How can we live looking over our shoulders every day as if we’re all thieves?

Town was dead quiet today. Lots of shops still haven’t opened. A friend who runs a small business won’t open his shop until February and it seems many others plan to do the same. It costs US$20,000 to buy a forex licence, which legally allows businesses to trade in foreign currency. However, most small business can barely generate enough income to pay their staff at the end of each month, never mind raise the funds required to buy that amount of forex on the black market to put towards a licence.

The result is that small businesses ‘legally’ have to trade in Zim dollars – of which there is a severe shortage – but pay for supplies and raw materials in forex. It’s impossible to do. To survive, many traders have started to trade informally in foreign currency. Enter Gideon Gono’s Reserve Bank ‘forex police’. They drift into shops in plain clothes and posing as customers they ask cashiers if they can pay for their goods in foreign currency. If the unsuspecting cashier says yes, and quotes a Rand figure, the forex police crack down and seize all the foreign currency earned that day in the shop.

One shop I was in today lost over R2,000 in one raid, and over R300 in another. He is in despair; the only way he can keep going is to trade in forex but he can’t afford the licence. Similarly, he simply cannot afford to keep going if every now and then he loses days worth of takings in raids.

His predicament is mirrored everywhere. Many many businesses have adopted a ‘wait and see’ attitude, and decided to stay closed for much longer. Their hope is that Gono will be forced to eventually recognise that the economy can only function if people can trade in foreign currency. It’s less risky and less intimidating to ‘wait and see’ than it is to run the forex police guantlet every day. As the guy I spoke to today said, “How can we live like this? How can we live looking over our shoulder everyday as if we’re all thieves?”

The idea of having forex licence’s in the first instance is downright bizarre. If it is illegal for people to trade in forex then it follows that employers cannot pay their employees in forex. If it is illegal to even have forex in your possession, and you aren’t able to earn forex, who on earth does the government think is going to buy the goods in the licensed shops?

Another friend commented today that her domestic worker had tried all day to find a shop where he could spend his Zim dollars but not one shop would take them – everyone, formally or informally, is trading in forex.

I’m wondering how long it will be before Gono and the Zanu elite start demanding that shops re-open, and how long it will be before they resume their threats to ‘take over’ businesses. Maybe that’s the whole plan behind the stupidy…. to force all businesses to close so the elite can assume control and start assest stripping this part of our economy too. They can console themselves that before they take control of all business they can send in their forex-squads to help themselves to real currency. Win-win?

Who knows what’s going on in their heads…? Anything is possible and its almost certainly disgustingly corrupt and not to the advantage of the poorest in our society.

This entry was posted by Hope on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 9:44 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.