In this week's episode of International Dateline, Ginny Stein reports from Zimbabwe, a ruined nation where inflation is spiralling out of control at well over 10,000 percent.

Armed with her spy camera to avoid arrest, Stein hitchhikes across the border from South Africa to find supermarkets virtually empty, with almost nothing edible on the shelves. Cities are without power and there's virtually no transport. Many businesses stay open to avoid the government taking over their business, but others have given up.

However it's not just the lack of food, and the relentless queuing for what little exists that is causing distress for Zimbabweans battling to survive.

"Everything has become bigger than life. You can't get transport there is no transport. And for those who are working it is just a matter of charity. There is virtually nothing here," says a resident. The one thriving industry in the once rich African country is the funeral business. Zimbabwe currently has the world's lowest life expectancy: 37 years for men and 34 for women.

The Robert Mugabe led government is in denial about the scope of the crisis facing the country. The Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa tells Ginny that there's plenty of food in the shops, but her pictures tell a vastly different story. The government blames drought for the nation's food shortage but for years now it's been seizing productive white-owned farms and giving them to blacks with little or no large scale farming experience.

About International Dateline 

SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.