A government on its way out – Moyo

In most supermarkets in the sprawling township of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, empty shelves and butcheries with no meat in the cold rooms tell of a desperate reality.

Even chickens are hard to come by. The government’s crack price monitoring teams will soon have no jobs, because ‘there will be nothing to monitor as all commodities have disappeared from shelves”, says Mercy Tiripo (32) of Mabvuku township, about 20km east of Harare.

Tiripo believes the worst is still to come. ‘They targeted houses because they feared the people will rise against the government after the parliamentary elections in 2005; now they are targeting shops and there will be no more shops by year end,” she says.

‘We will be left with nothing because shops are not restocking any time soon,” says Tiripo.

In the same township, Teresa Mtikani (not her real name) a 45-year-old shop owner, says she will have to lay off some of her employees. ‘There is nothing to sell any more, why should I keep them in the shops,” she asks.

‘Unemployment will rise to 110% and there won’t be any shops. I can’t even resort to sewing — there isn’t any electricity,” Mtikani says. ‘You can’t plan anything anymore.”

‘Price controls were okay, but if they are now going to create shortages, we are wondering if the government was right in the first place,” says Absalom Phiri (35).

‘If it’s going to be the government creating shortages, we will have serious problems with it, because they failed to manage this situation properly,” Phiri says.

‘Many people are now walking to work. They can’t walk on empty stomachs, and they will obviously turn their anger against the government,” he says.

Economists predict companies will be shut down within months, with many employees being thrown onto the streets. ‘It’s dangerous. If producers are not supplying shops with products, who is going to be paying the wages? Companies will be laying off workers and that builds up the public anger,” says Daniel Ndlela, an economist, says: ‘It’s going to boomerang.”

Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe’s former spin doctor, says developments in Zimbabwe are not without precedent. ‘In eastern Europe, governments that tried to nationalise, seizing companies, all these economies have one thing in common: they are now history, and you can only find them in the dustbin of history.”

Moyo says ‘it’s normally [the] behaviour of a government on its way out, [one] that has no confidence in itself. It’s trying to please voters, it’s nothing to do with consumers. They are trying to give the impression they have nothing to do with the economic meltdown, [and the] shortages of goods and services. It’s been trying to blame the business community for job losses.”