In Zimbabwe, It's Crisis As Usual

A NEW ROUND OF HYPERINFLATION WAS TAKING A HEAVY TOLL ON DAILY LIFE, EVEN BEFORE THE CORONAVIRUS HIT.

- REECY PONTIFF

“ZIMBABWEANS ARE HEARTBREAKERS, trust you me,” drawls Prince Matsika as he reworks a hand-strung necklace in front of his stall at an outdoor city market. People bustle by, but few even glance at the beaded trinkets and wooden crafts crowded onto tables and baskets. With rapidly rising inflation and food shortages across the country, now only the wealthy and foreign tourists can afford his wares.

“Even if [tourists] come, they would think our prices are ridiculous,” Matsika says. He’s selling a piece of his own design for $20, a king’s ransom for the developing world. “But we are trying to earn that little money,” he explains, even though “it doesn’t really have a serious value around here.”

It is January, and the coronavirus epidemic in China has just begun making headlines in the West. But Zimbabwe has been in a state of economic crisis since 2018, shortly after a coup d’état toppled the 37-year reign of dictator Robert Mugabe and installed his longtime political ally Emmerson Mnangagwa as president. Major factors in the sharp economic decline include government corruption, a horrific drought, and rampant inflation and cash shortages after the reintroduction of a Zimbabwean dollar (ZWL, colloquially called “bond”) following almost a decade under a multi-currency system.

In Matsika’s city of Bulawayo, the second-largest in Zimbabwe, hungry citizens helplessly watch the staggering devaluation of their wages, savings, and pensions. Even as the public education system raises school fees, teachers cannot afford to get to work. Recently, doctors in public hospitals reluctantly ended a four-month strike, even though their salaries are now worth just 10 percent of what they were promised and despite the lack of basics, including bandages.