Bleak Christmas for Zimbabweans
By Tichaona Sibanda
18 December 2006

Zimbabweans will endure another bleak festive season as the accelerating economic decline means most people won’t even be able to afford the small luxuries during the christmas and new year period.

Harare businessman Bernard Chiondegwa told us the values of Christmas and new year have long been eroded by the declining political and economic environment in the country.

‘We have seven days exactly to Christmas day and no-one really is talking about it. People have lost the enthusiasm of visiting family and friends, but the only things you hear in any conversation is that of price increases,’ said Chiondegwa.

Incidentally, the price of bread shot up from Z$600 to Z$1200 on Monday and the price of petrol has also increased to Z$3000 from Z$1700 per litre. However, the situation is so desperate that even tea and bread have become luxuries for most Zimbabwean families.

The country’s desperate economic and political crisis, which began when Robert Mugabe ordered the invasions of prosperous white commercial farms in 2000, leading to massive food shortages, shows no signs of recovery.

‘Basic chores like three meals a day are merely memories, and travel almost impossible, because when petrol is available, it is prohibitively expensive.‘Six years ago I will be planning of visiting my parents in rural Masvingo and I remember it was routine for me to take with me bags full of goodies. Everyone in the household would get something new, but this is all history now,’ he said.

Chiondegwa said the harsh impact of a crumbling economy, meagre salaries and food shortages will combine to ensure that Zimbabweans have the most miserable Christmas ever. Recently the World Bank described the economic crisis the worst ever seen for a country not actually at war.

‘As a businessman, I am not reviewing salaries of my staff members three times a month. This is ridiculous, how can people survive in this sort of environment. I blame the government for all these failures,’ he said.