2 kg Prawns in Zimbabwe for just $38,000- stock up now, while the bargains last

The Zimbabwean economy works on a very simple rule; what you can have is what you can afford. Fine, except a packet of potato chips costs a month’s salary for a person lucky enough to have a job.

In the townships, there’s almost nothing to buy, and coincidentally not much work. Sending the customers broke hasn’t helped the local businesses. In the wealthy suburbs, the prices are still huge, but people can afford them. The expensive prawns are imported, all the way from Mozambique, about the equivalent of a US neighboring state distance away. The Mugabe government, one of the most genuinely loathed in the Commonwealth since Apartheid South Africa, has ordered shopkeepers to slash their prices. This, of course, in an extremely expensive market for even household basics, is a form of business suicide. Many shopkeepers have been arrested for failing to cut prices. Zimbabwe has an inflation rate of 5000%, which is about 13.6% a day, meaning you can be 13.6% worse off cumulatively every day. In theory, however much money you have, you’d be bankrupt in eight days, if you didn’t make any more in that time. Isn’t it nice that we live in the Western world, where nobody feels the need to think twice about raising the price of anything? Economic dictatorship seems to be just as murderous as the other variety, and certainly kills as many people, or more, over time, as simple mass murder. Mugabe is a past master at brutality as a form of government, but in terms of destroying Zimbabwe, his economic rule has done far more permanent damage. It will take decades for Zimbabwe to recover. Mugabe will go, but his legacy will be a study for the next generation of dictators. It’s an interesting historical fact that most dictators are inspired by those before them.The trouble is that dictators tend to export their dictatorship, sometimes around the world.