Thinking About The Gore reNzara For No Particular Reason

Gore reNzara, literally Shona for The Year of Hunger, refers to the years 2007–2008 where things in Zimbabwe was really bad. A decade of economic mismanagement led to total economic collapse that led to widespread suffering.

I am rather well off so we were still fed and taken care of, but it was bad for everybody.

• Very little food in the shops—you’d probably only find salt and matches,
• This shitty Mazoe (cordial drink) knockoff which only tasted of preservatives. I doubt that’s the point,
• along with that we’re there powdered drinks (think Kool-Aid) from Mozambique that claimed to provide 30 liters of drink, which it did although it also tastes of preservatives.
• Very long fuel queues and you could only obtain fuel using coupons.
• Banks limited cash withdrawals, as if that prevented inflation from stretching into billions of percent.
• Speaking of inflation, I remember buying something at the school tuckshop. As soon as I did, the lady appended a 1 to all of the prices.
• Yes, the $100,000,000,000,000 banknote was real and we were all indeed billionaires. I only have a $20 billion dollar note now but I remember that’s combis (public transport) cost $1.5 trillion a ride (about 50 cents) which came in a wad of $50 billion dollar bills. Yeah.
• Power cuts were an issue. Not as severe as they are now since we have more demand and less supply now, but they were a problem as I had to do homework under candlelight.
• After the 2008 elections with a long wait for the results, there was a point where the teachers at my private school refused to teach for a week and chaos ensued.
• Cholera was rampant and we stopped getting municipal water at that point.
• Thinking of my brother who was a prefect at one of the ace private schools. As prefects, you pretty much get to bully kids around¹ under the guise of authority so they got to take all the little meat they got. For some reason, my brother actually gave it back to them.

In all we were straight up not having a good time. Just imagine the rural areas. To make things worse, there was no war going on at this point. Political repression yes, but it wasn’t full blown civil war.

Now, I’m bringing this up for no reason at allActually, the president has declared a state of emergency over the drought now. I’m not saying that we’re in a recession since there is a lot of construction going on but life is getting really tough in 2024. Also, do countries in a recession have chronic traffic jams and strained infrastructure? Some sectors, even mining, are in a recession but as a whole the economy is pretty good.

The government introduced a lot of taxes and regulations limiting manufacturers from selling to directly which raises the price of basic goods. The Mazoe I always got for $14? It’s now $22². The whole process was carried out with little public debate but I’m thinking that they’re doing this because they can’t find money elsewhere.

Besides that, cholera is rampant, service delivery is nonexistent, the public healthcare system is hanging on a thread, schools are a disaster, electricity is scarce, roads are dilapidated, many youth are NEET, companies are shutting down and divesting—all around chaos presided over by the same people who ruled over in the Gore reNzara 17 years ago and insist on doing so.

I almost forgot to mention the currency, which has slid from ZW$1,000:US$1 to ZW$15,000:US$ within a year leading to a high inflation rate and it continues to fall. If you are paid in Zim dollars exclusively (unlike me), that’s awful but a considerable number of workers (particularly in the vast informal sector) don’t so it’s a bit misleading. Even the preferred index the government uses is going up.

I didn’t mention this when I initially drafted this post but there are two big reason things are going to be especially bad as they compound on the previous factors. For one, there has been a crippling drought made worse by El Niño made worse by…climate change! Along with electricity challenges given Lake Kariba being at critically low levels, there’s also a lot of food insecurity. For two, like most African countries, we’re heavily reliant on commodities for foreign currency and the prices of said commodities have plummeted, particularly lithium (that we’re really betting on) is down 85%³. So if you combine declining forex inflows with the need to import food and energy, you’ve got a currency that will fall through the floor.

At this rate, it feels like another Gore reNzara is coming. At the same time, a lot of people are taking a chance investing in this country and trying to make it work even though the government, like the scorpion and the frog, can’t help but sting. I’d love to have hope, but this country has had so many let downs it probably isn’t worth getting excited over lithium value addition or potential fossil fuel reserves lest we get Chiadzwa again. If for some reason you’re reading this from the diaspora, please send more money home, we really need it. Heck, if you aren’t Zimbabwean, please come and visit our beautiful country as a tourist and leave some delicious foreign currency, particularly $1 and $5 US dollar bills.