Warped World: Future is BitCoin, Zim opts for Billy goat, citizens choose memes

By Chenai Makurumure

Zimbabwe’s social media realm has been metaphorically invaded by unimpressive jokes and dull memes whose main theme is a since rebuffed proposal to adopt a primitive trading method whose currency is the good old Billy goat.

Absurd right? Not the currency, but that a country on the brink of collapse of state pre-occupies itself with memes, instead of sounding alarm that the breadbasket is intent on returning to the stone age!

The quantum of content on this matter is so much that if, in his wildest of decisions, wilder than the goat proposal, Bill Gates decide to give Zimbabwe a dollar for every Billy Goat joke, the country would recover the infamous 15 billion in less than a week.

Yes, its been that many jokes.

There has been so much laughter but if are to stop but for a moment and ponder profoundly, the goat issue is a major sign of just how serious the regression in the country has become. It doesn’t require a rocket scientist to see how we have fallen light years into an economic abyss of limitless profundity.

With the world embracing block-chain technologies and all forms of crypto-currency, we are regressing into crude versions of batter trade.

While Bill Gates leads the business world to meticulously harness technology and furnish contextual revolutionary solutions, we are seeking to make Billy Goat the core element in our macroeconomics equation.

Sitting at the very pinnacle of academic prowess in the mother continent, the very cradle of mankind and civilization, as a people we have failed to convert academic knowledge into industrial competence.

The irony is that these ideas are deliberated upon by doctors but the final propositions have so much loopholes that even a newly born blind piglet can see through them.

An unpleasant but necessary stroll down memory lane furnishes us with empirical evidence of half-baked hare-brained economic concepts.  We have come from using travellers cheques, bearer cheques, slashing zeroes (“from Zero to Hero”), using different currencies (not to mention that the time it was capital crime to be exchanging the same foreign currency on the street) but this goat issue must be an all-time low.

In my opinion, every Zimbabwean that decided to leave the country tacitly acknowledges that the national problems are proving too big for the national leaders to solve. Since we come from different political persuasions, we are never in agreement about the nature of the problems and how to solve them……..but in order for things to work, we have to find common ground.

Those against the ruling party always feel that a political change is all it will take to fix Zimbabwe, but, are they right? Those in support of the ruling party will blame western countries, sanctions, opposition politicians , regular citizens and even those fly-by-night-religious-leaders-cum-activists for the country`s woes.

Let`s face it, we had economic problems long before some activists and even some opposition politician came on the scene. I believe that no-one will ever provide a good solution to anything unless they are crystal clear about the nature of the problem to start with.

Zimbabweans at home and abroad need to agree about the nature of the problem at home, we need to have some consensus (at least in the majority) about the causes before we can even come up with solutions. Some of us are even in denial that the country has any problems at all and I am sorry, we can`t waste our time with that kind of thinking (or more appropriately lack of).

Therefore, let`s talk practical, what are the real causes of Zimbabwe`s regular economic mess and what is the real solution(s) that will fix things? Make use of your powers of imagination; see yourself as THE potential national leader who has been asked to solve this problem.

If YOUR words could be implemented today and YOUR solution adopted with immediate effect to fix Zimbabwe…….what real solution would YOU proffer?

• Chenai Makurumure is an undergraduate student and social commentator for Khuluma Afrika