Zimbabwe: soon, no country for old people
By Mbaiso Mushure - 14/08/2008
An old man of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, was reportedly anxious, as all the people are, for a positive conclusion to the current talks between Zanu PF and the MDC. He was heard to blurt out in a beerhall: “Age may be a number, but YOUR number is up, comrade!”
His drinking mates knew who his target was, but wanted to know where he would utter such a potentially explosive challenge to 84-year-old President Robert Mugabe, self-confessed Marxist-Leninist, who has ruled – some say ruined - the country for 28 years.
Mugabe, as leader of the ruling Zanu PF, has been engaged in on-and-off talks with the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since his one-candidate presidential election victory on 27 June was rejected by most of the civilised world.
The South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has been presiding over the talks which many observers doubt will achieve much as long as Mugabe insists he must remain executive rather than ceremonial president.
In the beerhall, the old man spoke in hushed tones of where he hoped such a bold statement would be made to Mugabe: on huge placards in a protest march staged by senior citizens to State House in Harare.
His sentiments are shared by many mature citizens who believe he is a disgrace to them all, a man still clinging to power at 84 years of age, even as his country scores world-shattering statistics for the wrong reasons: the highest inflation rate in the world, the most worthless currency in the world and an unemployment rate of 80 percent.
The likelihood of such a protest march being mounted is far-fetched. It may be true that the worst victims of the present economic meltdown are senior citizens, but there is little chance any of them would muster enough courage, let alone the numbers, to stage such a demonstration.
Mugabe has been held responsible for the murder of dozens of opposition supporters since the first elections on 29 March, won by the MDC, including its president, Morgan Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe to the top job.
The official statistics show that there are more people under the age of 25 than those in their 60s and 70s in the country today. But they also indicate life expectancy has dropped from just under 60 years 15 years ago to 34 years.
So, very soon, there will be more senior citizens than young people. Yet because the health delivery system is now so tattered, these old people may not have enough drugs to treat their illnesses, most of which tend to the terminal.
This could soon be no country for old people.
Some statisticians ascribe the deaths of so many young people to the HIV and Aids pandemic since it emerged after 1980 as one of the causes of a serious depletion in the population.
The spread of the “hideous” disease, recently reported to have slowed down somewhat, has been blamed on the non-availability of enough life-prolonging Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) which a cash-strapped government cannot afford to import, and a health delivery system itself in the intensive care unit.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which received the drugs from donor countries around the world had their operations restricted a few months ago, further reducing the number of people living with HIV and Aids with access to ARVs.
The government, without bothering to provide any cast-iron proof, accused the NGOs of funding the MDC election campaign.
Senior citizens have been hard hit in other ways by the economic bungling of the government which has resulted, for instance, in the shortage of cash nationwide.
Commercial banks were ordered to restrict the amount of cash depositors could withdraw. This resulted in long queues at the banks. A state-owned bank had to institute a special queue for senior citizens after an elderly grandmother, having waited for hours in a queue, fainted and had to be rushed to hospital.
Banks which do have signs announcing that senior citizens must receive preferential treatment at every counter have been confronted by younger depositors who complain the old people are finishing the cash before they can get to the counters.
This has created an atmosphere of hostility between old and young depositors.
Old age pensioners, particularly former government workers, have been hardest hit by the plummeting value of the Zimdollar against almost all other currencies.
Their pensions are basically unrelated to the inflation rate and each time they receive them they are able to buy less and less of the essential commodities they need – assuming they are available in the usually empty supermarket shelves.
But it is in the health sector that the senior citizens are suffering the most. Sufferers from hypertension, diabetes, asthma and heart problems may be officially entitled to free medication at government hospitals, but they often find there are no such drugs.
Their alternative is to buy them from the pharmacies, where their prices are often so prohibitive most just give up and return to their homes, where they wait for a relative to turn up with enough money to buy the drugs.
Others choose the traditional route. They consult herbalists, now reported to be doing roaring business in the treatment of cancer, diabetes, epilepsy and hypertension.
There has so far been no official study of how the herbalists’ prescriptions have fared.