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The Voice (Francistown)

Botswana: Saving Face

29 April 2008

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opinion

Francistown — After spending a few days in Harare I started to question some of the horror reports we've been getting about the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy.

I thought maybe it was just another case of you can't believe much of what you see on the nightly news or read in the papers. The supermarkets in the capital had a reasonable selection of goods - nothing like we have in Gaborone, but seemingly sufficient and reasonably priced at black-market exchange rates. The big problem, of course, is that our neighbours do not earn pula or US dollars, and on current Zimbabwean salaries most basic goods are incredibly expensive.

For example, bread costs Z$1000, a litre of petrol about Z$2500 and a family sized take-away pizza with no extra toppings Z$20,000. Junior doctors at Zimbabwe's government hospitals, meanwhile, are currently paid Z$56,000 per month, and the lowest paid workers at the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority earn a mere Z$23,000.

And when you leave the capital things get worse. On the drive home to Botswana we stopped in Bulawayo to off load the last of our Zim dollars since they are not very likely to appreciate in value and they are clearly marked with an expiry date - July 31st 2007. Unfortunately, the markets were virtually empty aside from long queues of people waiting to buy bread.

What a change from 10 years ago when we used to drive there on weekends to get all the goods we couldn't find in Francistown.

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