The night-walkers of Uganda

British Airways says goodbye to Zimbabwe 
Level 1
Elementary
What are they called now?
1
Key words
2
Match the old African state and province names on the left with their names now (on the right).
Abyssinia 
Somalia
Benadir 
Mali 
French Sudan
Mozambique 
German Southwest Africa 
Ethiopia 
Rhodesia 
Burkina Faso 
Upper Volta
Namibia 
Portuguese East Africa
Zimbabwe 
237

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British Airways says goodbye
to Zimbabwe
Last BA flight from a grounded economy
Chris McGreal on BA152, Harare–London
October 29, 2007
The last flight left the new Harare airport, flew 
over the city and dipped its wings in farewell. 
With that, British Airways said goodbye
to Zimbabwe. 
Cephas Msipa, a lifelong member of Mr 
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, said he thought it was 
probably part of a British government plan 
against the Zimbabwean ruler, Robert Mugabe, 
but he said that he was going to miss British 
Airways anyway. “In these difficult times, people 
think Air Zimbabwe is unreliable,” he said.
Air Zimbabwe flights run days late because 
there is no fuel or maintenance, or they are 
diverted when Mr Mugabe feels like going on a 
shopping trip in Kuala Lumpur or attending the
Pope’s funeral.
Annie, a white Zimbabwean, is going to miss BA 
for another reason. “There’s toilet paper on this 
plane, but there’s no toilet paper in the shops. 
It feels like we’re being cut off from the rest of
the world”. 
BA stopped flights to Zimbabwe once before in 
1965 when Ian Smith declared independence 
for Rhodesia. BA returned 15 years later when 
Mr Smith was defeated by economics and war. 
At that time, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and 
Robert Mugabe took power.
Now Zimbabwe’s government is losing 
control. Zimbabwe has a shrinking economy, 
hyperinflation and production is collapsing. At 
the same time, Mr Mugabe is creating more and 
more new bureaucracy. The official exchange 
rate is so different to the exchange rate of the 
hidden market that the central bank governor has 
to send his staff out to buy dollars on the street.
The government says Zimbabwe is having a 
great agricultural season. But there is no bread 
in the shops because the wheat harvest is 
down by two-thirds and production of tobacco 
has dropped to one-fifth of what it once was. 
The government has said that it plans to sell 
electricity to Namibia next year, even though 
there isn’t enough power to keep lights on
in Zimbabwe.
A man living in a Harare township earns, on 
average, Z$5m dollars a month, or £2.50 at the 
hidden-market rate. His journey to work in Harare 
costs more than that but he has to travel to work 
if he wants to keep his job.
British Airways stayed when other European 
airlines left Zimbabwe as its economy 
collapsed – at the moment there are about $2m 
Zimbabwean dollars to the British pound. But 
now BA says that costs are too high, particularly 
the cost of bringing fuel in by road from South 
Africa. 
Mr Msipa and the Zimbabwean government are 
suspicious but Mr Msipa admits there is a crisis, 
and that his dad might be part of the problem. 
His father is the Zanu-PF governor of Midlands 
province. There, he has taken farms away from 
white farmers and has overseen the collapse 
of agriculture. Mr Msipa says this was possibly 
a mistake. “My father is an old nationalist who 
believes that everything is about the land, but our 
generation says we should get into computers 
and call centres”. 
The younger Mr Msipa is a property developer 
who travels regularly to London. His job has 
kept the worst effects of the economic collapse 
away from him and his five children. “We have an 
advantage. I can do things ... I have contacts,” 
he said. “But how I’m going to get to London 
now is a problem. No one wants to go through 
Johannesburg. They steal your luggage there. I 
suppose it will just have to be Air Zimbabwe.”