Dear Family and Friends,
\nThe ticking of\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdZimbabwe’s time bomb\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdis getting louder and faster by the day. Power sharing talks have again collapsed;\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdcholera is\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdspreading and the death toll rising; teachers, nurses and doctors are demanding payment in US dollars in order to report for duty\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdand the poverty of most families is growing worse by the day.
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\nThere is now\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdnothing you can buy in Zimbabwe dollars as even roadside vegetable vendors have resorted to selling their wares in US dollars or South African Rand. A handful of tomatoes, a\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdbunch of onions,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdhalf a\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd dozen bananas or even a\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdsingle, sweet, sticky\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdmango\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd – all are\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdpriced in American dollars.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdIf you don’t have foreign currency you go hungry, it’s\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdas simple as that. You also go sick,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdcan’t get a bed in a private hospital,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdcan’t have a baby, can’t get on a bus, can’t get a passport, can’t\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdeven buy a packet of headache pills.
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\nThe only thing you can do with Zimbabwe dollars,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdif you can\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdget them out of the bank, is\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdpay your telephone, water, and electricity bills. The authorities running\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdZimbabwe continue to refuse to allow the utilities\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdcompanies to charge in US dollars and so the services they\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdprovide have deteriorated to the point of almost complete collapse. Stick thin employees at parastatals wearing threadbare suits continue to report for work\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdwhile everything around them falls apart. They have no stationery to invoice customers, no receipt books, no ink for computers.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdThey\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdhave no answers to the increasingly angry\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdqueries\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdfrom their customers such as why have\u00ef\u00bf\u00bddustbins\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdnot been collected for eight months; when are blocked sewer pipes going to be cleared, when are cavernous pot holes on the roads going to be filled. These civil servants have little\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdreason to go to work anymore and it seems only a matter of time before they\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdjust don’t bother anymore.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd
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\nFor people without foreign currency life has become a living hell. A government teacher I met showed me her December pay slip. Her monthly salary was 10 trillion dollars. The exchange rate on the day\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd meant that in a month she had earned just one US dollar. I asked her if she would be returning to the classroom when schools re-open and she said no. She said the bus fare to get to her school on the first day alone would cost her\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdone US dollar, and then how would she get home, what would she have to eat, how would she get to school the next day.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd
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\nZimbabweans are looking to SADC and the African Union in the days ahead. Surely soon they will have to say: enough suffering, enough death, enough?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Family and Friends, The ticking of\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdZimbabwe’s time bomb\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdis getting louder and faster by the day. Power sharing talks have again collapsed;\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdcholera is\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdspreading and the death toll rising; teachers, nurses and doctors are demanding payment in US dollars in order to report for duty\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdand the poverty of most families is growing worse by the day. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}