Top businesses stand to lose their investments in Zimbabwe’s chaotic banking sector this Christmas after the closure of a seventh private bank for fraud and mismanagement.
Thousands of ordinary depositors have been left with empty pocketbooks and firms trading with the bank can’t pay salaries or annual bonuses for the holidays.
As Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis bit deeper, riot police this week stood guard outside the CFX Bank, a former foreign exchange dealership, to stop desperate account holders storming its offices and banking halls.
The ramifications of the closure by the state central bank of the seventh ”unstable” private bank this year left investors reeling.
Marjory Davies, a retired accountant and widow, said she had Z$400-million ($70 000) in savings and investments locked in the bank.
”I can’t get a cent out. I am devastated,” she said, holding back tears.
A property developer who sold an office building deposited a check for Z$2,6-billion ($470 000) a week before the December 18 closure while he made plans to reinvest the money.
Small investor Henry Chauruka used a pension payout to buy stock whose value has slumped by 70%.
Daily living expenses are drawn from current accounts in the bank that have been frozen for six months, along with all other transactions.
Creditors of the CFX Bank face months of waiting to learn whether they will get part or any of their money back.
By then, inflation of 149% — the highest in the world — will have cut swaths out of it.
In impoverished townships across Zimbabwe, however, the banking crisis meant little.
Ben Mucheche, head of an association of bus owners, told state radio on Friday that Christmas transport services were severely curtailed by bus breakdowns and shortages of spare parts and fuel.
Urban families who traditionally visit their rural villages were abandoning travel plans. Some waited in long lines for their buses for 10 hours, only to be turned away after a scramble to get aboard.
On Friday, lines of cars snaked around gas stations, a regular sight in this troubled southern African nation.
”If I don’t get fuel, I won’t be able to do anything” to enjoy the holidays, said Harare businessman Fungai Hwande.
His was the 38th car in the line he joined before dawn.
The agriculture-based economy has crumbled since President Robert Mugabe’s government began seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans in 2000, leading to acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline, medicines and other imports.
Outages of power and water utilities, blamed on breakdowns of aging equipment and shortages of imported water purifying chemicals, occur daily.
In the deepening economic crisis, unemployment has soared to 70% and an estimated 80% of the 12,5-million people are living below the standard poverty line.
In its annual report this month, the United Nations Children’s Fund said the death toll from Aids and HIV-related illnesses has left nearly a million orphans in Zimbabwe.
It said life expectancy has dropped from age 52 to 37 since 1990 and girls as young as nine were caregivers for siblings and ailing relatives.
Charity groups say ”coping mechanisms” for impoverished families include cutting back on food — often to one meagre meal a day — selling household goods and personal belongings, street vending, begging and prostitution.
In a grimy bar in western Harare, Sherry Mpala (26) has a cellphone for sale.
”How are we to survive? Times are hard and we are suffering,” said the mother of two.
She said she was abandoned by her husband when he travelled to neighbouring South Africa to look for work.
She said she tried buying cheap goods in flea markets in Harare for resale at a profit in provincial towns where there are no cheap markets.
Begging for ”loans” from male acquaintances turned into prostitution.
An older woman who gave her name only as ”Tanya” said she solicited in tourist hotels where she demanded $100 from foreigners.
But amid political violence and worldwide criticism of the country’s human rights record tourism has dried up.
Both women insisted they were aware of safe practices.
Mpala said more women were plying bars and streets than were seen a few months ago. Some of her rivals were young girls fresh from poor villages in the countryside where crops have failed.
”Hunger would kill my children before Aids kills me. Maybe we will all die of Aids in the end,” she said. – Sapa-AP