TO say that the situation in Zimbabwe is untenable is not only an understatement, but a partial appreciation of the dire state of affairs confronting this troubled nation.
And the plight of not only the country’s civil servants of being paid salaries and wages that can hardly bring food on table is just one highlight of Zimbabwe’s indescribable situation.
For the past four or so years, civil servants have been crying over poor remuneration and as the country’s economy turned for the worst, the cry has turned into a war cry for United States dollar salaries.
Given government’s insistence that it is unable to offer US dollar salaries, with retailers now charging in US dollars for the majority of their basic goods, one is tempted to deduce that government may be clueless on the way forward regarding this issue.
It is quite difficult to stomach that the country purportedly has a multi-currency system in place when the main currency, which is our Zimbabwe dollar, has little to no clout in the financial and day-to-day trading equation.
But why have we even ended up this far when we were told in February 2019 that the Zimdollar would prove all doomsayers wrong by holding its own?
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When the Zimdollar was resuscitated after 10 years in the graveyard, we were told it was 1:1 to the US dollar in terms of its buying power, but no one in government seems to be bold enough to tell us the exact truth, except that its fate is the wake of “dark forces” and the machinations of saboteurs.
At this rate, poverty and hunger is most likely going to increase and hunger at a mass scale spells bad things, if events in mankind’s past are anything to go by.
Government workers, and all other workers in general, are hungry and it is very difficult to negotiate with hungry people, meaning that government’s call for workers not to abandon the negotiation table is obviously now falling on very deaf ears.
But one also wonders why government decided to resuscitate the Zimdollar in 2019 when at the time, there were loud warnings that the currency had little to no backing to sustain its survival in the long run.
The currency did not even have national goodwill at the time, meaning it was doomed from the onset. And why government is adamantly refusing to swallow its pride in the face of this embarrassing Zimdollar fiasco is more than astounding.
If for 10 years Zimbabweans managed to survive under dollarisation, will the country not be able to survive just two years under dollarisation while government hopefully gets its act together? But obviously, re-dollarising would mean accepting failure by a headstrong government.
Unfortunately, the choices are very limited, if not non-existent because from the look of things very little life is left in the Zimdollar. It is just a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost and government will have no choice, but to pay those US dollar salaries.