What’s in a name, Zimbabwe?
Reserve Bank Governor John Mushayavanhu had something to say about it all: ‘If you blame me you’re actually blaming the World Bank.’ Image: Bloomberg
Oh dear, what an embarrassing situation unfolded in Zimbabwe over the past fortnight. Subsequent to an absolutely chaotic 10 days following the announcement by the government of a new currency and the immediate collapse of all banking and other payment systems, we quickly became the laughing stock.
Zimbabwe’s repeated answer to economic chaos is to change the currency, give it a new name, strip a bunch of digits off the end, waste unknown millions printing another lot of bank notes and then pretend it’s just business as usual.
But it’s not business as usual – and the sillier this change-over became, the faster the back-pedalling got.
As we all tried to get our heads around what had happened, and how we were going to pay bills with old money no one wanted and new money that hadn’t even been released yet, out came Reserve Bank Governor John Mushayavanhu to stir the pot a bit more.
“We didn’t know much about the structured currency,” he said of the ZiG. “We got a consultant from the World Bank … maybe they didn’t advise us properly … if you blame me you’re actually blaming the World Bank.”
Oh no! As one, we put our hands over our faces! Blame it on the World Bank!
What a thing to say.
Arrests
Then the big stick emerged and threats came thick and fast.
A week before the new bank notes were even released over 100 currency dealers were arrested in Harare.
The state media bragged about it, but we all know that 100 dealers is a drop in the vast ocean of street currency traders who literally line the pavements outside every supermarket offering to change your US dollars at a rate significantly higher than you can get in the bank.
One press report quoted a currency dealer as saying: “We are all in this mess together. The police can come to assault us … but after work they will come to us asking for the US dollars.”
One economist put his finger on it when he said: “Do you think the government has enough police to arrest seven million people? Everyone has been changing money on the parallel market.”
He’s right of course because for the past 15 years we have all been buying or selling US dollars on the side of the road where we can get at least a third, half or more for our US dollars than the banks will give us.
How do our leaders think we have all survived these years of mayhem? And how do they think so many people got so rich so quickly?
Last week the conversion rate for ZiG to US dollars went from the bank-stated rate of