This is Zim in the winter of 2025, where time goes backwards

On a beautiful winter day in Zimbabwe, I set out to visit a friend 100km away.

Life is very tough here now and I had a big bag of fruit for her on the back seat of the car and a few dollars tucked away in my pocket to buy some of her homemade goodies because every dollar counts when you are struggling to stay afloat.

The sky was blue and the sun warm – and the view from the window was gorgeous: tall golden grass, blue mountains on the far horizon and bright red flowers opening on Lucky Bean trees.

Many trees are starting to lose their leaves now, including the wild oranges that are laden with green cricket ball fruits and the beautiful Mukwa trees covered with fried egg pods.

On the roadside plots that were once big farms, the view now is of small subsistence families, maize cobs laid out drying in the sun.

I pass a plot where a group of women and youngsters are sitting, working in the sun.

The sight brings me an instant flashback of shelling maize by hand when I first started farming.

It’s hard work and very tough on your thumbs, but an immensely satisfying way to spend a warm winter morning, sitting in the sun, laughing, chatting and watching the bowls and buckets filling up with kernels one by one.

It’s all thumbs on deck at this time of year, making sure your thumb pushes out every pip and hoping that your harvest will be enough to get you through till next year.

Oh Zim, so much has happened

One of the women looked up as I passed and I waved, then everyone looked up and there were waves and smiles all round.

Oh Zimbabwe, so much has happened to us all these last 25 years, how tough all our lives have become with no end in sight as our government finds ever more ways to suck us dry.

Read: Reaping what Zimbabwe’s government sowed

My progress along the highway is slow, the roads are full of trucks, tankers and container lorries.

With Zimbabwe now 25 years into not being self-sufficient in food and countless other items, most imports enter the country by road. In 2024, Zimbabwe’s total imports were valued at $9.53 billion.

Major imports are fuel, mineral oil products, machinery, mechanical appliances, cereals, foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and vehicles.

All of those imports make for extremely busy highways, the majority of which are single-carriageway roads and all of which have numerous police road blocks.

On my 100km journey, there were five police road blocks; only two had a ‘police’ sign, the others consisted of two or three police officers sitting under a tree and one police detail standing right in the middle of the road.

Sucking us dry, now through our car radios

This week, they also have Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) personnel inspecting your car radio licence disc after the government made it law that every vehicle has to have a car radio licence.

It’s an annual fee of $92 and the only way round it is a form, a sworn affidavit declaring there is no car radio fitted in your vehicle and a commissioner of oaths to verify it all.

Once your form is submitted to ZBC, if it is approved, they will issue you with an exemption certificate.

This is Zimbabwe’s latest cash cow and there is no way round it.

It doesn’t matter if you only listen to music on your phone or iPod, I was told – you are ‘using our airwaves’. If you don’t buy the radio licence, you’re not allowed to renew your vehicle licence or insurance.

In 2024, there were 827 000 licensed vehicles on the road in Zimbabwe.

The government-owned ZBC has just made a cool $76 million with its new radio licence law.

The government gets ever richer on the taxes they charge us while people still carry water on their heads, drive ox-drawn carts and sit in the sun and shell maize by hand.

Read: Last minute reprieve for Zimbabwe Exemption Permit holders 

This is Zimbabwe in the winter of 2025, where time goes backwards.

Copyright © Cathy Buckle

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