Harare, ZIMBABWE:
Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa said his country will have a difficult Christmas in the wake of deep seated economic challenges.
The country is experiencing its worst inflation since 2008, which peaked to a 10 year high of 31% last month.
The health sector is in crisis with doctors on strike for close to a month, while there is critical shortage of medicines.
Commodities such as fuel, beverages and basic foods are also in short supply with many industries unable to produce due to foreign currency shortages.
At the weekend yet another outbreak of cholera claimed three lives.
In a Christmas message to Zimbabweans on Sunday, Mnangagwa said:
“there will be further bumps along the road”.
“I am aware that many will have a difficult Christmas. I encourage all of us to be patient, resilient and to work harder in collective unity, as we create a better, democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe for all. From my family to yours, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year,” he said.
Despite the bleak atmosphere, many Zimbabweans living in SA are expected to provide a Christmas cheer for relatives and friends back home.
At Beitbridge border thousands made their way home from South Africa for the festive season.
Many of the travelers stocked up on groceries, mindful of the shortages of basic commodities.
“We had to buy everything in South Africa because we have been told shops are empty back home and the few products that are available are very expensive,” said Sharon Takundwa, a Johannesburg based waitress who returned to Harare at the weekend.
South Africa home affairs minister Dr Siyabonga Cwele visited Beitbridge border post on Thursday, noting the increased number of travelers due to the festive season.
In a statement released soon after the tour, Dr Cwele said over 200 000 travellers had accessed the border between December 1 and December 17, 2018.
“This number is expected to increase with Christmas and New Year periods approaching.”
Tweeting from his rural home in Gutu where he spent his Christmas day, MDC Alliance President, Nelson Chamisa, said this year’s Christmas is a sorry one. The MDC Alliance posted pictures of himself in his rural home.
At Solomon Chakauya's grocery store in Zimbabwe's Chinamhora district outside Harare, there's no sign of the seasonal Christmas rush that he needs to keep his business afloat.
Even in the country's toughest times, sales rocketed in the days before Christmas, but this year few people are able to buy anything.
It is a far cry from the revived economy that President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised more than a year ago when he took over from the ousted Robert Mugabe.
Instead, shortages of bread, cooking oil and fuel have worsened in recent months, banknotes become even scarcer and shop shelves have often been left bare.
"In previous years, people would stream in to buy things like rice, oil, biscuits, sweets, soup powder and drinks. It was so busy I would be on my feet all day," Chakauya, 29, told AFP.
"Things are tough and most people have no money."
But over this holiday season, Chakauya has sometimes had only four customers a day, leaving him to kill time sitting in the shade in front of his store.
'I don't consider it Christmas at all'
Local villager Emilda Chingarambe said that for the first time in many years she could not buy her two daughters new clothes for Christmas day.
"I don't consider it Christmas at all," said Chingarambe whose husband works part-time as a labourer tilling fields.
"There is no bread in the shops. We can't afford flour and groceries we usually buy for Christmas."
Shortages have fuelled a ferocious climb in prices and long queues.
In Chinamhora, a litre of cooking oil was around $3.50 in early September and is now selling for $10. Inflation is officially 20 percent.
Once ubiquitous soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and the local Mazoe juice have also become hard to find.
"I haven't seen Coca-Cola in the last two months," Chingarambe said.
No post-Mugabe boom
Zimbabwe's economy has been in dire straits since hyperinflation wiped out savings between 2007 and 2009 and the Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned.
Under Mugabe, farms were seized, agriculture collapsed and investors fled as the country became internationally isolated.
Mugabe's fall last year saw Mnangagwa - his former deputy - claim that he represented a fresh start.
But the country has only lurched into fresh economic trouble after July that failed to encourage foreign investors or to unleash a flood of aid.
"The challenges have dampened the festive mood," Prosper Chitambara, economist at the think-tank Labour and Economic Research Institute, told AFP.
"It does not look like there is going to be an immediate end to the queues and shortages. Next year, there is going to be lots of pressure on the government to increase salaries which will put pressure on expenditure."
The latest downturn erupted two months ago when finance minister Mthuli Ncube announced a two-percent tax on all electronic transactions to increase revenue.
Zimbabweans rely on electronic payments in US dollars, which are in short supply and function as the main currency. The local "bond note" currency is little trusted.
Many shops and pharmacies have closed down in the capital, Harare. Those still operating charge much more when customers pay electronically or in bond notes than in US dollars.
In one shop, a bottle of paracetamol syrup is 3 US dollars in cash, 15 dollars in bond notes -- and 17 dollars when using a bank card.
Doctors at state hospitals have been on strike for the past three weeks demanding salaries in US dollars while a group of teachers completed a 200km walk from the eastern city of Mutare to Harare to demand better pay.
At the ruling Zanu-PF party last week, Mnangagwa admitted the economy "was characterised by fuel shortages, high cost of drugs, medicines (and) wide range of basic commodities."
He offered little immediate relief, instead blaming "gluttonous" businesses for price rises that "resulted in untold suffering to the majority of our people."
SOURCE:Business Day.
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