[Netwerk24] Only 700,000 Zimbabweans work - nearly half of them in the public service.That's the least of working since 1968, when Robert Mugabe as vryheidstryder was thrown in jail by the prime minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith.
Zimbabwe has a population of approximately 13.8 million (it is not known how many people of working age are not).
"People survive because they have to. Money relatives abroad sending off is a major element of survival, "said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare.
Thousands of Zimbabweans working informally and sidewalks are full of stalls offering everything from tomatoes to pirate DVDs sold. According to a 2011 survey of the country's statistical office, known as Zimstat, working almost 84% of Zimbabweans in the informal sector and 11% in the formal sector.
More than 3 million Zimbabweans are estimated since 2010 left the country, most of them for South Africa, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
The unemployment crisis can be traced to 2000, when the government began to annex commercial white-owned farms to. It has the country's import revenue for products such as tobacco and paprika make a drastic fall and thousands of workers jobless.