Well, I do not know about you, but I have almost completely moved outside the Zanu PF economy. Of course, there is no point being in it. I cannot make it work, it does not work for me (nor anyone else it seems), nor does it even work for Zanu PF. And it is like voting. A bit of ‘voting with your feet,’ but I can do it without leaving. I can select the regime I want to be in, and I want to be in one that works.

And it is no longer foreign currency – it is now a local currency for working markets. The US dollar economy is the one that seems to work. You can sell goods and services in it, and buy goods and services in it. Work on a budget. Save. All those things we used to do, before they destroyed our medium of exchange by printing.

From the most basic economy, a barter economy, – you swap this or that you do not need for that which you do. Next step up, the introduction of a ‘medium of exchange’. You can then swap what you do not need for this currency device, and use this currency device to swap for stuff you do need later. The medium of exchange still has enough value, and retains it’s value for long enough, to make the bigger deal (what you did not need, for what you do need) viable after more than five hours. This ‘medium of exchange’, the Zanu PF dollar, is no longer that instrument. However, the USD is – or Rands will work too, or Yuan, Yen, Metcais, Pula, Kwacha, Pounds etc, just the USD we all know. And know it’s value.

So Zanu PF is now trying to control this economy. Despite our ‘sovereignty’. They are licensing US$ shops. (They even tried to license power generators in US$.) And of course they have to control it. The whole point of power, (which they are clinging to tenaciously) is to make money. So what is the point of controlling the counter, when everything happens under the counter? Moreover, a government must live in a budget. It collects revenue, from its citizens (tax) and in exchange provides them with services. The City government collects rates and takes away our refuse and provides roads with no potholes. A national government collects taxes (income, corporate, VAT, etc) and provides security (cross border – the ZNA, internal, the ZRP), water, education, health, passports etc. However, this local national government has destroyed the economy, therefore they have no tax base, therefore they provide no services.

Specifically, they cannot pay the Army. So they do it by printing more money, convincing the soldiers that it is a ‘medium of exchange’, so the guys with guns do not use them against their employers. Simple. However, it cannot last forever. The bubble will burst. The soldiers will realize that they are not really getting paid, but are working as Zanu PF volunteers.

However, for the rest of us (who do not have civil service jobs), the USD economy works. The main problem being cash. (Sounds like the Zanu PF one!) Getting enough cash for day-to-day transactions. Small bills for making change. Etc. But everyone has it. Gardeners and maids are getting paid in it (and very happy to be too). You can buy vegetables from the street vendors with it. Telephone top up cards. Everything you need to buy: meat, drinks, bread, milk, pet food, fuel, dinning out, movies, club subscriptions, books, paintings, etc is done in real money. A real medium of exchange.

You cannot put USD in a bank (for safe keeping) but then the bank is just a black hole anyway. I think I have about three accounts with there different institutions but there is nothing really there. Just Zanu PF money, and the figures are meaningless. 19 trillion times 57 billion at a rate of 63 gadzillion to 100 times nothing is 145 billion, million, trillion nothings.

Since Monday, queues that are miles long
have filled the streets outside banks
waiting to draw the maximum allowed – equivalent to US$2 per day

People are unable to buy food
or to get to their jobs or their rural homes

3 million Zimbabweans
- families that were once self sufficient robust farmers
now stand on the edge of starvation

these are our people
skilled and powerful
gentle and loving and patient and resourceful beyond belief
brought to their knees

. . . and still they battle for power at the top

from in here,
we begin to understand
that this is not just about saving lives
- for we may not be able to do that

in the last 2 weeks I have sat in circles and listened to stories
from faces grey and worn and desperate
for their parents
and wives and children
out in the rural homes without food
‘eating fruit and roots of indigenous trees’
‘what will become of them?’
‘we have no news’

the evidence is already before us
as we begin to hear of the deaths

we are outside the limits of our power to help

what is it that we are able to learn at this time?
apart from bearing witness
to how amazing we are
as we negotiate this space
with dignity and respect
and wait for our voice to be heard
above the clamour for power and wealth

waiting to emerge from old wounds
wearing new wings of hope

An underground movement that calls itself People to People distributed, or rather littered, Harare’s streets with flyers over the weekend carrying a message rebuking the Reserve Bank Governor for printing substandard bank notes in the form of the new $20 000. Aside from detailing how the $20 000 note has no tight security features and is probably being replicated, the flyers also mention that some shops and vendors are not accepting this note as legal tender. The flyer also demands reasonable withdrawal limits and reasonable policies to curb inflation.

I started hearing complaints about the $20 000 note last week and indeed, it is of poor quality and appears to have been printed on something like bond paper. It also doesn’t have raised font or the silver security strip and watermark that have been the usual security features. But until today it has been possible to transact with it. First it was the hwindis (conductors). They are no longer considering the $20 000 note as legal tender. Unfortunately for them a lot of us had that note and we’d gone such a distance that either dropping us all off or taking us all back to the taxi rank would have been a loss either way. The hwindi eventually capitulated on taking the notes muttering under his breath that as soon as he can he will deposit the money in a bank.

While it is commendable citizen activism the flyers may spark alarm and despondency. The flyers were strewn all over the city from taxi ranks to shopping centres such that those who initially hadn’t closely analyzed the $20 000 note are all going to start shunning it. Now this is a disaster because that’s what the banks are churning out and one cannot exactly consider the option of re-depositing because of the hassle getting it in the first place and there is no guarantee of getting 10s next time. In any case, who wants to deal with tellers who are always on go slow and probably orchestrate the formation of the long bank queues in order to work overtime to reap the benefits?

When bearer cheques were first introduced in 2003 people blasted them for their insulting poor quality and very existence but not to the extent of actually not recognizing them as legal tender. If the people lose faith in the national currency, it spells disaster. One of the fundamental principles of a good economy is that the people have confidence in it. Most Zimbabweans know the security features of the US dollar better than their own money. In fact, they can tell a fake from a real one and actually know which year that country printed new notes.

It is nauseating to think that some people can just play games with a country’s whole economy and get away with it. What will it take for the man who sits at the helm of our central bank to admit failure and resign?

It really is a shame. The Shona version of the People to People flyer concludes by saying: Nderipi zita idzva reBhanga guru renyika? Rinonzi Zeroes Acre! Loosely translated: What is the new name for country’s central bank? It is called the Zeroes Acre! Indeed.

Small wonder for us pessimists that the “Founding Father” is still at it, deciding when we shall know about OUR future. It brings me back to my favourite question about our post-independence democracy dalliance: “why hold elections if losers claim to be winners?” “Because losers don’t care about the result, stupid!” Remember that old truism: “finders keepers, losers weepers?” Perhaps we typically fit the bill. Perhaps that makes us losers of the American kind. But as the old tale goes concerning our lot as once told by that not-so-esoteric spin guy whom cartoonists believe has more scalp than hair, Poof Moyo, we are a peace loving lot therefore we are not very much likely to take up any kind of arms to protest against anything. Even when someone breaks wind in a crowded banking hall, we all suffer silently, and the very fact that one decides to break wind in that crowded banking hall depicts us a people with no sense of shame whatsoever. So a windbreaker of the political kind gets off lightly because, well, we tolerate all kind of nonsense! And like that banking hall dolt, the politically-challenged windbreaker has no shame whatsoever. But then, if you take up arms in post-independence Zimbabwe, what other limbs are you left with? And then the soldier laid down his arms. Catch my drift? Though what is happening in Zimbabwe is not funny anymore, you still find people laughing. Only it ain’t the zany type no more! “You will laugh alone” goes the ghetto parlance. You laugh not because you find it amusing, but because you wonder what kind of species we have become. It is the cynical laugh that says, I don’t believe this. It is stuff that that would have you raving mad: incredible prices of basics and ridiculous wages for starters. One has to listen to the anger in the streets to get a feel of why nothing has happened since the 90s when this rot set in. Some believed it started much earlier, when Ndabaningi was ousted from the party he formed, perhaps? The guy with a funny “mouth-do” has juju, I heard someone say the other day. Surreptitiously I exclaimed “oh my God.” If we are to reduce this suffering to this, then there is nothing we can do until some malevolent god makes a grand appearance. But one thing I know for sure is that I detest windbreakers of any kind, because, as common understanding would have it, they have dead consciences.

With the weather heating up and given the amount I walk, my consumption of Mr. Freeze-Its has increased dramatically. There’s nothing like frozen flavored ice chips to combat the sun’s rays. I’ll need to execute taste-testing research, although I’m pretty sure I like the purple ones best. No research is needed to say any brand other than Mr. Freeze-It pales in comparison. Finding the tasty ice-pops for sale is sometimes a challenge. It’s not like vendors sit in the sun for hours with this particular product. I hope the rumor that vendors store them in the morgue is not true. The other day I was in a desperate search for a Mr. Freeze-It. I saw lots of people eating them and without thinking, I found myself asking anyone and everyone with one in their hand if they were selling. In part, it was the heat and my desperation affecting my brain and preventing me from looking for an actual vendor. But also, it made me realize how I’ve become accustomed to thinking that pretty much anyone and everyone in Zimbabwe is selling something. The term actual vendor has come to be expansively defined.

I’ve been wondering if vendors will begin selling imported products in US$ and local products in ZWD. Like the Spar stores now do. I’ll admit I felt relieved when I went in Spar, looked at a tin of tuna for US$2.10, and knew exactly what it costs. I didn’t have to do math. I didn’t have to remember the rate at which I last changed money. I didn’t have to wonder if the price just increased or if by chance, the store had forgotten to increase the price making it a good deal. That said, I find the mix of US$ and ZWD products unsettling. It seems the US$ shopper can most readily do three things: 1) clean their house and wash their clothes; 2) season food with chutney sauce; and 3) eat many flavors of Simba chips and Doritos chips. The first two are not such bad things. It’s that third one that I find depressing.

I do like chips. But I don’t like that it’s availability in US$ which makes me like and buy them more. And apparently I’m not alone in US$-driven love of chips. I was in Spar Saturday morning, one aisle was all chips, and everyone’s basket had chips. I went back to the Spar later that day and the queue was long. Everyone was buying chips. I went back to the Spar the next day and the chip aisle was like most aisles in Zimbabwe – empty. Time will tell if selective US$ sales helps or hurts the economy. I’m no economist, but somehow it seems contradictory to be phasing in US$ and suspending bank transfers through RTGS (unless it’s same-bank RTGSing). Then again, the two fiscal policy moves might work themselves out in similar ways. People will buy whatever is for sale in US$. Even chips they know they don’t really need or want. Chips will boost the economy. Just as people will chip away at the RTGS suspension. Say you need a bill paid, but don’t have an account at the bank where the payment needs to go. Not to worry. Someone who has an account at the bank will be selling the service to RTGS for you. Either that or open an additional bank account.

Over the past few years, life in Zimbabwe has increasingly come to resemble an Ionesco drama. One ridiculous government policy follows another, each more unconscionable than the last. And somehow, the stated purpose of the legislation never seems to gel with what the policy actually accomplishes.

Take, for example, the latest genius move on the part of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono. On Thursday he suspended the RTGS transfer payment scheme, because he had found that it had become “an active vehicle for illicit foreign exchange parallel market dealings, as well as a convenient excuse by sellers of goods and services to overprice their commodities.”

Never mind that it had also become an essential method of organising payments in an environment where bank queues take up literally hours of every working day. The RTGS and Internet banking set up enabled some people to perform transactions without having to join the bank queues – thus saving their own time, and keeping the queues a bit shorter than they otherwise would be.

Suspending RTGS to curb corruption is like using a machete to clean out the infection from your finger. In an economy where people can get to the bank at 6am and still be only number 3,478 in the queue, suspending RTGS makes the simple, basic, ordinary transactions of daily life and business impossible. To add insult to injury, it will put more people into the queues – the people in building societies like CABS, who don’t have cheque books and now need to get bank cheques drawn to pay their bills, and the people who need to deposit these cheques. Transactions at the bank near us had already begun to take longer than they used to – in part because the tellers are on go slow in the hopes that they can earn more overtime. Meanwhile, the kinds of people who were taking advantage of RTGS to profiteer off Zimbabwe’s crumbling economy will just find other corrupt ways in which to make their money – Your cash barons ye shall always have with you.

And yet, despite the outrage of it all, the Sunday Mail refers to the move as one to “bring sanity in the banking sector.” It also warns Zimbabweans that the Reserve Bank will be keeping tabs on everyone who is withdrawing money from the bank every day – to establish “what kind of business they are into.” With transport having gone up to $4,000 one way, bread costing $6,000 and the maximum daily withdrawal only $20,000, might it just be possible that people withdrawing money every day are just into the business of getting to work, having something to eat, and getting home again?