Dear Family and Friends,
Seeing pictures of hundreds of people crowded around banks in Greece desperate to withdraw their own money from the banks has sent cold but sympathetic shivers down our spines here in Zimbabwe. Greek banks closed for a week, cash withdrawals from ATM’s restricted to a limited amount per person per day is all too familiar to Zimbabweans.
We know exactly how this feels: the fear, anger, despair and disbelief that goes with watching your life savings evaporating and knowing there’s nothing you can do to save it. How well we remember standing for hours at the banks and then only being able to draw out enough money to buy a single bar of soap.
Zimbabwe has the dubious honour of being able to say “been there, done that” to almost every bad governance and economic crisis you can think of. It’s been six years since Zimbabwe discontinued using the Zim dollar and began trading in the US dollar and a few other international currencies but for the last few weeks we’ve been doing all the sums again, counting the zeroes and seeing if there’s anything we can salvage from our lost life savings.
When an announcement came in June that the old Zimbabwe dollar was to be demonetized there was a frenzy of rumours that this meant a new Zimbabwe dollar was going to be introduced. A return to the Zim dollar, old or new, is still probably the biggest fear of all Zimbabweans. As bad as things are for people now, at least we have an internationally accepted currency in our pockets and not a worthless currency which isn’t backed by gold reserves, which can be printed at will by an unaccountable government.