Zimbabwe: The war at home

Robert Mugabe’s relationship with the army has once again hit the doldrums. Soldiers have literally taken to the street and it has become incumbent on the police force to maintain the peace.

It turns out that government policy of paying the army’s top brass in American dollars whilst the rest of the population has to transact with sackfuls of trillions of Zimbabwe dollars which loose value by the hour, has dried the country’s foreign reserves.

Now the soldiers starved of real money (with value) have turned their sights on those who hold the keys to the forex bank vault. Over the weekend, the country’s Reserve Bank Governor’s farm was invaded by a contingent of soldiers who made away with a valuable booty of 175 chickens.

Yes, I said chickens. In a country facing starvation, hyper-inflation, cholera and an octogenarian self imposed president who lays blame for these and all other ills that happen in Zimbabwe squarely on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street (and sometimes also the White House depending on the audience), the kidnapped chickens are worth a princely sum of US$ 787.

It’s not just the army exhibiting such mutinous inclinations regarding the US dollar. Civil servants are also demanding their pay in foreign currency. Unfortunately all the forex seems to have been spent on satisfying and pacifying the avarice of the army generals. So even they must make do with sackfuls of trillion Zim dollars.

The chicken or the egg: an economic problem

So with 175 chickens valued at US $787 but with no one holding valuable currency to buy them, what’s an enterprising soldier to do? It’s a classic economic problem. High supply of a scarce product (food), high demand though without the required medium of exchange (forex) to satisfy the suppliers.

One answer could be to start a chicken rearing and egg enterprise, though this alternative means having to deal with sackfuls of trillion Zim dollars for goods like feed. The water and sanitation system is also compromised and avian illnesses could follow.

Alternatively the answer could be to share the chickens out and eat them… After all you can always raid Uncle Bob’s farm next.