely everyone. He also said that staff, sturggling to earn a living often used election time as a chance to strike for more money.

What struck me about this story was how both my colleague and the young man sharing the short journey into town didn’t spend one single moment discussing whether or not the outcome of the elections would be positive and bring about change and a brighter future. I pointed this out to my colleague and he laughed at me:

“Don’t be stupid, we all know the score! They’ll be stolen the way they always have been; we just need to find a way to get through them so we can continue figuring out how to survive the next day”.

And with that he left my office, and this time it was me struggling with a sense of deflation!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, elections

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The Stock Market, often a secure destination for investments in these times, suffered heavy losses across the board as money market rates continue to firm. Banks are struggling to pay their statutory reserves and inter bank relations are causing problems. Generally the flow of money is bogged down as the system cannot cope with such huge volumes. This means that more and more money is trapped in the system and this is denied to the intended receiver who requires it for business to continue. Added to this, the ZD depreciated rapidly last week gobbling up cash which is having a very negative effect on the pace of business transactions.

The RBZ is maintaining its bullying tactics and business leaders are being told to report to RBZ Harare within 24 hours in some cases to explain themselves. This behaviour shows little or no regard for the cost and inconvenience to the business community.

This is a weak attempt to defy gravity and force down inflation by interfering with the process of supply and demand which ultimately determines the rates of exchange. Power outages have resulted in communications breaking down and one Internet Service Provider went off air as they had run out of diesel for their generator. The economy is now running at 1947 levels.

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Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Business Watch, economy, inflation, currency, hyperinflation, cash supply

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Our latest issue of Zimbabwe Election Watch has just been mailed to our subscribers. This project is something we’ve been labouring over for months, anticipating the elections coming up and with the hindsight and experience of rigged elections and dubious practices in previous years. We’ve been carefully recording a range of events, all of which, when combined together, form a mosaic of oppression, repression and a total disregard for democratic principles and the human rights of Zimbabwean citizens. Please visit our ZEW section and read the issues. Use the database links in the middle column on that section to closely look at each article of the SADC guidelines to see the extent of the problem we face. Please tell other people about it an encourage them to read and learn.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, ZEW, Zimbabwe Election Watch, elections, democracy, human rights, SADC

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Zimbabwe has long been touted as Africa’s paradise and at first glance it is. Local business executives like to say “third world does not mean third rate in the various conferences that dot the annual business cycle” There are harrowing tales coming out the country though that make it sound like fiction from the stone age. There are stories of modern households cooking on firewood, the steady hum of generators becoming a way of life in a few of the houses in the affluent areas, while darkness is a norm in the rest of the country. School regularly talk about losing dozens of teacher at a time and so it goes on. None of the stories are more harrowing than those that come of the medical arena. In the immediate post independence period for about ten years, Zimbabwe was the envy of Africa. Today all that has changed.

An emergency takes place on a Sunday morning. The inefficient cell phone network means that the definition of an emergency has to change. A person who is about to collapse should ideally give a couple of hours notice otherwise they might die where they fall. The reason is simple: emergencies are not allowed anymore by the crumbling telecommunications system. A busy signal is far more likely to occur than the sighting of a soccer ball on a soccer pitch. When eventually, a report is made, whoever rushes to the scene of the accident has to hasten slowly because of the gaping potholes, fit to hide a baby giraffe, that now pock mark the streets of Harare, once the sunshine city of Africa. If you summon an ambulance, you’d better have cash on you otherwise ask to use the neighbour’s car. More often than not, the relatives of the victim do not have the cash because it is simply not available in the country and the next door neighbour does not have fuel because he parked his car a while back. There is no fuel in the country except for company cars.

By some miracle, the family and the patient make it to the hospital. By this time after several frustrating tries, it has been established that the only hospital with a working generator is a private one. There happens to be a country wide power outage and the government hospitals have run out of fuel for their generators. This is real life. So, on the advice of a relative or a doctor friend, it is off to the private hospital. On admission, the family is immediately required to pay over a billion Zimbabwe dollars. That is more or less the monthly salary for a middle manager in a company that pays its staff well. For some reason, emergencies target people who earn half that amount and so the mother of the patient pleads before a stoic hospital administrator who is employed to run a business. Human nature prevails and a promise to make good on the money in the morning or some sort of surety by end of day is elicited. The favourite form of surety is foreign currency which the family will of course pop over to the bank and fetch. Alas it is a Sunday and besides neither the mattress at home nor the bank has any foreign currency in it! An hour or so later, the nurse emerges from the emergency room to announce that the patient needs to move to Intensive care and the administrator whips out his scientific calculator (otherwise he cannot fit in all the zeros) and he immediately announces a further charge of $5 billion. The mother of the patient collapses on the spot while the uncle takes over. Phone calls are made to friends, relatives and bosses in that order. The school fees for the children and the grocery shopping and rent will have to wait. The children, school and landlord will have to understand that the family was faced with an emergency.

The hospital gives the family time to decide whether to risk transferring the patient to a government hospital because suddenly the power is back on or to stay. They call the ambulance people and they are told the ambulance will not make an appearance without someone having gone to their offices round the block to pay a cash sum of $300 million and the family must secure a doctor to receive the patient on arrival. The family do not know any doctors, they do not have the numbers of any doctor and the doctors are on strike for higher wages anyway! The mother collapses again and the family scold her for adding to every one’s stress. Nerves are frayed and this is taking place at reception in full view of the public. Private grief is not allowed in Zimbabwe. Public humiliation is. Human nature takes over and a junior doctor calls a mate who remembers his hippocratic oath and agrees to leave the school of medicine pub and receive this patient.

Money is borrowed and the ambulance duly arrives. At the government hospital the admissions lady, miserable at having been given the job to dwell with ‘township people,’ takes her time and asking questions in English like “next of kin” words that the poor people cannot understand. She sighs audibly, mutters under her breath and takes her sweet time attending to them, taking their $5000 million admission fee and sending them on their way half an hour later.

This is normal in today’s Zimbabwe. We have not spoken about the cost of prescription medicine, the state of the government hospitals and the unavailability of drugs. Just a day in the life of a person who has to rush a relative to hospital. We did not get the patients comments. They died before we could talk to them after writhing in pain for hours.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, health

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Elections have been called for March 29th. Yesterday’s zwnews carries a couple of articles on the topic, including this quote:

“It’s an act of madness and arrogance. What Mugabe has done is a slap in the face, not only of the MDC, but of Mbeki,” said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the MDC’s largest faction. “The date for the elections is supposed to be mutually agreed by all parties involved.” He added: “The country is not yet prepared, infrastructurally, logistically and psychologically for this election.”

Please have a look at our ZEW section - Zimbabwe Election Watch - available on our main website and review the data we’ve been monitoring for months now.

Then ask yourself, how can anyone possibly imagine that the elections - held so soon - will be free and fair under these conditions?

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, elections, voting

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Please visit our photo gallery to view each image with full titles and information attached. These come from the ‘Queues’ set.

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In my last post, written offline on a laptop and the posted when the power came on, I told you that the Rand rate was $500,000 to R1 (Monday), but I had been told it was $600,000 to R1 by Tuesday. On Tuesday evening a friend told me she had just paid $700,000 to R1. The value of our dollar is eroding so fast, and we’re having so many power cuts, that I couldn’t keep up with blogging the blackmarket rate changes if I tried!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, currency, economy, inflation, hyper-inflation, poverty, transport

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I am told, by someone I work with, that Robert Mugabe was on our state-controlled TV the other night, making an endless speech.

He apparently lamented the fact that everyone kept asking him when he was going to retire or leave. Defiant, he said something to the effect of, “I am not going to stop working, I am not like ZESA !”.

For those of you who don’t know by now, ZESA is the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority. As I type this, I am wondering when the power will next come on. It’s been off since yesterday: my deep freeze is leaking water again and I am wearily facing the possibility that the meat I recently bought is going to have to be thrown out. It cost a fortune, and its hard to come by, so I am fed-up.

“I am not going to stop working, I am not like ZESA!”

The arrogance and callousness of his ‘witticism’ astounds me. If it’s true: I don’t watch the ‘ Dead BC’ so I can only take my workmate’s word for it. Mind you, I couldn’t watch it even if I wanted to, because there is no power. I am writing this at speed on an old laptop, hoping I can save it before the computer powers down.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, ZESA, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, ZBC, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation

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The much anticipated new Bearer Cheques broke onto the scene at the end of last week. More importantly, this boosted the volume of cash available to transact foreign currency unofficially and this has resulted in the rapid devaluation of the Zimbabwe Dollar as there is now, once again, more cash chasing less forex. The US Dollar is trading between 7 and 8 million and the Old Mutual Implied Rate hovers in the same territory. Massive blackouts have been experienced with outages exceeding 18 hours in some cases.

South African economists estimate losses per business of around ZAR 25000 000/hour. The absurdity of Reserve Bank regulations continues as it is reported that daily cash withdrawals for the individual have been increased to $500 000 000 and it is the same rate for corporates. The assault on business continues with the blame proportioning exercise being stepped up again as the RBZ governor comes under increasing pressure. The IMF says that inflation rose to 150 000% in January, the same rate reached by Germany during the Weimar Republic in the 1920’s.

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Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Business Watch, economy, inflation, currency, hyperinflation, cash supply

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A new demomination in our funny currency was released very recently. I still haven’t seen it, but can tell you that it is a $10,000,000 bill. I haven’t seen it because I haven’t yet mustered the energy and patience required to stand for hours and hours in a queue to get cash. (Or, should I say, I’m not desperate enough yet!). Despite the new big note, cash is still in short supply and people are still being rationed in how much they can withdraw in one go.

Chovva (taxi/public transport) rates went up at the beginning of this week. A one way trip costs $2,000,000. So our largest note in our currency can buy 5 trips in a chovva.

I was told yesterday that the South African Rand was trading on the blackmarket for $500,000 to R1. So our new massive big hitting note buys us a teeny weeny R20. That was yesterday: today the Rand is trading at $600,000 to R1. So our new note buys even less today. And so it goes on, obliterated by inflation on a daily basis. How long will it be until it buys utterly nothing?

What does the largest note in your currency buy you?

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, currency, economy, inflation, hyper-inflation, poverty, transport

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So yesterday I was feeling great sympathy for the ZESA guys and their hard job, which they undoubtably do have.

But why, oh why are we being subjected to power cuts when street lights are being left on during broad daylight?

In the last four days, visiting a friend, I’ve noticed the street lights shining brightly in the sunlight in the main road leading to her house.

The lunacy is compounded by the fact that bulbs and materials are in short supply. The street lights in MY street are totally dark and never, ever, shine, not even at night and not even when there is no power cut. And that’s because the bulbs, the fittings and the wires have all been stolen ages ago, and ZESA cannot afford to replace them.

Please ZESA, turn off the lights during the day so there’s some power for us during the night!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, economy, inflation, ZESA, power, power cuts, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority

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The power cuts this year have been unbearable. For the first part of 2008 we’ve had rolling power cuts. My freezer stands constantly in a puddle of melting ice. I have to resist the urge to poke the contents to see if they are softening, because very time I open the door I let more cool air out, hastening the demise of my precious perishables. My cell phone hasn’t been properly charged for the last few weeks until two days ago.

I amuse myself by imagining what ZESA must see at their end. No power being consumed during a power cut, their power dials inactive and silent; then a suddent surge of activity when they switch it on, the dials high. Followed just as quickly by a drop as a nation rushes to plug in cell phones, laptops and anything else that needs re-charging, just to tide them over through the next power cut.

A friend of mine told me how, on one high density suburb in Bulawayo, the power had been switched off for days. The evening of 31 December was just another night of darkness, until the power suddenly came on for 15 minutes over and beyond midnight. Just enough light to see in the New Year, enough power to maybe play two or three songs, and dance two or three dances.

My reaction was ‘for goodness sake, that’s absurd’, but on reflection that was a bit harsh. I’ve met some of the ZESA technicians trying to keep our country in power. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes for anything. Our government doesn’t pay the country’s power bills and ZESA doesn’t have the money to buy materials to do proper repairs. What are they meant to do?

So flicking on the power for 15 minutes so unknown citizens could ’see’ in the New Year may have been a tiny gesture of kindness.

We have to say, absurd or not, that at least 2008 didn’t begin with darkness (in that area anyway). Had I been that technician I think I’d have flipped the switch then rested my head against the circuit board and wept, knowing that the brief moment of happiness at power on New Year’s Eve was going to be wiped out a few minutes later when darkness descended again.

It’s almost a metaphor for our country today.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, economy, inflation, ZESA, power, power cuts, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority

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There are a host of challenges that face Zimbabwean business on a day by day basis, most of them serious. It is really a case of what crisis is foremost on their minds that would determine the priority. Following the Christmas period, decision makers are both annoyed and amused by yet another reversal in Reserve Bank Policy, the re-introduction of the $200 000 bearer cheque and a reversal of almost punitive measures governing RTGS payments. One large factory in Bulawayo remarked that it was the first time in their 50 year history that they had experienced an extended shut-down of almost 2 months. For those that have opened up business in January, massive power outages have wreaked havoc and this is a combination of faults remaining un-repaired for weeks (shortage of spares and forex) and deliberate load shedding. The Mozambican power utility has shut off supplies due to the non-payment of USD 26 million and Zimbabwe now only produces only about 1000 megawatts, about half of what it used to a few years ago.The Old Mutual Implied Rate rose to over 7700 to the USD and inflation is now being estimated as anything up to %50 000 and rising more rapidly than ever before as government fumbles with the economy powerless to do anything.

Click here to see all posts in the Business Watch series

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Business Watch, economy, inflation, currency, hyperinflation, cash supply

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I learned today that a regional magistrate - only one step down from a judge - earns Z$10 million, a sum recently increased to Z$ 100 million. It’s absurd.

I’ve always thought senior people in the judiciary were better off than the rest of the country, and they are, but not by as big a margin as I assumed.

How on earth are the rest of us meant to survive?

A farm worker officially earns Z$2.7 million; a gardener about Z$4.7 million and a police sergeant with many years of service earns about Z$17 million before deductions.

A 10kg bag of mealie meal now costs Z$10 million and a bar of soap costs Z$8 million.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, economy, inflation, hyperinflation

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Rumours of imported toothpaste being sold at absurdly low prices (can anything counted in millions be considered ‘low’?), had me scurrying to a supermarket today with a few bricks of cash wedged into a suitcase sized handbag.

Usually, my toothpaste purchases involve deals with ‘runners’ who cross into South Africa or Botswana for a living. The price I pay then is a combination of the price it costs in South Africa; the price of transport which has to factor in inflationary fuel costs; the price of the bribe to avoid a long queue; another bribe to the customs official to dodge duty OR, if that isn’t paid, the astronomical duty the runner needs to pay; an further indeterminate price - a figure from fresh air - based on the runner’s future projection for how much Rands or Pula will cost him when bought on the local forex blackmarket; and then finally the runner’s profit margin.

Toothpaste ends up extortionately expensive, but I need it, and I need the services the runner supplies, so I grit my toothpaste-requiring teeth and buy it.

What was galling for me the last time was that my runner arrived with a bulk batch of the WRONG brand. I had no choice but to buy it, but I feel irritated every morning when I brush my teeth with toothpaste I dislike. Hence my feverish rush to the supermarket today.

Of course the ‘cheap’ ‘toothpaste was completely sold out. I could see where it was by the brand name labelling the empty space on the shelf. I also noticed however, that the price was not very cheap at all, and totally different to the price paid by my friend less than a week before. This means that the first batch sold at a lower price had already sold out once, and been replaced with the next batch at an inflationary higher price, and that had sold out already too. So my trip, using valuable scarce fuel, was wasted and cost me money.

As usual I am observing the inflationary rise in prices in the space of a week, and I am also noticing the scarce supply of toothpaste in our town and I am thinking this is something to blog. But top of my mind, if I am honest, is envy for the lucky fresher-breathed sods who beat me to it and snapped up a tube or two. I wish my rumour grapevine was a little more efficient! Rather than writing this blog I wish I was right now brushing my teeth with a better brand of toothpaste!

But you know what… ? Beggars can’t be choosers and I’m lucky to have the foul stuff I’m using at the moment. Other Zimbabweans can’t buy food, and I really shouldn’t be so caught up with things so trivial.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, economy, inflation, toothpaste, shopping, groceries

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