There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a country that no longer makes sense.
In Zimbabwe, we have stopped asking “What next?” and instead brace ourselves for the inevitable absurdity around the corner.
To the detached observer, the past decade might look like a humorous tragedy, but to those of us living through, it is a three-ring circus of cause minus the tent, the safety net, or any visible exit.
In this circus, the clowns don’t wear makeup, they occupy cabinet offices.
The high-wire act isn’t a death-defying stunt; it’s the daily struggle to survive without a job.
There is no trapeze, no roaring lion and no bearded lady. But if you look closely, you will find something far more terrifying.
A once-promising nation held captive by unsustainable debt, suffocating taxes, collapsing public services, crippling unemployment and a heartbreaking epidemic of drug abuse.
This is our reality.
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And the show must be stopped.
When your currency evaporates overnight, when the cash in your pocket becomes worthless than the paper it’s printed on, you are no longer a citizen.
You are a juggler.
We juggle multiple exchange rates before breakfast.
We juggled the need to pay school fees in US dollars while earning in the Zimbabwean currency that loses value by the hour.
And we juggle the silent, crushing weight of knowing that one medical emergency will bankrupt a family forever.
Of cause, every circus has its ringmaster, and here, the spectacle is orchestrated by a public debt so staggering that it has become a ghost haunting every transaction.
The total public debt of the country currently stands at over US$23,4 billion.
For the marginalised, the vendor in Mbare, the retired civil servant in Kwekwe, the nurse at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, that number may seem to be acceptable. Consider the man with a disability who cannot access the one bus that runs through his rural district, because the driver wants dollars.
He is not in the unemployment statistics because he was never counted.
He is the forgotten audience member, watching the circus from outside the tent, unable even to buy a ticket.
And yet, the show must go on. Politicians speak of Vision 2030 while we cannot see past next week.
Yes! everyone claps, but no one is fooled.
The International Monetary Fund warns, creditors circle, and still we are told to be “patient”.
But patience is a luxury of the well-fed.
What the marginalised need is not another act in this endless, exhausting performance.
They need the circus to fold its tents.
They need a public debt that does not eat their children’s future.
They need a currency that does not require a PhD in speculation.
They need a mental health system that treats their invisible wounds with something more than a shrug.
Until then, we will continue to juggle, to dodge, to survive.
We will laugh because crying is too expensive. We will dance because standing still means being trampled.
Welcome to the greatest show on earth — no applause, please.
Just spare change, in US dollars, if you have it.
Millin is a social and economic justice Ambassador. These weekly New Horizon articles, published in the Zimbabwe Independent, are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, managing consultant of Zawale Consultants (Private) Limited, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance & Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe, - [email protected] or mobile +263 772 382 852.
