It is now ten years since the collapse of the Zimbabwe economy got under way in earnest in 1999. It actually started in 1997 but only really began to slide two years later when the effect of policy changes took root. It is perhaps time that we looked back on this lost decade and ask ourselves what sort of price have we paid?
The numbers are astonishing - if you assume an average potential growth of 5 per cent in GDP over this decade then the actual cost in terms of lost GDP earnings is over $76 billion. In human terms, life expectancies have halved and over 3 million people have died before they would have died in the decade before.
For South Africa , the collapse of Zimbabwe has cost over $43 billion or 350 billion Rand and that estimate is a third lower than the cost estimated by Tony Blair when he visited South Africa three years ago. The crisis has cost the region perhaps a million jobs - a total that rivals the job losses attributable to the recent global melt down in financial markets.
In human terms the collapse has been nothing short of a catastrophe - a third of our population has left the country - nearly 4 million going to neighbouring States. About half a million people have lost their jobs and nearly two million people displaced internally. Absolute poverty is now the norm with average Zimbabweans receiving less that a dollar a day on which to subsist - the international measure of living below the level required for essential needs. This is confirmed by the fact that over 70 per cent of the national population was being supplied with their basic food needs at the beginning of this year.
On Sunday I attended a meeting where I was told of an incident where a woman encountered a man who was clearly insane wandering about a shopping centre. She was told he was a former member of the security forces who had been involved in torture. I understand there are thousands who are haunted by the crimes they have committed under State direction.
The consequences of the genocide in 1983/87 in many areas of Matabeleland have not been addressed and remain as a shadow over many communities. The effects of Murambatsvina in 2005 when 1,2 million people were displaced by a State campaign to force people back into the rural areas. Thousands died in the aftermath and hundreds of thousands are still homeless.