Zimbabwe dollar — a timeline of a pompous currency
Dollar bill, y’all: Zimbabwe is between a rock and a very hard greenback. Image — Aidan Bartos/Unsplash.
1. Mpondoland/Pondoland barter trade (c. 500 AD): the San (Twa) and Khwe barter trade on the eastern seaboard of Southern Africa which would become present-day Eastern Cape where 2000-year-old Roman and Egyptian coins were found.
2. Spanish dollar 8 reales/Spanish dollar/$ (1652): after invasive establishment of the Cape Colony in what would become South Africa, chartered megacorporation Dutch East India Company/VOC is granted permission by Spain to reproduce an on par (exchanged at equal value) alternate version of what is the world’s first international super currency which was in use in the Netherlands and unwittingly called dollar by the English. At its peak, the VOC adjusted for 2020 inflation is worth more than Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Alibaba Berkshire Hathaway, ExonMobile, Netflix and more, combined!
3. Dutch guilder/NLG/ƒ (1681): colonial circulation of Dutch currency in the Cape.
4. Cape Colony rix dollar (1782): deficiency of small change and Dutch abandonment of the settler expansion leads to legal independent press of the inconvertible handwritten paper rix dollar by the VOC.
5. Cape Colony stuiver/NLG/ƒ 0.05/ (1800): after failure of the rix dollar and failure of multi-nation coin currencies, the VOC mints the iconic 5 cent coins, stuiver, in Dutch colonies copying the 1797 British 10 leaf cartwheel penny/dime. The invading British call the coins stiver. The Bantu call them izuka while the penny because it’s one twelfth of a shilling call it isheleni. Considered to be a government-backed cartel, corruption and underhand currency dealings render the Dutch chartered company defunct (1800).
6. British pound sterling/GBP/£ (1825): after the Cape Colony is taken over by the British, the Empire decrees the pound as legal tender in all colonies. The British Cape Colony issues a pound note on par with the sterling (1835) to counter the now paper-printed still fluctuating rix dollar (1817) up until the sterling is decreed sole currency of the Cape (1840). Private banks, trading houses and the Dutch-rebelling Afrikaner Transvaal Republic each independently issue their own private pounds and coinage on par with the sterling. Previously poor white settlers are lifted out of poverty into 19th century middle-class status with the discovery of diamonds, silver, gold, and the founding of Johannesburg (1886), which also trade as money against the sterling.
7. Southern Rhodesia private pound/SR£ (1896): the Salisbury (Harare) branch of the Standard Bank of (British) South Africa (1982) [aka. Stanbic Bank, not to be confused with Standard Charted Bank] issues a first of several private pound currencies on par with the sterling issued by private banks for Rhodesian colonial settlers after the occupation of Mashonaland (1890), and Matabeleland (1983) by the British South Africa Company which are merged into Zimbabwe by white consensus with a provision for Matebeleland to join the Union of South Africa.
8. Southern Rhodesia Currency Board pound/SR£ (1938): after gold prices rise in London, South African banks are forced to centralise currency and exchange as the South African Reserve Bank (1921) to counter losses of dealers buying and re-selling gold between Pretoria and London.
9. Rhodesia & Nyasaland pound/RN£ (1955): after small change becomes a problem for the Southern Rhodesian pound which is circulating in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi), coinage under the Bank of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1956) is issued in the Federation of the 3 countries.
10. Rhodesian pound/R£ (1965): after decolonisation of Zambia and Malawi, London opts out of war and instead abandons the rebelling white Rhodesia which refuses to decolonise in the Empire’s “wind of change.” The Rhodesian pound is issued hypothetically on par with the sterling by the now Reserve Bank of Rhodesia which has been booted out of the sterling zone by the Bank of England for disrespecting Her Majesty. In just a year, scrambling Rhodesia is locally printing its own inconvertible money pegged against the United States dollar in attempt to undercut effects of British devaluation of the sterling.
11. Rhodesian dollar/ZWC/R$ (1970): after international dismissal of the American-style Unilateral Declaration of Independence of the colony, Rhodesia tries to rebrand as a republic with a new hypothetically on par but further devalued inconvertible Rhodesian dollar. A parallel market for currency emerges in just 5 months. The Rhodesian pound-dollar is characterised by a decade of revaluations, devaluations, GPB float and pegging between the USD and the South African Rand/ZAR with ultimate pegging against a “flexible” multiple international currencies “basket” until demonetisation (1981).
12. Zimbabwe dollar/ZWD/Z$ (1980): at independence, hapless blacks under the Reserve of Bank of Zimbabwe issue a new hypothetically on par with the USD but further devalued inconvertible Zimbabwean dollar as the obscure parallel market for currency rages on infamously known as the “World Bank”. After two decades of high government expenditure, structural adjustment, devastating droughts, a genocide, and military offensives, the currency and stock market crashes (1997). Notes increase in denominations; Z$500 (2001) and Z$1,000 (2003). “Special Cheques” circulate starting from a Z$5,000 note (2003), ultimately reaching Z$100 billion (2008) note.
The dollar rebrands as the inconvertible ZWN/Z$ (2006), a new Z$1,000 note devalued against the USD, causing barter trade to remerge. Six months later, a new to-be currency is announced.
The dollar rebrands as the inconvertible ZWR/Z$ (2008), a new Z$1 note being equal to ZWN/Z$10 billion. The ZWR/Z$100 trillion note, today a collector’s item sold online, is an international news blockbuster with its buying power being that of a single egg. A month later retailers are formally allowed to price goods in USD/ZAR after market rejection of ZWR which saw goods and services reaching quadrillion price tags, and people’s bank deposits vanish. Z$300 trillion is worth a street value of US$1. Cape Colony megacorporation Old Mutual (1845) creates the Old Mutual Implied Rate/OMIR to counter unreliable central bank USD exchange rate using its London and Harare stock.
Hardly being used, the dollar rebrands as the inconvertible ZWL/Z$ (2009), Z$1 being equal to ZWR/Z$1 trillion. Three months later, the Zimbabwe dollar is suspended and demonetised (2015) after nearly a decade of the central bank rewarding public frenzy return of older Z$ notes and coinage.
13. Legal tender of international currencies (2009): USD/ZAR/BWP/EUR/GBP are basket currencies as legal tender, incredibly and yet easily interchangeable at any till between notes and coinage based on their real-time country rates. Sweets, chewing gum, razor blades and sundry are bartered as small change in lieu of coins at retail. South African Rand/ZAR coins flourish as small change only to completely vanish while the parallel market of currencies remains active. US dollar notes circulating in Zimbabwe are international headlines for a variety of reasons infamously including that of being horribly soiled with some being displayed at the British Museum. A boom in mobile telephone money savings popularises electronic transacting. Asian currencies are added to the basket currencies (2014) six months after the end of multi-party government.
14. New Zimbabwe dollar/“ZWx”/“NZ$” (2014): Ten months later (2014), the central bank issues “bond” coins hypothetically valued on par at US$0.01; US$0.05; US$0.10; with the US$0.25 and US$0.50 denominations enjoying skeptic though popular circulation.
At the end of 2016, a new $1 dollar bond coin, $2 and $5 bond notes hypothetically valued on par with the USD are issued firing up what had been a dormant but still active parallel market and US dollars vanish. Electronic money savings which unwittingly have become a devalued quasi-currency tumble against the USD on the parallel market after announcement that the bond currency which is now circulating outside of central bank control is to be phased out (2018). After much speculation, electronic money savings are billed as a new currency, Real Time Gross Settlement dollar/RTGS$ (2019), devalued against the USD abandoning the hypothetical on par peg. The parallel market rate of the RTGS$ fires up instead.
Four months later, the legal tender of international currencies basket is decreed void as the bond coin, bond note and RTGS$ are mulled as sole legal tender on par with the USD in lieu of the new currency of the “second republic” of Zimbabwe. COVID-19 brings back he international currencies basket, and not that it had ever left the streets.
15. Zimbabwe Gold/ZiG/ZWG/GBDT (2024): a new ISO-registered currency since 2009. Most have never seen it and gladly continue using USD/ZAR from under their pillows and matteresses with sweets, razor blades and sundry as small change.
What, a, difficult!
Sonny Jermain is a verbalist (verb-a-list: one who heals people with words) and a Mutwa-Bantu custodian. He is author of I Deserve to Be: Self-worth Is a Silent Killer.
