Bearer cheques, not election results …
Today we awoke to the introduction of two new bearer cheques. This was the state propaganda’s big news of the day, not election results as you would imagine.
One cheque is to the value of ZWD25 million and the other for ZWD50 million. Today’s parallel market exchange rate (it changes all the time) is 1USD = ZWD42 million.
A loaf of bread, when available, now costs about ZWD30 million but as usual there’s a catch: by the time you get to the front of the queue the price may have changed!
Jokes aside, the introduction of these new bearer cheques does not help the collapsing computer systems, cash registers and shop scales. There are too many digits and zeros for the systems to cope with.
Many companies now present invoices that simply read “multiply by 1000” in an effort to keep up.
Just today my bank informed me that they can no longer deal with accounts that have a balance of ZWD1 trillion or over; as a result, they have to split current accounts.
I now hold four work accounts instead of the one that I had on Monday.
I also pay four times more bank charges, but I guess that that’s necessary for the banks as they will have to employee more staff to keep up with the managing of these accounts. That’s no joke!
The only comment I heard this morning about the new bearer cheque was that ‘we are sick and tired of these bearers and want our new government who will give us back real notes and coins’.
Maybe tomorrow’s headlines will have some real news to report? We can’t go on like this. Something has to change.
April 5th, 2008 12:13
Thanks as ever for the news. I couldn’t bear the anxiety last night - I was hyperventilating and didn’t want to eat. So I cheated a little, took a sleeping pill, and had a merciful blackout of my own for 8 hours.
I have used your ‘money’ information in a post with information from elsewhere. The ZWD gained 50% in value last weekend and has plummeted by 33% in the last two days. We are still ahead I guess but we have squandered that initial gain in confidence.
I was thinking about what the ordinary person can do. And the money trail made me think about the role of confidence in a country. If I am confident of you, you can be confident in me. And if we are confident in each other, we are willing to do business. The exchange rate is a direct reflection of that confidence and our belief in each other to make a place where we will be safe.
So how can we as individuals help create a climate of confidence? I think we can show respect for differences. If each of us took the view “You don’t believe in me but I believe in you” we could so something like, approach, say, 3 people who are in the ‘opposition’ (however we define that personally) with no purpose but to be generally pleasant and to make their day better. We could use tomorrow, Sunday, to consider how to make Zimbabwe a safe place for our enemies.
Emotion is very contagious and I suspect that in no time at all Zimbabwe might be moving towards that place where we can say “I don’t like what you say but I will defend to the last your right to say it”. And would this make a difference? Would it take us forward?
Has my good night’s sleep made my light headed? What does everyone else think?
April 5th, 2008 12:52
The whole world is watching the Zimbabwean election results - and waiting for Mugabe to give up and get out. I believe he will flee - I just hope my country would not take him. We all watch and grieve for the Zimbabwean people. We all watch and hold our breath and cross our fingers and pray…..God bless you all and good luck. We all hope you get what you deserve - a fair, honest government for the people, elected by the people. The kindest of regards, Australia
April 8th, 2008 00:49
Noktula,
I work in the area of Computing for Sustainability. While enabling forums such as this, it seems that computing is not helping your plight. Do you know of anyone in the Zimbabawe IT industry that we might be able to talk with about this? It’s not at all clear from the outside whether you are at a state of information infrastructure collapse, and if you are, do you need/want help?
Cheers
SaM
April 8th, 2008 17:18
Hello Samuel
You might like to follow this link here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7336372.stm
As far as I know there isn’t a mashup going yet for the post election violence. The Kenya mashup http://www.ushahidi.com might be worth emulating. I am sure people could do with so help adapting that one and then those of us without IT skills could try raise the money to host it in Joburg. The SMS link is important in Africa as most people don’t have internet.
I am sure Zimbabweans would like to thank you for thinking of us and would welcome any support you can provide.
April 8th, 2008 17:29
Have a look at this link too, where we mapped the election conditions on the ground in the months running up to elections.
We plan to re-visit this for post-election violence, but at the moment are waiting for court rulings to set the parameters of our work.
Hope