Zimbabwe: Shops shelves fill up but customers stay away

HARARE: The demise of Zimbabwe's local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, and the reappearance of goods on the recently barren shop shelves is an equation that ensures the status quo: ordinary people are unable to feed themselves.

15 Apr 2009

Zimbabwe: Shops shelves fill up but customers stay away

Foreign currency, whether US dollars, South African rands or Botswana pula, is the price paid for stocked shops, but at the Domboshava shopping centre, a rural outpost about 40km north-east of the capital, Harare, there are few customers.

Tendai Shava moves from shelf to shelf admiring the goods, mostly imported from neighbouring South Africa, holding a soiled R20 note (worth about US$2) as she weighs her options.

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