Pith Helmets, Bulging Bellies And The Rest Of Us
Dear Family and Friends,
Along a vast, deserted, newly built boulevard devoid of spectators, the Presidential convoy headed towards Mount Hampden for the official opening of the new session of Parliament. The capital city, Harare, was blurred and hazy in the far distance. It was a cool, windy and heavily overcast October day.
Gone now is the pomp and ceremony of the President driving along the central streets of Harare in the Presidential Rolls Royce with people standing under the purple flowering Jacaranda trees to watch the spectacle. Everything now is out of sight of the common people, the gap between the leaders and us grows ever wider.
The cameras filmed the arrival of the presidential vintage Rolls Royce at the entrance to the new 200-million-dollar Chinese-built Parliament. The military horse patrol was there, riders’ heads adorned in white sun/pith helmets. As the car drew to a stop the security men hurried into place, dark suits, unbuttoned jackets, white shirts, bulging bellies.
Later when President Mnangagwa entered the grandiose new Parliament there was a wave of cheering, whistling and ululating. He described a country of successes which sounded far removed from the reality of the one we live in. We see a country where urban residential areas go for weeks, months and years without water, where power cuts last 10 or more hours most days, where the vast majority of people make a living selling goods on the dusty roadsides and a country where the national currency lost almost fifty percent of its value just five days ago.
Imagine going to bed with 100 dollars in your wallet and waking up the next morning to find that it’s only worth 56 dollars. This is what happened to the Zimbabwe Dollar, officially called the ZiG, a few days ago.
Suddenly you can only buy half the food you were going to buy, half the medicine, pay half the bus fare, half the rent, half the bills. Imagine if you were supposed to go the doctor today, or the dentist or pay the school fees, what do you do, who do you turn to?
Imagine if you own a small business and were accepting payment in Zig’s at the official exchange rate, as was insisted by government; today you are broke, you will not be able to restock your shelves, all your goods are worth 44% less than yesterday. And if you put your prices up by 44% today you will watch people like me, walk in, look at your prices and walk out again because we can’t afford them.
We have been down exactly this same road before at the hands of this same ruling party. People will panic buy, shelves will empty, doors will close. On the flip side of the coin well connected people have doubled their money overnight. Those who were able to source US dollars from the bank at the rate of 14 Zigs to one US dollar, doubled their money when the rate changed to 25 ZiGs to one.
The irony of this official 44% devaluation of Zimbabwe’s local currency, launched just five months ago, is that it is the very people who are employed by the government of Zimbabwe who are the biggest losers. On Thursday they received their government salaries in ZiGs and on Friday that same government devalued the currency. It is those Zimbabweans, the civil servants, from teachers, nurses and doctors to police, army and prison workers to engineers, pensioners and so many more – it is they who have been reduced to penury overnight. Millions of Zimbabweans are 44% poorer today than they were last week.
Hot on the heels of the devaluation came the announcement that government have reduced the amount of cash travellers are allowed to take out of the country from US$10,000 to US$2,000. This will have a huge impact on informal traders. It will increase the prices of goods in informal tuckshops; lead to shortages of basic commodities, reduce the amount of foreign currency in circulation, increase the price of foreign currency and then the prices of goods and then inflation.
It seems Zimbabwe has not learnt a single thing from its own recent past. In an instant we have returned to the nightmare of 2007 and 2008. If you have family or friends in Zimbabwe, they will need your help to survive this and what will inevitably follow.
There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website. My new evocative photobook “Zimbabwe’s Timeless Beauty The 2024 Collection” and my “Beautiful Zimbabwe 2025 Calendar” have both just been published and are available to order from my website.
Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 24th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.
Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)
Love Cathy 3 October 2024.
Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.co.zw/
All my books are available from my website https://cathybuckle.co.zw/ or www.lulu.com/spotlight/