There’s absolutely nothing new about the New Syllabus Mathematics textbook for Zimbabwean grade fours.
It still has weird equations in it. Strange things like Z$1, and 20c and so forth. Many Zimbabwean children have never seen that type of money.
My nine-year old niece carries Z$200-billion to school, where fees have just been raised to more than Z$4-trillion. Quadrillion, trillions and billions — now, that’s the kind of money she knows. Z$60-billion for the taxi. The rest is her ”just in case money”.
”Just in case,” her mom warms daily, ”the taxi fare goes up while she is in class.” And ”just in case” she stumbles across someone selling bread on her way home.
As for cents and coins? Never heard of them. Stuff for history class, not maths.
If only I could nail this weekend’s Z$1-quadrillion lotto jackpot. I would fold all of it in a wad of 20 000 new Z$50-billion notes and spend it immediately. It would buy me a small patch of land in a township this week. It might only buy me detergent next month.
Numbers don’t faze us. We are experts at this: 100 Z$5-billion notes for that pizza; 15 of those Z$25-billion notes for a kilo of beef. And, to get rid of that pile of Z$10-million notes, give 7 000 of those beauties to the poor barman for a pint.
You don’t want to carry those notes around, but you do not want to run out of them either. The ATM only gives out Z$100-billion at a time, enough only for two loaves of bread from the shifty-eyed guy waiting in the back alley behind the Spar with a hood over his head as if he is pushing herb.
This week, Barclays had trouble with its ATMs. ”Data overflow”, it said. Fancy talk for ”our computers can’t read all these zeros”.
Using your debit card is hardly an option. Whoever designed those point-of-sale machines obviously never thought anybody could run up Z$10-billion at the supermarket. So you have to swipe repeatedly — that’s 9 999 999 999 Zim dollars at a time — until payment is reached for that Z$960-billion bag of rice.
The time it takes to swipe the contents of the shopping basket can be filled with the usual, happy Harare gossip, ”What do they mean Mwanawasa is in a ‘stable condition’?”; ”Who knew embassies had beds to sleep in.”; ”What was Grace talking about on TV last night?”
Or you can debate whether the Spar sign reading ”for your convenience just multiply all the prices by 1 000 000” is trying to be sarcastic or serious.
The maths gets worse if you are in business. Because of the size of the numbers, you can’t carry cash around.
There are limits on cheques too, which is a good thing. Try writing nine hundred trillion eight hundred and fifty billion, six hundred and seventy million — the price a phone company paid for a small generator three weeks ago.
So bank transfers are encouraged. Again things get tricky. Those dumb bank systems are not programmed to read past Z$10-trillion. So the banks had an idea. They now create hundreds of new accounts to allow a single big transfer to go through — if they didn’t it would take months to clear a single transaction.
Thankfully, a local computer company is now writing ”homegrown software” to deal with all the zeros.
The government statistics agency no longer bothers releasing inflation data. The signs that this would happen have been there for some time now. Firstly there were repeated delays in the release of the numbers, then the figures were only leaked to media and banks, until we finally ran out of inflation. Now, nobody bothers.
I was at a record store last weekend, swiping my card for the sixth time to for a CD, when someone asked the question Zimbabweans love to ask: ”Will we make it to Christmas?”
Of course we will. And we will buy steaks and chicken for quintillions and gazillions and celebrate — and wonder how the heck we do it.
ANC steps in
ANC deputy president Kgalema Mothlanthe and secretary general Gwede Mantashe travelled to Harare this week to meet Zimbabwean self- styled president Robert Mugabe in his capacity as the leader of Zanu-PF.
There has been some worry within Zanu-PF about a Zuma-led ANC, and the visit was an attempt by the ANC to ”keep the channels of communication open between the two revolutionary parties,” said a Zanu-PF politburo source.
After the meeting Motlanthe said dialogue between Zanu-PF and the MDC had produced results, noting the constitutional amendments agreed to by the parties last year.
Motlanthe said ”We have a shared history as liberation movements. Our experiences are very similar.”
Motlanthe and Mantashe first met Joyce Mujuru before holding separate meetings with Joseph Msika and then Mugabe. They also met Didymus Mutasa, the secretary for administration. It was agreed with Mugabe that the two parties form a ”joint committee” that would ensure there is ”constant engagement between ANC and Zanu-PF,” the Zanu-PF source said.
Mugabe insists he is willing to speak to the MDC. But the source reported that ”he says the public statements of support for Tsvangirai from Western powers are not doing their man any favours”.
The politburo also met without Mugabe, to conduct a ”post mortem of the runoff”, according to spokesperson Ephraim Masawi. — Mail & Guardian reporter