As hundreds of pensioners line up outside a bank in central Harare in the hope of collecting their pensions, military veteran Elias Nyabunzi has a sense that he has seen this all before.

If there is cash available, he will collect the equivalent of just $26, down from the $400 he was getting a few months back. A decade ago when he went to collect the lump sum he was also entitled to after 25 years in the army he was given just $1. The rest had been eaten away by hyperinflation, he was told.

“It buys nothing,” the 62-year-old says of the pension as he stands under a purple blossomed jacaranda tree wearing a faded England tracksuit.

Pensioners in Zimbabwe, who are estimated to number about 500,000, are among the hardest hit in an economy that’s stagnated for almost 20 years, a result of a botched land reform program and a profligate central bank printing press. Abrupt changes in the currency system have wiped out savings twice in a decade and, according to the government, the economy has halved in size. While pensioners have little choice, in total about a quarter of the population of 16 million has left.

This June the authorities suddenly banned the use of foreign currencies and reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar, which has since plunged 59% against the U.S. dollar. That’s a problem in a country where almost everything is imported. In 2009 the opposite happened when the Zimbabwe dollar was abolished after a bout of hyperinflation.

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