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Queues for money in Harare turn deadly
Sunday Independent (SA)
January 06, 2008

http://www.zwnews.com/print.cfm?ArticleID=18026

Kevin Johnson, the former journalist, wasn't the only Zimbabwean to die in the past few months because of the cruel cash shortage created by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. It should be said he didn't die only because his access to his own money in his bank was impossible. He was quite seriously ill with Crohn's disease and he had long had a messed-up liver, but he might have survived had he been treated earlier and had there been some blood available from the normally efficient Blood Transfusion Centre. He might have been able to live long enough for his eldest son to write his "O" levels late last year with serenity. Instead, the boy was distracted by grief and the funeral. The problem with the blood was that power cuts, one in Harare that lasted 17 days, saw most of the blood in storage go off and replacements weren't back to normal when Johnson needed a transfusion. He had been collected by ambulance from his home after suffering a fall, which triggered internal bleeding. Medical aid covered the ambulance but the private city clinic where his wife tried to get him admitted wanted Z$600 million up front. That was about R1 500 at that time. In local money, it was six large bricks of cash which would have needed a large shopping bag to carry around. His frantic wife, Memory, called her brother-in-law, a doctor, who arranged for a bed without deposit at that saintly old hospital, St Anne's in Harare's once upmarket Avondale suburb. Johnson had bled to death by morning.

He was about 22 at the time of independence, fresh from university in South Africa, and he didn't want to trek back across the Limpopo like so many lemming whites fearful of black majority rule. Johnson despised the Rhodesian Front and its leaders and was delighted to be part of what he hoped would be a democracy when he began his journalism career at The Herald. But he didn't last long there; no professional could, and all of the well-trained editorial staff, mostly recruited after independence, left as soon as they possibly could when it became clear that The Herald was a Zanu PF political mouthpiece. Memory said on Wednesday night that she would remain in the UK for several months doing what so many former middle-class Zimbabwean women do to keep kids at school and so on, "caring" - looking after rich old Britons. Her two boys, still at school, are being looked after by relatives in Harare. Memory is a black woman. Someone calling himself Tichafa Nenzara has written an open letter to the governor of the Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono, and distributed it through one of many Zimbabwean e-mail lists. He writes that his wife became ill suddenly in the early hours of December 3. As the doors of the bank opened, his brother was there queuing to do an electronic transfer to a private hospital after the state hospital said it was unable to offer any medical assistance. There was an enormous queue for electronic transfers, and he missed the midday cut-off point. "I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I watched my deaf wife writhing in pain, with my four-year-old son looking at her, confused at why nobody was interested in assisting her," he writes.

Eventually, a doctor turned up at the state hospital, examined the woman, by now seriously ill, and ordered diagnostic tests which couldn't be done at the state hospital as all the equipment had broken down. "The following day,we were at the bank by 3.30am but, already, there was a queue. When the bank opened its doors five hours later, pandemonium ensued and the queue became useless." His brother eventually succeeded in doing the direct electronic transfer to a private clinic but it would not admit the ill woman until the money cleared into their account, and that took more than 72 hours, by which time she had died without receiving any medical attention. Nenzara signed off his letter to Gono, "in grief". This couple, like the Johnsons, are middle-class people, one with medical aid, and both with enough resources to be able to pay for medical treatment, but unable to access their own money in time.

Gono blames the black market for cash shortages which, as grieving Nenzara and every local economist knows, is just so much nonsense. Firstly, the government is the largest player in the black market to pay foreign debts such as Eskom and, secondly, it's a cash economy and nobody wants to hold on to Zimbabwe cash as it devalues daily. John Robertson, an economist, sounded exhausted only two days into 2008. "The incompetence of the Reserve Bank is staggering. They have chosen to believe their own figures of inflation." Robertson said that no official inflation figures have been released since September. Privately, he says, the government admits to about 20 000 percent inflation when every statistic collected by bankers, accountants and economists shows that real inflation is about 100 000 percent. He and other Zimbabwean economists have done their sums and know that Zambians, for example, have the equivalent of US$30 (about R200) per person on them. Zimbabweans have less than US$2. And yet Gono insists that Zimbabweans are hiding Z$63 trillion worthless Zimbabwe dollars - he maintains, to play the black market. So he cancelled the highest denomination note of Z$200 000. He also made it impossible for ordinary people to do electronic transfers. Then he changed his mind on New Year's eve and reversed both decisions. Instead of printing new notes of five or 10 million, the highest note he has just released on to the market is Z$750 000. It takes two of them to buy a loaf of bread. Well, that was on December 31; it may have changed by now.

Robertson and many others, including some government commentators, wonder why Gono has not resigned, as clearly he knows what needs to be done. "He is unable or unwilling to limit his political chances by pointing out the harsh realities to Mugabe," one economist who asked not to be named said this week. Then, of course, Mugabe is answerable to the service chiefs of the Joint Operational Command who run the country, many would say, into the ground. It was the JOC together with Mugabe who cut retail prices in July, which saw tens of thousands of large and small businesspeople arrested, and put the final nail in the coffin of the ever-diminishing manufacturing sector. In his annual new year message, Morgan Tsvangirai, founding president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, pointed to the dreadful festive season just ended and the new crisis around the corner, the start of the school year. "The situation in Zimbabwe today requires a great deal of courage, endurance and our usual resilience. We are stretched to the limit. Daily, we are fighting despondency, hopelessness and state-sanctioned despair. Our families have gone through the worst Christmas season ever imagined: without food, without our own cash. With schools opening in the next two weeks, the worst is still with us - making the current cash shortages a serious humanitarian emergency."

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