Zimbabweans laugh it off
2008-01-14 21:25
Special Report
Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai has called for openness in the country’s nascent diamond trade, getting underway after the lifting of a global ban over rights abuses.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Harare - If you hear a Zimbabwean housewife boast that she's off to buy the head of a cow, don't think she's found a secret supply of meat. She plans to buy a cabbage.
And if she says she's cooking pig's head for supper over an outdoor fire, of course, because there won't be any power, she's also talking about cabbage.
Meat has been in desperately short supply in Zimbabwe since July, when President Robert Mugabe's controversial 50% price cut emptied shop shelves and butchers within days.
And although the precious commodity is slowly creeping back into stores, it is doing so at prices way beyond the purses of most.
Inflation, now rumoured to be well over 24 000% and climbing, is wreaking havoc on the lives of all but the very rich.
A chicken this week cost at least Zim$24m, more than a teacher's monthly salary. A packet of sausages cost Zim$30m. That is US$1 000 at the official exchange rate. No wonder cabbage is the country's new meat.
Dark humour
In these tough days, Zimbabweans have found their own unique brand of humour. No surprises: it's heavily laced with sarcasm.
As power cuts bite - Zimbabwe is reported to have had electricity imports from South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) cut - witty Zimbabweans have found a substitute meaning for ZESA, the state-run Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority. It is the Zimbabwe Electricity Sometimes Available company, according to letter-writers to the independent press.
The state-run Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) has also been renamed: it's the Zimbabwe No Water Available authority - a particularly apt name for the water body this week. Monday marked the start of what a ZINWA official warned would be a week-long water cut for Harare and parts of the capital's sprawling dormitory town of Chitungwiza.
Examples abound: a columnist for the weekly Standard has coined a new name for the government mouthpiece, the Herald. Tongue-in-cheek, he calls the newspaper the Herald of Total Honesty.
And the pothole-riddled capital city with its frequent sewage pipe bursts and its diarrhoea outbreaks is Ha-Ha-rare. Things in the place once called the Sunshine City just aren't that funny any more.
With bank queues still snaking their way outside most banks as desperate customers wait for cash and with crunch polls Zanu-PF says it?s sure of winning now only two months away, there's little hope of a let-up in the situation.
For many Zimbabweans, there's a lot of truth in the popular saying: if you don't laugh, you'll cry.
Sapa-dpa
- SAPA