It all started from the most unlikely source: supporters of President Robert Mugabe at the weekend besieged a supermarket and a grain depot to fire the first warning shots that Zimbabwe might be engulfed in serious food riots before Easter.
In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, war veterans and youth brigades loyal to Mugabe on January 3 fought running battles with the police after they failed to storm a local grain-holding depot suspected of hoarding the staple maize meal.
An almost similar incident played itself out in sprawling Chitungwiza, the dormitory town of the capital city Harare, last Sunday where police had to fire teargas to disperse thousands of residents in long food queues at a local supermarket.
The residents, including housewives, had attacked some overzealous young supporters of Mugabe, known here as the ruling Zanu-PF’s Youth Brigades, who had tried to muscle themselves in to control the long food queues.
The red light is flashing for Mugabe and 2003 will be an extremely difficult year for the veteran politician, says University of Zimbabwe political science lecturer Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro.
Mukonoweshuro, an adviser to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, says hunger, starvation, the collapsing economy and unemployment will sound the death knell to Mugabe’s 23-year reign this year.
Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Southern Africa and a major exporter of food, is experiencing severe food shortages largely blamed on a recurrent drought, lack of proper planning by the government and Mugabe’s chaotic land reforms that have destroyed commercial agriculture.
Galloping inflation — officially pegged at 144,2% in October and rising fast — foreign currency shortages and the shrinking economy are likely to topple Mugabe before the year ends, warn experts.
“The Zimbabwean economy might not yet be imploding but it is on a very fast decline,” says Harare consulting economist John Robertson.
“We have destroyed the credibility of our currency, we have lost our credit rating and our exports are shrinking. Either way we have to change our attitude,” says Robertson.
Ordinary Zimbabweans are feeling the pinch worst. While wages and salaries have either stagnated or been eroded by inflation, prices of almost all basic commodities have shot up many times.
For example, a loaf of bread that cost Z$30 at the beginning of last year (equivalent to about R5 at the official exchange rate) now costs anything between Z$150 and $200.
This week some enterprising Zambian businessmen were conducting a roaring trade in Harare selling freshly baked loaves imported from Lusaka at Z$200 each.
Mealie meal, the staple food for many Zimbabweans, whose price is pegged by the government at about Z$700 a 20kg bag, is scarce in the shops but freely available on the parallel market at $6 000 a 20kg bag.
Beer, which cost about Z$50 a bottle at the beginning of last year, now costs more than Z$200, while shortages are experienced for most basic foodstuffs from milk, salt, sugar and bread to cooking oil, red meat and chicken.
Many Zimbabweans spent Christmas and New Year sleeping in kilometre-long petrol queues. The fuel problem persists because Libya, which had previously supplied the commodity at a generous price, has begun to play hardball.
It is a common sight for many Zimbabwean workers to walk distances of up to 40km every day to and from work because the fuel shortages have pushed up fares and almost crippled the public transport system.
The Confederation of Zimbabwean Industries (CZI), the private-sector body that groups most of the country’s leading manufacturers, says many companies will not open after the Christmas holidays because of the harsh economic climate.
To survive, companies have to source hard currency on the parallel market to buy foreign inputs, but the American greenback sells for as much as Z$1 400 a dollar compared with its officially pegged rate of Z$55.
Almost all commercial banks in Zimbabwe have stopped issuing foreign currency for business or travel.
Besides the possibility of food riots, analysts warn that Zimbabwe will also be paralysed by industrial action this year as workers press for better wages to match the high cost of living, especially if the government implements a wage and salary freeze as it has threatened it might be forced to do.
Mukonoweshuro says the hunger, the starvation and the collapsing economy might finally push Mugabe, out of office. The veteran nationalist has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist since 1980.
The food riots in Chitungwiza and in Bulawayo over the weekend, and the involvement of his own supporters in the disturbances, are signs that the red light is already flashing for Mugabe and that 2003 is likely to be the most torrid year of his 23-year-rule.