Economy remains a major threat to Mugabe as other options fail

By Tererai Karimakwenda
07 June 2006

Church leaders are reported to have met with Robert Mugabe last week in an effort to find a solution to the crisis, but emerged with no real success and few details of the meeting have been made public. This recent initiative mirrors other previous efforts to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis in that it yielded no tangible results and gave Zimbabweans no reason to feel hopeful. South Africa and Thabo Mbeki came and went. Then there was The United Nations special rapporteur whose recommendations were ignored by Mugabe, and resolutions adopted by The African Commission
remain just notes in a file that African heads of state won’t deal with. But the one issue that has been constant in putting pressure on Mugabe and his regime is the economy. And many observers believe it is the biggest threat to ZANU-PF’s reign at the moment.

Andrea Bohnstedt, an economic analyst for sub-Saharan Africa at Global Insight said: “I think obviously the continued deterioration of the economy just increases the level of despair. But I think there are a number of factors why we would have to be cautious to say something like this and its very simply that we did say 2 years ago and 3 years ago that it has gotten so bad that really this should be the end and it hasn’t. It continues to deteriorate.” Though she was cautious, Bohnstedt did agree the economy poses the greatest threat to the Mugabe regime at the moment. She said: “From what I hear there has been a very clear prioritization of army needs, both printing money to increase salaries and also the fact that you find key military and security sector people literally everywhere in economic management and economic policy making - which is basically saying ‘I’ll hand over those assets so you’ll keep backing me. But even the resources available to buy that kind of support are being more and more squeezed.”

Last week the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe released Z$100,000 bearers cheque, just as bread went up in price to Z$120,000. The shortages of forex, food and fuel have become so critical Mugabe is struggling to sustain the military machinery that has kept him in power. On the other end Zimbabweans are getting more restless, with unemployment beyond 70% and inflation above 1000%. The level of despair has reached a dangerous point which the opposition has been exploiting through their lobbying for mass action in the so-called “winter of discontent.” If all else fails, it may just be the economy that brings change to Zimbabwe.