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Crackdown in Mugabe heartland
12/07/2007 20:06 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe has sent crack police to enforce price freezes in the rural strongholds of President Robert Mugabe, where businesses have failed to heed measures aimed at reining in inflation and halting economic collapse.
Mugabe's government, grappling with inflation of 4 500%, ordered businesses last month to roll back and freeze prices on petrol, bread, milk, cooking oil and other key consumer items after a sharp increase in their prices.
The move has prompted panic buying, leading to empty store shelves and long lines at petrol stations, and pushed the
economically depressed southern African nation closer to
breaking point.
"We have started deploying many officers to rural areas to
make sure there is compliance, and we are saying we are not
going to stop until we are satisfied that there is total
compliance," said police spokesperson Oliver Mandipaka.
Defying the price freeze
Mandipaka said many businesses in rural areas - where the
majority of Zimbabwe's population lives and where Mugabe's
ruling Zanu-PF party enjoys strong support - had failed to
follow the government's directive on prices.
So far, the crackdown has been concentrated in Harare and other urban areas where workers have borne the brunt
of the severe economic crisis. It has led to arrests and fines
for 1 768 executives and companies.
The chief executive of Zimbabwe's largest supermarket chain
has been arrested and faces 41 charges of defying the price
freeze, while police on Wednesday seized 49 commuter buses and
detained the drivers for overcharging, Mandipaka said.
Public commuter operators have grounded their fleets, citing
fuel shortages and a forced 60% reduction in fares,
leaving thousands of commuters stranded.
The rollback programme was extended to rural areas after the
government accused some businesses of diverting goods to rural
shops where the price freeze had not been enforced.
Zimbabwe, once one of Africa's most prosperous countries, is
in the eighth year of a deep recession, marked by chronic
shortages of food and fuel, soaring unemployment and poverty and
the world's highest inflation rate.
Seizure of white-owned farms
Rural Zimbabweans, who have been forced to engage in
informal trading and open small shops to supplement what they
make from subsistence farming, are increasingly feeling the
pinch of the government's price controls.
"Can you imagine someone who is running a little store and
told to reduce his prices ... he has no insurance and will not
only have to take the loss but will go out of business," said
John Robertson, a leading private economist in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe, who blames the economic problems on sabotage by
Western nations upset over his seizure of thousands of
white-owned farms, has threatened to nationalise companies who
hike prices without cause.
The 83-year-old Zimbabwean leader, in power since
independence from Britain in 1980, has said that those resisting
the new economic measures are part of a Western plot to topple
his government.
Cut workers' salaries
While the price crackdown has brought relief to hard-pressed
consumers who can find goods in the stores, basic foodstuffs,
such as maize-meal, sugar and cooking oil, have disappeared from
shops.
Economic analysts warn that many businesses could shut their
doors rather than continue producing at a loss.
Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu
dismissed reports that the government also planned to cut
workers' salaries, the official Herald newspaper reported on
Thursday.
- Reuters
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