Stand on the top of Heroes’ Acre, a monument to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle on a hill outside Harare, and you notice two things. Halfway down the slope dozens of fresh tombs of polished black granite are being prepared for the octogenarians who led the country to independence in 1980 and remain in power. The plot beside Sally Mugabe, Robert Mugabe’s first wife, is vacant.
Shift your gaze to the plain that stretches towards the city and you see a small forest which swiftly thins and gives way to row after row of tree stumps. The people of Harare have started hacking down wood for fuel.
It is a stark demonstration of the economic catastrophe closing in on the ageing autocratic rulers. There may be no more trees by the time Mugabe (82) is buried.
On the surface, many things seem normal. There is food in the shops, traffic-lights work, children attend school. Compared with other African capitals, Harare is calm and orderly.
Reports of ox-wagons ferrying the sick to hospitals and famine stalking the countryside are belied by functioning ambulances and villagers who say they are hungry but not starving. Zimbabwe has not quite collapsed. But it has hollowed. Behind a facade of normality, a crisis is gouging the economy and society, causing incalculable suffering in what was once one of Africa’s most developed countries.
Agriculture and industry are in ruins, unemployment is pushing 80% and the official inflation rate of 913% is widely deemed a gross underestimate. The economy has shrunk by 50% in the past six years — the fastest contraction anywhere outside a war zone.
The result was visible in the ragged clothes and skinny frames of the crowd attending independence day celebrations at Harare’s football stadium last week. ”I haven’t had a proper meal in a long time,” said Herbert Mwinjilo (29) a now-destitute former gardener. He says he cannot always afford the insulin to treat his diabetes.
International pariah
The crisis dates from the government-sponsored invasions of white-owned farms in 2000, a chaotic land-reform programme that destroyed agricultural exports, frightened off investors and helped make Mugabe an international pariah.
”There is so much suffering out there. Social services — health, education, public works — have completely degraded,” said Emmanuel Munyukwi, chief executive of the stock exchange.
Teachers at Mugabe’s alma mater, the elite St Francis Xavier college, say that a third of the 1 000-plus pupils have left because parents cannot afford the fees. Text books are not being replaced, classrooms are falling apart and blackouts prevent evening study. But the teachers are grateful for free eggs and chickens from a nearby estate owned by Mugabe.
More than three-million Zimbabweans are thought to have emigrated. The ruling Zanu-PF party has branded healthcare workers who moved to Britain as ”British bum cleaners”, a pun on the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is banned as part of draconian media censorship. Last week, the casualty unit of Harare’s main Parirenyatwa hospital was pristine but short of drugs, blood and stitches. It was staffed entirely by Cuban and Congolese doctors.
The World Health Organisation says average life expectancy for women has plunged to 34 — the world’s lowest — and for men to 37. This is the result of HIV/Aids and poor nutrition and medical care. Prostitution has grown. Sex workers loiter on street corners alongside black-market currency traders. Some street children have become entrepreneurs, buying groceries in the morning hoping the hyper-inflation will enable them to sell at a profit that evening.
Game reserves have reported a surge in poaching, with 17 rhinos lost in Kwekwe park alone. Tourists have all but vanished. The government’s ”look East” policy — an attempt to lure Asian investment — has flopped: Chinese tourist numbers are down 70%.
Relief agencies say good rains should boost harvests by 50% compared with last year, but several hundred thousand tonnes of food aid will still be needed.
”My family is down to two meals a day and that’s just maize and pumpkin leaves,” said Violet Charehwa (42) as she queued in Chegutu district, 144km south of Harare, for a wheat ration from the World Food Programme.
The opposition, meanwhile, seems to have lost its relevance. Since being defeated in last year’s election, which observers said was rigged, the Movement for Democratic Change has split in two.
Zanu-PF is also hollowing. In theory, it rules Zimbabwe. The Cabinet meets every Friday, and state media report ministers’ statements as if civilians were in charge. In reality, the party is paralysed by in-fighting and the economic crisis. Power has shifted to a cabal of senior officials from the army, police, prison service and intelligence agencies.
Internal coup
Over the past 18 months, serving and retired officers have been slotted into ministries and parastatal bodies such as the grain marketing board. Soldiers are responsible for house-building, farming, tax collection and, to some extent, monetary policy. The takeover was formalised by the recent establishment of a Soviet-style Zimbabwe National Security Council, a group of elderly securocrats, chaired by Mugabe and tasked with managing the economy.
”The whole government has been militarised. You could almost call it an internal coup,” said a western diplomat.
Mugabe is still in control and plotting to safeguard his future after 2008, when his presidential term expires, by installing relatives and loyalists in key positions. He retains some support from fellow members of the dominant Shona tribe who accept his claims that drought and sanctions — not his misrule — are responsible for the country’s plight.
”The president is doing a good job. He is constant about everything,” said Dick Chingaira (53) a singer better known by his stage name, Comrade Chinx, who appears at rallies singing the regime’s praises. An official version of Zimbabwe’s situation is not possible to obtain. Due to restrictions on foreign media working in the country, The Guardian was not able to approach ministers for comment.
Most people pine for change. The question many ask, though, is: will the economic crisis puncture the atmosphere of intimidation and fear inhibiting protest? ”People are angry — yes. But willing to express it in any visible or tangible manner — no,” said one aid worker, who declined to be named. ”The politics of survival has overtaken the politics of opposition. People are consumed simply by trying to get by day to day.”
About 30 000 people packed Harare’s football stadium on independence day last week. They came not for the president’s state-of-the-nation address but the football match that followed: a rare free treat. Mugabe, wearing a green sash, spoke for an hour, promising initiatives to revive the economy, a familiar refrain that might have been expected to provoke a hostile response from a crowd who had heard it all before.
It provoked nothing. No jeers, no shouts, no whistles. Some people snoozed, the rest chatted among themselves. Mwinjilo, the unemployed gardener, shrugged. ”What good would it do to heckle? It would change nothing. Anyway the speech is almost finished. The match will start soon.”
State of decline
20 minutes: Frequency that a child dies of Aids and another is orphaned, according to the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, which estimates that 1,6-million children, almost one in three, are orphans.
3 000: Number of people estimated to die of Aids-related illnesses each week, despite an apparent slight decline recently in the HIV rate.
4,3-million: Number of people receiving food aid after several poor harvests blamed on drought and chaotic land reform.
34: Average life expectancy for women — the lowest in the world. For men it is 37, according to the World Health Organisation. The government says the figures are exaggerated.
3,5-million: Number of Zimbabweans said to have emigrated, mostly to South Africa, Botswana and Britain. – Guardian Unlimited Â