When schools returned in mid-September, most teachers did not, shifting the focus of industrial strife from the health to the education sector. It underlines the galloping inflation impacting the wages of public servants and other workers, and the huge pressures for change in Zimbabwean society. However, the political opposition continues to disintegrate due to factional conflicts and, in the case of Nelson Chamisa’s MDC Alliance, its connections to the Mugabe G40 faction of ZANU-PF and its use of violence.

The Zimbabwe Nurses Union has called for a return to work after months of strikes over pay and workplace safety, after the appointment of Vice-President Chiwenga as Health Minister. Civil servants have been promised a pay adjustment every three months. However, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called for wages to be paid in US dollars and for lightening workplace lunchtime protests on September 1. Teacher unions are also determined to gain pay in US dollars.

Today is the second anniversary of the 2018 national election won by President Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF, and the day set for the Extraordinary Congress of MDC-T. It was chosen therefore for a big street protest, purportedly against corruption.

The first Zimbabwean to die from novel coronavirus infection was Zororo Makamba, on March 23. He was a prominent young man who was recovering from a lung operation. He had contracted the virus in New York. Since then another Zimbabwean has died. Makamba’s family account of his last days demonstrates how totally unprepared Zimbabwe is for the pandemic. Zororo was sent to the Wilkins Infectious Disease Hospital, but his family found that it had no ventilator, its oxygen supply ran out, it had no running water.

March 13, 2020: The new year is already into its third month and the combined impacts of severe drought, long-term economic collapse and now the COVID-19 pandemic are closing off the chances for a turn-around in the economic crisis and for genuine democratic reform for Zimbabwe. Like much of Africa, Zimbabwe needs significant external funding to get onto a growth path, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The looming global recession and possible depression means that the people of Zimbabwe will be thrown back onto their own capacities.