Lies, lies, lies and more lies …

Well, well, well, what a sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in. Here we have US$100 issued by a bank in single, grimy one dollar notes – the only hard cash per customer available in these two bundles of 50×1. 

We are once again in the record books for all the wrong reasons. The real money has run out, and the new substitute ‘bond notes,’ known as bollars, run out from time to time.

The fiscal authorities, it now transpires, have been lying to us all along. Way back in May they said the bond notes would only be earned as a 5 percent bonus or incentive on export receipts and would seep slowly into the hands of the ordinary transacting public over weeks and months.

That lie was exposed on Day 1 of their release last week when everyone was suddenly getting the substitute notes. My first one came on Day 1 as change in a bar where the proprietor was unable to say what either he or I had recently exported. It is fair to assume, therefore, that the Reserve Bank has been lying on all its other promises too – only US$200 million worth will be issued, underwritten by Africa Export Import Bank in Cairo, it is not a return to the abandoned Zimbabwe dollar and its perceived worthlessness won’t contribute to rocketing inflation. Well, well, well, there is already a brisk black market for bollars of B$2 to US$1, depending on where you look. It should be on par at 1 to 1.

There is mystery too over whether the Africa Exim loan facility ever existed in the first place and where the shoddy notes – the ink runs and smudges in the damp and the security features vary – are being printed. Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa says the printing venue is being kept confidential for security reasons. Russia? it is rumoured. Ukraine? China? Zimbabwe itself? Evidently we don’t need to know or some malcontent might snivel over there to find out more truth behind the incessant lies propagated by the bankrupt government.

This has already been described as the biggest heist in our history. Under the guise of easing cash shortages with the bond notes, they take real money from every single one of us and give us worthless paper in return to buy basic goods locally. Millions of our real dollars go into Mr Mugabe’s war chest to pay for him and his close circle to stay in power.

Simple, really. Daylight robbery and Zimbabweans are too timid to do anything about it. We wait meekly in bank queues for our new bollars.

People hope the final meltdown will come one of these days, showing Mr Mugabe the door at last.  He didn’t mention the bollars in his worthless State of the Nation speech on Tuesday, but insisted the economy is ‘poised for further growth’  and we now have a culture of ‘zero tolerance to corruption’  and improving ‘investor friendly’ and ‘ease of doing business’ conditions. Delusional lies, lies and more lies. I don’t know what drugs his speechwriters are on, but can I please have some?

As I have mentioned before, everyone thought Donald Trump would melt down. Is the new Time magazine cover a bit of humble pie sneakily trying to make the M in the masthead look like devil’s horns on the horrid man’s head?