...On row after row of white shelving, wiped clean each day, sit a dozen cabbages. The bakery has ten plain scones. That is all the food there is in the largest supermarket serving tens of thousands of people in the oldest, and teeming, township in Harare.
One night last week, Rosa, a church volunteer, scoured Mbare for supplies to make the daily ration of maizemeal, the national staple, and some green vegetables, to be cooked without vegetable oil and often without salt. She found two loaves of bread.
“How do I feed the 14 people in my house with two loaves of bread?” Rosa asked. “Sometimes there is nothing and you go to bed with no dinner. We are living like orphans.”...
Summary Price freeze resulted in buying/hoarding especially by gov't employees, and now there are no new supplies...even the black market is drying up thanks to a government crackdown...and riots are expected but police/miliary are there to put them down
Cost of living
Z$30,000 Price of a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe, the equivalent of $120 at official exchange rate but $1.30 on the black market
Z$55,561 The cost of producing a loaf of bread
7,600% Current rate of inflation
450,000 Tons of wheat needed by Zimbabwe per year
78,000 Tons yielded by last year’s harvest
325,000 Tons yielded in 1990 harvest
80% Of Zimbabwe's population is estimated to be living below the poverty line
3.4m
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