Zimbabweans are heading for a dismal new year, with food shortages and an economic crisis expected to worsen while prospects for political change appear dimmer than ever, analysts say.
While President Robert Mugabe’s government is forecasting growth of up to 3,5% in 2006, economists and ordinary Zimbabweans are bracing for more hardship.
”The problems we’ve had in the last seven years will definitely follow us into the new year as the economy continues shrinking,” independent economist John Robertson told Agence France Presse.
”If anything next year will be tougher for the majority of the people because presently the government has absolutely no clue or strategy to turn around the economy,” said Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
Zimbabwe’s economy has been on a downturn for most of the last decade, plagued by runaway inflation, unemployment hovering above 70% and chronic food and fuel shortages.
On the political front, a split in the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has severely weakened the party that posed the most credible challenge to Mugabe’s 25-year rule.
”Prospects are gloomy politically especially with tensions in the opposition MDC party which have dealt a setback in a force that was capable of confronting the government,” said political commentator Bill Saidi.
The MDC is to hold its annual congress in February next year and judging from the squabbling currently dogging the party, the gathering could put the final nail in the coffin.
In the coming months, United Nations food deliveries are expected to reach more than three million people in what was once the breadbasket of Southern Africa.
The government blames the food deficit on drought but analysts say the seizures since 2000 of white-owned commercial farmers for re-allocation to landless blacks has dealt a crippling blow to agriculture.
”Harvests are going to be poor because most farmers got inputs late and that means more foreign currency will be used to import food we should be producing,” said Robertson.
Among ordinary Zimbabweans, the mood is depressingly bleak.
”We are all literally living from hand to mouth, hardly affording to buy basic things like lunch at work,” said Harare township teacher Patrick Maonwa.
”I foresee a difficult year ahead because government does not seem to be a solution for the galloping inflation,” said the teacher.
Petrol attendant George Musa, who for most of this year has been working three days a week due to an acute shortage of gasoline, does not hide his pessimism.
”There is really nothing to say, there is nothing positive to predict about Zimbabwe these days.
”Politically, where can change come from, there is no more opposition to talk about,” he added.
Memory Chimutengo sells electronic parts in an increasingly difficult business environment.
”Early this year, I used to give my clients quotations valid for 15 days, now those quotations are valid for less than 12 hours because prices are so volatile that they can change within hours,” said Chimutengo.
”There is not even a flicker at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Zimbabwe has become increasingly isolated from its former trading partners in the West following presidential elections in 2002 which foreign observers said were rigged.
”Economically, unless we rejoin the international community and make amends with the countries we isolated ourselves from, our problems will remain with us,” said Saidi. – Sapa-AFP