Zimbabweans mark 26 years of independence on Tuesday with little to celebrate amid deepening economic hardships, personal tragedies and a rapidly widening gap between the rich elite and the poor majority.
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party on Monday said it was ”disturbed” that young Zimbabweans, in particular, showed no pride in their nation’s independence from colonial-era white rule after a bitter seven-year bush war in which at least 40 000 fighters died.
Lavish celebrations are planned throughout the country, including an address by Mugabe.
Linda (22) an unemployed office clerk, won’t be going. Known as a member of the Freedom Generation, or a Freedom Child, born after 1980, she benefited from free education and health care as a child, achieving modest school results.
Linda — who wouldn’t give her last name for fear of reprisals — now hangs out in a seedy Harare bar, looking for customers. She said she is aware of the dangers of prostitution in a nation where at least 3 000 die of HIV/Aids related illnesses each week.
She said some men pay more for unprotected sex. A rival in the bar claimed Linda coughed from tuberculosis, a likely HIV-related infection.
”What can I do?” protested Linda, in a now-common Zimbabwe refrain. ”I have to eat.”
”Too many questions. Don’t get me into trouble,” she implored in a voice breaking with desperation and typical of the fear felt among many Zimbabweans at Mugabe’s clampdown on civil liberties.
Mercedes limousines were parked outside a posh restaurant and bar across town. Half a dozen of its patrons, drinking doubles, consumed within 90 minutes a bottle of the finest 12-year-old Scotch whisky for a total cost of about 28-million Zimbabwe dollars ($280) — at least four times the monthly salary of the bartender and other average wage earners.
The vast and growing disparity between the poor and a rich elite of about five percent of the population is blamed largely on corruption, black market profiteering, favoritism in official contracts and land deals and the peddling of political influence.
Unemployment exceeds 70% and inflation is the highest in the world at 913% on basic goods. Scarcities and black marketeering have sharply eroded the spending power of the Zimbabwe currency in the past decade.
Since cellphones went into service in 1996 as fixed phone services crashed, the price of the cheapest range of phones with a line connection has increased 5 000-fold. The price of a single car battery this year could have bought 14 brand new cars 10 years ago.
An estimated 3,5-million Zimbabweans, many skilled professionals, are living outside the country.
Disruptions in the agriculture-based economy after the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms since 2000 have led to acute shortages of food, gasoline, and medicines.
The weak Zimbabwe dollar, plummeting in the worst economic crisis since independence, has hit health, education and other public services. Absenteeism from schools has soared in the wake of frequent fee increases.
Harare’s main Parirenyatwa hospital emergency room on Friday was unable to provide surgical stitching for a woman who split open her chin in a fall. Road accident victims waited hours for painkillers and treatment.
”We are working in very trying circumstances. We don’t have enough staff or resources,” said a senior nurse who asked not to be identified for fear of recriminations.
Health ministry officials acknowledge the shortcomings and have increased treatment and hospitalization charges in a health service that, like education, was mainly free in the first booming years of independence.
Last week, the government allowed private doctors to double their consultation fees to about 6-million Zimbabwe dollars ($60) a visit.
In an unusual insight in the state media, cartoonist Innocent Mpofu depicted a doctor asking his sickly patient: ”Where does it hurt?”
Gasped the patient: ”In my pocket.” – Sapa-AP