During the year under review, inflation spiked from under 1 percent in 2017 to more than 400 percent in October 2019, triggering fears of a return to the 2007 2008 hyperinflationary period. The economy was thus projected to shrink by 7% according to the International Monetary Fund at a time when an estimated 8 million Zimbabweans are facing hunger and in need of food aid and the worst drought since 1992. The crisis was worsened by the dispute between President Mnangagwa and MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa over the 2018 presidential election results, with the latter refusing to recognise the former’s incumbency. This dispute spilled into Parliament, where Zanu PF MPs retaliated by refusing to recognise the chairpersons of parliamentary committees led by MDC Alliance MPs. Suffice to say the worsening socio-economic environment can easily be transposed with the 2007 – 2008 hyper-inflationary era before the relative stabilisation of the socio-economic environment during the 2009 – 2013 Government of National Unity. And as the economy continued to deteriorate, junior and senior doctors, nurses and other health workers went on strike protesting poor working conditions and shortages of drugs thereby crippling the health delivery system. Similar protests and demonstrations were staged by civil servants including teachers complaining they were incapacitated from fulfilling their duties due to poor salaries. Coming on the backdrop of the brutal clampdown of the August 2018 and January 2019 protests, Zimbabwe’s democratic space continued to shrink as the year progressed. Similar actions were meted yet again, when anti-riot police dispersed and assaulted citizens and innocent bystanders at the MDC Alliance Headquarters in Harare where its leader Nelson Chamisa was scheduled to deliver his ‘Hope of the Nation Address’. Again scores of people were injured, including journalists, as police indiscriminately assaulted supporters and bystanders that had gathered at the party’s headquarters, including elderly women. These actions undoubtedly drew local and international outrage and condemnation and by among others, heads of mission of the delegation of the European Union i.e. France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom and those of Australia, Canada and United States. 6