If you want political analysis of Zimbabwe – ask an Uber driver. In Cape Town earlier this year, I met the same Uber driver twice. Typically overqualified, having been a buyer and manager for a retailer, Zimbabwe’s sharply deteriorating economy drove him to South Africa to drive for a living. His prognosis for President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government was that it was “the last kick of a dying horse”.

The reintroduction of the Zimbabwe currency could deliver the regime the coup de grâce. In February, the ruling Zanu-PF government unilaterally ended the ten-year-old multicurrency system, forcing a single currency – the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollar – on citizens and businesses. The move was anticipated, after Zanu-PF had introduced a range of quasicurrencies to manage its fiscal deficit. The central bank followed with an announcement that it would print $400-million to back the currency. In July, Mnangagwa chimed in and insisted that Zimbabwe must have its own currency by the end of 2019.

Few believe Zimbabwe’s desire for the Zimbabwe dollar in the current political and economic environment is credible or sustainable. It fails all the basic currency tests: popular confidence, reserves to back the currency and an independent monetary policy to curb inflation. Its arbitrary introduction risks turning back the clock to pre-2009 and hyperinflation. It risks reintroducing hyperinflation, seeing the economy spiral and bringing civilians out in protest onto the streets. A wholesale refusal to use the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009 forced Zimbabwe to adopt the multicurrency system after hyperinflation had reached an absurd 230-million per cent and the US dollar became the de facto currency of choice.

The impact has been immediate: inflation has soared. On June 17, the statistical agency, ZimStat, announced that year-on-year inflation reached 97.8% in May, a sharp spike from 75.8% in April. On July 9, a colleague in Zimbabwe reported inflation of 98%. The RTGS dollar had lost more than 132% of its value in the four months to June, already forcing the Finance Ministry to promise civil service pay rises – prices of basic goods have shot up as the value of their pay plummets. A parallel market has opened up. Businesses are pegging their prices to the parallel market rate to the US dollar.

Businesses have, for the most part, complied with the directives, while flagging the acute shortage of foreign exchange that cripples their business. Foreign currency scarcity also risks freezing capital expenditure and foreign direct investment. Foreign businesses that supply goods into Zimbabwe face a long wait for payment, as hard currency is in extremely short supply. Some suppliers are luckier: government has begged South African State-owned electricity utility Eskom to urgently supply it with power after paying $10-million to offset a $33-million debt. Meanwhile, those who can afford it have taken refuge in the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, which, by mid-June, had recorded gains for 12 weeks in a row as business turns to equities as a haven from the wider economic meltdown.

The impact of the new currency has scuppered the credibility of Mnangwa’s ‘Zimbabwe is Open for Business’ campaign. It also removes hope that Mnangagwa can bring real change. When he came to power in November 2017, Mnangagwa spoke with charm at home and at Davos, in Switzerland, of change and openness, of liberalising the economy and removing restraints on foreign investors, and encouraging Zimbabweans living abroad to return. In their desire to hope for change and, in a collective act of voluntary amnesia, Zimbabweans and international diplomats allowed themselves to forget who Mnangagwa was – Robert Mugabe’s right-hand man, his eyes and ears as head of intelligence – and his henchman through years of brutality. The window of opportunity Mnangagwa created was short but it lulled the international community into giving him the benefit of the doubt and bending over backwards to facilitate a path to the massive debt relief that is critical to repair the economy.

Then came elections in July 2018. Zanu-PF stalwarts exhibited the same old behaviour to manipulate a sure win for Mnangagwa. The window slammed shut on August 1, when the ‘new’ regime unleashed the army on unarmed opposition protesters in Harare. Six opposition protesters were murdered. Violence against protesters again in January further dashed hopes and ended Mnangagwa’s campaign to re-establish diplomatic links with the UK, the European Union and the US. An already hostile US President Donald Trump reimposed targeted sanctions against Mnangagwa and his deputy, Constantino Chiwenga, and renewed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which prevents the US from voting for International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank debt relief for Zimbabwe. Despite Zanu-PF spending money on two Washington lobbying firms, this is unlikely to change any time soon.

With avenues for debt relief and new financing so closed, the only way out is political. An economic collapse could force dramatic political and economic change. The IMF forecasts that the economy will contract by 5.2% in 2019 to push Zimbabwe into recession.

Less dramatic would be to recreate the government of national unity (GNU) comprising Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF and Nelson Chamisa’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Zimbabwe last had a GNU in 2009 under the late MDC Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai. Over four years, the GNU saw improvements in the economy, health and housing, with gross domestic product growth recorded at 10.6% and inflation decreasing from 231-million per cent in 2008 to less than 5% in 2013.

For most Zimbabweans, the no-change politics and soaring inflation bring back memories of the worst of times – all felt under Zanu-PF’s inept political and economic management. Since Mnangagwa came to power, 800 000 Zimbabweans have voted with their feet and left to find work in South Africa, many of them to take up occupations well beneath their economic and educational abilities.