World

A year after Mnangagwa's election, old woes haunt Zimbabwe

July 31, 2019
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa campaigned in last year's elections vowing to revive the country’s sickly economy. –Courtesy photo
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa campaigned in last year's elections vowing to revive the country’s sickly economy. –Courtesy photo

HARARE - Langton Chiwocha chose Emmerson Mnangagwa among 23 candidates in Zimbabwe's presidential elections a year ago.

Today he says he deeply regrets his choice.

"We had high expectations as many promises were made, but things have turned worse since the elections," Chiwocha told AFP.

"I wish I could take back my vote, or maybe I shouldn't have bothered to vote at all."

Mnangagwa, 76, who took over from long-time autocrat Robert Mugabe, went into the July 30 2018 elections vowing to revive Zimbabwe's sickly economy, end cash shortages, mend fences with former western allies and lure foreign investors.

Chiwocha, who holds a business studies diploma from a college in the capital Harare, says his hopes have been cruelly dashed.

"I graduated in 2012 and I have not had a job. I thought after winning the elections, Mnangagwa would fix the economy and all who had qualifications would get jobs."

But within months of Mnangagwa's election, the ghosts of Zimbabwe's economic past returned: severe power rationing and shortages of fuel, bread, medicine and other basics.

In June this year, the annual inflation rate hit a decade-high 175 percent. Memories revived of the terrifying hyperinflation that reached 500 billion percent in 2009, wiping out savings and wrecking the economy.

That episode ended when the US dollar became the national currency, replacing the Zimbabwean dollar, which had been proudly introduced upon independence in 1980.

But in June, Zimbabwe in theory ended the use of greenbacks, replacing them with "bond notes" and electronic RTGS dollars, which would combine to become a new Zimbabwe dollar, a currency that has yet to be introduced in paper form.

Zimbabweans say it is a nightmare to get common documents such as passports, drivers' license discs and vehicle registration plates -- the government is too poor to import the materials to make them.

Over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have fled abroad seeking work. Many others are now seeking to join the exodus as the economy withers. -AFP


July 31, 2019
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