Zimbabwe in a Vortes of Despair

December 24, 2008.

ZIMBABWE IN A VORTEX OF DESPAIR

The political crisis is at the centre of the collapse in the economy and the health service. The crisis is one of legitimacy, where a party and a leader who lost an election in March are still clinging to power and holding the country hostage. Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Southern Africa, is now the fastest shrinking economy in the world. The root cause of the political, economic and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe needs to be addressed.

The crisis is the result of the mismanagement of economic policies, corruption, and human rights abuses on the part of the Mugabe regime. Mugabe and his coterie have to come to terms with reality. Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have thrown them a lifeline by even agreeing to the Global Political Agreement. They did win the elections and they do deserve more than they are being given by the losing party.

Drawn into a vortex of despair, the southern African country saw the collapse of the public health sector this year. Government hospitals and clinics faced a critical shortage of basic drugs, food, water, surgical equipment and above all staff. Specialist doctors, nurses and nurse aides have been on strike for part of the year demanding better working conditions and to be paid in foreign currency. Their strike has seen most wards in government hospitals closed and people failing to receive treatment. On the other hand, private hospitals have been charging medical fees in foreign currency -- beyond the reach of many.

As the country faces drastic shortages of health professionals, there is a shortage of every life-sustaining commodity: cash, food, electricity and medicine and water sanitisation equipment.

Zimbabwe's health system cannot cope with the cholera epidemic and the water supply network has failed, forcing people to drink from contaminated wells and streams. The death toll from Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic soared to 1,174 with 23,712 reported cases (half of them in just one Harare suburb), the United Nations said on December 23. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the disease could affect up to 60,000 people during the rain season.

But the Red Cross believes the actual number of cholera victims is likely to be much higher, as most people do not have access to medical care due to lack of transport. It is believed the ‘unreported' death toll is closer to 3,000 deaths. Nine out of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces have reported cases.

Thousands of cases of cholera have also been identified in Angola and Mozambique while neighbouring South Africa has designated one of its northern regions a disaster area due to the number of people crossing the border to seek treatment, with at least eight cholera deaths reported in Musina. Four people were confirmed to have died in Mozambique, while another four have died in Malawi. Meanwhile, Botswana's second largest city of Francistown has been placed on high alert following reports that two new cases of cholera were diagnosed there, bringing the number of cases to four in the country in less than a month.

With service delivery having virtually collapsed, the cholera epidemic is worsening and is threatening thousands more people. Cholera is an easily treated disease but because of the complete collapse in infrastructure and basic services it has proved difficult to contain.

Although Zimbabwe called for international aid, a diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity in Harare said that a French medical team had been denied visas. The team included three specialists from the French Foreign Ministry's crisis centre, two epidemiologists, and a water treatment expert. The embassy in Paris told them that "Zimbabwe doesn't need a foreign technical team to fight cholera," the diplomat said.

Robert Mugabe's spokesman on December 12 defended the octogenarian leader's outrageous comments who said, "I am happy to say...that there is no cholera" in Zimbabwe, amid numerous warnings that the cholera crisis is in fact worsening. Mugabe insisted that cholera had been ‘arrested,' and therefore the West's ‘cause' for military intervention did not exist anymore.

Mugabe is a man now completely detached from reality and a man who is battling with old age affecting the brain. He has not even made an effort to visit cholera victims.

Robert Mugabe's outgoing minister of information, Sikanyiso Ndlovu, claimed the cholera outbreak was caused by the British government in a biological warfare against Zimbabwe, saying the epidemic was a calculated attack on Zimbabwe.

"The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological chemical war force, a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British," he said. "Cholera is a calculated racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country."

Mugabe's propagandists need to know that cholera is only a symptom: it is the water and burst sewage pipes, and sanitation and garbage collection that the ZANU (PF) authorities have neglected. Piles of burning rubbish in the streets of the capital, Harare, and burst pipes spewing filthy water are now a common sight. Flowing raw sewage is a common sight in Mufakose, Mabvuku, Tafara, Highfield (Canaan Engineering) and Dzivarasekwa -- some of the country's poorest townships. To prevent cholera, they need to deal with that. Instead they will continue to blame everyone else but themselves for not spending more money on amenities and public services than on patronage.

The lack of safe drinking water, which caused the cholera outbreak, is the direct result of the government's economic mismanagement and a crisis of governance. Many Zimbabweans have not had access to water that meets even basic sanitary requirements for almost a year now because of the poor maintenance of delivery systems.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) warned the crisis was not under control, and announced it would provide US$6.2 million to fight the cholera outbreak in addition to the US$4.6 million already spent. At the same time, UK based aid group Save the Children said the crisis was set to worsen.

Most Zimbabwean cities and towns had been battling severe water shortages over the past few years due to government interference with Local Authority administrative issues and gross mismanagement by government appointed commissions that replaced elected councils whenever such councils were from the opposition political parties. Zimbabwe has suffered periodic outbreaks of cholera especially in big overcrowded cities. A cholera outbreak in Harare's Glen View township killed three people from the same family in January 2006 after they had eaten contaminated fish, forcing the authorities to temporarily shut down the capital's main food and vegetable market.

Between January and February 2007 alone, 51 cholera deaths were reported countrywide. The first case of cholera in Harare was reported in Budiriro and at one point the army dispatched soldiers to clean up the area and banned all street vendors from the suburb. However, because of the economic meltdown, the exercise was futile, as vending is the source of income for many unemployed people living in the high density suburbs. Nine people from Mabvuku and Tafara suburbs in Harare were hospitalised in January 2007 after being infected with cholera. In February 2007, Harare authorities worked to contain an outbreak in two townships where residents had been collecting water from unprotected wells. At least 19 people were reported to have contracted cholera in that outbreak, but there were no recorded deaths.

Following this incident, in mid-December 2007, independent health experts in Harare reported another cholera outbreak due to the untreated tap water being supplied by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA). According to the Combined Harare Residents' Association (CHRA), at least 2,000 cholera cases were reported at clinics around the city. Residents of high-density suburbs often went for long periods without tap water and were relying on shallow wells for drinking water. The wells, which are unprotected, are prone to contamination, as residents had also resorted to using the bush for toilets due to the crippling water shortages.

All this is happening in the face of the impact of HIV/AIDS pandemic, killing about 2,000 people weekly. There is a lack of anti-retroviral to treat the HIV/AIDS plague. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), in a report published at the end of 2006, warns that Zimbabwe and Lesotho could lose more than a quarter of their labour force to HIV/AIDS by 2010 unless the respective governments ensure universal access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. Zimbabwe was estimated to have already lost about 20% of its workforce by 2005. The AIDS pandemic is also impacting negatively on agricultural production as the majority of the workforce is dying from the disease.

There is an estimated 1.3 million Zimbabweans living with AIDS and 1.5 million orphans created by the disease.

According to a 2005-06 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS), 21% of women aged 15 to 49 are infected with HIV. For men of the same age, HIV prevalence is 15%. For women, HIV prevalence peaks between the ages of 30 and 34 at 36%. For men, it peaks almost a decade later, between the ages of 40 and 44 at 33%. This has impacted on Zimbabwe's life expectancy, which went down to 39 years in 2003 from 62 in 1990. Reported to be lowest in the world, it is 34 for women and 37 for men.

Zimbabwe's economy is battling high infant mortality rates that have worsened from 76 in every 1,000 births in 2001 to 58 in 2003. Feeling the severity of a national cholera crisis, Zimbabwean children are already vulnerable, a quarter of them are orphaned, and most have fewer meals than their peers.

Although the government imposed a 6% levy on income to raise funds to fight HIV/AIDS, organisations that deal with the disease have for several years now blamed the government and the National Aids Council (NAC) for abusing Aids Funds and for giving first preference to government officials when distributing the ARVs ahead of the less privileged members.

Amid all the suffering, the ZANU (PF) government is guilty of misappropriating funds mobilised to buy life-saving drugs for the sick, including people living with HIV. Allegations were made that government officials embezzled US$7.3 million donated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2007 to buy anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for people living with HIV in Zimbabwe. The money was stolen from the US$12.3 million it gave to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to buy medicine for sick people in Zimbabwe.

The erosion of livelihoods, food insecurity, rising malnutrition and the possibility of disease outbreaks are putting the already vulnerable population under further distress. Malnutrition now afflicts 45% of Zimbabwe's population. A report released by the Harare City Council in August 2007 reveals that at least 10% of all school children in Harare's working class suburbs were suffering from chronic malnutrition or stunted growth. The City Council's department of health report, that graphically captures the worsening economic crisis in Zimbabwe, said cases of kwashiorkor had in 2006 increased by 43.7% compared to the 2005 figures.

Kwashiorkor is a disease that is caused by lack of proteins and is common in impoverished communities. The report says most of the cases were recorded in Harare's working class suburbs of Dzivarasekwa, Kuwadzana, Mabvuku and Mbare where there is widespread poverty. The United Nations Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) last year said there had been a serious deterioration in care for Zimbabwean children resulting in many deaths for children under the age of five.

In December 2007, Zimbabwe's 65 prisons were hit by a critical shortage of food that culminated in some inmates suffering from malnutrition and pellagra, among a plethora of other problems facing the country's penal system due to inadequate funding. There was a flood of reports of alarming deaths after three prisoners from Khami Maximum Prison were given a pauper's burial at Luveve cemetery on December 21 of that year. During the past two years, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs has produced a string of reports painting a gloomy state of affairs in the country's 43 prisons.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee, led by Faber Chidarikire, an MP for the ruling ZANU (PF) party, described the situation in the prisons they visited as "disturbing", and said malnutrition and disease outbreaks were common as a result of food shortages.

"There were serious shortages of foodstuffs, such as sugar, mealie [maize] meal, cooking oil, beans, meat and most basic commodities. The committee was informed that as a result of these scanty allocations it was very difficult to maintain the basic human standards, resulting in prisoners suffering from malnutrition," Chidarikire told Parliament.

Since the fast-track land-reform began in 2000, Zimbabwe has relied on food imports and handouts from international food agencies mainly due to failure by resettled ZANU (PF) cronies to maintain production on former commercial farms.

Basic foodstuffs are running out, prices of goods are doubling every 24 hours, and the 10 billion Zimbabwean dollar a month limit for bank withdrawals buys only five loaves of bread in the once relatively prosperous country. By December 23 the price of bread had increased from Z$65 million to Z$2 billion per loaf. On the same day, the US dollar traded for between Z$9 and Z$11 billion. Crippling food shortages have left nearly half the population in need of aid.

Commuter omnibus operators were demanding Z$2 billion or much-sought-after gasoline coupons for a ride from the Harare city centre to Highfield and other inner suburbs.

Harare residents and Zimbabweans in general continue to slink deeper into the abyss of dire poverty as the country's economic and socio-political entanglement rages on. The UN has predicted that up to five million people will face starvation by January. Depositors are enduring long hours in winding queues at banks to access cash because the monetary system is failing to cope with the demand for banknotes. The city of Harare witnessed a very eventful week (from Wednesday the 26th of November) which saw soldiers rebelliously taking into the streets, looting shops, beating and taking away money from forex dealers and clashing with the police in the process.

Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) members based at 4.2 Infantry Battalion in Gutu went on a rampage on December 13, beating up anyone in sight, including bank officials and illegal foreign currency dealers, following their failure to get cash from banks. This follows similar incidents in Harare and Masvingo a fortnight earlier, as mutiny escalates in various quarters of the defence forces.

Sources within the army said the forces emulated similar actions by their fellows around the country and started to beat up everyone in sight following massive disgruntlement over low salaries which they struggle to get from the banks. In Gutu, like in other towns, soldiers were receiving preferential treatment and were receiving more than the gazetted cash withdrawal limits of more than Z$200 million per week but this changed when bank officials said they did not have the required cash reserves to sustain the gesture.

"They started beating everyone at around five in the evening, up to late in the night after they were riled by their bankruptcy. They, however, did not break into shops. Several people, including innocent civilians and illegal forex dealers lost substantial amounts of cash and sustained serious injuries," a source said.

Witnesses said the soldiers accused them of failing to revolt against President Mugabe's rule, as they (uniformed forces) are not allowed to revolt.

"One soldier grabbed me and floored me, and as I was on the ground, he accused civilians of being cowards who fail to revolt against Mugabe as they were ready to join us, not disperse us. He said we tolerated the crisis in the country, hence we had to suffer," a victim who requested anonymity said.

While the cholera epidemic threatens villages and cities alike, the word "inflation" has lost all meaning as it reached 231 million percent according to official figures. But the highly respected Washington-based Cato Institute says as of November 7, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate was 516 quintillion percent (516 followed by 18 zeros). This may seem improbable, and yet this is how Zimbabwe is in a vortex of despair. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe continues to print money and in so doing fuels inflation.

The regime's huge appetite for cash is also likely to spur increased money printing, pushing money supply growth upwards. The Reserve Bank has kept the lid on the money supply (M3) figures. The official figure to date is 420,867.4% for April. Economic analysts on December 18 said the figure could be nearing 500 million percent after the central bank governor, Gideon Gono, introduced 27 new denomination notes this year alone.

Quasi fiscal activities by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe have been pivotal in supporting Mugabe's bankrupt schemes. Zimbabwe's economy is in free-fall mainly because of Mugabe's patronage policies. Mugabe and his henchmen have exposed their failure to offer a solution to the crisis they have spawned. The domestic debt was likely to rise further because of increased borrowing by the government to finance unbudgeted expenditure arising from reckless spending (most of it to buy political patronage).

Domestic debt rose by 17,960% inside one month to Z$179.6 trillion on September 8 from Z$1 trillion recorded on August 8. The rise in government domestic debt levels, which is now being kept secret by the Reserve Bank, was sparked by huge interest payments which account for about 90% of the total debt. The surge in domestic debt was the result of high interests on the market which were in line with the inflation rate. This is also caused by the Reserve Bank's advances to the regime, largely for the agricultural mechanisation programme and food, fuel and power imports as all major sectors of the economy are reportedly operating below 30%.

The regime has also been forced to rely on domestic borrowings because their tax revenue base has dwindled because of company closures which have led to retrenchments. This means that in real terms, the government is collecting less revenue through corporate and income tax.

With government's continued reliance on borrowing from the local market, domestic debt is estimated to end above 10 quadrillion Zimdollars this year. The mismatch between fiscal revenues and expenditures also opened a significant funding gap resulting in government utilising the overdraft window at the Reserve Bank, while at the same time borrowing from the domestic market.

The Reserve Bank's advances to the government have over the past five years accounted for about 80% of total debt, a situation which bank economists say was evidence that the Mugabe regime was broke and had no other source of revenue other than the domestic market. The fact that Zimbabwe has no access to international capital has only aggravated the situation.

The rationalities for the moral and physical bankruptcy in Zimbabwe are widely known, and for any sane observer are actually simple to understand. There are growing shortages of most things relevant to a proper and hopeful life in the imploding and collapsing Zimbabwean economy. Notably, there is a huge deficit of diligent intelligence in the hierarchy. There is an inane omission of the application of emerged and proven civilized standards that include respect for human and civil rights.

With its appetite for military-style operations to eliminate opponents (Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina, Makavhoterapapi), the regime has introduced Operation Chimumumu (Make Them Dump/Voiceless) intended to eliminate the MDC leadership and decimate the party through frivolous allegations. Innocent people are abducted, murdered, tortured, and displaced. Scores of people from the civil society and the main-stream MDC have been kidnapped. Among them are Jestina Mukoko, the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, MDC Director of Security, Chris Dhlamini, Morgan Tsvangirai's former personal adviser, Ghandi Mudzingwa, journalist Shadreck Manyere, Concillia and Emmanuel Chinanzvavana. Court orders to produce the victims have been ignored.

It is high time Zimbabwe's neighbours together with the rest of SADC countries take steps to isolate the Mugabe regime. It should be made clear to Mugabe that he is not the legitimate leader of Zimbabwe and that his regime will be isolated. Botswana's suggestion of an economic blockade is one such measure.

When the Ian Smith regime ignored world opinion and continued to violate human rights during the 1970s, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia closed their borders. After apartheid South Africa also threatened to close its border, Smith came running to London where the Lancaster House Constitution was hammered leading to Zimbabwe's independence in April 1980. The South African government has been disgracefully remiss in not using its substantial political and economic heft to end the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.

Cutting off electricity and blocking fuel supplies to Zimbabwe would mean that Mugabe would fall like a ripe fruit.

It is also fair for countries which financially assist SADC to insist that the bloc adheres to its own protocols. It is not acceptable for SADC countries to shield a man whose behaviour flies in the face of what the SADC was set up to achieve. For example, the regime is clearly not conforming to the regional bloc's guidelines on the conduct of free and fair elections.

Furthermore, despite a ruling by the SADC regional tribunal that the fast-track land reform programme violated commercial farmers' rights under law, Mugabe's regime is proceeding with the prosecution of several white commercial farmers for allegedly staying on their land, which had been forcibly acquired by the government under the violent land reform exercise.

How long is the SADC going to sit on the fence as Mugabe defies its rulings?

There is also the New African Partnership for Development (NEPAD), the African Marshall Plan, which was crafted on underlying principles of a commitment to good governance, democracy, human rights and conflict resolution. The recognition that maintenance of these standards is fundamental to the creation of an environment conducive to investment and long-term economic growth should be considered paramount. When Thabo Mbeki drummed up support for NEPAD, he accepted that in return for economic assistance and cooperation from the industrialised world, Africa would commit to upholding human rights and good governance.

As the endgame of the octogenarian Mugabe's rule plays out, the human tragedies mount. The explosion of the deadly cholera epidemic that has rocked the country has served as a strong reminder to Zimbabweans that all is not well. Zimbabweans live on under US$1 per day. The government is technically bankrupt and all macroeconomic fundamentals have collapsed and they remain bleak.