Night falls across Harare and Tracy Ncube sashays up Fife Avenue in a tight skirt and borrowed shirt to sell the only thing she can. Half a dozen other young women are already stationed outside Tipperary's bar and Ncube picks her spot, a tree opposite the car park illuminated by headlights. Zimbabwe's youth were once considered Africa's brightest, graduates of one of the continent's best education systems which bred sophistication, confidence and ambition.
But the economy has crumbled and, with it, opportunity. There are virtually no jobs. Some 90 per cent of the country's Hyperinflation and food shortages are making the middle class destitute. So, a fortnight ago, Ncube, 23, turned to prostitution. My family doesn't know that I do this, but how else am I to survive? She was visibly nervous. Aid jargon calls prostitution, or transactional sex, a 'negative coping mechanism', a desperate but effective way to get by.
Others emigrate, flying to Britain to work as nurses or jumping a fence to scrounge jobs in Botswana or South Africa. Their pay keeps many families afloat. For President Robert Mugabe, all this is excellent news. Inflation is close to per cent, unemployment is at 70 per cent and hunger and homelessness are spreading, but there is no sign of revolution. Yesterday the country was digesting the surprise acquittal of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been charged with attempting to assassinate the president.
It was a significant boost for the party but there was little public jubilation. Partly this was because police in riot gear patrolled the capital with guns and batons. A military jet roared low overhead to reinforce the authority of a regime in power since independence from Britain in But another reason was resignation.
Analysts say that the ruling Zanu-PF party will sweep parliamentary elections due next March because opposition has been crushed. Starved of an independent media and the right to campaign freely, the MDC has withered, according to a senior MP who asked not to be named. Its narrow defeats in rigged elections in and were high-water marks, he said. Both cause and symptom of its malaise are to be found on Fife Avenue. At night, the smart, leafy suburb close to the city centre is a red-light district.
