Resourcefulness only way to survive in Zimbabwe

In crisis-stricken Zimbabwe, with prices soaring, the local dollar plummeting and time always short, even a trip to the petrol station can be an adventure in the struggle to survive.

Filling a tank used to require just a few minutes. Now it takes a day of patience and some ingenuity at the petrol station. Even then, success is not guaranteed.

As the sun sets on Harare, Tinashe Magacha is about to spend the night in his car, like hundreds of motorists, hoping to

refuel a minibus. While I am queuing, my bus is“on the road with my driver transporting passengers. If I fill up this car, I will drain the fuel with a hosepipe into the commuter bus.”

All that effort comes with a hefty price tag. Fuel prices more than doubled in January, triggering protests suppressed in a crackdown by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime.

For months, lines of cars stretching for several kilometres at petrol stations have been the latest manifestation of the economic ruin left by Robert Mugabe, who died on September 6, almost two years after a coup ended his 37-year rule.

Zimbabwe has been mired in the crisis since the early 2000s after Mugabe’s land reform programme led to the violent seizure of white-owned farms and investors fleeing the country. Zimbabwe never recovered. Today, there are shortages of everything from fuel to washing powder, licence plates to passports. Even local currency is in short supply at banks.

Forced to pay his bus tickets in hard currency to go to work, Crispen Mudzengerere must spend hours at his bank to withdraw, if he is lucky, at best Zim$100 (about R129 or €8) in cash. He could buy some from street traders, but the service is “taxed” at least 30% commission. “To get Zim$20, I need to spend $26. I have to pay for my own money!” he says.

To cut back on transportation costs, Mudzengerere got creative. He now does double shifts at his restaurant, which allows him to have four days of rest, and travel less. In Zimbabwe, resourcefulness and patience are indispensable means for dealing with daily survival.

But hustling cannot solve everything. The first victim of the crisis has been the value of wages, destroyed by hyperinflation 175% in June and the depreciation of the currency. Within a year, Zimbabweans say, the value of their salaries has been divided by fifteen.

The toll has been harsh. Wakanai Murambidzi, a cleaner in a bank, was unable to pay her children’s school fees. They were forced out of school earlier in September.

“I did not pay the last school fees [in full]. I don’t know what to do. I am stuck,” she says. “We regret removing Mugabe,” she says, referring to the military coup that ended his reign in 2017. “We used to buy bread for $1. Now it is $10.”

A new type of market has emerged in the poor Harare district of Mbare. Shoppers will not find fresh vegetables, fruit or meat, only long-shelf-life foods such as rice and sugar as well as soap, all illegally imported from SA. Prices, untaxed and sold without an intermediary, are unbeatable here.

“We are smuggling,” shopkeeper Blessing Chiona says, all her goods laid on a wooden pallet in the mud. “The prices change up to three times a day.”

Sheltered under an umbrella, Chiona sends text messages of shopping lists to delivery drivers, known as “malayisha” or couriers, who travel back and forth between Zimbabwe and SA with minibus taxis.

Power cuts last up to 18 hours a day. Jocelyn Chaibva, a pharmacist, gets up in the middle of the night, when the electricity is on for a few hours in her neighbourhood, to turn on the washing machine.

“It requires a PhD to survive here,” says colleague Luckmore Bunu.