Musings on where we are today
June 8th, 2009
Saturday morning market outside Bulawayo City Hall
Saturday morning market outside Bulawayo City Hall
Its nice and toasty sitting in the warm winter sun right now. Zimbabwe has glorious winter days generally, cold and icy first thing in the morning, but by midday the sun is shining down, its not too hot, not too cold, as the littlest one of the Three Bears said “It’s Just right” .
It was this month four years ago that Murambatsvina reared its ugly head in Zimbabwe, when hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, their jobs, their livelihoods, to the vagaries and cruelty of a government hell-bent on self destruction.
So maybe its time now to reflect on where we are as a nation ?
Are things any better than they were four years ago ?
If the status quo remains the same, yes indeed things are better for some of us. But not for all Zimbabweans sadly, for the rural people things have not changed at all, they had nothing then, they still have nothing, but for the ‘middle-class’ man in the street, things are certainly a little better.
For one thing, we are not as afraid as we were a year ago. We activists have had an aching fear of arrest for some time now, since the dreaded AIPPA and POSA laws came into effect. But promises have been made and hopefully promises will be kept, and some sort of balance is creeping back into the system.
Another good thing is that the businesses too are losing their fear. For years and years businessmen have been breaking the law, since before UDI in fact, when we had sanctions busters: illegal forex dealers, bogus companies, people have been involved in a multitude of illegal and nefarious deals, just to keep our companies from going under.
Now that we have dollarised, that fear of being thrown in jail for ‘illegal forex dealings’, has hopefully all but gone from our lives. All of us were doing it without exception purely for survival, some on a larger scale than others, but now that we can legally trade in almost any currency, we are a lot more relaxed and happy about doing business in Zimbabwe.
I am curious to know what happened to all the people who were dealing in forex ? The Vapastori – the “Pavement Blockers” – where are they now, what are they doing now ? Have they resorted to another curiously African continent type employment? Selling hard boiled eggs again maybe? What has happened to all the lucky favoured people who were procuring forex at the bank rate and selling it at the street rate ? Pity those unhappy folk now, shame poor souls …..
OK need more positive things to think about…..
What about the shops ? They are literally bulging with goods, think of our shelves this time last year, this time two years ago, this time three years ago ?
How many furtive photos were taken of empty shelves ? How many desperate people did you see examining the empty bread baskets, the empty milk fridges, the basic essentials like roller meal and meat were just not there. Imagine the futility and hopelessness of a family man, a mother, not being able to find even a loaf of bread to take back to a hungry family?
Every single person for the past twenty years was smuggling money OUT of the country at great risk, and now you can take obscene amounts out of the country quite legally.
But now the silly thing is we are bringing that same money back into the country to be able to afford to live here again !!
I do know that another problem has arisen – the fact that you still need to be able to find the money to be able to buy this superfluity of goods.
Salaries are nowhere near high enough to be able to buy many of the essential items, utility bills are still ridiculously out of kilter with earnings, but at least the goods are back on the shelves and prices are coming down slowly.
Prices still have a long way to go though, I paid R10 for one kg of sugar in a Zimbabwe supermarket, whereas in a Joburg supermarket a two and a half kg pack of sugar is R14.50 !!
If only the rule of law could be restored, if only security of tenure could be established, if only Gono would go, if only Mugabe and the JOC would step down. Investors would start to pour in, the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans living abroad would begin to come back, and we could start living again as the proud Zimbabwean nation that we were, once upon a time.
