the latest in zimbabwe
Things are looking up in
Zimbabwe
After the terrifying “land grab”, a sustained period of hyper-inflation as well as political turbulence and personal danger, life in Zimbabwe is beginning to settle down after a 2008 power-sharing arrangement was signed between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. The country’s horseracing industry has been a beneficary of the subsquent economic stability (in 2009 GDP registered an increase for the first time in ten years) and prize-money earnings have improved so much that even for winning just a moderate race at Borrowdale, a horse’s training fees might be covered for four months. Something those who manage British racing might do well to take note of, writes John Smith. And with year-round sun, as well as the attractions of Victoria Falls and trips out on safari, there is plenty that racing in Zimbabwe can offer the thoroughbred owner and racing fan.
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www.internationalthoroughbred.net
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With a band of stalwart owners, eight trainers, a dozen jockeys and a dozen stud farms, the rudiments of a horseracing industry were sustained pending better times
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nflation ran at a squillion percent, supermarket shelves were bare, unemployment was over 90 per cent, farmers had their holdings “liberated” by the generals and politicos, municipal water dried up, electricity was sporadic, hospitals ran out of drugs and staff, schools went chalkless and bookless. The economy was in free-fall with GDP halving in just ten years. And no this wasn’t Britain after a Lib Dem election – it was Zimbabwe in 2008. Yet through all this strife and turmoil Flat racing survived at Borrowdale Park in Harare, Zimbabwe. An oasis of sanity in an otherwise asylum of chaos and uncertainty. With a band of stalwart owners, eight
trainers, a dozen jockeys and a dozen stud farms, the rudiments of a horseracing industry were sustained pending better times. Nobody could quite spot such a glimmer of light on the horizon and, for a couple of years, they couldn’t even spot the horizon. The situation was dire indeed. But, eventually, in February 2009, the Zim dollar was abandoned in favour of the US version and the South African rand, the MDC and Mugabe’s Zanu PF formed a government of national unity and most import and export restrictions were lifted together with the price controls and related bureaucracy. Within weeks, the country began to wake up and a new economic trajectory began. Inflation disappeared very quickly, shops