Zimbabwe Absurdity

My domestic servant asked me this morning if she could go to a ZANU-PF (ruling party) “meeting” at lunchtime. I said yes as not going to these gatherings can be a bit detrimental to ones health. I mentioned this to my staff at work and immediately there was something of a panic until I pointed out that as far as I knew this was not “official”; nobody in authority had mentioned it to me. Anyway, I used it as an excuse to stay away from work and the farm over lunchtime as I had no particular intention of attending either. It could of course be an excuse for the maid to get the afternoon off but she knows that I will check up so I doubt it.

Jenni has been a bit off colour recently so I took her to the vet on Tuesday. It cost me all of 16 billion Zim dollars (about 8 of the US type) so I was not too upset. What did concern me though was that I heard another customer mention that dog food was becoming increasingly difficult to find because the manufacturer of the most popular brand could not find the sorghum to put in it. Now THAT could be a problem! Jenni is OK now and back looking for the jackals that got away on Monday evening. She has a scary turn of speed when she wants to and caught up with one very quickly. Fortunately it was a bit more agile and got away without a punch up. They frequently carry rabies. On the same run that I do with her there is a genet cat (lanky type of wild feline) but it is much quicker than her and wily to boot. It does not stop Jenni trying to catch it though and when we get near the area where she’s seen it I can see the adrenaline start to kick in.

I have just had an email from my ISP saying that they are not going to bother charging us this month as by the time they get the money it will be worth half of what we paid. Therefore they are withholding charges for the time being and trust that as loyal customers we will pay the final bill in full whenever it arrives! Wow, I am impressed!

“Quadrillion boost for agric” was a headline in today’s government newspaper, The Herald. A couple of days ago I was chatting to my bank manager Colin, about the use of such vague terms. It seems that we have adopted the billion as being a thousand million because I asked him if I could write a cheque for that amount. He seemed to think that nobody would know what it meant. Well here is my best guess on a quadrillion.
Million = 1,000,000
Billion = 1,000,000,000
Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000
Quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000 which is less than a million US dollars.

I should have been pleased that I’d just got a trillion dollar order and looking at the invoice I did notice that the itemized line needed some more spaces to fit in the 12 zeros.  I looked at the cheques again (no, only 500 million allowed per cheque) to see that the first one was missing the “dollars” after the “five hundred million” and was unacceptable to the bank. The second (you can only write cheques to the value of 500 million and they must be banked on separate days) was post-dated by a week and therefore unacceptable to me. I should explain that. Cheques take about 5 days to clear in this country so these were going to devalue by at least 50% before I could access them and then the bank would only allow me to draw 10 billion in cash in any one day. Cheques? Well, few outlets are accepting cheques these days – for the very reason that I was less than impressed. From the customer’s point of view we were just too good to pass up. He was getting rid of money (not a huge asset in Zimbabwe dollars) to get seedlings that were only going to appreciate (in Zimbabwe dollar terms if not real money). We were going to be getting rid of assets in the form of chemicals, fertilizer and other necessities for the growing of seedlings to get nearly useless Zimbabawe dollars. Clearly things were going to have to change. So this morning we have stopped accepting new orders for anything but cash. Preferably real money but therein lies a poisoned chalice. It’s illegal to deal in anything but Zim dollars though just about anyone will accept real money if they think the supplier will not rat on them. The customer in question is coming to see me in an hour or so to sort out his cheques. We will see what happens…

I was talking to a black customer on Tuesday. He farms in the north of the country and though I don’t know him very well he seemed to trust me with his less than flattering opinion of the powers that be. He was telling me that if you are vaguely successful you are seen as being a member of the Opposition (MDC). Likewise if you don’t supply food to the government “agents” or if you don’t supply transport on demand. Last week mobs had descended on his workers’ compound and burnt four houses. The next day they wanted transport to go to a rally. I didn’t ask the obvious question. He admitted that he now slept with a loaded firearm by the bed. When I asked if he wondered if there was any point to all this he gave the now predictable reply: “What else can I do?”

How badly did I want this butter? Obviously badly enough to fork out the equivalent of 10 USD for a kg! I don’t use it that much but sometimes it’s really nice to enjoy a slice of fresh bread and Marmite! I cannot remember what the price was last time I bought but I do know it was much less in real terms. Actually the last butter I bought was in South Africa at the end of March so I reckoned I owed myself this treat.

Last week I had to go and get some inputs for the nursery. I suppose I could have paid in Zim dollars if I’d had them but the truth was I didn’t. I’d even had to “bring in” (I know someone who has cash here and I have money there so an arrangement was made) some of my hard saved USD just to keep the company going long enough to see through some seedlings that I’m pretty sure I can get USD for. It’s a gamble and if it doesn’t pay off I guess we will close. So, I took the figurative deep breath and went for it. On entering the fertilizer into the computer at work I noticed that the real (i.e. USD) price had gone up some 20% since I’d last bought fertilizer in December last year. I know that the onion seed that we use has gone up 25% in the last 6 months and diesel has gone up 50% since last November. We are no longer a cheap 3rd World country; we are instead like Zambia (which is expensive) but without the supporting economy. The catch of course is that most of us are earning Zimbabwe dollars which as of yesterday are worth about a billionth of a US dollar.

Yesterday I also had to make some more space on the invoices at work. Coping for billions is just not enough. I long ago removed the cents and all our prices are rounded up to the nearest million. It’s easily done as I wrote the software but I have not had much luck marketing it. Most companies prefer to just keep knocking 3 zero’s off and putting up a little notice at the checkout to that effect. The banks have had to resort to issuing new accounts once they get into the trillions (1×10 to the power 12). Oh Zimbabwe, when will it end?