Zimbabwe: 2007 till Mugabe resigns

[SWCAdmin]

Every once in a while, when I contemplate the price of cars these days, I flash back to watching the Price is Right and wondering whether the price (4 digit) of the car would start with a 3 or a 4. Wow.

Then I think of Zaire and it puts it back in perspective. I wandered through in 92 or 93, just when the 5 million Z note was coming out, which was an issue in its own right. The Marine Det fronted me $50 in local sheckles. I was there for 3 days, spent nothing. Gave them back the same amount of sheckles, plus a check for about $19 I think to make up for the depreciation of the cash during the short time I held it.

One of the local semi-American guys, late 20s / early 30s maybe, told me he could remember as a kid his mom giving him 1 Z, then worth $2, and he could live large and go get a full-on burger, fries, etc. It was something for him to look at a 5 million Z note and not be able to even get a burger with it.

[Stan]

Every once in a while, when I contemplate the price of cars these days...

Then I think of Zaire and it puts it back in perspective...

Bill, I had no idea you visited our tiny community. I'd assume you were not a DIA visitor, or, I was once again out of town.

With your nostalgic post, here's some pics to reminisce

[Tom Odom]

Man those must be mint 50 Makuta's

Let's see 100 Makuta to a Zaire and 5 Million Zaires to a dollar, that means they were worth 1/500 Million of a dollar....

Anybody got change for a 50 Makuta?

[Stan]

Man those must be mint 50 Makuta's

Remember how they wrapped 25 notes together using the 25th like a taco around the other 24 ? I had a stack of those and never once handled, intent on creating a new Monopoly game called Zaire in Maryland . That idea never really took hold, but my sister, a MD banker showed her friends my 84 funny money. Later some of those people fired up a website and posted all that Sierra there. I must have sent them everything I ever found in Zaire.

Good stuff, aye !
EDIT: Best thing about this Mo Money is the serial number is only on one side. The scans are actually two bills

[carl]

They still use the 25th bill to wrap the other 24. The franc seems quite stable now. The two years I was there it stayed around 500 to $1 and now (i just checked) it is 437 to $1.

I talked to pilot once who used to haul money for Mobutu. They would leave Kin empty and go to Brazil non-stop. On the return they had to make a fuel stop because the DC-8 was so heavily loaded with paper money. The next stop was Gbadolite to give the old man his cut, then on to Kin with the rest.

[Tom Odom]

Dying Silently In Zimbabwe By Michael Gerson


...This kind of hyperinflation is rare in history, but we are seeing it once again, in Zimbabwe. Government officials claim an inflation rate of 66,212 percent (most months they refuse to release inflation figures at all). The International Monetary Fund believes the rate is closer to 150,000 percent -- about the level reached by Weimar Germany. By some estimates, about 50 percent of Zimbabwe's government revenue comes from the printing of money. At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was worth more than one U.S. dollar. Recently, the state-controlled newspaper raised its cover price to 3 million Zimbabwean dollars. Two pounds of chicken were recently reported to cost about 15 million Zimbabwean dollars.

A Zimbabwean friend who runs a business recently told me, "If you don't get a bill collected in 48 hours, it isn't worth collecting, because it is worthless. Whenever we get money, we must immediately spend it, just go and buy what we can. Our pension was destroyed ages ago. None of us have any savings left." Zimbabwean nationals who work on the U.S. Embassy staff in Harare have seen all their retirement funds wiped out. American government officials in the country carry boxes of money to pay at restaurants and must begin counting out currency at the beginning of the meal to finish by its end.

short but interesting piece; the real currency of power comes from gold and platimum and land sales to the Chinese and Libyans.

Tom

[Tom Odom]

And stretching for good news:

Zimbabwe is rare bright spot for AIDS in southern Africa

HARARE, Zimbabwe — In southern Africa for the past two decades, casual sex helped to fuel the worst epidemics of HIV and AIDS in the world. In Zimbabwe, however, fewer people are taking chances anymore, making this otherwise beleaguered nation an unlikely bright spot in Africa's battle against AIDS...

...Experts suggest that sex has become another casualty of the country's eight-year economic depression, which has shrunk the economy by nearly half. Few men have the money to support extramarital affairs or, for bachelors, the late nights on the town often required to woo a woman.

"You have to spend to get sex," said Richard Chimbiri, who writes a column on HIV for the Financial Gazette, an independent newsweekly. "Some guys would have four or five girlfriends if they could. But the economic situation and the risk of HIV — it's all conspiring to make people change their attitudes."