Living Zimbabwe

Author: Living Zimbabwe

  • The Passport That Takes You Nowhere

    In Zimbabwe’s early years travel was so easy for a number of her citizens. Getting together all the necessary items to take your family on holiday was not a difficult task. Applying for a getting a passport if you didn’t have one was simple. Getting money for travel, accommodation and spending was not a problem either. Best of all, passage into a number of countries worldwide was a breeze. You could travel to quite a few visa free and if you needed a visa the application process was simple and approval almost certainly guaranteed.Nowadays, it is a completely different story.
    Traveling on a Zimbabwe passport can be a little tricky. You need a visa to visit a number of countries. A few years ago Zimbabwe introduced machine readable passports but some of the Zimbabweans in the Diaspora have not yet gotten a chance to get themselves one. They are still traveling on the old style non-machine readable and handwritten passport. These old passports can lengthen processing times at border controls and. I have an old style passport and have even been stopped at the air bridge. This happened to me when boarding flights in Johannesburg, Dallas and Stockholm. The authenticity of my passport is what was being questioned. This was such an inconvenience and embarrassing as I was made to stand aside with an official standing next to me waiting to question me as my flights boarded.A few weeks ago I got to listen in on a conversation between a Zimbabwean and the former Immigration Minister (New Zealand). He mentioned how it was in his era that they started up a unit Immigration Profiling Group (IPG) that handles all visa applications from a list of countries that they deem as high risk. These countries are where there is political unrest of whom its citizens may decide to not return if allowed passage into New Zealand. He mentioned that Zimbabwe was at the top of the list of African countries. Visa applications normally take weeks but if you have the misfortune of being a citizen of a country whose applications have to go through IPG you are looking at a wait time of about 6 months. This is ridiculous when all you want to do is visit a country even after that six month wait period your application may be declined. If you are a 23 year old person who has not travelled at all and doesn’t have any real reason to return to your homeland you can forget about it. This is sure to be the same for a number of Western countries around the world who are imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe.

    Anything and everything is just becoming harder for Zimbabweans but, there are a number in the Diaspora who have been able to become residents of the countries they are living and working in which does give them a bit of peace of mind in knowing that they do not have to worry about what to do when their visas/permits expire.

  • Maybe Air Zimbabwe Can Do It

    Following on from the previous post, maybe Air Zimbabwe can do it. Strengthening ties with airlines in the region may help in rebuilding the airline. Take a look at the story below:

  • British Airways Flies Out – Will Air Zimbabwe Cope?

    On the 28th of October a British Airways Boeing 777 flew out of Harare on its way to London for the last time. BA cited high operational costs as the reason for the pull out. Fuel shortages in Zimbabwe had forced them to truck fuel in from neighbouring countries which was becoming uneconomical. A decline in passenger numbers was also resulting in losses on the Harare route.

    In the nineties, BA flew packed Boeing 747 jumbo jets to Harare four times a week. A number of other foreign airlines flew into the country and these included the likes of Lufthansa, Air France, KLM, TAP and Qantas just to name a few.

    When the political situation in Zimbabwe started to deteriorate a number of airlines withdrew their services. All that was left was a handful of African carriers and BA. Due to dwindling passenger numbers BA cut their services to three flights a week on 777s which carry half the capacity of 747s. With BA’s departure, Air Zimbabwe is left as the only airline with a direct route to Europe.

    To fill in the gaps, Air Zimbabwe has added two more flights to the Harare-London route. This brings their weekly flights between the two cities to five. Them being able to handle the increase in flights is another story. The state owned airline has been facing a few problems brought about lack of fuel, maintenance and mismanagement issues. There have been periods when flight delays have stretched for more than a few hours and ran into days. On occasion aircrafts have been diverted to cater to government officials leaving a number of passengers stranded. Only time will tell if they are able to provide a good service.

    There is a question that is still on peoples minds. Was BAs pullout really due to economics or was it politically motivated in an effort to further isolate Zimbabwe?

  • The Smoke That Thunders – Victoria Falls

    Victoria Falls is a 1.7km wide waterfall that drops up to 107m into the Zambezi Gorge forming the largest curtain of water in the world. The falls which are located between the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia are feed by the Zambezi River. The Falls were named Mosi oa Tunya ‘the smoke that thunders’ by the locals but when David Livingstone “discovered” the Falls 1885 he renamed them after the reigning queen of the British Isles, Victoria. Victoria Falls have been designated a World Heritage Site under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

    In days gone by whenever Victoria Falls was mentioned, Zimbabwe was sure to be part of the conversation as it was the most popular country to visit the falls from. This is due to the fact that when you are on the Zimbabwean side of the falls you can stand right opposite the falls and the majority of the falls are in Zimbabwe. Over the last few years, tourists wanting to visit the falls have been doing so from the Zambian side and they are marketed as Victoria Falls, Zambia. Whenever I see or hear this my heart sinks as I think of how things used to be.

    The rapid decline of visitors to the Zimbabwean side is due to the political situation in the country. Zambia is really profiting from it as tourists visits to the falls from the Zambian side increase. Vic Falls is not the only area of tourism to suffer. Other areas such as safaris have also suffered. As a result Zimbabwe has lost out on millions of dollars of revenue. This much needed revenue is something that could help to get the country back on its feet.

    This is the wonder that is Victoria Falls:

  • The Zimbabwe Dollar – 1,000,000 to 1

    One US Dollar will get you One Million Zimbabwe Dollars. That is just ridiculous!! I checked the official bank rate about two to three weeks ago and it was ZW $30,000 to US$1. The official rate doesn’t really mean much for everyday people in Zimbabwe because you can’t get yourself any foreign currency at the bank and it doesn’t make sense to sell your forex to a bank when you can get more for your money on the street. People who do want to know where the bank rates stand are the black market dealers so that they can adjust their prices accordingly.

    I can remember the days in the early to mid nineties when you could get the US Dollar for well under ZW $10. It was so readily available and you could pick up your foreign currency from the bank on the day that you ordered it. As the years went by and the economic and political situation got a little shaky it became harder and harder to get your hands on forex. The situation has only gotten worse as time has gone by. I was in Zimbabwe at the beginning of the year when US $1 would get you about ZW $15,000 to ZW $20,000 depending on where you changed your money. I would not have thought that it would reach the levels it has reached. The instability in the economy has made a lot of people very rich and very quick!!

    One funny thing is that I kept quite a few notes, in particular the $10,000 bill that does not have a space between the first and second zero. I went on to sell a few of them on eBay! for between US$15-50. A few people are selling an array of Zimbabwe Dollar notes and getting a whole lot more from them than they would get in Zimbabwe.

    It is beyond me how the economic situation has reached the level it is currently at.

  • Pain in My Heart

    For the first post, I have put up a short version of the documentary Pain in My Heart by Zimbabwean journalist and broadcaster Hopewell Chin’ono. In the documentary he follows 2 people infected by HIV. One of them has access to anti retro virals drugs and other does not.

    HIV/AIDS is something that has affected the lives of so many Zimbabweans. I don’t know if I have come across a Zimbabwe whose life has not been affected by the disease in the form of the death of a family member or friend.