Board Blog

Zimbabwe diaries
Zimbabwe has been in the headlines for most of last year. Many of the stories reported across the world have been largely negative and sensational, bemoaning how a country that was once a breadbasket has turned into a basket case. The powerful or those with the privilege to write often write history. In contrast, those who are too busy fighting for their daily survival are rarely given the chance to tell their stories. For many people in Zimbabwe history is written in their memory & culture.

Those who have tasked themselves with reporting on Zimbabwe have unfortunately projected an idealistic past and posited a simple argument, which claim that Zimbabwe was some form of paradise before the current socio-economic and political crisis.  It is true that after independence in 1980, Zimbabweans enjoyed a decade of relative prosperity. However, it was no breadbasket for the millions of peasants who continued to live in marginalised rural areas waiting for the government to reverse historical injustices.

Reports about Zimbabwe in the western media tend to be obsessed with Mugabe’s personality, and thus, fail to provide the public with a balanced analysis.  For example there has been limited coverage of how, despite Robert Mugabe’s misrule, ordinary Zimbabweans have been coping with a sustained economic downturn. Though many of headlines have provided a general picture of political injustices and human rights abuses, they fail to explain why, if things are that bad, how Zimbabwe has not collapsed as predicted nearly five years ago. Contrary to predictions of an imminent economic collapse, Zimbabwe still ambles on albeit with signs of a gradual socio-economic deterioration. I remember in 2005, before I went back to work in Zimbabwe many people asked me why I was going to a country that was about to collapse.  That was four years ago yet the country has not experienced the dramatic collapse that many commentators predicted.

There are several reasons why the country did not collapse as predicted, which have been omitted by the mainstream media. Zimbabweans are generally what can be called “cooperative hunters”, which means in townships, and in many of the poverty stricken areas, of Zimbabwe life goes on. The battle for survival is fought in dark alleys where foreign currency from friends and relatives in far off western countries is illegally changed and shared within a complicated network of friends and family. Zimbabwe’s kinship system which predates colonial occupation still exists; this is the main reason why the country has not collapsed. Many of the millions of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora keep in touch with their families; they buy phone cards, use western money transfer union to wire money back home. They pay for fees, seed for parents in rural areas, school fees for brothers, sisters and nieces the list goes on.

Zimbabweans unconsciously follow a very old tradition, which is rooted in their spiritual beliefs, that if you neglect your kin you will be befallen by bad lucky. That belief has been largely responsible for sustainaning the country. No one knows how many millions of US dollars are wired to Zimbabwe from abroad on a weekly basis.

The crisis in Zimbabwe has also created a network of bankers with no formal education.  Many Zimbabweans have become experts in arithmetic; kids as young as ten are able to go to shops carrying large amounts of cash that amount to trillions. High inflation means Zimbabwean children have learnt to count from millions to quadrillions; these are the facts as they are lived by the ordinary Zimbabweans.

The other question many people ask me, as a Zimbabwean is why so many Zimbabweans have not resorted to violence to remove Mugabe. I always tell people that the battle in Zimbabwe is fought in street corners, and that people direct their energies towards “working the system.” Many Zimbabweans survive on transactions that take place on street corners, changing money illegally; of late there has been a boom in the illegal trade in precious metals like diamonds which have found their way to Zimbabwe’s street corners. These street corners have made many millionaires owing to the fact that much of the hard currency that changes hands everyday on street corners is untaxed, denying Zimbabwe’ government huge amounts of potential revenue in the much needed foreign currency. It’s almost like the country is a tax haven; when a country’s formal economy is eclipsed by a thriving parallel economy, it creates a dilemma for the government, since the dominance of informal economy means nobody is likely to pay tax.

There have also been a lot of reports of empty supermarkets and food shortages etc, whilst nobody can deny that the country faces severe food shortages Zimbabwe is far from Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia. The reason once more is ordinary Zimbabweans has risen to the challenge.  The ordinary Zimbabwean imports food from neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa. Both these country’s border economies are experiencing a dramatic boom in sales fuelled by cross border traders from Zimbabwe who buy anything from soap, bread, gasoline and other household utensils. This has attracted animosity from locals who envy the foreigners they see driving expensive SUVs and carrying large amounts of foreign currency which many of them does not have.
It’s not a surprise then that many supermarkets are reported to be empty since the supermarkets in Zimbabwe have been replaced by cross border traders who does not sell their imported groceries in formal shops, instead the stock is displayed along street sides and on motorways where motorists stop and buy cooking oil, bread and soap etc. The system is largely underwritten by foreign currency remittances from abroad.

However, the above have its own disadvantages since, it has indirectly helped to delay the much anticipated economic collapse of the country which many hope will relieve the country of its ageing dictator. Given the above, one can safely argue that if change takes place in Zimbabwe it’s unlikely to be through a civil war or a dramatic economic collapse, many Zimbabweans are aware of how change achieved violently can have long term implications for the country and the southern African region at large.