Printing Mugabe's money

Sunday Times:

MONEY that is being used to prop up President Robert Mugabe’s brutal regime, keep his military onside and win over voters in the run-up to Zimbabwe’s elections this month is being printed by a German company.

With inflation topping 100,000% and the highest value 10m Zimbabwe dollar note worth just 20p, heavily guarded planeloads of banknotes are flying into Harare almost every day to keep up with the demand.

Documents obtained by The Sunday Times show the Munich company Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is receiving more than €500,000 (£382,000) a week for delivering bank notes at the astonishing rate of Z$170 trillion a week.

“The regime is surviving by printing money,” said Martin Rupiya, professor of war and security studies at the University of Zimbabwe. “At this stage there is no other way.”

According to a source at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, G&D delivers 432,000 sheets of banknotes every week to Fidelity printers in Harare, where they are stamped with the denomination. Each sheet contains 40 notes and the current production is entirely in Z$10m notes.

Last week some of this money was used to award huge pay rises to the army in an apparent move to buy their loyalty ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections on March 29. Teachers belonging to a union supportive of the government were also given large sums.

Soldiers received windfalls of between Z$1.2 billion for privates and Z$3 billion for officers, while teachers received Z$500m on average. Those belonging to the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, which criticises Mugabe, were excluded.

“Mugabe is giving soldiers a lot of money as a way of buying allegiance,” said Raymond Majongwe, the Progressive union’s general secretary. “Mugabe is planning to rig the elections in March because he must win at all costs. He, however, believes that we teachers do not deserve increased salaries because he says we are agents of regime change.”

Last month Z$1 trillion was set aside for managing so-called war veterans “for the purpose of elections”. Mugabe has long used the war vets to intimidate voters.

“G&D are literally bankrolling the regime,” said a Zimbabwean banker who could not be named for fear of reprisals. “These notes are being used to buy votes, to purchase foreign exchange to import electricity and vehicles to keep their regime going, and to fund the import of Chinese water cannons and police equipment to keep us intimidated.

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Germany has certainly had experience with runaway inflation. Why a German company would facilitate the misery of Zimbabwe is a matter for their conscience or lack thereof. The wretched masses of Zimbabwe deserve better.