37 • • • • Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) from 1991 Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation (ZIMPREST) launched in April 1998 Millennium Economic Recovery Programme (MERP) launched in 2001 National Economic Revival Programme (NERP): Measures to Address the Current Challenges, 2003 The multiplicity of development programmes, particularly within the second decade of the country’s independence, is indicative of the failure to reverse the deterioration of the economic situation since the 1990s. The failure to transform the economic systems at the onset of independence, largely because Government’s hands were tied by the Lancaster Agreement, made economic liberation a distant reality and a nagging problem for Zimbabwe. 5.2 THE ECONOMIC CRISIS The Zimbabwean economy is currently in an unprecedented crisis characterised by: • High levels of inflation, currently estimated around four digit figures; • High levels of national debt and the consequent disruption of international lines of trade; • High levels of poverty with the rural and women fork suffering the brunt of such poverty; • Food insecurity resulting from periodic droughts and the disruption of production within the programme of equi-distribution of land; • High levels of unemployment as companies reduce production. This necessitates once again the phenomenon of split families, which was characteristic of the dual colonial economy, as people emigrate in search for jobs; • Shortages of critical basic commodities on the formal market. Where such commodities are available, they are neither accessible nor affordable to the majority of the poor. • A thriving parallel market for basic commodities. The beneficiaries of the price controls are therefore the speculators and dealers who are capitalizing on the shortages by importing the needed goods which they sell at exorbitant prices. • A thriving foreign currency parallel market which determines the prices of imported goods; • The production of lower quality products, as producers are, forced to reduce inputs in order to maintain profit margins against a backdrop of rising input costs. • The criminalization of the average Zimbabwean, as people are, scrambling for survival. There is mass stress, tension and bitterness as people fail to meet their daily needs. • The consequent politicization and militarization of the economy where government is now a major player instead of being a neutral facilitator.