Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

311 DAYS OF LEAVE A YEAR !

Dear Family and Friends,

The big luxury cars and their nouveau riche occupants have gone from our town now. The men in big jackets whose multiple pockets were overflowing with banknotes have also disappeared from view this week. These vultures who came hot on the heels of the price cutting army and youth brigade have picked the carcass clean and now just the bare bones are left : our shops are as good as empty. Most supermarkets have given up all pretence of trying to make it look as if they've got things left to sell and there are just line after line of empty shelves. Bottled water, however, is still abundant - surely a relief to the participants of the endless government workshops who seem to use so much of it.

Our streets have grown dramatically quieter this week as fuel supplies have dried up and yesterday came another nail in the price control coffin. The all powerful 'Task Force' on price cuts announced that fuel paid for in foreign currency and issued by a coupon system has now been banned. Holders of coupons have 2 weeks to redeem their fuel from private importers and that's the end of another life line. It wasn't one that many ordinary people could access but still it kept some individuals, church organizations, donor agencies and diplomats on the road. Day by day the ways that people outside the country can help their families left behind are being cut off and so the reality of aloneness and oppression grows.

It's taken three weeks of madness but at last people are beginning to ask questions about the price cuts. The first one is why the maximum amount of money people can withdraw from their own bank accounts suddenly and dramatically increased from one and a half to ten million dollars just a few days after price cuts began. Coincidental? You have to wonder, as most ordinary Zimbabweans lucky enough to have jobs don't earn anywhere near ten million dollars a month. The government stipulated wage for a domestic house worker, for example is less than a hundred thousand dollars a month - for sure none of them benefited from price cuts or from being able to withdraw ten million dollars a day.

People are openly asking where the resupplies of food and fuel are going to come from now that the cupboard is bare. Everyone is asking where, when and how this is going to end. And everyone is asking why it happened. Many say its been done to win voter support but 8 months before elections are due and with empty shelves already, it makes little sense. Perhaps answers will come in the next week as Parliament re-opens for the 7th session but we are not holding our breath. The statistics just released about the 6th session of parliament leave much to be desired. In the year long 6th session the House of Assembly sat for business for just 54 days. Imagine 311 days of paid annual leave at the expense of tax payers! The mind boggles.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Copyright cathy buckle 21st July2007.www.cathybuckle.com
My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available from:orders@africabookcentre.com