It was a scrap of information, shared on the streets and on social media, which speaks volumes about the desperate state Zimbabweans now find themselves in.
The word was, staff at a government office had started printing Zimbabwean passports.
Queues for a passport in Zimbabwe
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Queues for a passport in Zimbabwe
A massive queue, thousands of people long, formed in the early morning light as residents of the capital grasped the opportunity to get their travel papers. If there is a communal dream in this beleaguered nation, it generally involves leaving it – to find food, work and a little stability abroad.
Unsurprisingly, their hopes were dashed. Members of the queue were told to come back later in the month “for an assessment of the reasons why you need to travel”.
The fact is, civil servants cannot produce passports because the government cannot afford to pay for the paper and ink. The country’s registrar general, Clemence Masango, recently admitted to a whopping backlog of 370,000 passports.
Nor is Mr Masango likely to get the supplies he needs because this crisis-ridden government is not governing and the economy has virtually collapsed.
