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Johannesburg, April 17
Nineteen days after Zimbabwe's national elections, the government has yet to release the results of the presidential vote. And the excuse that they're not quite done with the counting has worn a little thin.
Because, of course, one byproduct of living in the world's highest inflation (the Zim dollar hit $75 million to the U.S. dollar yesterday) is that you learn to count really, really quickly.
"Nobody counts faster than Zimbabweans," a well-known Harare black market currency dealer observed yesterday. "We are the world's fastest counters."
He gestured at the stack of bills in front of a customer.
"How long did it take you to count that $15 billion?" he asked.
"Uh, about four minutes," the customer replied.
"You see? But they expect us to believe they can't count those five million election votes yet?"
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Gerry O'Brien from Ottawa, Canada writes: Dear STEPHANIE NOLEN:
Thank you very very very much for your reporting.
About hyper-inflation and the re-denomination of the currency, I wonder how such an industry of printing money can keep up with the pace of printing new higher denominated notes. I wonder who is profiting from this? paper producers? printers? Are government printers profiting from this? who? I believe that this is controlled by government contracts? but to who?
The people are suffering greatly from run away inflation while the economy is brought down to its knees. Yet there is a cost to producing the new re-denominated currency and this is squandering valuable resources that the government could spend better on other programs. It may be worth while to investigate this !!!
I recall (from history lessons) where in Germany during the rise of inflation during the 1920s after the Great War (1914-1918), when their currency was fundamentally worthless after many re-denominations, it was said that people were carting about their money in wheel barrows to do their daily purchases.- Posted 17/04/08 at 7:00 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
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D M from Canada writes: Re: Germany in the depression. The story continues.. a lady walks into the store having wheeled in her savings in a wheelbarrow to buy groceries. She leaves it to look for something, and when she came back - the wheelbarrow was stolen ... but the money had been dumped and left. :)
I was wondering where Ms. Nolan has been. No posts since April 2. I have been checking back to read her writing. I know she did a live session once, but are there problems to updating? Electricity problems? Political?- Posted 17/04/08 at 7:14 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
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D M from Canada writes: Oh, I see now, she's reporting from Johannesburg. Any reason?
- Posted 17/04/08 at 7:18 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
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