Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Zimbabwe at the brink
Mugabe's strategy for combating the collapse of the currency? Send out thugs and arrest any business people who don't cut prices by 50%. As one might predict, business cannot sell goods at 50% of cost and survive, so you're either carted off to jail or your shelves are stripped clean and you are out of business. And of course parasites with connections find a way to profit, by following the price police and then scooping up the cut-rate inventory for later sale on the black market. Cathy Buckle describes the scene in her weekly letter from Zimbabwe:
Shop owners who refuse to cut the prices face arrest and having their goods seized. Some have been assaulted, others had their premises trashed and windows smashed.
The result of it all, inevitably, is rapid collapse and many goods and foods have now become completely unavailable including all the staples which were already difficult to find such as flour, oil, sugar, salt and maize meal. Joining the list now are most other normal household products in daily use such as soap, candles, matches, milk, eggs, margarine, rice, bread and the list grows longer by the hour and day. As the prices are ordered down hordes of people with bagfuls of money swarm behind and buy up all the stocks. Shops are displaying signs announcing that only one of each item may be purchased but entire gangs are moving around in dozens and just cleaning everything out.
Outside a major wholesaler, groups of young men stood around waiting for the "militia taskforce" to arrive so that they could buy up everything as the prices were slashed. The car park was nearly full of luxury vehicles - pajero's, twin cabs, SUV's. even a Lexus - all filled with men talking incessantly on cellphones and women in tight jeans and artificial hair - their vehicles already bulging with 'slashed price' goods, many pulling trailers also stuffed to overflowing.
All week as the situation has deteriorated people have been comparing what is happening now to shops and businesses with what happened to farms. A huge crisis seems just a few days or perhaps a couple of weeks away, as stocks dwindle, warehouses empty and we simply run out of food. As I write this letter the government are continuing to applaud the price cuts and say they will take over the businesses that close down.
One wonders how long such a situation can endure.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jul 10, 12:08:00 PM:
I'd guess it can endure so long as the food and water hold out.
By , at
Tue Jul 10, 01:13:00 PM:
Anothr effing place with total gun control. Mind you, the place would be a paradise if the bloody Europeans hadn't colonised the place first.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Jul 10, 02:17:00 PM:
The longer it holds together, the louder the crash. Everybody who can get out, should run like heck.
And we can not fix this by just shipping in money or food, that will only make the upcoming disaster bigger as the existing corrupt government uses it to prop themselves up.
By , at
Tue Jul 10, 03:35:00 PM:
"Mind you, the place would be a paradise if the bloody Europeans hadn't colonised the place first."
Please tell me that's a joke. Unless your idea of paradise and mine differs significantly of course.
By Mystery Meat, at
Tue Jul 10, 06:44:00 PM:
"Mind you, the place would be a paradise if the bloody Europeans hadn't colonised the place first."
That's true of Somalia, too.
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Jul 10, 07:43:00 PM:
This tells me Mugabe is heavily invested in black market operations.
By , at
Tue Jul 10, 11:06:00 PM:
So the government supporters take over the stores, where apon they charge full price (or demand payment in USD, Euro or Yen).
Only Chavez is stupid enough to call it nationalization these days, everyone else just does the same thing by a different method.
