Just as Zimbabwe is being told to applaud single-digit inflation, reality has arrived in the form of court papers.
Libya’s central bank has taken Zimbabwe’s finance minister Mthuli Ncube and the National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe to the UK High Court, seeking more than US$100 million in unpaid debt. It is the latest reminder that macroeconomic calm means very little when a country cannot service what it owes.
This is not a new problem. It is an old one resurfacing because Zimbabwe has never dealt with it properly.
According to the filing, loans dating back to a 2001 fuel credit facility were guaranteed by the Zimbabwean state. Over two decades later, only US$5.5 million has been repaid. With interest, the liability now exceeds US$100 million. That debt has survived multiple administrations, currency resets and economic narratives, quietly compounding in the background.
Zimbabwe today remains locked out of international capital markets because of more than US$21 billion in unpaid obligations. Arrears to multilateral lenders stretch back 26 years. Private creditors continue to circle. Fuel traders, commodity houses and former commercial farmers are all owed money. Inflation statistics do not make these claims disappear.
This is where the limits of paper economics become obvious.
Low inflation is often presented as a gateway to recovery. In Zimbabwe’s case, it does not unlock borrowing, restore trust or reopen capital markets. Creditors do not price risk based on CPI charts. They look at repayment history, legal enforcement and political credibility. On those measures, Zimbabwe remains radioactive.
The Libyan case also exposes a deeper contradiction in government messaging. On one hand, authorities speak of stabilisation, discipline and reform. On the other, they are being sued abroad for debts acknowledged repeatedly since 2005 and still unpaid. Stability without solvency is not reassurance. It is delay.
Even efforts to creatively settle debts underline the desperation. Zimbabwe’s reported talks to repay Trafigura Group with gold and nickel point to a country short of cash and credibility. Asset-based repayment is not strategy; it is constraint.
The unresolved compensation agreement with former commercial farmers is another example. A US$3.5 billion deal was signed, then effectively parked. The message to creditors is consistent: agreements can be made, but enforcement is uncertain.
Inflation control does nothing to change that perception.
In a stagnant economy, low inflation often signals suppressed demand rather than renewed confidence. People are not spending because incomes are weak. Businesses are not expanding because capital is unavailable. The state is not borrowing because no one trusts it to repay. That is not macroeconomic success. It is macroeconomic containment.
Debt, unlike inflation, does not respond to optimism. It responds to payment.
Zimbabwe’s real economic bind is not price instability. It is credibility. Until the country demonstrates a clear, enforceable path to clearing arrears, restructuring obligations and honouring guarantees, creditors will continue to seek relief wherever they can find it, including foreign courts.
The Libyan lawsuit is not an outlier. It is a warning.
You can stabilise prices.
You can redesign currencies.
You can rebrand economic policy.
But if debts remain unpaid, the past will keep returning, interest added, summons in hand.
Zimbabwe’s crisis has never been just about inflation. It has always been about trust. And trust, once lost, cannot be statistically engineered back into existence.
