Letter from Harare: Life grinds to a halt as Mugabe's fuel runs out

There is a joke that Zimbabweans lack so many basic commodities that they do not know which queue to join, but it no longer seems very funny. In Harare’s once comfortable suburb of Greencroft yesterday about 200 people queued outside the supermarket for bread. At the Shell service station next door about 20 lorries and buses were waiting at the diesel pump. At the Mobil station next to that the queue for petrol stretched down the road and out of sight. Bread shortages have been the norm for more than six months in Zimbabwe, but they are now being matched by fuel shortages that threaten to paralyse the country.