‘Hungry kids collapse as looters take millions’: life in today’s Zimbabwe
Far from seeing reform after Robert Mugabe was toppled, the country has fallen into crisis as millions are ‘reduced to paupers’
In the streets of Mbare, the children play, neighbours talk and a wintry sun lights neat houses with carefully tended vegetable plots. But the apparent tranquillity of this poor suburb of Zimbabwe’s capital hides a rude reality of misery and despair.
The smoke rising into the evening sky is a clue. Power cuts now stretch from dawn to long after dusk. Gas is too expensive so families cook on firewood, gathering around braziers as the sun goes down and an almost total darkness comes.