The unfair ZANU PF sponsored youth brigade has been deployed in suburbs in and around Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare where they are powerfully reducing food prices. Zimbabwe Militia The youth militia, armed with baton sticks and whips are targeting supermarkets, shops and parallel market traders, in which they order the selling of goods at very unfairly low prices. Prices, particularly of basic commodities are rising on a daily basis primarily owing to escalating inflation which is deteriorating the local currency against other world major currencies.
Last week in Chitungwiza, a group of ruling party supporters went to one of the country’s major retail supermarkets- OK Zimbabwe at the Town Centre where mealie-meal had been delivered and was about to be sold. A source said in a well orchestrated move, the group instructed the supermarket bosses that the 50 kilogramme bags of mealie-meal were to be sold at a mere $1.5 billion per bag. In the past weeks, the country’s president Robert Mugabe has been labeling businessmen as working with the main opposition MDC party in efforts to effect a regime change through hiking prices of goods, commodities and services to levels way beyond the reach of the ordinary Zimbabwean.
According to Mugabe, businesspeople are hiking prices so citizens can go hungry and turn against him especially now during the presidential election run-off race against MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai on June 27. “Customers who have relatives or friends who work in the supermarket had no difficulties in buying the mealie-meal.” “I know everyone wants something affordable, but $1.5 billion is not even enough to take one on a single trip to or from town,” he said. On Monday this week, the local currency was trading at $5.2 billion (parallel market) and $4.2 billion (inter-bank) rates, to the US$.
Prices have soared radically in the past weeks with a kg of beef now fetching for not less than $10 billion. A bar of washing soap costs at least $10 billion. A 2 liter bottle of cooking oil costs around $30 billion. A trip to Harare’s city centre is now between $1 billion to $2.5 billion. “The ruling party youths took everything and started selling he stuff to people at very low prices,” he said. “Can you imagine? Bread which was sold at$2 billion per loaf, was being sold by the youths at $100 million per loaf,” he said.