ZIMBABWE: Highways are clogged by roadblocks as police conduct lengthy searches of travellers for currency prior to a revaluation of Zimbabwe dollar aimed at reining in the country's hyperinflation. Mourners say they have been forced to open coffins and some women say they have had to submit to body searches.
The country's Reserve Bank lopped three zeros off the currency and gave people a three-week period, which ends next Monday, to exchange their old notes. It also put a strict limit on how many of the old notes can be exchanged every day.
The government of President Robert Mugabe blames currency hoarding for the country's economic woes. Mugabe warned on Tuesday that the government would crack down hard on any violent protests when the old currency expires, state radio said.
Zimbabwe's economy, once one of the strongest in Africa, has been in free fall for five years. It faces severe shortages of foreign currency, fuel, food, medicines and basic goods.
The problems began when the once rich agricultural sector collapsed after Mr Mugabe redistributed land in large farms, many of which were white-owned.
Mr Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, accuses Britain and other Western governments of sabotaging Zimbabwe. His critics accuse him of ruining the basis of the economy and then printing money to meet the demand for cash, sparking hyperinflation.
Before the devaluation was announced, the official exchange rate was 250,000 Zimbabwe dollars to one US dollar, but the black market rate was 555,000.
Since then, the black market value of the Zimbabwean currency has declined sharply as dealers try to dump it.
Police and youth militias of the ruling Zanu-PF party are confiscating the cash of anyone carrying more than 100 million in the old currency.
"The government is trying to rob us of our hard-earned cash," said Thomas Matumbura at a road block in Landela, located south of the capital Harare. He said his family was forced to open the coffin of his older brother Tinos.
Shuvai Mpofu (43), a widow in Mberengwa, about 250 miles south of the capital Harare, said she lost her savings last week when Zanu-PF youth militias conducting door-to-door searches took 200 million Zimbabwe dollars. "I had sold two cattle to pay for school fees for my two daughters. They harassed me and accused me of sabotaging the economy and they did not give me a receipt," she said.
At a roadblock outside Masvingo, about 300 miles south of Harare, Ozias Mutuwe, who runs a bottle store in a nearby town, said he bribed police after he and his business partner were picked up on the way to deposit his daily earnings. "We ended up paying 50 million to the police manning the roadblock, so they'd let us go. Mugabe is creating criminals," Mr Mutuwe said.
Reserve bank chief Gideon Gono said recently that only 12½ per cent of the nation's currency flowed through the banking sector, while the rest remains in the shadow economy. The Reserve Bank has seized trillions of old Zimbabwe dollars, including one haul of 10 trillion discovered at Harare Airport being smuggled into the country.
Some economists warn that the move could cripple the informal economy, which has become the mainstay of economic activity.
Independent Harare-based economist John Robertson said the devaluation meant people would no longer have to carry sacks of cash to the supermarket, but that it did nothing to address the fundamental economic crisis.
He said the militias and police manning the roadblocks were "literally robbing people of their money". He predicted that as long as the government continued printing money, inflation could rise from 1,000 per cent to 2,000 per cent by the end of the year.