HARARE – Soldiers and riot police were deployed to a Harare supermarket on Thursday as a nationwide shortage of cooking oil threatened to spark riots.

Thousands of people queued outside supermarkets in all the major cities and towns, with no end in sight to the crisis.

Pick n Pay supermarket on Jason Moyo Avenue and 2nd Street in Harare was forced to temporarily close as hundreds of people jostled.

Riot police had a torrid time stopping people from stampeding forward, before they were joined by uniformed soldiers.

The government blames the shortages on panic buying and hoarding by Zimbabweans who fear cooking oil is about to run out.

Cooking oil is a key ingredient used in preparing vegetable relish eaten daily by most Zimbabweans.

Busisa Moyo, the CEO of United Refineries, one of Zimbabwe’s largest cooking oil manufacturers, said the situation had become too dangerous and “unworkable” for their drivers and shop workers.

“How do we deliver cooking oil to shops of people go crazy even before we offload? It’s now a risk to our delivery van drivers, merchandisers and sales staff,” Moyo said on Twitter.

“We really want to help and we are in production, but this is counterproductive. It has become unworkable, truth be told.”

Videos have been posted on the internet of masses of people surrounding cooking oil delivery vans – raising fears of looting as the situation spirals out of control.

Moyo said Zimbabwe was not growing enough soya beans – a key ingredient in the production of cooking oil. The government, he said, was also not releasing enough foreign currency to import some of the ingredients which are not available locally. As a result, most manufacturers were operating at below capacity.

Moyo agreed with the government narrative that the current purchases of cooking oil were “not normal”. The government claims speculators are hoarding certain products to drive up demand and prices.

“I’ve been producing and selling this stuff for a decade,” Moyo said, “and I’m telling you it’s not normal. People are seeing cooking oil as a store of value and trading, a lot of the purchases are not for consumption.”

Foreign currency shortages have also hit wheat, drug and fuel imports, causing panic across the economy.