Not at all surprisingly, the Mugabe government's unilateral price cutting, and crackdown on those who would defy it, has proven to be a short-term palliative and not a long-term solution. Store shelves are empty. Shortages reign. Prices may be low, but no one can buy goods. Producers have stopped producing, store owners have stopped purchasing goods — for both, the price cuts mean that they operate at a loss most of the time.
Dissenters argue, almost assuredly rightly, that this is yet another ploy in Mugabe's arsenal of tricks, demogoguery to appease the masses and win support or at least ease some of the sting of opposition. For now one of the most vocal critics of Mugabe, Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, hopes that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union will be able to pressure Mugabe into enacting democratic reforms or something resembling them. But one senses that Ncube is skeptical of the efficacy of these organizations and of Thabo Mbeki, the AU's designated choice to mediate the crisis in Zimbabwe. For its part, South Africa would like the SADC to step in and try to salvage that which is salvageable in Zimbabwe's economy. The AU wants South Africa to act. South Africa wants SADC to act.
It would be nice if the African Union, South Africa, and SADC would get together and act in concert rather than pass the buck. I continue to be sleptical about precisely what can be done to force Mugabe's hand, but this sort of circularity surely is not the solution.