The invasion of Ukraine, combined with the black currency market, caused the Zimbabwean dollar to fall sharply. The country's economy has been suffering for twenty years - mainly due to shortages of money and food. The current inflation furthers the issues faced by the government.
The situation has worsened this year with the Zimbabwean dollar plummeting. "The parallel market is largely responsible for runaway inflation," says Joseph Mverecha, chief economist at AgriBank. Inflation reached 191.6% in June, compared to 60% at the start of the year. Five kilos of chicken drumsticks are now worth 65.22 dollars (64 euros), equivalent to the average monthly salary of a civil servant. A liter of gasoline went from $1.41 in January to $1.77 this month.
Zimbabweans survived the worst difficulties in 2008 when, facing inflation, the central bank had to issue a trillion local dollar note. Many blame the government. During partial legislative elections in March, the Zanu-PF party, currently in power, lost ground to the Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC), an opposition party formed three months earlier.
According to several experts, the current landscape resembles the crisis that preceded the 2008 elections, during which former leader Robert Mugabe nearly lost power. "People earning starvation wages, the unemployed and all those feeling the effects of the rising cost of living have lost faith in Zanu-PF ," summarizes Takavafira Zhou, a political scientist at Masvingo University. They hope for "a new government that would allow them to breathe."
Zanu-PF has been in power since 1980, when British colonial rule ended. The current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, took over from Mugabe in a 2017 coup, pledging to fix the moribund economy. The electoral risk is now pushing Zanu-PF to "frenzied measures" to curb the rise in prices which is further impoverishing millions of people, says economist Prosper Chitambara.
Last month, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube announced monetary measures, including maintaining the dual use of the US dollar, adopted after the 2008 hyperinflation, and the Zimbabwean dollar, reintroduced in 2019. Interest rates lows more than doubled to 200% last week. The country is also introducing gold coins "as a store of value" from July 25. But these measures concern the rich, not "ordinary citizens, those who struggle and live from day to day," notes the economist.
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