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With inflation measured at over 470 per cent in 2020, the people of Zimbabwe are really struggling to survive as 2021 gets into full swing. Several high profile political, business and church people have died from COVID-19 in recent weeks, sharply focussing the government on more effective action.

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.

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.

Detailed reports from Zimbabwe on July 31, 2020, and the following days, show that there was no popular response to the call for anti-corruption rallies, and that the government pre-empted any possibility by preventive arrests, and a confused series of orders to close shops and then open shops.

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 COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in
Zimbabwe from a low base, but with little effective physical distancing
measures and very little testing to restrain its spread.

Hunger continues to grow the more the economic
dislocation from the pandemic continues, especially falling remittances from
the diaspora.