Zimbabwe: Shops shelves fill up but customers stay away
HARARE: The demise of Zimbabwe's local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, and the reappearance of goods on the recently barren shop shelves is an equation that ensures the status quo: ordinary people are unable to feed themselves.
© Gnerk/Flickr
Foreign currency, whether US dollars, South African rands or Botswana pula, is the price paid for stocked shops, but at the Domboshava shopping centre, a rural outpost about 40km north-east of the capital, Harare, there are few customers.
Tendai Shava moves from shelf to shelf admiring the goods, mostly imported from neighbouring South Africa, holding a soiled R20 note (worth about US$2) as she weighs her options.