hospitals, would rarely lose power.

And anxious patients were reassured by the promise that the hospitals could always switch on their own generators if the worst happened.

The worst duly happened when one Mrs Dorothy Dube, 59, attended the Mpilo Central Hospital in Bulawayo, for her regular three-times-a-week dialysis session. She took with her the necessary needles, tubes, fluids, etc, which the hospital can't provide but which her family can buy in neighbouring South Africa.

Twenty minutes into Mrs. Dube's dialysis, the lights went out and the machine ceased to function. The nursing staff assured her that the hospital generator would kick in.

The generator didn't kick in.

Apparently it was out of fuel. And the tank couldn't be resupplied because none of the local filling stations had any fuel either.

Mrs Dube came home distressed and frightened. Her son raced to South Africa to buy helpful drugs, and two days later the hospital managed to find some fuel, and she could return to the clinic for a successful dialysis session.

She told me: "It was a bad experience for me. But even worse for those poor people having surgical operations that day. Can you imagine how it was for them?"

Powerless industry, powerless homes, and now powerless hospitals. And suffering under it all - the powerless people of Zimbabwe.