Newsletter 2009

Contents:
1. There is life in the old dog yet.
2. A doctor in the house.
3. Baby Gwata arrived.
4. Participated in building a house of God.
5. Helped save forests
6. Participated in cholera prevention.
7. Discovered long lost relatives

In a moment of weakness a few years ago I enrolled for a degree in Mathematics with the University of South Africa. If I had known how much time and effort it demands I probably would never have started. This year I passed the Real Analysis module, easily one of the most difficult exams I have ever sat all my life. Real analysis is the mathematical study of infinite phenomena using the calculus. I was really pleased with my results. One of the tools we used extensively is called D’Alembert’s ratio test. It is used to test for convergence of infinite series. D’Alembert’s story is remarkable. Jean-le-Rond d’Alembert was abandoned as a newly-born infant. He was subsequently raised by surrogate parents and went on to become one of the leading French mathematicians of the eighteenth century. Looking at the street children of Harare,

I can’t help wondering how many potential D’Alemberts are going to waste.

It has been a good year for my family. My niece Nyasha Gwata passed her medical school finals this year. This represents a landmark for the family. She is the first doctor in the family. Prior to that the highest scholastic attainments in the family were masters degrees. It is not clear yet whether Nyasha will decide to come back to practise in Zimbabwe. Life in Zimbabwe is now infinitely better than last year but we are not out of the wood yet by a long way.

By far the biggest economic reform of the year was the official switch from Zimbabwe dollars to using US dollars. It is working like a dream. Apart from slaying hyperinflation, it provided incentive for formal business to come out of hibernation. Retailers and petrol stations in particular have restocked. It is such a pleasure to be able to drive up to the forecourt and fill up whenever you like. I know it is not profound but after last year’s ordeal,

we appreciate it more than most. It has all eased the pressure to emigrate. Previously one of the attractions of emigration was the opportunity to earn real money as opposed to Monopoly money(Zimbabwe dollars).

Currency reform is probably the biggest achievement of the new government of national unity (GNU). Significant achievements beyond that are unlikely because the government remains technically broke. So far there is nothing significant in the pipeline likely to change that. The GNU is drawn from only the biggest three political parties. Other political parties were not invited to the party. So my political career remains in the doldrums for now. However every dog has his day.

While life is much better for individual consumers, the same cannot be said of Zimbabwean businesses, particularly the big ones. Therein lies the rub. The new-found welfare of the consumer cannot be sustained without productivity at a national level. More than ninety percent of what we are consuming is coming from South Africa. Even the milk in my fridge right now has come from Stellenbosch, South Africa. Paradoxically, milk coming from 2000km away is landed at my local Spar cheaper than the locally produced equivalent coming from 4km away!

Many Zimbabwean corporations were born and/or bred in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia under sanctions (there were real sanctions then). The prime concern was to circumvent sanctions, not necessarily efficiently. After independence, the inefficiency of some companies and parastatals alike was compounded by the Marxist experiments of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Government subsidies were wheeled in to keep consumer prices down and prop up non-viable corporations. In the nineties I was in the milling industry and we used to receive such government subsidies. All in all Zimbabwean companies have been sheltered throughout most of their history.

Now the climate has changed in more ways than one. In practice, the Zimbabwean economy(or rather what remains of it) is now more liberalized than the South African economy. The floodgates have been swung open almost instantaneously. As expected, Zimbabwean companies are not coping with the global competition and many of them will not survive the shake-out. The last time I looked, of the listed companies that had published their annual results then, only two had made a profit. The dying dinosaurs are saddled with overheads they cannot afford to retain or retrench. Needless to say it is a dynamic dilemma, so it is only a question of time before something gives. We are likely to witness spectacular takeovers and mergers if not outright bankruptcies. If the resultant contraction weeds out second rate managers, then it won’t be such a bad thing after all. What this means is that there are bound to be immense business opportunities for the emerging small and agile companies. Unfortunately the opportunities remain elusive to me so far. I will probably only recognize them after others have taken them, in much the same way as I often recognize strengths in ladies after someone else has already married them. That reminds me of the joke of the year: Marriage is like going to an a la carte restaurant with friends. You order what you want but when you see what the next guy has got, you wish you had ordered that!

For now the Gwatamatic continues to support me but only just. The potential customers are so impoverished that “potential customer” is now a misnomer. Accordingly I have developed a truncated version of the Gwatamatic that gives 80% of the functionality for half the price of a full rig. It is called the Baby Gwata.

It is an idea that I conceived sometime back but the first one was only delivered last month

Since last year I have graduated from worrying about my next meal to worrying about my next investment. I also worry whenever I have to fix anything. While food prices have come down considerably, it remains inordinately expensive to fix things in Zimbabwe, whether it is fixing the car, the house or haemorrhoids. Even an ordinary car service remains quite pricey. Whenever I get my car serviced in South Africa it hardly ever exceeds US$100. A similar service in Zimbabwe costs anything up to US$500. There is no small irony in the fact that many of the motor mechs in South Africa are Zimbabweans.

With business slow, I found myself with more time on my hands than usual. So I took up a bit of voluntary work. On one of the projects I started off as a minor donor. Somewhere along the way I let my guard down and found myself the de facto project manager.

It was a project to put up a new church building for the Methodist Church near my rural home 80km south of Harare.

It took a year to build and was officially opened on 22 December 2009.

In hindsight, I am glad I participated. The project is bound to have more eternal value than any sadza machine I could build.

While the project’s primary purpose was to facilitate spiritual food, it also had to address culinary needs. The ladies requested a heavy duty wood fired cooking facility. So I set out to design something more fuel efficient than traditional methods. The result is the Dandamatic.

The grating at the bottom improves ventilation and hence facilitates complete combustion. In practice this means more heat and less smoke. The concentric rings serve a dual purpose. They focus the heat as well as provide variable diameter “hobs” for different sizes of saucepans up to a maximum diameter of 60cm. The Dandamatic had a successful maiden run on 22 December 2009 and fed the thousand-strong crowd that attended the official opening ceremony.

The other voluntary project I undertook was coordinating development of an alternative water supply for my old school, Fletcher High School.

In common with the rest of Zimbabwe, municipal infrastructure in Gweru is falling to pieces and they failed to supply water. The headmaster of Fletcher High School found himself with 700pupils and no running water. As former students we passed the hat round and managed to purchase a heavy duty borehole pump for the school. The borehole is up and running now

but nobody knows how large or small the underground water reserves are.

It appears unreliable municipal water supply is the bane of Africa. I was in Tanzania a couple of weeks ago and saw the tell-tale water tanks atop many buildings. In Zanzibar the electricity was also a problem. They did not have mains electricity supplies for weeks. Fortunately they had a generator at the hotel.
However it broke down on my last night there. We get a lot of power cuts in Harare too. So I should have felt at home in Zanzibar but I didn’t, maybe because I was paying.

My experience of Zanzibar was chequered. For a start I arrived without my luggage. I had a cruel attack of deja vu as I stood at the airport carousel hoping against hope that there was more luggage coming. Fellow passengers had already collected their luggage and gone. It was when the attendant switched off the carousel that I realized I could not deny the truth any longer. I had a similar experience in Cyprus eight years ago, when I had to live out of a Woolworths carrier bag for four days.

Unfortunately there is no Woolworth in Zanzibar. I scoured Stone Town (the old city of Zanzibar) looking for a toothbrush and other emergency supplies. It took a major effort just to find a toothbrush. There are no supermarkets there, just a handful of corner shops that are not well marked. The silver lining was that it forced me to explore extensive portions of Stone Town. Otherwise I would never have trudged along in such sweltering heat for so long. I wondered whether any of the modest shops would stock a micro-screen shaver. The moral of the story is that in future, personal care items will be carried in my hand luggage.

My business sessions were due to begin within 48hours and I would need formal clothes. So my anxiety intensified with every passing hour. Fortunately, late the following day I was re-united with my suitcase in a short but moving ceremony at Zanzibar Airport.

Talking to others afterwards, I discovered that Kenya Airways have a bad luggage handling record. That may well be but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi has become the hub of African connections. Sadly investment in the Airport has not kept pace with the growth in traffic. So the airport facilities appear stretched. The airport terminal building is perennially overcrowded. There are not enough piers for the aircraft and no buses to ferry people to and from the terminal building in cases where planes are parked elsewhere. We had to walk across the apron mingling with roaring jets and dodging tugs. The incidence of delayed flights

could be yet another symptom of stretched infrastructure. Our flight from Nairobi to Harare was delayed by two hours. I knew we were in trouble when five minutes before the scheduled departure time we were still in the departure lounge and I could see a cleaner dashing up the aircraft stairs carrying a vacuum cleaner. Even the departure lounge was overcrowded, with bodies sprawled all over the floor.

Once on board, the actual flights were not too bad though. At least nobody had to sit on the floor. The crew on board tried really hard. Incidentally, in common with other airlines, Kenya Airways also have their share of the following inevitable species:
1. The poseur – a guy who palpably ignores the on-board safety demo to prove to fellow passengers that he is a frequent flyer.
2. The colonizer – a guy who takes over two armrests. He even has his elbows straying into neighbours’ airspace, especially when he eats.
3. The cargo carrier – a lady who has a million pieces of hand luggage. She proceeds to squash or throw fellow passengers’ luggage out of the luggage bins to make space for her own.

I had glorious views of the sea from my room at the Tembo Hotel. Like the rest of Zanzibar, the hotel also features highly ornamental doors.

Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar. (In spite of his weaknesses, he was one of my boyhood heroes). However he seems to get limited recognition

in his hometown compared to say Montreaux.
Maybe it is because in Zanzibar they are battling to meet basic needs. They do not have the luxury of appreciating the arts. As I explored Stone Town, I saw lots and lots of young men just sitting idle along the streets.
It appears there is serious unemployment there.

Overall, I found Zanzibar dilapidated,
a bit reminiscent of Mombasa. The surprising thing is that in spite of its state, the island still enjoys significant tourist arrivals. For me it was like a breath of fresh air when I left Zanzibar and checked into the Holiday Inn in Dar es Salaam. It really is a good hotel, much better than the Holiday Inn in Harare.

Before I traveled, someone warned me that Dar es Salaam is essentially one big Mbare sprawled by the sea (Mbare is a seedy township in Harare). As it turned out I was pleasantly surprised because Dar does have some good bits. I was however left with the general impression that, for some reason, the British colonial authorities put a lot more planning effort into Southern Africa relative to East Africa. Harare’s layout is superior to all African cities I have been to north of the Zambezi River.

In spite of cultural differences, I think the Tanzanians are our close relatives judging by our common linguistic root. I found Swahili strikingly similar to Shona. Sadly there is no reliable record of our migration history.

Taking it all in all, it has been a good year for me in spite of and also because of the circumstances.
That’s it for now folks.
I trust you had a good Christmas.
Wish you a good New Year.

Update 23 August 2009

Contents:
1. Business
2. Other woes
3. Some positives
4. Tribute to Michael Jackson

Business(or rather the lack of it) is terrible. There are plenty of inefficiencies largely because business, as we knew it, remains in intensive care. “Big” businesses are not big anymore. Meaningful volumes of business are still hard to come by in virtually all sectors. Power cuts in my neighborhood are lasting anything up to twelve hours, which is a considerable improvement on normal. I have not had running water in my house since March 2009. Apart from that I am having a great time.

In mid-July 2009 I drove past my bank and suddenly realized that I had not been in there for several months. That is how informal the Zimbabwe economy has become. We are now a de facto cash only society. That means the only significant financial instrument available to run the economy is M1. If you think the credit crunch is unbearable, spare a thought for us in Zimbabwe. There is no credit at all here. In practice that means business transaction magnitudes cannot exceed small beer. Unless things change, youngsters starting out today have no hope of ever buying houses for example. It is a tragedy at a personal level and even worse at corporate levels. Whenever money comes my way, I keep it in the proverbial mattress. Like many others I am still wary after my experience with the banks last year. Severe restrictions on bank withdrawals left us depositors queuing and begging for money that was ours in the first place.

There is still no guarantee that similar peremptory measures could not be invoked again anytime. The Zimbabwean financial services sector desperately needs restoration of customer confidence.

Most countries that have made it have done so on the back of domestic savings on deposit with formal financial institutions. Foreign investment might help but it is domestic investment that seeds conditions conducive to foreign capital inflows. I remember an article in The Economist that summarized it well. A foreign investor was asking why he was expected to invest in Africa when the Africans themselves were reluctant to invest in Africa. Even African thieves stash away their booty in Swiss banks, not African banks!

Without formally pooled savings, it is not only the financial institutions that are threatened. Industrial and commercial concerns are struggling for working capital finance. Many are now moribund and not likely to make it. This is in turn threatening their suppliers and their suppliers’ suppliers and so on. In a nutshell, Zimbabwean industry remains snarled up and unemployment is not abating. The total market capitalization of all the companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange put together was US$4billion last week. In contrast the market capitalization of Google (a dot com company listed on the New York Stock Exchange) alone was US$143billion. So Eric Schmidt’s petty cash float could probably run the whole Zimbabwean economy! Incidentally Google is only ten years old while Zimbabwean industry is 110years old. However, therein lies some hope for us. With a bit of innovation and discipline, just a handful of success stories could save the day.

Having said that, the road to national recovery is bound to be long and hard. It is with a touch of deja vu that I watch events unfolding in Zimbabwe. It all puts me in mind of the time I started my own business. I was starting from scratch with unrealistic optimism. Someone had told me that it takes three years on average for a green-field business start-up to attain positive cash flows. I was convinced mine would do it in six months. In the end it did take three years.

So it is with the Zimbabwean economy. It died last year and we are starting off from ground zero if not lower. Someone told me that it takes longer to rebuild than it took to destroy in the first place. Not to accept and understand this is to set ourselves up for disillusionment and frustration. This might seem rather pessimistic an outlook to take, but I believe that only when we have faced reality can we stand any chance of transcending it. Unfortunately the hollow political rhetoric, now emanating from both sides of the political divide, continues to espouse the idea of re-branding Zimbabwe for a panacea. To me it sounds as futile as trying to re-brand a slum before re-developing it. It is not likely to fool anyone.

When my brother and his contemporaries were studying in Nigeria in the seventies, they would bring back horror stories of life in West Africa. Looking back, the stories were generally symptoms of a demoralized chaotic society. Apparently West Africans of both sexes would not hesitate to relieve themselves along city streets in broad daylight without shame! We laughed long and hard when the stories were related. Now the same problem has arrived in Harare. Once again it is a symptom of ebbing morale. It is hardly surprising considering there is more than ninety percent unemployment and little prospect of jobs in the near future. Last year politicians blithely gave the people to believe that everything would be instantly honky dory once a political power sharing agreement was signed. So people prepared for a 100-metre sprint only to discover there was a marathon ahead of them. Some analysts believe the MDC went into the whole deal without knowing the score. So they are now in real danger of being tainted with the incompetence and failure of others (kusara nechitsveru).

Maybe the reason why people are relieving themselves on the streets is that there is no water in the water closets. There is plenty of water on the streets from burst water mains.

While there are perennial burst water mains all over I have not had running water in my house since March 2009. If nothing is done about it before the rainy season kicks in in a few months’ time, cholera may flare up again. Meanwhile the municipal authorities have had the audacity to send me water bills. I will strangle someone one of these days!

I recently witnessed busloads of people relieving themselves by the roadside. On 18 August 2009 the Zimbabwe Government introduced toll gates on most intercity roads. It was chaotic to put it mildly. I had to queue for 26 minutes at a toll gate in Harare South.
Inevitably multitudes in the snarled up traffic were taken short. They had only scant bushes by the roadside for cover. I watched so many disappear behind the same bushes that there must have been significant compromises there. You should see the state of the roads they are charging tolls for! It is like collecting rentals on shacks in a slum. They really should pay us to drive on such roads.

Last month I drove past the spot where Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife died in a car crash in March 2009. That stretch of road was still in really bad shape more than four months later. It was a death-trap with or without foul play.

In spite of our dire circumstances, the march of civilization continues. My rural home area recently got a cell phone base station. I know it is not profound under normal circumstances but considering how inaccessible that place was, it is a giant leap indeed. Previously it could take all day to get a message across to Harare. The base station is at Mahusekwa Growth Point (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 18minutes 23.88seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 11minutes 52.00seconds EAST) that is about 9km as the crow flies from my rural home (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 22minutes 51.87seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 14minutes 42.63seconds EAST). That is where I grew up. You can see how far I used to walk to Chakadini Primary School (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 21minutes 34.85seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 13minutes 57.82seconds EAST) and how far I went after that to Fletcher High School (Google Earth Coordinates: 19degrees 30minutes 52.39seconds SOUTH; 29degrees 50minutes 56.66seconds EAST). My sixth form college in London (Google Earth Coordinates: 51degrees 25minutes 42.37seconds NORTH; 0degrees 06minutes 13.70seconds WEST). has since been closed and converted into a warehouse. In contrast, the University of Surrey (Google Earth Coordinates: 51degrees 14minutes 36.03seconds NORTH; 0degrees 35minutes 21.59seconds WEST) continues to grow from strength to strength. So is the University of South Africa (Google Earth Coordinates: 25degrees 46minutes 02.51seconds SOUTH; 28degrees 11minutes 56.50seconds EAST). That ends the educational history digression. The irony of it is that after all that effort I am not doing much with the education at the moment. You can see my garden in Harare (Google Earth Coordinates: 17degrees 49minutes 48.72seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 04minutes 23.32seconds EAST) where I kill time sunbathing. Now that spring is in the air, it is getting too hot to sunbathe. So I don’t know what I am going to do with my time; maybe look for a wife.

Prior to this installation, there are a few milestones in my life relating to cellular telephony. My first experience of it was in the autumn of 1991. I was attending a reception for University of Surrey alumni held by His Royal Highness, The Duke of Kent, who is the Chancellor of the University, at St James’ Palace in London. During the proceedings, I remembered I had to phone Sheila, a classmate who could not make the reception. So I sneaked out to find a public phone booth. I asked a passer-by where I could find a public phone. He did not know but was happy to let me use his cell phone instead. As far as I can remember, it was my first un-tethered phone call ever.The handsets were substantial in those days, but nevertheless thoroughly impressive to a bemused first time user!

It was eight years before I eventually got my own cell phone. Relative to local men about town, I was a late starter. I am told those who got in early reaped social dividends. Vaitogona kunyenga nadzo! By the time I came along the gadgets were already commonplace and so did not improve my chances of marriage. Now even the herd boys around the rural areas wield cell phones.

Back in the year 2001, Zimbabwean companies were still creditworthy. So we could roam on Zimbabwean SIM cards. A sublime roaming experience came to me while I was at Masada in Israel. Perched up there on that hilltop I was busy surveying the parched landscape when my phone rang. It was Barclays Bank in Harare! The signal was not even coming via an Israeli network. It was coming through a Jordanian network from across the Dead Sea. That was especially significant. On an Emirates flight I had noticed that they listed telephone dialing codes for virtually all countries except Israel. I was told that was because Arab countries generally refuse to recognize the existence of Israel. Now here was the power of technology dramatically breaching a conflict curtain! We are bound to see more of the same as globalization comes into its own.

For now the struggle just to stand still continues. Yes there is still hope for Zimbabwe, believe it or not. The threat of a failed state that loomed large last year has subsided. We no longer have to travel all the way to South Africa just to buy soap. Civil servants are back at work (but the hospital doctors have gone back on a pay strike). The multitudes of spivs that roamed the streets of Harare last year have all but disappeared. Street sweepers are back at work and Harare’s Central Business District does look a lot cleaner.

One foreign investor who once came to Zimbabwe scouting for investment opportunities was Michael Jackson. In the end he decided not to invest, even though Zimbabwe was still in much better shape then. I nevertheless remain his fan. Michael Jackson’s music forms part of the bedrock of my cultural heritage. We are generally most receptive to the influence of music in early adolescence. Michael Jackson ruled the pop charts during the time I entered that critical stage. When I listen to the drivel they call pop music today it makes me glad to have grown up in that era. The New York Times gave the opinion that MJ was a "musical phenomenon", and that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else."

Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released shortly after I arrived at the University of Surrey. Thriller is the best selling music album of all time. So Students’ Union discos played tracks from Thriller a lot, which thrilled us. It still evokes great memories. One track called Beat It, in particular, reminds me of a classmate Alwyn Pereira.
Alwyn could dance so well to it, and indeed to many other tracks. I still can’t disengage the tune of Beat It from Alwyn’s poetry in motion. I remember Pete Gaskin

saying, “It is well worth coming to the Lower Bar even if only to watch Alwyn dance!” My admiration of Alwyn took a bit of a knocking when I discovered, to my horror, that he had an eye on a girl I was after. Fortunately she did not appear to notice his dancing prowess too much. However, in the end neither of us got her! I think she was too busy concentrating her energies on her studies. Ian (aka Scobies) reckoned she was just frigid though. My respect for Alwyn was restored and we remain friends to this day.

Update 13 April 2009

Politically, a lot has changed in Zimbabwe but the people’s lot has not changed a lot. As someone put it, “Everything has changed and nothing has changed.” There is a bit more hope than there was three months ago. However we are anything but out of the wood at this stage. Beneath all the political rhetoric and wishful thinking, one rule will rule the day: it is easier to pull down than to build up. It took more than ten years to destroy Zimbabwe and it will take longer than that to rebuild.

Probably the two most prominent events in Zimbabwe in the last few months have been the universal adoption of foreign currencies and the swearing in of a power-sharing government. The new government is drawn from only the biggest three political parties. Other political parties were not invited to the party. So my political career remains in the doldrums. This may not be such a bad thing because I still have misgivings over the whole idea of power sharing in lieu of democracy. It is like compelling a Lotto winner to share their prize with the losers. The silver lining is that it affords the new crowd some opportunity for “apprenticeship”. Yes, even bad guys can have some useful experience to share. Continuity is a virtue and conversely, the bane for much of Africa has been the instant overnight power and government transfers at independence. The downside of this silver lining is that bad habits can be passed on too, for example a penchant for Mercedes Benz limousines.

A veneer of normalcy has appeared in the last few weeks. The shops are well stocked again and school children are back at school. I say a veneer because the sustainability of these positive developments remains in the balance. Some of the rogues that ransacked shops eighteen months ago remain empowered, and they could strike again. Also for all we know, the money to pay the next round of teachers’ salaries is not there yet. Furthermore Harare remains untidy and unkempt. This is how my neighbourhood still looks. I have not had running municipal water at home for eight weeks and my garbage has not been collected for more than nine months.

The shops may be well stocked but with 94% of the workforce out of formal employment, only a tiny minority has access to them. Foreign currency is in short supply because Zimbabwe is still not producing let alone exporting much. Even though we have learnt to do without many things, we continue to consume more imports than we are exporting. So as a country we are bound to get poorer everyday. Needless to say at this rate the shortage of foreign currency will continue to worsen.
Furthermore the prices are generally twice what they are in South Africa for groceries and worse for pharmaceuticals. The silver lining is that the prices are actually coming down! The official rate of inflation last week was -3%. At the height of shortages not long ago, general price levels were as bad as eight times those in South Africa. With the recent liberalization of foreign currency usage and relevant trading licenses, goods are flowing into the country fast and furious. This proves that bad government policies were exacerbating the shortages last year. Prices continue to come down tending towards a limit which is parity with South African shops. Of the things that I buy, First Choice UHT milk is now close to that parity. The foreign currency may be hard to get hold of but dropping prices are like a breath of fresh air after the tyranny of hyperinflation. When I emerge from a bad cold, I really savour good health, at least for a few days. So it is with emerging from hyperinflation. We have had choice in the shops before, but this time I appreciate it that much more. Convenience foods are back on the shelves. So, even when there are prolonged power outages, I can still eat. This was not the case during the severe privation of last year. Now I have even started to put on weight.

Formal business is starting to twitch out of hibernation. Unfortunately the financial services sector is in dire straits. With nowhere to borrow, particularly for working capital, meaningful recovery is likely to remain hamstrung for a while yet. Even though full recovery is a long way away, small jobs that were not worthwhile last year are suddenly attractive now that they pay real money. We had forgotten how much less stressful it is to conduct business in a stable currency. The main currencies in circulation are US dollars and South African rands. US dollars remain the more popular of the two, even among peasants selling firewood deep down in the bowels of Masvingo province. This is strange at least at first glance. More than 90% of the goods in the shops are of South African origin. So, one would expect the South African rand to be a more practical currency. However, after the ordeal of hyperinflation, Zimbabweans are now extremely averse to any currency whose value oscillates. The value of the South African rand swings more than that of the US dollar. Furthermore South Africa continues to deploy currency exchange controls, possibly as a hangover from the apartheid era sanctions. So South African rands are more difficult to move across borders. This is an important consideration for Zimbabwe’s populace that is now scattered around the globe.

Dollarization (i.e. the switch to using US dollars) slew the hyperinflation monster almost overnight. This proved that hyperinflation was caused by fiscal ill discipline. Thankfully the authorities are not able to print US dollars. However they have not taken it lying down. They have printed some “foreign currency vouchers” that at one stage looked set to threaten the semblance of order we now have. Fortunately that threat has not crystallized, so far anyway.

It is in order to count our blessings. After decades of neo-Marxist price controls and other persecution of business, the Zimbabwe economy has de facto liberalization at last. It was easy because with an already broke economy, such policy changes did not cost much. Where competition is possible prices are coming down. However, without developed antitrust legislation, we are now exposed in some sectors. Monopolies are being abused. The telecommunications sector has been particularly villainous. My last two months’ phone bills have been so ridiculously high that it is proving attractive to import telephone services from South Africa. It is believed to be now cheaper to roam on a South African sim card than to use a local service! Sure, the poor telecom companies were forced to limp along on controlled sub-economic tariffs for many years. Now they have swung to the other extreme. They are attempting to recoup a decade’s losses from one month’s bills.

In the corporate world, poor-performing asset rich companies get taken over or at the very least have their management’s wings clipped. It is interesting to observe similar scenarios playing out at country level in Zimbabwe, albeit only symbolically at this stage. A few weeks ago a friend invited me to join a Facebook group called "I'm not South African, and No, Zimbabwe is not the same as South Africa!" I joined. However with each passing day I cannot help noticing the inexorable blurring of the distinction between the two countries. Walking into a Harare supermarket is now like walking into a South African shop. Even the carrier bags have been imported from South Africa! Even the cholera in South Africa has been imported from Zimbabwe!

A sense of humour has been necessary to survive in Zimbabwe so far. Apparently the downturn has given humour a shot in the arm. When business is down, one thing that thrives is email jokes. People who used to be very busy now find themselves with plenty of time on their hands. I have been sending and receiving a lot of email jokes!