By the time you finish reading this article the cost of a taxi-ride home from work in Harare will have doubled.
Zimbabwe, which continues to subsidise fuel prices, has had fuel shortages for the past seven years. A shortage of foreign currency has dramatically reduced the state's ability to pay for fuel imports. The official price is Z$ 300 per litre but parallel market fuel prices were Z$ 100 000 per litre a week ago. With unofficial inflation rates at 11 000%, and expected to rise to 1.5 million % by the end of the year, the current fuel price is mere speculation.
Whythawk Ratings, which investigates regional development needs as well as emerging market business opportunities, has recently completed research into the informal sector in Harare and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.
"This push for a so-called "green revolution" or "gene revolution" is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa. Chemical-intensive agriculture is, however, already known to be outmoded. We have seen how fertilisers have killed the soil, creating erosion, vulnerable plants and loss of water from the soil. We have seen how pesticides and herbicides have harmed our environment and made us sick."
Reading Farming Solutions, a joint initiative of Oxfam and Greenpeace, we discover who is behind this savage and deliberate policy of poisoning life on earth and destroying the environment. It is global organisations like the World Bank, and large corporations like Monsanto, McDonalds and Walmart.
Human beings are pathetic, ignorant and helpless creatures lying on our spindly backs, our limbs flailing in the air as the corporations lined against us tread our ambitions into dust.
How did it go so wrong? When did hindsight become an excoriation of past genius and a call to denigrate all that we invented?
The atmosphere is relaxed and congenial. Dave Bullard, Sunday Times columnist and recent blog convert, is interviewing a panel of South African wine experts at the Cape Town Book Fair.
"Is the wine industry in crisis?" he asks, mock seriously.
But it is serious. Only a few days ago a shadowy group of French wine-producers declared on French state television that they were preparing for a violent showdown with their government unless they were offered a guaranteed minimum subsidy. EU subsidies are already so vast that they have contributed significantly to the current global wine glut.
Learn about the Spyder Curve
