Zimbabwe is hungry and broke, the country’s central bank governor has warned in a frank admission that President Robert Mugabe’s government is unable to provide adequate food supplies or maintain many basic services.
Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono told a parliamentary committee that he was struggling to keep the country’s electricity on and the air force aloft. He admitted he had no funds to buy police vehicles or print passports and that, unless drastic action was taken on rampant inflation, Zimbabwe could slump ”to levels never dreamt before”.
The battered economy has become Mugabe’s most potent opponent and public anger is growing, say civic leaders. Since the beginning of the year, the economy has taken a lurching fall, with inflation soaring to nearly 1 600% and food and fuel shortages gripping the nation.
Scant hope of better times was offered by Gono when he came to the parliamentary committee on defence and home affairs on Tuesday to respond to appeals from the police, army and other departments for foreign currency to buy vehicles, vital equipment and basic materials.
Gono is favoured by Mugabe for his optimism, so many Zimbabweans will have been surprised by his bleak assessment, published in the state Herald newspaper this week.
He told the parliamentary group he received desperate calls daily from state food and petrol distributors, the national airline, and the state railway and power utility — all demanding hard currency for imports. An official from the power utility called at dusk saying: ”If you don’t give us money, the nation will be in darkness.”
But he said the bank’s priority was to allocate hard currency for imports of maize, Zimbabwe’s staple grain, to avert a looming food crisis. He admitted currency had been diverted from almost every government department to buy food.
Committee chairman of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, Claudius Makova, said its investigations showed that the police needed more than 15 000 vehicles but had 1 500. He said the air force needed $2-million to keep planes in the air.
The passport office had earlier said it had a backlog of 300 000 applications but could not produce any because it had no paper or ink. It is resorting to issuing emergency travel documents on plain paper.
Gono said he did not have the foreign currency to pay those urgent bills. He said Zimbabwe needed more than $2,5-billion ”to function well” but he did not know where he could find the hard currency.
”If we were talking about local currency, I would say, ‘Don’t worry, in the next 30 minutes we will print money,”’ he said, but added that he could not print US dollars or British pounds.
Gono blamed people who had taken over white-owned farms for failing to produce food. ”There are some people who have become professional land occupiers, vandalising equipment and moving from one farm to another,” he said.
Tobacco exports were the nation’s main hard-currency earners before the land seizures. Tobacco production this year is forecast at one-fifth of the 1999 level and food output is down to one-third.
The economy would fall to ”levels never dreamt before” unless there was an immediate wage and price freeze, he said.
In a sign of growing public impatience, dozens of people were arrested this week for defying a police ban on demonstrations to protest at hardship and repression.
The National Constitutional Assembly said many of those arrested were assaulted, but it vowed to continue demonstrating. ”We believe that demonstrating for a new constitution is a genuine cause that cannot be blocked by a corrupt police force whose mandate is merely that of protecting a failed regime,” said the group, which campaigns for constitutional reform.
Zimbabwe’s main labour body, the Zimbawe Congress of Trade Unions, confirmed yesterday that it would hold a general strike on April 3 and 4 to protest at the hardships it blamed on the government. It rejected Gono’s call for a wage freeze, saying poor and hungry workers could not accept that.
”People are hungry and they are fed up. The terrible economy is creating a growing mood of desperation,” said John Makumbe, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. ”We have seen battles between police and protesters and this could grow.”
Mugabe this week visited one of his strongest allies, Namibia, but even there he was met with protests. Hundreds took to the streets with signs that read ”Go Mugabe Go” and ”Go Home Dictator”. — Â