The ghosts of industry still linger in Harare’s once bustling industrial Graniteside area, evoking fond memories of the good old times in Zimbabwe. Where the air once hummed with the drums of machinery and the pride of local manufactured goods, it now buzzes with a different kind of energy dominated by Chinese traders and middlemen selling all types of low cost import plastic ware. The skeletal remains of old factories stand shoulder-to-shoulder with brightly lit warehouses turned into mini-retail shops overflowing with plastic buckets, synthetic textiles, and mass-produced imports.
Investigations by CITE revealed that the Chinese traders and their middlemen have carved out a parallel United States dollar only economy in what was once one of Harare’s industrial heartbeats. The vibrant, almost chaotic, storefronts that now characterise the Graniteside industrial area offer a veneer of prosperity, a bargain-hunter’s paradise. Despite the colourful displays of cheap goods in the plastic ware bazaars that now line up Bessemer, Strand and Dhlela Way roads, underneath lies an unsettling transformation where a two-tier economy has taken root.
On one level are the cash-rich importers, insulated from the local currency’s volatility where the Chinese traders are refusing to accept the local currency in its various forms from mobile money, swipe cards to ZIG notes, effectively operating outside the formal economy. Efforts to obtain comment from several Chinese-owned plastic ware businesses operating in Graniteside were unsuccessful, with shop managers and representatives declining to comment when approached by CITE. On the other side, are the struggling local manufacturers choked by power cuts, punitive exchange rates, and the very red tape that seems bypassed by the new arrivals.
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Several Chinese nationals have set up plastic factories in Graniteside industrial area, selling everything from buckets and tubs to packaging materials and plastic kitchenware. Zimbabwe has seen imports of plastic ware from China skyrocket in the past few years with United Nations COMTRADE database showing that plastics worth US$65.2 million landed from the Asian country last year, up from just US$10.9 million in 2012. While the growth of the plastic material sector has provided ordinary Zimbabweans with cheap goods, small-to-medium local retailers and manufacturers say they are being pushed out of business.
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