A memoir of a summer deep within the Zimbabwean social, political and economic crisis

My awareness of the severity of the crisis in Zimbabwe began over a month before I even landed in the country this summer. I was in my very comfortable single in Forbes, stressing (read: procrastinating) over my spring finals. It was 2 a.m. and I was seeping multivariable calculus from every orifice. My room phone rang and I was jolted out of my Lagrangian-induced haze. No one ever calls my room phone – let alone at 2 a.m. I could hear my mother’s voice in the receiver – distant and crackly. She explained that my father had been jailed. The phone line broke. I couldn’t get through again. Zimbabwean phone lines are a sham because our local providers cannot afford to adequately compensate their international call centers. Apart from that, phone lines and emails are closely monitored for hints of political dangers and foreign currency talk. I must wait till I am home after finals before I can get the full story.

I flew out of JFK airport with luggage that I could barely carry. Half of it consisted of food, clothes and basic amenities for my family. Things that we buy from the U-store or CVS that will make their tough lives slightly more bearable. The shopping list that was emailed to me seemed ridiculous as it included: breakfast cereals, soap, shampoo, vitamin tablets, liquid eyeliner and freezer bags among many other absurdities. Two days later and a one-hour haggle with Zimbawean customs over the liquid eyeliner (which the customs lady took for herself), I land at Harare International Airport into a world that could not be more different to the relatively easy and simple one that I lead in the Orange Bubble. My mind is blown away as my dad hands the parking-guy 250 million Zimbabwe Dollars for the 30-minute-stay that our Toyota spent in the airport car park. The ride back home is sobering and anxiety-filled. We watch out for ZANU-PF militias that hide on the roadside ready to stone passing vehicles. I still want to know why my dad was in prison! Soon, I coerce the story out of my parents, forcing them to relive yet again one of the scariest times of their lives as Zimbabweans. Before I can retell my family predicament, some tangential background is necessary.

Zimbabwe used to be an extremely prosperous country. A highly developed infrastructure, rich source of minerals and flourishing agricultural sector culminated in one of Africa’s strongest economies, leading to it being dubbed the “breadbasket of Africa”. The country had everything going for it until the new millennium when a governmental regime entitled the “Land Reform Act” led to the violent expropriation of most of the country’s white-owned farmland. This effectively sabotaged the country’s agricultural sector (its primary source of foreign currency) and set off a chain reaction of events that began to slowly erode the country’s wealth and stability.

Today, Zimbabwe is a third-world country plagued by many prejudiced views, biased political regimes, a collapsing economy and a retarded level of technological growth in comparison to other sub-Saharan African countries.

Naturally, the ultimate survival challenge is operating a business in the adverse conditions of Zimbabwe. An accurate value of the current Zimbabwean inflation rate is almost impossible to predict, however estimates range between 3-5 billion percent - a figure so ludicrous that its ramifications are oftentimes hilarious, but at the same time, very sobering. It has happened more than once that I have been out for coffee with friends and the cappuccinos double in price while we sit and drink them. Funny? Yes… and no.

What would you do if you had just been paid your wage, and you knew that tomorrow the price of the staple cornmeal on which your family survives would probably double? If you had any sense, you would go into the supermarket and buy them out – before your money wastes away any further! Zimbabwean’s caught onto this tactic nearly a decade ago. Probably the greatest skill that Zimbabwean’s possess nowadays is an acute perception for price changes across the city. If a supermarket has been too slow in hiking the price of milk, within an hour, phones ring to let our neighbors, friends and family know.  We all rush to said supermarket and blow our cash quota¹ for the day. The basics of economics tell us that this leads to shortages. Supermarket shelves are mostly empty and if any real commodity is made available, queues develop that spill out onto the street and bend around blocks. Normally the first block of people are lucky enough to lay their hands on a loaf of bread and the stocks sell out within the hour.

What this means for the people of Zimbabwe is that they are constantly unsure of the value of the thick wad of Zimbabwean dollars in their pockets. Naturally, the economy has tended to the use of foreign currency (primarily US dollars). In this way, a person knows that the money he/she has will retain its value compared to the Zimbabwean dollar whose value depreciates so fast that it is not even worth the paper that it’s printed on.

This “dollarization” is not an uncommon strategy in the rehabilitation of dying economies and has been used in Zambia, Mozambique and many other African states. However, as usual, there’s a catch. Because foreign currency reserves have run so low, banks have been unable to exchange foreign currency themselves for more than ten years. This has given birth to a thriving underground black market with stupendously exorbitant exchange rates and the average Zimbabwean’s sole access to any kind of financial security. At the date of writing this article, the current black market rate, disregarding the 13 zeroes that the government has dropped over the years, is approximately US$1 = Z$50000000000000000000000000000 = Z$5 x 10²⁸ , for the chemists out there, yes, that’s more than a mole of Zimbabwe Dollars – and rising daily.

Even though the RBZ (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) could not provide a legal source of foreign currency on its own, it condemned the black market exchange of foreign currency. Many “laws” have been passed that now make it illegal to be in the possession of any form of foreign currency unless you can prove its source. Any person unable to do so faces immediate confiscation and possible incarceration. This is the RBZ’s way of pulling in as much foreign currency as possible, and of maximizing bribery and corruption for the officials who go around collecting (read: pocketing) the riches for the day.

That’s how it happened - a distinguished looking gentleman walked into my parents’ business and asked my father if he could make his purchase in US dollars. Naturally, my father accepted. He had fallen so far into the trap of a RBZ official; that before he could even say “Robert Mugabe” he was being frog marched before my mother and my uncle into a dank prison cell. It took my mother’s sharp wit, my father’s morally upstanding reputation, a Supreme Court justice, the CID (Central Intelligence Department), the chief of Police and a large chunk of our family’s savings in bribes to have my father released within the next two days.

Two days in prison? Not such a big deal? Wrong. VERY BIG deal. Chikurubi maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Harare has earned its reputation for being one of the most brutal in Africa. Prisoners are deprived of human rights in any form. They have little access to water, food, warmth or medical attention. The unhygienic conditions lend themselves to the spread of disease, especially AIDS-related opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis (TB). A vicious cycle is created whereby people who are HIV-positive, in view of their impending death, become more nonchalant about committing criminal offenses. As homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe, prisons such as Chikurubi refuse to issue condoms to their inmates. This mentality along with the already unsanitary surroundings means that Zimbabwean prisons are converted into breeding grounds for AIDS and its related infections.  With one of the highest AIDS prevalence rates worldwide, HIV is only a compounding issue that puts the icing on the Zimbabwean cake of political and socio-economic disaster.

I guess I will never know precisely what my mother and sister experienced while I worried about such trivial issues as final exams, late meal and laundry. More than anything, this made me feel guilty. One year living in the lap of Princetonian luxury had almost let me forget where I came from. I returned to Princeton this year with a fresh attitude but I soon realized why I had slipped last year. It is pointless to expect everyone around me to relate completely to my background – after all, I have difficulty relating entirely to his or hers! The extreme environments are so contradictory that it is hard to survive in either with the other constantly on one’s mind.