First this:

It was a short, simple story - one which would have had absolutely no relevance in a normal society. But then Zim is rapidly precipitating from normality. The cause for her shock? She had phoned her stationery supplier! Now that is hardly any likely cause for shock, is it? All she had wanted was a ream of thin white A4-size card. “No problem”, said the supplier, “That will be Z$295,000 per sheet”. PER SHEET???

My observation: people often joke about money not being worth the paper that it’s printed on. Here is an honest situation where the paper that the money is printed on being far more valuable than the “currency” it represents.

The unofficial exchange rate is one dollar US is worth a little over 74,147 Zimbabwe dollars. So, assuming you could find a place that actually had the paper that you wanted to buy (I’m guessing that’s not as easy as it may seem--just a guess, though), it would cost you just under US $4 per sheet at the official exchange rate to buy a sheet of paper.

The cost of that sheet of paper is merely ridiculous to us (where the median household income is around US $50,000 or well over Zim $3.7 billion dollars per year), but what is its meaning in a country where unemployment is estimated at 70%?

Let’s look at this a bit closer - Zim’s highest denomination banknote is a Z$20,000 “Bearer Cheque”. You would need a wad of 7375 x Z$20,000 Bearer Cheques to buy one ream! Some more simple maths - Bearer Cheques are usually packed in bundles of 100, which are about 15mm thick. That is then a pile of notes about 1.1 metres tall!

According to old (and, what could only be described in comparison to the current economy in Zimbabwe, overly optimistic) data, the gross national per capita income was only US $506 (which at the US Treasury quoted exchange rate of Zim $24150 per US dollar would mean a gross national per capita income of $12,219,900--but we’ll stick with the unofficial rate because this more official rate would only buy about a third of the sheets of paper) annually or about 127 sheets of paper.

Which actually brings me to a point or three:

1. I have no idea what the official figures actually mean. What does it mean to scrape by in a country with so little money, so little food, and so little in the way of job opportunities? The figures are meaningless and quite possibly completely out of touch with the reality of living in Zimbabwe.
2. But it is just as obviously true that the Zimbabwe dollar is worthless. It barely functions as currency for its citizens, is unwanted on money markets, and is really becoming less a benchmark of purchasing power than a benchmark of misery.
3. The actual value of money has never simply been in having barrels of the stuff. A million dollars is meaningless if it isn’t sufficient to buy food and shelter (or if there isn’t anything left in the stores and gas stations to buy).