Well, things are progressing at pace here… The real question is, in which direction? We are still queuing for bread- where and when we can find it, which is not that often anyway- but now we can’t get meat in the shops. You have to understand how southern Africans are about their meat to understand how devastating this is. Was talking to someone about how if Zimbabwe was cruel to the poor before, now it has finally caught up with the middle class…

Last week the government imposed a price freeze for all goods, at June 17 (or is it 18) levels… And asked retailers to cut their prices in half, basically, for most retailers. This caused a literal run on the shops, and people could be seen queuing for everything from shoes to televisions, fridges, and toiletries. Naturally, people were panicked- it was like madness, really- I suspect that there are now people with three extra beds at home, just because they could buy them last week. Supermarket shelves have been mostly empty, with supermarket owners (or chief executives, etc, for the larger chains) arrested if their prices were not slashed. Most butcheries closed their doors, as private abattoirs stopped supplying meat to them, figuring (naturally) that it made no sense to supply at under cost. The government retaliated by withdrawing their licences, so that now a government-run business is the only one allowed to supply meat. Which I still don’t see in shops.

Of course, on the back of all this, vegetables have gone up (that being the only part of the economy that’s been left unregulated, because it is mostly informal). If this wasn’t nearly enough to starve the citizens, the government has also decided to ban the importation of foodstuffs, with effect from the 1st August. Most middle-class Zimbabweans have been relying on travel to neighbouring countries to buy the things we can’t always get in the supermarkets- things like flour, soap, washing powder, sugar, cooking oil. While it is true that there were people (informal traders) going across the border to buy these things to sell on the black market (in itself a source of income for the otherwise indigent), it is a fact that these things are NOT on our supermarket shelves… One truly does wonder what will happen next. It is as if the most ridiculous things are going on, and as if it will not stop until the country has come to a complete standstill. I don’t even talk about the power and water cuts, as I live in an area where we are mercifully mostly spared; but these new developments are in addition to all that Zimbabweans have been suffering under already.

One can only shake one’s head in wonder…

Ps. Am prevented from taking pictures of things on the ground by the fear of being caught doing so, as there are laws against reporting on Zimbabwe without government sanction. Even my blog posts are a little dangerous, really...