ZIMBABWE: Coins change fortunes

When the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) announced its decision to revive old coinage, Samuel Mapuranga, 29, of Chitungwiza, a dormitory city 30km south of Harare, the capital, had something to smile about.

Without enough money to buy even a loaf of bread for his two school-going children, he borrowed a pick and a shovel from a neighbour and rushed to a nearby informal garbage site.

"I used to work as a till operator for a local shop owner who gave me coins to throw away because they had become useless. I followed his instructions ... Now that they [the coins] are back in circulation, I have something to smile about," Mapuranga told IRIN.

Coins last used in 2001 were brought back into circulation on 1 August. Gideon Gono, governor of the RBZ, has introduced new coins as well as new notes to replace the old bearer cheques, from which and 10 zeroes were removed.

On the first day Mapuranga dug up enough coins to transform himself into a "trillionaire" in the old currency. "I found about nine trillion dollars [Z$9,000 in the new currency, about US$60] on the first day of my secret treasure hunt, and half of that the following day, but the 'gold mine' is drying up now," said Mapuranga, whose windfall amounted to more than a quarter of a school teacher's monthly salary.
Resuscitation of the coinage has brought cheer to Zimbabweans likes Mapuranga, struggling to make ends meet in a collapsed economy. Even though he is not as lucky as he was on the first two days, he is able to find the odd stash of coins in dumping sites dotted around the city, "And that makes me the envy of many people who put on a jacket and tie six days a week and yet get peanuts from their employers."

Shops and informal traders sometimes refuse to accept his coins because they are too blackened with dirt, but that does not worry him because he can still go to the bank and exchange them for new notes.

These days, Mapuranga can afford basic commodities like sugar, washing soap and maize-meal, and even manage to have a drink with friends at the local liquor shop.

"I have been struggling to put money on the table for years, but in the past four days the sun has been shining brightly through my window, thanks to the return of the coins," he said. "I can now give my children money to spend at school and I have even managed to pay up the top fees that the school was demanding."

Play money

Fortunate Kanhukamwe, 19, a housemaid who also lives in Chitungwiza, has suddenly found joy in the coins she used to use as play money to cheer up her employers' two-year-old son.

"My employers throw these coins everywhere and when they are away at work I look in every hidden corner - even madam's underwear closets - for them. They don't know it, but I have managed to gather about three times the salary they give me a month in a short space of time," Kanhukamwe told IRIN.

In her free time she searches the alleys and streets for coins, but is careful not to let her employers know, fearing they might take them away from her. "Sometimes we fight over the coins that we find in the streets, but that [the fights] is a lot of fun in these hard times."

However, there are fears that the joy brought by the reintroduction of the coins could be short-lived, and Mapuranga and Kanhukamwe admit that "We have to make as much hay as possible while the sun shines."

Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist and past chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), told IRIN: "The coins are bringing back temporary joy. In two weeks or so they will be despised, because they would have been rendered useless by the hyperinflationary environment we are operating under."

Inflation is officially estimated at around 2.2 million percent, but independent analysts have put it as high as 15 million percent. Makwiramiti said the RBZ had been forced to reintroduce the coins because Giesecke and Devrient, the German company supplying the paper used to print notes, had decided to stop doing so in protest of the political violence in the recent elections.

Elton Mangoma, secretary for economic affairs in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said in a recent statement that "no amount of tinkering with currency denominations will address the Zimbabwean crisis", and described Gono's new measures as "the usual nonsense".

"Allowing people to scrounge for old money from their drawers will make it impossible to know how much currency is on the market," he pointed out, and this "could further push up inflation, which has now hit stratospheric levels".
 
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has appealed for about US$26.6 million to assist 260,100 people in need.

More than 5 million Zimbabweans will suffer food insecurity by the height of the hungry season between January and March 2009, according to a crop assessment forecast released on 18 June by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).

"This figure [5.1 million] represents approximately 45 percent of the country's population," said Peter Lundberg, the head of the IFRC's delegation in Harare. "It gives a clear indication of how severe the situation is, and could become. We are very concerned."

IRIN