It seems like Zimbabwe is rapidly going to hell in a handbasket.
Last week the government was begging retired nurses (most of them older than 60) to re-enter their former field because of a dire shortage in healthcare workers:
Zimbabwe will rehire retired nurses to help ease a critical staff shortage in public hospitals caused in part by the exodus of health care workers to Europe and Australia, the health minister said on Thursday.
Zimbabwe’s public hospitals have a shortage of about 3 000 nurses. With an estimated unemployment rate of more than 70 percent, the majority of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people rely on public health care, which is considerably cheaper than private facilities.
Read that again – unemployment is at 70%.
And the same article says that 24.6% of the country’s adult population is infected with HIV – that is 1 in 4.
Meanwhile the Zim government owes the IMF more than $300 million and has no way to repay it as the country is running out of money. If they default on their loan, they could be expelled, meaning they won’t be eligible for future aid.
Because of this, the Zim government has asked the South African government for a massive loan just to buy fuel, food and seed.
The good news is that the South African government might finally use this loan as leverage to get the Zim gov’t to stop their mass expulsion and shantytown destruction program. And later this week the United Nations Security Council may pass a resolution condeming the same.
But the state-controlled Sunday Mail says that university students are next in line for a crackdown:
Harare University students could be the next victims of Zimbabwe’s controversial clean-up campaign, the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper has reported.
A shortage of accommodation at the country’s top higher education institution, the University of Zimbabwe, has led many students to rent rooms and cottages in the nearby suburb of Mount Pleasant.
But now police and officials have ordered residents of high-income suburbs like Mount Pleasant to demolish all illegal structures.
Meanwhile the inflation rate has gone up 19.9% in just one month alone, now officially at a staggering 164.3%:
In other words the average “bundle” of goods and services, normally purchased by households for domestic use, that used to cost $100 000 in June 2004 are now priced at $264 400.
Luckily the price of bread has risen “only” 54.9% this year.
And lastly, the dictator president Mugabe has ruled out any talks whatsoever with the opposition MDC party:
There is no way that Zanu-PF can have talks with the MDC unless the opposition party becomes nationalistic in outlook, President Mugabe said yesterday.
“The MDC is different from other opposition parties because this is a creature put in place by the British,” he told journalists.
Sadly this is how Mugabe gets away with everything – by blaming the British and Americans. But it’s not just the west trying to get Mugabe to engage with the domestic opposition:
During the just-ended African Union summit in Libya, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a fresh bid to restart mediating talks between President Mugabe and MDC leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. But the Government indicated that its position on talks with the MDC had not changed and it would engage the opposition in Parliament.
Let’s all keep the ordinary, regular people of Zimbabweans in our thoughts because it’s going to be a long, cold winter there…
Pax
