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A non-currency country
Moses Moyo, The First Post (UK)
June 28, 2007

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=7501

It-s a daily struggle trying to survive in a society where money is worthless

I popped out for a Z$25,000 loaf of bread last Friday. It had gone up to Z$30,000 dollars. I ran home for the extra, ran back to the shop - and the price of my loaf had risen to Z$44,000. That's life in Zimbabwe today - or at least it was, until this week when our government took bold and decisive action to reduce the inflatory spiral, and predictably everything got even worse straight away. Perhaps alarmed by the forecasts of doom issuing from the lips of American ambassadors and others, the government decided that the simplest way to cut prices was to... well, cut prices. An order went out to all manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to slash their prices by half. Any who showed the slightest reluctance to do so were visited by the Green Bombers - young graduates from the Zanu PF terror camps whose economic arguments are enforced with a smack on the head with a stout stick.

Those shops that obeyed the edict and reduced their prices were invaded by fervent shoppers, and the result was chaos, with many businesses threatening to close their doors for the rest of the week at least, if not for good. And the end result? Where it worked best, where prices were cut by a genuine 50 per cent, the government succeeded in reducing the cost of living to almost exactly what it was 10 days ago. The government has some other exciting wheezes on the go. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono is issuing a new set of bearer cheques, replacing those introduced last August, and intended to be used instead of dollars. Bearer cheques, of course, are soon subject to the same inflationary whirlwind as real money. So where are we today? Back in the same old chaos, is the answer. Zimbabwe is becoming a non-currency society. No one banks money any more. We only go to our banks to cash our salary cheques as soon as they are paid in. Then we run - and I do mean run - to the nearest store to buy something. Anything.

After all, a kilo of sugar is as sweet next week as it is today, and the money spent to buy it will be little more than worthless tomorrow. You might like to know how much things cost on an everyday basis, and I can give you some prices. A shirt is Z$15m. Shoes, Z$20m. A beer - Z$75,000. Mind you, that's at the time of writing. No doubt by the time of reading those prices will seem fatuously low. So how do we manage? The answer is, by the historic medium of barter. Housewives barter what they have in their kitchen cupboard. A few beans for a litre of oil, perhaps. They take their example from our government, which now hands over what sugar we still produce to Malawi in exchange for maize meal. So whose fault is all this? Who's to blame? The government has no doubt. It's you - the nations of the west. You are deliberately strangling us; deliberately inflating our currency; deliberately bringing economic chaos down on our heads, in order to get rid of Mugabe and co. If that is so, can you please hurry it up?

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