The Zimbabwean government-controlled media screamed that President Robert Mugabe, on a state visit to Iran, had secured a fuel deal with his hosts. Every time such a headline has appeared in the past, the newspapers were effusive in their praise for Mugabe’s economic miracle-working prowess. But the fuel queues never end.

Wilf Mbanga

Somehow, the wonder deals are just too good to be true and the fuel, if there ever was any in the first place, never trickles down to the service stations to become available to the person in the street.

We hear nothing further about the deal for months. The queues get longer and longer. People die for want of an ambulance to get them to hospital - but the ambulance has no fuel.

Fields lie fallow, the tractors are grounded for want of diesel. Ministry of education officials complain that they cannot supervise teachers around the country because their vehicles have no fuel. Cattle die from tick-born diseases because the veterinary department cannot deliver the chemicals to the dipping tanks.

Crime rampages unchecked as policemen and women sit idly in their offices, unable to respond even to emergency calls because their trucks are empty.
All five aircraft of the national airline, Air Zimbabwe, were grounded recently for want of aviation fuel. Hundreds of people were stranded as flights were cancelled at the last minute.

Sometimes it seems the only thing moving is Mugabe’s long cavalcade.
The state press is usually vague concerning the exact details of the wonder deals struck by Mugabe while abroad. Of course he can only travel to the east. Zimbabweans are left totally in the dark concerning what assets are bartered for the precious fuel that they never get to enjoy. As the nation has no money, all the deals, of necessity, involve bartering raw materials of one description or another.

The latest deal was said to have involved “an array of minerals”. Similar deals have been concluded during recent years with Libya, Kuwait, Sudan, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela and China.

It is understood that the latest deal includes a promise by Iran to send technicians to investigate the feasibility of resuscitating the Feruka Oil refinery in Mutare, which was closed down some 40 years ago, soon after Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain.

Feruka was built to refine Iranian crude sourced in a deal between the illegal Smith regime and the Shah of Iran. But a British blockade of the Mozambican port of Beira soon put a stop to that deal.

Since then, the country has imported refined fuel. The chronic shortages have been on-going for more than five years now.

With Zimbabwe’s appalling debt-service record the fuel exporters are no doubt exacting a punitive premium in return for any supplies. A desperate Mugabe, meanwhile, gives away more and more of our country’s precious natural resources for a few barrels of liquid.

I wonder if there is anything left at all of riches hidden beneath our hills?




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Wilf Mbanga, one of the founders of the independent Zimbabwean daily newspaper "The Daily News", is currently living in the UK. He writes about the current situation in Zimbabwe.