The March 2026 fuel increase, petrol now at US$1.71 per litre and diesel at US$1.77, a staggering 16.4% jump, in my view, is not an innocent adjustment to global oil markets, but a calculated strike against ordinary Zimbabweans.
Officials may dress it up as a “necessary cushion” against external shocks, but the lived reality is brutal: commuters face fare hikes, food prices surge, and informal traders watch their already fragile margins collapse.
For the ruling elites, however, fuel pricing is not about stability; it is about control.
Politically connected businesses continue to access fuel at preferential rates, shielded from the pain, while dual pricing systems create lucrative arbitrage opportunities for the few at the expense of the many.
This latest increase is not an isolated event; it validates a broader pattern of economic manipulation masquerading as policy.
Just as Statutory Instrument 125 criminalised parallel market exchange rates to punish citizens while elites accessed forex through backdoor channels, fuel hikes are framed as “necessary” but function as instruments of exclusion.
The result is predictable: trust erodes further. Citizens see fuel pricing not as a reflection of global markets, but as another lever of elite enrichment. Each increase deepens the perception that Zimbabwe’s economy is engineered to punish the many while protecting the few.
For over two decades, Zimbabwe’s economy has been weaponised against its own people.
What should be instruments of national development, pricing policies, taxation frameworks, and empowerment laws have instead become tools of deception, enriching ruling elites while punishing ordinary citizens.
The result is a political economy defined not by growth, but by betrayal.
Hyperinflation and Arbitrage
Since the dawn of the 2000s, Zimbabweans have been ensnared in a deliberately constructed labyrinth of distorted exchange rates and parallel markets, a system less about economics than about power.
At its core lies a cynical calculus: politically connected elites glide through official channels, securing foreign currency at subsidised rates, while the majority are condemned to the shadows of the black market, where prices spiral beyond reach and survival itself becomes a daily negotiation.
This dual economy is not the residue of incompetence; it is the architecture of inequality, meticulously maintained to institutionalise corruption and cement privilege as the ruling order.
What masquerades as monetary policy is, in truth, a mechanism of exclusion. The state’s manipulation of exchange regimes has transformed currency into a weapon, wielded to reward loyalty and punish dissent.
Ordinary citizens, stripped of access to fair value, are forced into cycles of dependency and despair, while elites harvest rents from scarcity. In this theatre of deception, the market is not a neutral space but a battlefield where the ruling class scripts the terms of suffering.
Price Controls and Subsidy Distortions
Controls on maize meal, fuel, and bread did not simply regulate consumption; they manufactured scarcity as a political instrument. What should have been staples of survival became symbols of deprivation.
Ordinary citizens were condemned to endless queues, their dignity eroded as they waited for goods that rarely arrived, only to be forced into the predatory embrace of the black market, where prices soared beyond reach.
Meanwhile, the ruling elites glided past these queues, enjoying preferential access to subsidised commodities, converting scarcity into profit and deprivation into opportunity.
This was not mere economic mismanagement; it was a deliberate choreography of control. By rationing essentials, the state created a hierarchy of access in which privilege was monetised and suffering commodified.
Scarcity became the currency of power, a mechanism through which elites reinforced their dominance while ordinary Zimbabweans were reduced to supplicants in their own economy.
In this theatre of manipulation, bread was no longer bread, fuel no longer fuel; they became instruments of exclusion, reminders that the economy itself had been weaponised against the people it was meant to serve.
Punitive Taxes and Fiscal Extraction
Excise duties on fuel, alcohol, and telecommunications have functioned less as instruments of fiscal prudence than as blunt weapons of extraction, disproportionately burdening households already crushed by inflation.
VAT hikes and presumptive taxes have targeted survivalist traders, the backbone of Zimbabwe’s informal economy, while politically connected firms glide past scrutiny, shielded by patronage and privilege.
What masquerades as equitable taxation is, in truth, a predatory regime designed to siphon from the many while sparing the few.
Even car import duties, ostensibly a matter of regulation, have become instruments of control. By inflating tariffs on second‑hand vehicles from Japan, the state has deliberately curtailed citizens’ access to affordable mobility, transforming the simple act of owning a car into a privilege reserved for elites.
In a country where public transport is unreliable and costly, these duties are not neutral; they are punitive, designed to regulate aspiration itself.
The ruling class monopolises access to modern vehicles while ordinary Zimbabweans are trapped in queues, overcrowded buses, and the indignity of dependence.
This fiscal architecture reveals a deeper truth: taxation in Zimbabwe is not about development, but domination. It is a system that weaponises everyday necessities, fuel, bread, communication, and mobility, turning them into levers of exclusion and reinforcing the hierarchy of privilege that defines the political economy.
Indigenisation as Elite Capture
The 2007 Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, draped in the rhetoric of liberation and empowerment, demanded that foreign firms surrender 51% ownership to “indigenous” Zimbabweans, yet beneath this populist veneer lay a calculated project of elite capture.
Far from redistributing wealth to the masses, the policy became a conveyor belt of privilege, enriching ruling party insiders while discouraging foreign investment and triggering waves of capital flight.
Jobs evaporated, industries shrank, and ordinary citizens were left with the ashes of promises never fulfilled.
Reserved sector regulations compounded the betrayal, entrenching monopolies in mining, retail, and transport, and excluding ordinary Zimbabweans from opportunity.
What was framed as sovereignty became a fortress of exclusion, where access to economic participation was determined not by merit or enterprise, but by proximity to power.
Indigenisation was less a revolution than a masquerade: a hollow performance of empowerment that institutionalised inequality, cemented patronage networks, and transformed the language of liberation into a cynical justification for elite enrichment.
Currency Punishment
Statutory Instrument 125 of 2020 did not merely regulate currency; it criminalised survival itself. By outlawing parallel market rates, the state forced citizens to transact at official exchange values so unrealistic they bordered on fiction.
Ordinary Zimbabweans, already battered by inflation, were compelled to operate in a rigged marketplace where their labour and savings were devalued overnight.
Meanwhile, the ruling elites continued to glide through backdoor channels, accessing foreign currency at preferential rates and converting scarcity into profit.
This was not policy in the service of stability; it was economic authoritarianism masquerading as reform. SI 125 institutionalised inequality by erecting a dual economy: one for the privileged few, lubricated by patronage and insider access, and another for the majority, condemned to punitive restrictions and financial precarity.
In effect, the law transformed the currency itself into a weapon of exclusion, fuelling mistrust and deepening the chasm between rulers and the ruled.
What was presented as a patriotic defence of the Zimbabwean dollar became, in practice, a cynical instrument of deception, proof that in Zimbabwe, regulation is rarely about protection, but about control.
Trust Shattered
Savings were not merely eroded, they were annihilated, stripped of value until entire lifetimes of labour dissolved into nothingness.
Livelihoods were not simply strained; they were systematically punished, crushed beneath the weight of distorted prices, punitive taxes, and exclusionary laws.
The investment climate did not falter by accident; it collapsed under the deliberate weight of policies designed to repel capital while rewarding patronage.
Citizens rightly perceive this economic order not as development but as predation: a machinery calibrated to enrich elites while extracting from the powerless.
ZANU‑PF cloaks these policies in the rhetoric of patriotism and anti‑imperialism, presenting exploitation as sovereignty and exclusion as empowerment, yet the lived reality is unambiguous, hardship institutionalised, opportunity foreclosed, and confidence in governance eroded to dust.
What remains is a political economy defined by betrayal, where slogans masquerade as policy, and the people are reduced to collateral in the ruling elite’s pursuit of power and profit.
A Call to the Youth
Zimbabwe’s future cannot be mortgaged to hollow slogans or embalmed in brittle nostalgia. The youth must refuse to inherit the ruins of deception and instead carve out their own path, armed with literacy in politics, sharpened by the dismantling of myths, and disciplined in the language of accountability.
To stand out is to resist subjugation; to stand out is to insist that Zimbabwe belongs not to the ghosts of liberation, but to the living generation whose courage must eclipse yesterday’s rhetoric.
The future will not arrive as a gift; it must be seized, and it begins with you: informed, unafraid, unwilling to be silenced. Even fuel, once the lifeblood of mobility and commerce, has been transformed into a weapon of control, a daily reminder that scarcity has been scripted into the nation’s political economy, yet this weapon loses its sting when confronted by a generation that refuses to bow, a generation that reclaims agency through knowledge, solidarity, and fearless critique.
As the ruling elites have perfected the art of betrayal, it is now the youth who must perfect the art of renewal. The task is urgent, the moment is yours, and the call is clear: dismantle deception, reclaim dignity, and write Zimbabwe’s next chapter with the ink of courage and the grammar of justice.
Wellington Muzengeza is an Independent Journalist, Political Risk Analyst and Urban Strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession, and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post-liberation and urban landscapes.
