Among the many signs of a country sliding into chaos, one has gone largely unnoticed: Zimbabwe's morgues are filling up. It's not only that more people are dying, but also that the families of those who are cannot afford to pay their medical bills any longer. To escape them, relatives are registering the sick under false names. When they die, the bodies cannot be claimed.The practice is just one of the increasingly desperate measures Zimbabweans are taking to survive in a collapsing economy where inflation runs at 1,700% a year and the value of local currency can plummet in a few hours.
Most of those who can have left the country in search of a means of survival, or at least made plans to do so. Typical of the estimated 3m Zimbabweans who have left - two-thirds of the country's working-age population from doctors and teachers to farm labourers and soldiers - are Mbongani Ntzombane's sons.
They headed south across the Limpopo river, bribing their way into South Africa, and then sent word to their siblings that Johannesburg might not be the promised land but it at least offered hope.
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