Sculptor Frank Bute camps in the gully of a foul-smelling stream beside a golf course in Harare, Zimbabwe. His market stall was demolished in a clampdown against traders earlier this year, and he and the other 700 000 people who lost their homes or livelihoods face a bleak Christmas.
For a decade, Bute (49) ran a small but viable business selling his stone carvings and baskets woven by his wife at a roadside market in the Newlands district of Harare.
”Now I have nothing,” he said.
But even those whose homes survived the government demolition blitz are struggling in a country where the purchasing power of the local currency has declined so much that the price of a brand-new locally assembled car in 1997 now buys two packets of pet food.
Jeffrey Gogo, a financial analyst writing in the state media on Friday, said poverty has eradicated traditional holiday cheer, feasting and gift-giving to mark the birth of Christ this year.
”It is still worthwhile to celebrate Christmas on half-empty stomachs because our faith compels us to do so,” he said.
Charity groups and care givers say white retirees whose adult children have left the country in an exodus from economic and political turmoil have been hard hit. The state central bank estimates about 3,4-million Zimbabweans, many of them skilled professionals, have left.
Some retirees receive monthly pensions of as little as Z$40 000 (about R2,50), enough for a single loaf of bread in a nation facing spiraling annual inflation, running at 502%, one of the highest rates in the world.
One white-haired retiree, who asked not to be named, bought all she could afford — two eggs and two tomatoes — for the festive season.
Charities report malnutrition — including a scurvy-like vitamin deficiency affecting gums, bones and hair loss — and depression and suicide among retirees.
‘Beg, borrow and steal’
In the run-up to the Christmas holidays, Bute said he guarded cars — and ”I beg, borrow and steal” — around a suburban shopping centre.
Bute’s market stall and nearby dwelling was targeted in mass evictions known as Operation Murambatsvina. President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic government insisted the programme was slum clearance across the country aimed at eradicating disease and thwarting black-market trading in the ailing economy.
Bute said he pleaded with police to allow him to remove his wares before bulldozers rumbled through the market in June, reducing his stall and its contents to fragments and rubble.
”Yes, I am angry, but what can I do? They have the power,” he said.
An estimated 700 000 people lost their homes and livelihoods in May and June and thousands of families were still living in the open as torrential seasonal rains began in November, collapsing sanitary services amid worsening power and water outages and mounting heaps of uncollected garbage.
Acute shortages of food, gasoline and essential imports have been blamed on the disruptions in the agriculture-based economy since the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms began in 2000.
About one-fourth of the 12,5-million population is currently in need of emergency food aid and 70% of families can only have one meal a day, according to United Nations estimates.
In the past decade, the value of the Zimbabwe currency plunged from Z$8 to the dollar to Z$80 000 per dollar.
Music stores have reported little interest from Christmas shoppers in a new compilation on CD of Mugabe’s political speeches. — Sapa-AP