Piling on the agony

Dec 3rd 2008 | JOHANNESBURG
From Economist.com

Zimbabwe asks for help as hundreds die from cholera

Reuters

THE latest catastrophe to hit Zimbabwe is an epidemic of cholera. It has spread across nine of the country’s ten provinces, hitting at least 12,000 people and perhaps many more. The UN says that at least 565 people have already died, but a local organisation says the death toll is already much higher. On Wednesday December 3rd Zimbabwe's rulers asked for urgent international help—medicine, equipment and funds—to tackle the outbreak.

The health-care system has collapsed. Harare’s two biggest hospitals have almost ceased to function. The water and sewerage system has broken down in many places, including Harare, where the authorities turned off the taps completely for a few days in a cack-handed attempt to stem the spread of the disease. Sick Zimbabweans are streaming into neighbouring South Africa.

At the same time, food is running out. The last harvest failed. Severe shortages will leave more than half the resident population of some 9m (it is unclear what the population is now) needing handouts by next month. The few Zimbabweans still formally employed, probably less than a fifth of the working-age population, earn only a pittance, their wages long ago squeezed almost into nothing by hyperinflation. Punitive cash-withdrawal limits imposed by the central bank mean that people anyway cannot get hold of more than a fraction of their earnings. Public-sector workers are staying away from work en masse. Few teachers, for instance, now turn up. Dealing on the black market, barter, subsistence and foreign currency sent by friends and relatives abroad are the lifelines for most Zimbabweans.

For the first time in recent history Zimbabwe’s security forces have started to voice their anger. For the second time in a week, a few dozen disgruntled soldiers ran amok in the streets of Harare after they had been unable to withdraw cash from banks. Some shops were looted and illegal foreign-exchange dealers beaten up before the enraged but unarmed soldiers clashed with the police.

It is too soon to tell if such unrest will resume and spread or if the authorities will contain the soldiers’ anger by giving them extra perks while crushing a mutinous few. But it is plain that soldiers, the ultimate guarantor of Robert Mugabe’s power, are no longer shielded from inflation, running at hundreds of millions percent. Thousands have been told to work on farms. Many are deserting. The senior ranks—colonels and upwards—still benefit from access to farms and minerals and other business privileges, and are probably still loyal to Mr Mugabe. But a question-mark may soon start to hang over junior officers.

Almost three months after a power-sharing deal was signed, there is little hope that a new government will be in place soon. Violence against the opposition continues. After more talks in South Africa, the ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change at least agreed on a constitutional amendment providing for a new post of prime minister, to be held by the MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

It will take at least another month for the change to get Parliament’s nod and be enacted. Moreover, several big issues are outstanding, including how ministries and provincial governorships will be divided among the rival parties, who will be part of a new National Security Council, and what it will do. Negotiations are expected to resume later this month. Meanwhile, Mr Mugabe has unilaterally reappointed Gideon Gono, the central bank governor presiding over the world’s highest inflation rate, for another five years.

The 15-country Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has been trying to break the impasse, does not carry much weight with either side. Mr Tsvangirai’s party dismissed a recent suggestion from SADC’s leaders that the home ministry, which controls the police, be shared with the ruling party, while Mr Mugabe’s side would hold on to the army and intelligence service. Thabo Mbeki, a former South African president mandated as mediator by SADC, reacted with a scathing letter, browbeating Mr Tsvangirai’s lot for rejecting the ministry-sharing idea and accusing it of being a Western stooge.