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.

I was walking one morning, when it started to rain. I recall feeling a raindrop, and I considered whether I had been the first to feel the initial one or had the privilege been given to someone else. Every storm must begin with a single drop of rain. And so it is with every worthwhile movement . . . it begins with an idea that is too simple to be taken seriously . . . and then comes the storm.
~ Marco Caceres

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?

Greetings in Shona usually go something like this; “Makadii?” (How are you?) The answer usually goes; “Tiripo, kana makadiiwo?” (We are well, if you are also well). Infused in this greeting is this society’s ethos. The recognition that our destinies are intertwined. That no person is an island. That we belong to the human family. That each person has responsibilities not just to themselves, but to the community to which they belong. That you are what you are because of others. Hunhu, ubuntu.

Last night l was in my office on Selous Ave working late when something happened that is symptomatic not just of the serious decay in this country, but perhaps also of the reason why as Zimbabweans we have not risen up and done something about our mess. It was about 8:45pm and all was quiet in this area of the Avenues, when a sudden scream rang out. It was a woman screaming for help. There was terror in her voice. Although such screams are common place in the area around Selous Avenue/ Livingstone Avenue/ Third Street going towards Fourth Street, as people fall prey to the thieves and robbers who haunt the area, they are still shocking and frightening when they happen. We all ran out of the office to look out. What normally happens (and l use the word normally advisedly) is that because it is so dark, (on account of there being no street lighting), you hear the agonised screams of a person as they succumb to the thieves, long before you see them running for dear life.  You peer into the dark but you cannot see the victims until they come to a lit up area near one of the offices. And so it was that last night we heard the screams of the woman long before we saw her. She was screaming for help and it appeared to us that the thieves were still in pursuit, shouting as they went after her. So loud were her screams that she drew the attention of a number of people who were in nearby offices. People were calling out to her to run towards the light. Hearts were pounding as we waited for her to emerge from the night. We were gratified to see an armed police officer who had been checking the nearby Beverley Bank ATMs for cash, emerge and run towards the screams. And then he stopped short. The woman emerged into the lit up area, as did her accosters.  They were about three police officers who were roughing her up. She was screaming that they were hitting her as she came up to the armed police officer who was her would-be rescuer. She kept asking “why are you hitting me? Why are you hurting me? What have l done?” She was clutching her handbag to her chest and there was real terror in her voice.

As they came to the lit up area where people had gathered, the police officers pulled back a little but continued roughing the woman up, pulling and shouting at her. All this without arresting her. The would-be rescuer was at a loss as to what to do l guess, given that these were his fellow police officers. He did not ask what was going on and he just started trailing after them as the three went off, still assaulting the woman. The three of us who had been watching this tragedy just stood impotently, consumed with a mixture of guilt, fear, helplessness and despair.

The security guards went back to their posts, muttering that she was probably a prostitute. The implication being therefore that she deserved whatever abuse the police officers were subjecting her to. Other people went off, muttering and wondering what she had done. Again the implication was that she must have done something to deserve the abuse, otherwise why would the police be doing that? 

No one problematised the role of the police. No one said that even if she had broken the law, the police should have arrested her and taken her into custody, not assaulted her like criminals. There were three of them; they could have done that easily.  Even if she was a commercial sex worker, that still did not give the police the right to rough her up as they were doing.

Now, l do not know the facts of the story. I do not know what she had or had not done.  I do know however that the police take an oath of office in which they swear to uphold the laws of the country. If someone is suspected of committing an offence, he or she should be arrested and taken into custody. As far as l could tell, the woman was not resisting arrest. One is therefore left wondering why the police were behaving as they were. I have my theories as to why, but will not go into them.

The guilt we felt at not having intervened kept pulling at us long after her screams had fallen silent, we kept wondering how she was, what had happened. We questioned whether they were real police officers or they had been thieves dressed as police officers.  We wondered perhaps if they had tried to proposition her and she had rejected their advances and therefore the assault and harassment was retaliation. We wondered if perhaps they had tried to steal from the woman and were roughing her up to facilitate this. (One certainly hears enough stories in which police officers are implicated in criminal activities) They were certainly not behaving like officers of the law as they assaulted the woman. 

Our guilt arose from the fact that we had kept silent when we should have spoken out. We had stood back when we should have stepped up and stepped in. We were relieved that it was not us and we were safe. We felt sorry for the woman but that was not enough to compel us to act.  We were afraid that the lawless louts would turn on us. We were afraid perhaps of the inconvenience, so we sacrificed the woman to her doubtful fate. We were after all working late because we had to. Getting ourselves involved would have meant that we would lose valuable time getting embroiled in a messy and dangerous argument with the apparently lawless police, or so we told ourselves.  The irony is that the incident so disturbed us that we could not continue working.

Our response l think is part of the problem we have in Zimbabwe. We all know what’s wrong and what’s right but no one is willing to do what it takes for the common good. The shelves are empty, but as long as l am managing to put food on my family’s table, who cares that my neighbour’s children are going to bed hungry? As long as l can access cash through various means, who cares that someone has been spending days and nights outside the bank waiting to withdraw their paltry money. We look at them, we feel sorry, we despair but we are relieved that it is not us standing in the baking sun as we go about our business. We do not intervene. We do not speak out when we should.  As long as l is managing, it is enough. Hatisisina hunhu. We have lost our ubuntu. That which makes us members of the human family.

I hope as the Prime Minister and his two deputy prime ministers are inspecting their swanky new offices in Munhumutapa Building, they are thinking of ways of healing our community and restoring our values. 

Here at Kubatana, we are enough of politicians fiddling whilst Zimbabweans starve. Our current electronic activism campaign encourages people to get in touch with the offices of the President and the Prime Minister designate to urge them to stop stalling and start governing.

Getting contact information for the President’s office, though, was no easy matter.

First off, when I used the numbers in the telephone directory, as soon as I asked for contact information they’d transfer me to the Ministry of Information. No wonder Zanu PF wants to keep control of the Ministry of Information. It would be too hard to reconfigure all the telephone lines to separate them from the numbers for the President’s office!

When I finally got through to the right person, I asked for their email address. I could hear the receptionist shouting across the office to one of her colleagues –

“These people want our email address. Can I give it?” She asked.

“Which people?” Her colleague asked.

“These people on the phone. They’re calling from Harare. They want the email address for our office. Can I give them?”

“Who are they?”

“They’re on the phone.”

“What do they want?”

“They want our email address can I give them?”

“No. Don’t give them our email address. We don’t know who they are.”

The whole exchange reminded me an awful lot of trying to get Zanu PF’s email address.

She then came back on the line and told me they weren’t on email so she couldn’t give me the email address. So I asked for fax number. She said the fax was down. So if I have an urgent message for the President’s office? How am I meant to get it to them? She told me to phone the Ministry of Information.

It took four more phone calls and uncountable inter-office transfers for them to eventually give me their fax number – and to get them to give me a fax tone when it rang.

This is exactly what needs to change in the new Zimbabwe. As much as we need government to start governing again, this must be a New government, with a new attitude about itself and its responsibilities to the people, and a new approach towards listening to Zimbabweans and responding to what we want.

Fax the President’s office on +263 4 251641 and let them know that you want a new government – and you want it now.