Cars waited in lines 3km long for fuel in Zimbabwe on Friday where a fuel shortage has grown so severe that the usually uncritical state-run broadcaster reported motorists’ pleas for the government to solve the crisis.
The shortage is aggravated by a lack of hard currency in a country where drought and political turmoil have badly hit the agriculture-based economy. Western donors cut off aid to Zimbabwe in 1999 in protest at chronic financial indiscipline.
The state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, which only very rarely carries stories critical of the government, said thousands of attendants at the stations that have been without fuel for days fear they will join the ranks of two million unemployed in Zimbabwe.
”Motorists and commuters called upon the government to come up with a lasting solution to the crisis,” said the official broadcasting service.
In Harare on Friday there were long lines at filling stations rumoured to be receiving supplies sometime during the day.
The state broadcaster said operators of the country’s commuter taxis are charging exorbitant fares, to recoup black-market prices for fuel. The Matabeleland South region, 600km south-west of the capital, Harare, is worst hit, with both government and private vehicles stranded.
”Only ambulances have a limited supply of fuel,” said the broadcaster.
Justin Mapumhanga, the top civil servant in the ministry of energy and power development, told the state-run Herald newspaper that the government is working hard on the problem but is constrained by the shortage of foreign currency.
At the Reserve Bank’s last weekly auction of foreign currency, only an amount equal to $11-million was available when fuel importers alone needed $230-million.
Anthony Hawkins, a professor at the University of Zimbabwe Business School, said he has been surprised at how fast things have fallen apart in the country after the March 31 parliamentary election.
”They [the government] just patched things together until after the election, but nobody thought what would happen after that,” he said.
Hawkins said the current tobacco crop, traditionally the country’s major foreign currency earner, is 70% down from figures in 2000, when Mugabe launched ”fast track” seizure of 5 000 white-owned farms.
He added that the crop is fetching ”disastrous” low prices due to poor quality. Earnings from gold mining have also fallen, and manufacturing exports are uncompetitive due to artificial pegging of the exchange rate at Z$6 200 to the United States dollar. The black-market rate is reported to be Z$17 000.
”It is obviously very serious and I don’t think there is any way out,” said Hawkins. — Sapa-AP