Harare (AFP)

In Zimbabwe in crisis, prices are exploding, the local currency is plummeting and time is running out. A full tank of fuel that took only five minutes now requires a day of patience and a lot of ingenuity. Without the slightest guarantee of success.

The sun sets on Harare and Tinashe Magacha is about to spend the night in his car with hundreds of other motorists lined up in front of the gas station.

He comes to fill up with ... his minibus. "While I wait, my van carries passengers," says the young man. "If I can buy gas, I'll siphon it and fill my van with a garden hose."

Many efforts for a salty bill. Fuel prices more than doubled in January, triggering protests suppressed in blood by President Emmerson Mnangagwa's regime.

For months, lines of cars stretching for miles ahead of the pumps have reappeared in the capital, the latest manifestation of the economic ruin left as a legacy to its people by the late Robert Mugabe.

Zimbabwe was precipitated into the crisis in the early 2000s by controversial land reform ordered by the former president, who died on September 6 at age 95.

The country has never recovered and lacks everything today. From fuel to laundry, to license plates and passports.

- "Buy our money" -

To the puzzle of shortages is added that of "cash". Ruined by hyperinflation and the plummet of its Zimbabwean dollar, the country and its banks are desperately short of it.

Forced to pay his bus tickets in hard currency to go to work, Crispen Mudzengerere must spend hours at his bank to be able to withdraw, if he is lucky, at best 100 Zimbabwean dollars (8 euros) in cash.

He could get some in the street, but the service is "taxed" at least 30%. "To have 20 dollars, I have to spend 26 dollars," the father says. "We come to buy our own money," he says, summing up the absurdity of the system.

To limit his transportation costs, he had to be inventive. He is now doing double duty at his restaurant, which allows him to have four days of rest in a row.

In this hostile daily life, resourcefulness and patience have become essential weapons.

But the system D can not do everything. And especially prevent the devaluation of wages, victims of the dizzying price increases (+ 175% in June) and the depreciation of the local dollar.

In the space of a year, their value has been divided by fifteen.

In these circumstances, Wakanai Murambidzi, a maintenance worker, was unable to pay the school fees of her children. They were fired from their school earlier this month. "I do not know how to get out of it," laments the thirties.

"We regret having fired Mugabe," she added, citing the military coup that ended in 2017 the reign of the former president. "At the time the bread was 1 dollar, now it is 10 dollars.

- Contraband -

In this field of economic ruins, a new type of market has emerged in Harare, in the poor district of Mbare.

Here, no vegetables, no fruit or meat, but non-perishable foods like rice, sugar and bars of soap illegally imported from neighboring South Africa. Prices, untaxed and sold without intermediary, are unbeatable here.

"We smuggle," recognizes a saleswoman, Blessing Chiona, all the goods on a pallet in the mud.

Beside her, dozens of sellers are waiting for customers under the sun. That day, two liters of oil flow for 24 dollars in cash, against 34 in supermarkets.

Under his umbrella, Blessing Chiona mails his shopping lists to delivery drivers, the "malayitsha", who travel back and forth between Zimbabwe and South Africa with minibuses full of passengers and goods.

As if these galleys were not enough, Zimbabweans also have to deal with very long power cuts, up to eighteen hours a day.

Also a seller in Mbare, Misheck Masarirevhu found the parade. With a micro solar panel, he charges a car battery during the day, on which he plugs his phone home at night.

Jocelyn Chaibva, a 59-year-old pharmacist, gets up in the middle of the night, when the power is back, to wash her clothes.

"To get by here, you need a doctorate" of survival, sums up one of his colleagues, Luckmore Bunu. "A stranger here, he does not take a month, but we are used to it."

© 2019 AFP