Zimbabwe's frenzied shopping spree

Around her desperate shoppers at the Harare supermarket, with trolleys piled high, were lunging at shelves, fighting, shouting to get to products that had suddenly been cut by 50 percent.

 
"The staff had all evacuated apart from the till operators. At the back, even the storeroom doors were wide open and the place had been ransacked - there was nothing left, nothing on pallets," a bystander said.  This chaotic scene has been repeated across the capital in the last week following an order by the authorities that basic goods be halved.