Zimbabwe: Plight of the powerless

Our shortage of fuel, our shortage of foreign currency, and, of course, our chronic shortage of intelligent government administration, have all led to power cuts becoming a way of life in modern Zimbabwe. But recently they have threatened to become a way of death.

‘Load-shedding’, as power cuts are known, results from our under-performing power stations at Hwange and Kariba, and the massive debts we owe to Mozambique and other southern African countries for the supply of electricity to our grid.


But the authorities, while blacking out offices, factories, shops and even the traffic lights (‘robots’ as we call them), have always assured us that critical institutions, particularly hospitals, would rarely lose power.

And anxious patients were reassured by the promise that the hospitals could always switch on their own generators if the worst happened.

The First Post (UK)