After 100 days of Zimbabwe’s unity government the question of whether the lives of ordinary people have changed elicits responses as divided as the fragile coalition itself.
Ask Thamie Dube, a young nurse, and she will tell you that the fact that she sat down last week to draw up her first budget means things are changing for the better.
Her workplace, Harare Hospital, is one of Zimbabwe’s two biggest public hospitals, but it has no functioning operating theatre or essential equipment. But there was some celebration when a glass company arrived to repair broken doors and windows for free.
The hours are hard and long and the pay a mere US$100 a month, but in the past three months Dube has reported to work every day without fail. That in itself is something of a miracle. “I can count the number of days I came to work for all of last year,” she says.
Some of the euphoria that greeted the new government in February has receded amid the constant battle for control between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Even so, Sarah Madondo, an auditor, has again been able to open a credit account at Edgars, which has restored credit facilities for the first time in years.
“Professionals shouldn’t have to go through the kind of embarrassment we went through. I need to be able to plan, to buy furniture, to afford a few comforts,” Madondo says.
For her it’s a sign of the government’s success that she now gets to choose between three types of bread at her local TM Supermarket. The store was closed last year, but it has reopened, newly renovated and bursting with goods.
“I have all types of cereal in my kitchen. It might sound petty but, as a professional, that’s very important to me,” Madondo says.
There are other positive signs, with new international aid pledges announced each week.
Farmers have a somewhat different take. Ask John James (not his real name), a citrus and wheat farmer west of Harare, whether the unity government is working and his response is predictable.
He has been thrown out of his farmhouse twice, forced to camp out on the roadside with his young family in the cold. Police, co-managed by Zanu-PF and the MDC, were powerless to protect him.
“I’ve had to go begging to the same people who are behind this. Sometimes they are reasonable, sometimes not. I’m on the farm now, but I know it won’t be long [before I’m thrown out again],” he said.
An 80-year-old neighbour was recently beaten up on her farm as police watched. “Now you ask me, ‘is the government working for me?’ I look at things like that and the answer is easy, it is not.”
James tries to pretend that it is business as usual. “You think, ‘perhaps if you get down to it, people will let you be’. Farming is all we know.”
But even that is impossible. He is broke and no bank will lend farmers money, even with the government-issued 99-year lease that has replaced title deeds. Even if he put in a crop, power cuts would leave him unable to irrigate .
Despite the small steps towards a stronger economy frustration is growing. Civil servants plan strikes to press for higher wages and living standards remain dire for the majority. It is a fact that Tsvangirai has acknowledged in his repeated pleas for patience.
And there has been little political reform. Repressive laws remain, Mugabe’s opponents continue to face arrest and harassment and his loyalists remain in charge of the central bank and the attorney general’s office.
An army official declared last week that controversial central bank boss Gideon Gono would not be sacked. Through Gono Mugabe has plied loyalists with farms, cheap loans and luxury vehicles.
Tsvangirai’s supporters expected a quick dismantling of such pillars of Mugabe’s power, but they remain largely intact.
And so the unity government plods along with its bizarre contradictions.
On Wednesday the MDC reported that Lawrence Berejena, a pastor who has counselled its tortured activists, had been abducted.
But on the same day a bus load of teachers who had sought refuge at Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church quietly arrived home.