Zimbabwe's shopping nightmare

BUYING meat in Zimbabwe these days is like buying an illegal substance.

"I've got some meat today," whispers a shop assistant, glancing to make sure there's no-one else in earshot.

She disappears to the back of the shop, returning with a small plastic-wrapped packet of mince that she stuffs quickly into this shopper's bag.

The price? Some 300,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about £590 officially, but just £1.15 at the unofficial but widely-used black market rate for foreign exchange), well above the Z$87,000 per kilo that Robert Mugabe's government says beef must be sold for.

Meat, like most other basic commodities, has disappeared from Zimbabwe's supermarkets after Mr Mugabe's controversial price-slashing initiative early this month.

Trying to find beef in Mutare, Zimbabwe's third-largest city, is now "like looking for a snowflake in the Sahara desert", the local newspaper, Manica Post, said last week.

Empty shelves and freezer units greet shoppers in grocery shops and butchers.

Farmers have stopped delivering their livestock for slaughter after the government said it would only pay around Z$8 million per beast, five times less than the going market rate.

Official figures show that only 100 cattle are being slaughtered per day by the government-owned Cold Storage Company, which is now Zimbabwe's only licensed meat processing company after all private abattoirs were banned.

That's 100 animals to feed Zimbabwe's entire population of nearly 12 million people. No wonder everyone is asking where to find meat.

Opening parliament in the capital, Harare, on Tuesday, a defiant Mr Mugabe said the price cuts were necessary to protect Zimbabweans from "inexplicable and astronomical" increases by profiteers.

But, with elections just eight months away, critics say it was a calculated gamble by the 83-year-old president to win support from Zimbabweans worn down by years of power cuts, water cuts, hospital strikes and inflation which analysts say has now probably reached an astronomical 9,000 per cent.

It worked, at first. Accustomed to daily price rises, jubilant listeners telephoned the state radio station ZBC to say they'd been given "Christmas in July" when the cuts were first announced.

Reports that members of the ruling party elite and soldiers grabbed most of the bargains were quickly quashed: the state-controlled Herald newspaper ran an apology this week for "misquoting" the head of the official Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, who had apparently suggested that "uniformed forces" were hoarding seized goods.

Three and a half weeks after Operation Dzikisa Mitengo ("Operation Reduce Prices") was launched, shops have no maize meal, meat, margarine, sugar, salt, flour, cooking oil or the fruit cordial Mazoe that every Zimbabwean wants on his table. Bread queues have resurfaced. Petrol pumps have no fuel. There are not even any matches.

Desperation is mounting. On Tuesday, soldiers with dogs monitored a crowd of at least 600 gathered outside a wholesalers just off Mutare's Herbert Chitepo Street in the hope of buying sugar.

Many shops have introduced rationing. One housewife said a supermarket worker told her that she needed "authorisation" to buy more than three toilet rolls at once. "There's me and my husband and two kids with snotty noses - and you're only allowed three rolls," she complained.

But some businesses are quietly finding ways of dodging the price monitors.

State radio reported yesterday that some shops were opening only at night in an attempt to dodge the inspectors.

At lunchtimes, a convenience store on the outskirts of Mutare sells a small amount of freshly-baked bread at Z$40,000 per loaf - nearly double the government-set price of Z$22,000 - as a store manager lurks anxiously by the entrance doors, watching for the government inspectors.

Look at the bread receipt when you get out of the shop and you'll find it's blank - it's too dangerous, apparently, to print the real price.

Defying Mr Mugabe is risky. At least 3,500 business executives and store managers have been arrested this month for overcharging. State prosecutor Patson Nyazamba called eight shopowners remanded in filthy police cells this week "economic saboteurs" and said they should be jailed.

And, in a chilling new threat, the government has announced it is reviving two long-dormant companies indirectly controlled by the government - the Zimbabwe State Trading Corporation and the Zimbabwe Development Corporation - to take over private businesses "engaging in economic sabotage".

• ZIMBABWEAN women are suffering increased repression and abuse as they struggle to feed and clothe their families in the face of the country's economic collapse, according to Amnesty International. An Amnesty report yesterday said women made up the "majority of the hundreds of Zimbabwean human rights defenders arbitrarily arrested and detained for engaging in peaceful protest marches or meetings in the past two years".

It said that women activists told them that police often accuse them of being used by the British and US governments to overthrow Robert Mugabe's government.

The Scotsman