Desperate times bring desperate measures in Zim
A new breed of entrepreneur has evolved in Zimbabwe's ever-deteriorating economy, adapted to take advantage of an environment characterised by food shortages and increasingly scarce basic commodities.
The new professionals are known as 'queuers', who buy goods at discounted prices as a result of forced government price cuts and resell them at a substantial profit on the illegal parallel market.
Martha Nyoni, 45, a widow and unemployed mother of five, recently joined the group. She says she has found a survival strategy that works, but acknowledges that somewhere down the line someone has to pay the price.
"We have no choice except to charge the high prices because we spend a lot of time in queues, and for those that do not want to queue, they have to pay for our time spent in the queues."
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