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- Zimbabwe’s collapse is personified by the sorry state of its health system, with hospitals beset by shortages of medicines and recurring strikes by nurses and doctors over wages and working conditions.
- Funding cuts have left schools without essential instructional materials and unmotivated staff, some of whom skip classes to work second jobs to try to make ends meet.
- The reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar early last year caused the value of public servants’ salaries to plummet to about $ 40 a month.
In Zimbabwe, pregnant women are left alone in hospitals to give birth, taps have run dry in major urban centers, infrastructure has nearly collapsed, and more than half the population is in need of food aid.
This is the price that two decades of economic mismanagement have taken on a nation that was once considered one of Africa’s shining stars. The promises of an economic revival and more political freedom made by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now in his third year in office, have sounded hollow and public anger over intolerable living conditions has spurred a protest action that has been brutally suppressed by the military.
Western governments that rebuked ruler Robert Mugabe for violating civil rights are launching similar criticisms of his successor. And even South Africa, a longtime Zimbabwean ally and regional power broker, has now entered the fray, sending envoys and ruling party officials to Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, to try to help its neighbor resolve the issue. deepening crisis. No progress was made in initial talks and more are planned in the coming days.
“I don’t know how low we can go, but we are in a very low space,” said Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwean law professor who helped design the nation’s 2013 constitution.
It was not always like this. In 1980, the respected president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, told Mugabe, a young guerrilla leader who had just assumed the post of prime minister of newly independent Zimbabwe, that he had “inherited a jewel, keep it that way.”
Mugabe spent his first decade in office building the infrastructure and advanced institutions that the white-only government had built on the foundation of cheap black labor, and invested heavily in education and healthcare. Zimbabwe quickly became one of the most literate nations in Africa and boasted some of the best hospitals on the continent.
A crippling program of the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s, rampant corruption, stolen elections, and the seizure of white-owned farms destroyed those gains. Today many city roads are unpaved, power outages last 18 hours a day and a quarter of the population, unable to earn a living, has left. Bulawayo, the second-largest city, has had no running water since last month.
While a popular revolt is unlikely, with a recent call for a national strike largely ignored as the military fanned out on the streets of major cities, the security forces that put Mnangagwa in power are increasingly more frustrated. In June, military leaders took the unusual step of calling a press conference to deny that they were planning a coup.
The president later accused his deputy, former head of the military Constantino Chiwenga, of seeking to undermine him, according to people familiar with the situation.
‘Flying high’
In 1990, Zimbabwe “was flying high and among the most industrialized African countries,” said Ringisai Chikohomero, an analyst with the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies. “Now Zimbabwe is lagging behind everyone.”
Zimbabwe’s collapse is summed up in the sorry state of its healthcare system. Hospitals are beset by drug shortages and recurring strikes by nurses and doctors over pay and working conditions. The neglect of pregnant women is the latest health scandal to make headlines.
“It’s a new low,” said Norman Matara, a doctor who has worked at Parirenyatwa, the country’s largest public hospital in Harare. “Some women are developing complications from ruptured uteri and experiencing prolonged labor, which leads to brain damage in their babies.”
The education system has done no better. In 1990, spending on education was equivalent to more than 12% of gross domestic product. By 2018, the share had fallen to just 4.6%, World Bank data shows. Funding cuts have left schools without essential instructional materials and unmotivated staff, some of whom skip classes to work second jobs to try to make ends meet. Many of the country’s most experienced teachers have emigrated.
“Our school looks like something out of a war movie, because I doubt it has been painted in 25 or 30 years. There are broken windows, collapsed walls and we have no water, ”said Tawanda Chikondo, a 29-year-old teacher in Makonde, a rural area north of Harare, who is trying to emigrate to the UK or Asia. “This is Zimbabwe, can you imagine? The most educated nation in Africa has to teach children under trees because the classrooms are miserable and neglected. “
While Zimbabwe experienced 500 billion percent hyperinflation in 2008 and was forced to dump its worthless currency in early 2009 as a result, this year’s crisis looks worse for many.
The reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar early last year caused the value of civil servants’ salaries to collapse to around $ 40 a month from over $ 400. Rising inflation has also returned, at a rate that currently it stands at more than 800%.
What has been most difficult for many Zimbabweans to accept is that Mnangagwa’s consent to power was seen as a new beginning, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets to celebrate the end of 37 years of rule. of Mugabe at the end of 2017. The change of power was also welcomed by the United States and the European Union, which had imposed sanctions on members of the Mugabe administration, although in all intents and purposes it was a coup. Mugabe died in September last year at the age of 95.
Mnangagwa, 77, who was Mugabe’s right-hand man for half a century before fighting him, spent much of his first months in office visiting foreign capital and repeating the mantra that “Zimbabwe is open for business.”
Their guarantees have not translated into an influx of foreign capital. While the government has announced investment plans worth $ 30 billion, there is little evidence that they will materialize. And relationships with multilateral lenders, damaged by $ 8 billion in unpaid debt, have yet to be restored.
“I had high hopes when President Mnangagwa took office. I attended their first inauguration. He said all the right things, you could feel the euphoria in the streets of Harare, ”said Ian Khama, who was president of neighboring Botswana at the time. “I am really very, very disappointed. In Zimbabwe, they tell you that the situation is worse than under Mugabe. “
Frustrated by the deteriorating economy, Mnangagwa blamed the private sector. He described the unidentified companies as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” shortly before halting the activities of Econet Wireless Ltd., accusing its mobile money unit of weakening the currency.
Cambridge-educated Mnangagwa Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube is optimistic that the economy may get back on track. He has touted improvements in reducing public spending and presented a plan that will build on investments in mining and infrastructure to turn the nation into an upper-middle-income country by 2030.
Most analysts see that as an illusion, given the terrible state of the nation that Mnangagwa inherited from Mugabe and the increasing isolation of his government.
Mnangagwa “received a poisoned chalice, but there was a lot of international goodwill that they have wasted,” Chikohomero said.
