On a parched nine-hole golf course that has seen better days, more than 40 golfers are braving the midday heat to battle it out for the big prize. The winner of the weekend competition at the Hornung sports club in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, will walk away with 25 litres of unleaded petrol, writes Aoife Kavanagh.
"Last weekend, first prize was a box of vegetables," one wiry old veteran explained as he shaped up to tee off. "Veggies are welcome, but the petrol prize is something special - it's like gold dust these days."
This is Zimbabwe, where the white elite once lived a charmed existence, but can now barely manage to fill their fuel tanks. And where, for the majority black population, years of economic and political mismanagement are life-threatening.
Four out of every five black Zimbabweans are living beneath the poverty line. Every wage-earner in the country is feeding almost 20 people from his or her monthly salary. Just over a decade ago the life expectancy of the average Zimbabwean woman was 66. Today it is 33. The central bank's foreign exchange reserves have been decimated; supermarket shelves are bare.
When President Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 the country was thriving. Its health and education services were the envy of the region and, thanks to a first class infrastructure and a healthy economy, the future looked bright.
Now it is a country hanging on by its fingertips.
Last week the ritual queuing began at first light in the centre of the capital city, Harare. As dawn broke, two separate lines intertwined on the corner of Takawira Street. The longest queue was motivated by a rumour that circulated around the city overnight. Somebody got a tip-off that there was bread in town. Up and down the line people were on their mobile phones, texting and calling friends to give them the latest information. In the end, many people walked away empty-handed. When bread and flour do come on the market they are often bought up in bulk and sold on at inflated prices on the black market - in effect the real market in Zimbabwe.
And it's not just bread. Those who have the purchasing power buy what they can - maize, cooking oil or beans - often at government-subsidised prices. Instead of supplying the domestic market, they export the goods to neighbouring Mozambique or Botswana to earn precious foreign currency, while the less well-off in their own country can barely afford one meal a day.
"If I don't get the bread today, who knows, maybe I won't be able to afford it tomorrow," one woman in the bread queue told me.
She is probably right. Last month inflation stood at 7,900 per cent, and already this month, it has risen to 14,000 per cent. For those lucky enough to have a job - unemployment is about 80 per cent - inflation rates are making a mockery of their wages. Teachers are still being paid about $12 million (Zimbabwean dollars) a month, just a little more than the cost of six litres of cooking oil.
The second queue that morning was for the Post Office Savings Bank, where scores of people lined up to withdraw money. The value of the country's currency is falling so sharply that the government can't print enough notes to keep up with demand. On a bad day, by the time the last person in line reaches the cash dispenser the Zimbabwean dollar will once again have fallen in value.
This week, the government tightened the screw once again on the availability of hard cash by halving the daily limit one person can withdraw from an ATM. The queues on Takawira Street are about to get even longer.
The impact of this economic meltdown is much more serious than having to birdie the ninth to fill your fuel tank or being forced to stand in line for cash. Four million Zimbabwean citizens will need food donations if they are to make it through the next four months. Zimbabwe gets much of its electricity from South Africa, but supply is at best sporadic and at worst a rarity, directly because of the fact that President Mugabe's government can't afford to pay its electricity bills. All over the country, dams are drying up and people are digging their own wells or making do with rancid water supplies.
THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL of the economy even affects the dead. In rural areas, people can no longer afford to buy coffins for their loved ones. Neither can they afford to register their deaths. The truth is that nobody knows exactly how many people are dying in Zimbabwe from hunger or disease. In Bulawayo, the local, state-owned newspaper, the Chronicle, used to regularly publish the number of people who died from starvation in the area, until the government banned it from doing so.
Contaminated water, poor nutrition and a HIV/Aids rate of 15 per cent would place heavy demands on any health service. But in Zimbabwe the health service is failing the people when they need it most.
The country's public hospitals have almost ground to a halt, so much so that if a patient needs a simple procedure, like a couple of stitches or an injection, the instruments or the antiseptic might not be available.
Two weeks ago, three of the country's main hospitals were without electricity for more than four days. Fires burned outside the kitchen doors so staff could cook food to feed their patients.
Half of all medical posts are now vacant, as doctors leave for London or Dublin or Sydney to earn a decent wage.
Dr Andrew Fairbairn, a white Zimbabwean, whose family has been here for two generations, is one of the few doctors who hasn't left. He runs a private clinic on the outskirts of Harare. Every week he watches the gradual but persistent decay of the health system. "Medical care is almost not available to people who can't afford it, such that someone needing surgery or chronic medication cannot get it," he says.
When we met he was making plans to travel to Baghdad for two months as a doctor-for-hire in order to earn some foreign currency before coming home again. He says he is struggling to keep his clinic going because of the severe drugs shortages and the spiralling cost of treatment. "It's shocking to see some elderly people coming in here, wasting away, losing weight because they can barely afford to buy food," he says. "Many people are cutting their medication in half, or not taking it at all. They come to me and ask me which of their medicines they can do without because they can't pay for them."
Restricted by the price or the unavailability of certain drugs, pharmacists occasionally stock medicines not registered by the Zimbabwean drugs authorities. Friends of Dr Fairbairn's have been arrested and thrown in jail for days for attempting to supply their customers with the drugs they need. "A couple of pharmacies have been closed down. It's common for them to be arrested on a Friday so that they squirm in an over-crowded cell all weekend without access to a lawyer," he says.
While he will continue to come and go from the country to earn foreign currency, Dr Fairbairn claims he is determined to stay in Zimbabwe no matter how much conditions deteriorate. "I feel an obligation to stay until things come right again." And when might that be? He shrugs his shoulders. "Once again I am thinking something might change after next year's elections, but then I am a committed optimist."
JACOB SWITCHES ON the battered radio and his small, dilapidated shack is flooded with loud, pounding hip-hop music. His baby daughter lying on the couch wakes with a start as our small group pulls a little closer together, "just so they will not hear us talking", Jacob says, explaining that CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) operations are common in the area. "Now you can go ahead and ask your questions."
His home is in Tafara, a huge township about 20km west of Harare. Jacob is a monitor with the Zimbabwean Peace Project, a non-governmental human rights organisation that tracks political violence and intimidation. Sitting on the couch beside him is 32-year-old Saveri Mafunga, who is a victim of Mugabe's efforts to shore up support ahead of the 2008 elections. He was refused subsidised food because he does not support Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
As Mafunga begins to speak, his voice shakes a little; he is nervous. He knows it is dangerous to talk to journalists or human rights groups. It is officially illegal to criticise the government in this country. And, unofficially, he could be beaten or tortured for doing so. One side of his face is lit by the sun streaming through the window, and he appears gaunt and tired as he tells me how he is sick with worry that he won't be able to feed his wife and baby daughter.
Two weeks ago he went to a government food distribution point near his home. Officials were handing out maize, beans and cooking oil, all at subsidised prices and all most people can afford now. He checked if his name was on the register and was relieved to see it there. For months he has hustled for bits and pieces of part-time work, but there hasn't been nearly enough to keep up with runaway prices.
"When I got to the top of the queue I was asked to show my Zanu-PF card," he explains. "I do not have one and they told me that even though my name was on the list, that I was entitled to food, there would be nothing for me." The government official passed along, telling him that there was no record of his attendance at Zanu-PF meetings, and if he wanted food he should get it from Morgan Tsvangirai - the leader of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe.
"I am also asked for a Zanu party card when I look for work, and often there is no work without it," he says. "I don't know what we are going to do now to survive. Anything I have, I get from friends and from good neighbours."
This year has been declared a drought year in Zimbabwe, and this is the beginning of the so-called "hungry season". Human rights organisations say the government is clearly using food as a political tool against millions of people who are now at their most vulnerable.
The Zimbabwean Peace Project has recorded hundreds of incidents of people being refused subsidised food because they don't support Zanu-PF. Project director Jestina Mukoko fears this tactic will have the desired effect at the ballot box. "People might be forced to vote with their stomachs, simply because they want to guarantee their food," she says. "For many people it is a matter of survival".
The project has evidence too of efforts to discriminate even against those too young to vote. Some "child-headed households" - where both parents are dead and the eldest child is caring for the rest - are also being denied food if their parents were suspected or known to have supported the opposition. "Children are having to suffer for the 'sins' of their parents, in terms of them accessing food," Mukoko says. "To want to see somebody go hungry when food is available is inhuman. I think it is within the powers of the authorities to sort it out."
While the government has free rein to manipulate its own subsidised food, it has also attempted to interfere in the distribution of international food donations. Between now and next March, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will feed three million people in Zimbabwe.
When WFP officials first sat down to negotiate the distribution of food aid, there was a stand-off with government. The ruling party wanted community chiefs - most of them loyal to Mugabe - to decide where the food would go. WFP refused to go along with this arrangement, but has occasionally been forced to suspend distribution because politicians have, to quote a WFP spokesman, "tried to make their presence felt" at distribution points.
"We have a very rigorous and thorough process in place for handing out food, from registration all the way through to distribution. The beneficiaries get food strictly on the basis of need," the spokesman says.
However, Justina Mukoko believes there is a low level of manipulation of international food donations. "Lists are compiled in the community and and I think it takes the international organisations some time to realise that people are being left out," she says.
'I THINK IT would be better if we were killing each other in the streets every night," the owner of a Bulawayo hotel told me on my last evening in the country. "Then perhaps the world would have to do something." That day he had been forced to serve notice to half his staff and feared he would soon have to leave the country.
There is no war on the streets, but instead Zimbabweans must suffer this slow strangulation of their society. Intimidation by the government, in whatever form, is crushing the population. Fear is palpable here and prevents most people from speaking out or rising up. Instead, if they can, they simply leave. Each week, more and more families are being ripped apart as husbands or wives, or sometimes both, leave their children behind and make for Mozambique or Johannesburg or Botswana.
Most people have one of just two hopes now. Firstly, that they will make it safely across the crocodile-infested Limpopo river, which forms a natural barrier between Zimbabwe and South Africa, and find a way to survive in exile. Or, preferably, that their 83-year-old president will not live to inflict many more years of chaos and oppression on his people.
Mugabe's methods: how he holds on to power
President Robert Gabriel Mugabe believes he knows the outcome of the presidential elections next March: he will win.
In the course of almost three decades in power, he has efficiently quelled dissent and out-manoeuvred all opponents. Even this week he saw off yet another rival, with the death of the last leader of what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), 88-year-old Ian Smith. Bitter enemies, both men were masters of oppression.
Down the years, President Mugabe has been consistent in ensuring his ruling party, Zanu-PF, always succeeds at the ballot box. And he uses every means at his disposal to do so. Intimidation, torture, forced exile, and infiltration of communities, and of the opposition, by his Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) recruits all help him stay in total control.
But as the economy of Zimbabwe continues to disintegrate, his most effective tool, perhaps, is the manipulation of food for political ends. Through the state-controlled Grain Marketing Board, the government holds the sole rights to import and distribute maize, the staple diet of millions of Zimbabweans. Throughout the country now, as elections loom, the message is clear - support the ruling party and you will not starve.