Coffee With The Big 5
If you are having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my jungle of words, watch your step there’s wild thoughts afoot, domesticated into subtext and metaphor, and I call it home.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you about an old hunting term used to describe the five most dangerous and difficult animals to hunt on foot in Africa, the big 5. When trophy hunting became less glorious, the term evolved to pay homage to Africa’s most iconic wildlife, with the Big 5 being the gold standard of a safari tour.
The elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard and of course the so-called king of the jungle, that doesn’t actually live in jungle and is instead found in grasslands, savannas, and open plains. That whole jungle thing is, lets just call it, a branding misnomer, just like the other misconceptions that Africa is one wild jungle. If I want to see any of the big 5 I actually have to go to a National Park, just like any other tourist.
You can potentially find all the big 5 in twelve African countries which include, Angola, Botswana, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe in varying degrees of sighting depending on conservation success and habitat.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that in Zimbabwe, a new habitat has been found for the big 5, as an upgrade for the ZiG currency note. Our latest currency iteration, the ZiG, began electronic trading on 8 April 2024, with notes being issued at the end of month.
By the 2nd year anniversary of the ZiG, a new ZiG banknote series will be in circulation. The new notes will circulate alongside existing notes, while worn-out ones will gradually be withdrawn from the system. The Reserve Bank governor, Dr John Mushayavanhu, announced the new series of notes which will include additional denominations to expand the range of ZiG currency at a presentation of the 2026 Monetary Policy Statement on 27 February 2026.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that in the two years of using the ZiG I have interacted with the notes on very limited occasions but one thing that stood out, was the uninspired design, and the mysterious QR code which served no purpose as well as the cheaply printed fragility of the notes that frayed ever so easily, as if they were printed on low quality bond paper.
The new series of notes look more like how money should, and vaguely reminiscent of the notes of yesteryear Zimbabwean dollar 1980-1994 series before inflation, back when the largest note was a 20 dollar note.
I remember when the $50 note was introduced it was such a big deal, a whole awareness campaign on the money what the design represented and the security features, then there was a $500 note and 1000 note.
Then this was followed by the era of special agro and bearer cheques with spectacular figures that you would have to see to believe.
We eventually switched to exclusive use of foreign currency until the Bond Notes was introduced at a rate of 1:1 to the USD and predictably some volatile economics as the government tried to force the rate on the market and a whole lot of drama with the bond currency and RTGS that got rebranded back to the Zim Dollar and then to the gold-backed Zimbabwe Gold the ZiG which just got an upgrade.
Makes my head spin trying to keep track of our basket case of currency issues might have even missed out on some parts such as the bit we were compelled to use the local currency as sole legal tender but thanks to the pandemic and lockdown era that was waivered as a measure to ease challenges, which is how we come to be having a multi-currency system again, although they keep threatening that with the continued stability and raising confidence in the ZiG it’s going to be the sole legal tender, at a yet to be determined time.
While the new notes look good, checking the current market rate where officially 1 USD is equivalent to 25.1154 – 26.4034 ZiG, which means that the new $100 note is $3-4 depending on whether the glass is half full or half empty… so the entire range of notes is basically pocket change for transactions below $5, and a few bumps up the inflation change and a bunch of these notes will not be worth carrying.
Makes one wonder at the necessity of all this, and of course, who got the tender to redo the currency and at what cost. I mean, it would have been more cost-effective to simply upgrade the paper quality…. problem solved.
We should be discussing more important things like amendments to the constitution that would extend presidential term limits by 2 years and such but that is a tricky conversation as one politician found out when he was allegedly attacked by alleged thugs alleged to be alleged police while the police allegedly watch, allegedly… Yes, that’s a lot of allegations, and even the police want to know what actually transpired
What’s been going on in your neck of the woods? So world war 3… yeah?
~B
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