Shops in Zimbabwe’s normally thriving eastern border city of Mutare are fast running out of stock.
Seven days after President Robert Mugabe’s government began a blitz on shops and businesses, forcing them to slash prices by half, Mutare’s biggest stores look in part like they’ve been decimated.
Huge white meat freezers stand empty. There are empty shelves where eggs should be stocked. There is no cooking oil, sugar or flour.
In TM stores — a popular grocery chain on Mutare’s main shopping artery — more than 200 people waited patiently in a line on Tuesday for scarce supplies of bread.
Bakers are reported to have massively reduced production since price inspectors ordered a loaf be sold for Z$22 000.
They say it costs at least Z$35 000 to produce one loaf.
”Look, the store is empty,” whispers a teller in an upmarket department store as she scrubs down bare shelves.
”By December, what will there be to buy?”
Last week, residents say, shoppers stampeded from one store to the next to get bargains. Price inspectors and police ordered store managers to slash by about half the prices of most goods, including shoes, clothes, cement and pots and pans.
After struggling under rampant inflation of at least 4 500%, many could not believe their luck. Popular soft drink Coca Cola, which is bottled in Mutare, had shot up to more than Z$50 000 a bottle. For the last few days it’s been selling, as ordered, for Z$20 000.
”The town’s awash in Coke,” giggled one 28-year-old mother-of-two, who was drinking the fizzy drink for breakfast.
But the euphoria, it appears, could prove short-lived.
Already there is talk that many shop owners, angered at being forced to sell at a massive loss, simply won’t restock their shelves. Owners and managers from more than 20 stores in Mutare and its nearest town, Rusape, were arrested in a move likely to prove the last straw for some stressed business people.
And, as in the days of unaffordably high prices, shoppers are already wandering around TM with empty baskets. This time it’s because the goods they want just aren’t available.
Provincial governor Tinaye Chigudu last week sounded a note of alarm at the growing shortages.
He accused Mutare business people of siphoning precious basic commodities across the border into Mozambique, where demand for quality Zimbabwean products like pasteurised milk, sugar and body lotions is high.
”We know businesses are making billions of dollars in profits but people are struggling out there,” Chigudu, a staunch senior member of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, said in comments carried by the local Manica Post newspaper.
But with black marketeers quietly offering unavailable commodities at huge premiums on the pavements outside supermarkets in Mutare and elsewhere, government opponents aren’t convinced. They accuse Mugabe of making a last-ditch bid to win popular support ahead of next year’s presidential and parliamentary polls.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) described the attack on the local business community as a ”poor election gimmick” and predicted Zimbabwe was headed for ”serious chaos” as a result of the price blitz.
The main Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) also condemned the campaign, warning job losses were ”imminent” and calling on the government to deal with the ”root causes” of Zimbabwe’s economic rot.
SADC ”disassociates” itself from Zimbabwe support reports
Meanwhile, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has distanced itself from reports of a plan to use South Africa’s rand currency to ease Zimbabwe’s economic crisis, but said it was looking at ways to help the beleaguered country.
South Africa’s Sunday Independent quoted unidentified sources as saying SADC was working on a plan to extend the rand monetary union to Zimbabwe, struggling with a meltdown critics blame on the skewed policies of Mugabe’s government.
”SADC disassociates itself from any reported support packages as they did not originate from its secretariat,” the Botswana-based body said in a statement seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
But it said a summit of Southern African leaders held in Tanzania in March had mandated SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao to undertake a study on the Zimbabwe economic crisis and propose measures on how SADC could help resolve it.
”To this end, a study has been conducted and a report will be prepared and presented to the summit troika of the SADC organ on politics, defence and security for consideration in due course,” the SADC statement said.
The Sunday Independent said Zimbabwe could benefit from joining the monetary union, under which currencies are pegged to the solid rand, and which presently consists of South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.
The Sunday Independent said the plan would involve the central banks in South Africa and Botswana injecting huge amounts of funds into their counterpart in Zimbabwe.
But on Wednesday Zimbabwe’s state Herald newspaper quoted central bank Governor Gideon Gono as saying that ”nothing of the sort, as reported, has even been or is under consideration”.
Economists have said any regional aid package would only work if Mugabe’s government agreed to significant economic and political reforms — something it has resisted in the past.
Once regarded as Southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe has suffered erratic food supplies over the past seven years or so, with critics pointing to the forcible redistribution of white-owned commercial farms among black Zimbabweans ill-equipped to properly use the land. — Sapa-dpa, Reuters