ZIMBABWE FACES ITS WORST ECONOMIC CRISIS IN A DECADE

harare, zimbabwe

At his Pentecostal church in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, Bishop Never Muparutsa sighs at the empty pews. In recent weeks, as the economy has deteriorated, his congregation has shrunk from 400 to 120.

Bishop Muparutsa sends Bible verses via WhatsApp to those too poor to travel. He tries to keep sermons upbeat. But he is worried about his formerly ebullient flock. “The joy I used to see is gone,” he says. “They might as well be Anglicans.”

After decades of mismanagement and corruption, Zimbabwe is a wreck. Its people are poor and hungry.

The country is facing its worst economic crisis in a decade. Electricity is available for just six hours a day. Clean tap water runs once a week. Petrol stations either have no fuel or long queues.

About 7.5 million people, roughly half the country, will struggle to eat one meal a day by early next year, says the World Food Program, a United Nations agency.

In a country that was once among Africa’s most industrialized, electricity flickers for only a few hours a day, often at night. Factories and bakeries stand idle while the sun shines.

Annual inflation is running at about 500%, reckons Msasa Capital, a local advisory firm. “I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says one businessman. “Just the light from an incoming train.”

Workers arrive after dark, hoping that if they are patient they will be able to switch on their machines or ovens. In homes people wake up in the middle of the night to cook or iron their shirts and freshwater taps work for a few hours once a week.

Tendai Biti, an opposition Member of Parliament and former finance minister, complains that life has gone back to colonial times: “I’m washing in a bucket, my friend, as if it is Southern Rhodesia in 1923.”

The crisis is Zimbabwe’s worst since the bad days of 2008-09, when President Robert Mugabe’s money-printing sparked hyperinflation so intense that prices doubled several times a week. That crisis was tamed only when Zimbabwe ditched its own currency and started using American dollars.

This time, the government blames drought for the nation’s woes. Rains have, indeed, been poor. But the real problem is bad government.

The same ruling party, ZANU-PF, has been in charge since 1980. Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who seized power from his mentor in 2017, is equally thuggish.

His regime has kept grabbing dollars from people’s bank accounts and replacing them with electronic funny money, which has now lost most of its value. In June, without enough hard cash to pay the soldiers who defend it, the government decreed that shops must accept only funny money. Annual inflation has reached 500%. – The Economist