Zimbabwe's President under fire for suggesting local currency is not real money
Harare, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa has come under fire for suggesting that the local currency his government introduced in February was not ‘real money’, social media reports monitored by PANA said.
Mnangagwa was speaking during a tour of the Cyclone Idai hit Manicaland Province on Thursday when he told those with him of the US$2.5 million donation from the United States towards relief efforts for the category three cyclone.
“The most exciting one (donation) is Trump’s. Do you know Trump? The president of which country? From America? Yes. The ones who imposed sanctions on us. Yesterday, just yesterday, he sent his ambassador and he came with two-and-a-half million,” Mnangagwa said.
“Two-and-a-half million of their currency, not RTGS dollars, but the real currency, the real thing. Two-and-a-half million, and they said use this to help yourselves but if you have other needs that you see you might need as well, we have a station in South Africa and we can give you more.”
In February, the Zimbabwean government scrapped a fictional 1:1 peg between the US dollar and local dollar by devaluing the latter and making it the local currency, the RTGS dollar.
However, what this did was to erode the values of money held by citizens due to Statutory Instrument 33 of 2019 backing RTGS dollars as the law basically allowed public and private sector salaries to remain the same.
As such, Zimbabwe’s hundreds of social media users voiced their displeasure to Mnangagwa’s utterances.
“ED does not represent our own interests, he has bankrupted our country. Mnangagwa is clueless on how to run the statecraft. Zimbabweans should unite and kick all ZANU thieves out of power. ED is not my President,” Twitter user, Junta stop stealing #CyloneIdai donations tweeted.
Twitter user Leanord Koni said: “To imagine that Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa behaving like a toddler getting excited of getting US$ 2.5 million from American government and laughing at his own currency really shows what type of a government we have in the country”.
When government devalued the local currency, this was seen as an admission from government that its previously long held position that the local money and the US currency were equal were in actual fact not.
The local money refers to electronic and mobile money as well as the surrogate currency 'bond notes' that became a currency in on itself due to it not being adequately backed by foreign currency which forced government to consolidate it into the RTGS dollar.
But government did not just scrap the 1:1 peg; it also introduced an interbank forex market where the RTGS dollars could be traded for the greenback at a rate of RTGS$2.5:US$1 which has since devalued to RTGS$3,1:US$1.
The devaluation of the RTGS dollar has left the market skeptical of the currency which is contributing to low trading on the interbank forex market as foreign currency holders have opted to hold onto the greenback.
“Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube and central bank governor, John Mangudya, are trying very hard to talk up their RTGS Dollar.
“Their boss Emmerson Mnangagwa, the country’s CEO, makes a public joke out of the RTGS dollar, trashing it in the process. You couldn’t make it up,” legal scholar and former advisor to the late former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Alex Magaisa, said.
Ncube and Mangudya have since the reintroduction of local currency in February, been trying to promote RTGS dollars for holders of foreign currency to come and trade their monies on the interbank forex market in exchange for the RTGS dollar.
“Mnangagwa, calling the collapsing local RTGS$ currency "ma RTG", excited like a toddler who's had a lollipop for the first time, talking about receiving USD 2.5 million from the US Ambassador in Harare for Cyclone Idai victims. This has raised fears the money will just disappear!” exiled former minister of Higher & Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Jonathan Moyo said.
Prominent Zimbabwean lawyer and politician Fadzayi Mahere said “he (Mnangagwa) rubbishes the valueless ‘RTG’ currency he imposed on us by force and glorifies the USD which they’ve systematically looted from the people. There’s little sense of occasion or empathy for the victims’ melancholy. How so very sad”.
-0- PANA RA 7Apr2019
