20 billion dollar boiled maize cob

Traveling between Malawi and South Africa is a journey of many tales. In the present day however cholera dominates the stories in the buses as you cross the wide Zimbabwe from Mozambique to Beit Bridge border post. Often times the bus host would warn passengers not to buy food and water in Zimbabwe to prevent picking up the cholera bugs. On my recent trip however, it was rather difficult to resist buying anything especially fresh boiled maize, this happened because we had a breakdown which took over twelve hours to fix and by then almost everyone was looking for food to eat. At this time what caught people's attention was rather the price attached to the maize cob. One was going for a whooping 20billion dollar. The mention of this figure triggers the millionaire feelings in people, for a billion dollar is quite a huge sum of money which a lot of people do not even think and dream of ever possessing but in Harare this is possible. Like one man from Mzimba put it 'ndalama izi kukaya nizakuti tikuzizunula yayi, panji kuzighana ghanako yayi" (this type money is never thought of ). However the real monetary value of this amount is what should make us really realize to what extent is the economic melt down crampling the social life of the people in Zimbabwe. When i asked one of the traders in the fresh boiled maize cobs how much i would be paying in Rand (ZAR), he stated that 20 billion was by then equivalent to R5, in Malawi this would be about K75. These figures made me to ask how much a teacher receives in this country, the response to this was that a teacher gets about 300Billion. What it means then is that if a teacher decides to buy one maize cob at 20billion, he is left with about 280billion. In South Africa, if a teacher gets R7000 and decides to buy a similar maize cob for R5 out of his/her salary, the difference is almost negiligible.

What this means is that with all honesty our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe are heavily repressed by this economic melt down. Although the current global economic crisis may equally be a culprit in the current socio-economic problems in Harare, the political leadership of Zimbabwe should take responsibility for the suffering of the millions of people in that country, people who have got no escape routes from this economic upheaval. While the elite often times cross the border into Musina to purchase the groceries, the poor person on the ground has no means and resources to do the same. On the other hand, the government has authorised trading in foreign currency in a bid to reduce inflation, at the same time, this is completely relegating the poor person on the ground into the forgotten chambers of living, condemning their existence because they have no means of finding the foreign money.

Yesterday the civil society here in South Africa lauched "Save Zimbabwe campaign", this ought to be supported by all people of good will; the suffering of millions of Zimbabwe's people is no longer a problem of a few people, it needs a collective approach which demands all of us to join hands. At the same time while appreciating the sovereignity of Zimbabwe, the universality of the human race is beyond our political borders, it is thus the responsibility of all people of good will to rethink their position on Zimbabwe, so that millions of suffering women and children can be spared the burden of carrying the load of suffering which is predominantly brought on them by egotistic and selfish leaders, thus these people's suffering is totally an indictment on the politicians