Tag: Jeffrey Moyo

• by Jeffrey Moyo (harare)
• Wednesday, January 24, 2024
• Inter Press Service

Every day throughout the week, Mukono leaves his home to join many others like him in betting clubs strewn across Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, with the hope of making it.

With Zimbabwe’s economy underperforming over the past two decades since the government seized white-owned commercial farms, unemployment has stood out as the country’s worst burden.

According to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), over 90 percent of Zimbabweans are jobless.

Such are many, like Mukono, who has desperately found betting to be the panacea.

“I wake up every day to come bet here in town. I do soccer betting, and sometimes I win, but sometimes I also lose, but I keep trying,” Mukono told IPS.

He (Mukono) spoke recently from inside a soccer shop, typically a local betting hall, where other men like him sat with their eyes glued to television and computer screens displaying soccer games, horse races, and dog races.

Littering the floor with betting receipts, many, such as Mukono, closely studied television and computer screens displaying payout dividends and other information gamblers like him hoped would help them bet victoriously.

Yet in the past, betting never used to be popular in this southern African nation, but as economic hardships grew, affecting many like Mukono, betting has become the way to go.

In the past, where it occurred in Zimbabwe, betting was often limited to the state lottery, horse betting, and casinos.

Now, whether they win or lose as they bet, with no survival options, many, like Mukono, find themselves hooked on the vice, which local police have gone on record moving in to quell, with claims that some of the betting clubs are illegal and behind a spate of robberies and money laundering in the country.

Of late, betting clubs have seen a rise in the number of patrons who frequent these places each day from morning until late as people try out their luck, battling for redemption from mounting economic hardships.

Mukono, like many other people involved in betting, said that without a job for years on end, betting for him has turned into a profession.

“I might not be reporting to someone, but for me, this is some form of job because at times I earn money, which feeds my family,” said Mukono.

Rashweat Mukundu, researcher with the International Media Support (IMS), said, “I think there are significantly reduced means or ways upon which young people, especially the youth and young male adults, can survive in Zimbabwe because of the high rate of unemployment and lack of economic opportunities, and so betting and gambling have become a way of survival.”

“So, you see the increasing number of betting houses; you see the increasing numbers of young people who go out to bet. This is a clear indication that the economic fundamentals are off the rails and many people are having to look for ways to survive outside of what you would normally expect such people to be doing,” Mukundu told IPS.

However, economists like Prosper Chitambara see otherwise.

Chitambara, who is the chief economist with the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), said: “There are some people who are more predisposed to risk-taking through gambling or betting activities, but mental health conditions and even substance abuse are key drivers of gambling, and of course mental health is also a function of the state of the economy.”

With countrywide economic hardships coupled with unemployment, many, like Mukono, have taken to sports betting in order to raise money for survival.

In fact, across Zimbabwe, local authority halls that used to team with recreational activities have now been converted into betting clubs where gambling thrives, with many, like Mukono, frequenting them in their desperate quest to earn a living.

Meanwhile, there are no stringent rules governing Zimbabwe’s gambling sector, with betting still viewed as a pastime rather than an economic activity.

But with many Zimbabweans like Mukono now taking up betting as employment, betting club employees have a word of advice.

“Honestly, one cannot substitute betting with employment. Surely, it should not be something individuals should opt for to rely on for their economic needs,” Derick Maungwe, one of the staffers at a local betting club in central Harare, told IPS.

But owing to joblessness, said Maungwe, it has become some form of employment for many Zimbabweans.

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• by Jeffrey Moyo (mberengwa)
• Friday, November 25, 2022
• Inter Press Service

He wasn’t alone; scores of other villagers in his locality followed suit.

In no time, cattle became a new currency as the Zimbabwean dollar went down the drain, pounded by inflation.

“We had no choice. It appeared cattle was the only money we could stare at and not the real Zimbabwean bank notes, which were now losing value every day as prices skyrocketed,” Musaigwa told IPS.

Many villagers like Musaigwa, pummeled by inflation then, found the panacea in their livestock like cattle.

The cattle, said Musaigwa, could be traded by villagers for any valuable goods or services.

One such villager whose life was saved by her cattle is 67-year-old Neliswa Mupepeti hailing from the same village as Musaigwa.

“I fell sick very seriously and was no longer able to walk on my own. I had to use one of my cows to pay a local school headmaster to transport me using his car to Zvishavane to get medical treatment in 2008,” she (Mupepeti) told IPS.

Then, Zimbabwe’s inflation peaked at 231 percent.

Zvishavane is a Zimbabwean mining town located in the country’s Midlands Province, south of the country.

Fourteen years later, inflation has resurfaced in the southern African country, and cattle have again turned into a currency as people evade the worthless local currency.

But from 2009 to 2013, during the country’s unity government that followed the disputed 2008 elections, Zimbabwe enjoyed some currency stability because authorities allowed the use of the USD and many other regional currencies.

Many Mberengwa villagers, like Musaigwa and Mupepeti, had been visited by inflation before, and they know the survival tricks.

“We have just had to return to using cattle as our money. I can tell you I have recently managed to buy a cart and a bicycle using just one cow here because villagers can’t accept the local currency. Many don’t have the popular USD, and cattle have become the readily available currency,” said Musaigwa.

Zimbabwe’s inflation currently stands out at 257 percent, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, with the local currency ever falling against international currencies like the USD.

As cattle turn into currency, just a single cow in Zimbabwe ordinarily costs about 400 US dollars.

In order to store the value of their worth, many Zimbabweans who can at least access US dollars, like Mwenezi district’s 67-year-old Tinago Muchahwikwa, whose children working abroad send him money for personal upkeep, have had to buy more cattle.

“Money, either USD or any other currency – tends to lose value at any time, but cattle, for as long as they are well-fed and regularly treated for any diseases, remain with their value, and one can trade them off when a need arises,” Muchahwikwa told IPS.

For Muchahwikwa, cattle are the currency he can rather trust than any money, worse the Zimbabwean dollar, he said.

Even for 40-year-old Admire Gumbo, a Zimbabwean based in Cape Town in South Africa, investment in cattle has become the way to go back in his village home in Mwenezi as Zimbabwe contends with an inflation-ravaged currency.

“Back home, the money I send is buying cattle because when I settle back home, I don’t want to suffer. As my herd of cattle increases, that also means the increase of my own worth in terms of money,” Gumbo told IPS.

A worker at a grape farm in Cape Town, Gumbo bragged about owning a herd of 15 cows that he had bought back home.

As many like Gumbo surmount inflation in Zimbabwe using cattle, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has been on record saying livestock accounts for 35 percent to 38 percent of this Southern African country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Faced with a collapsing Zimbabwean dollar, cattle seem to have become a more stable currency than the local currency for many, like Gumbo.

“I have made sure my mother buys cattle for me and not keep the money when I send cash to her because of the risks faced by the local currency back home, which has kept losing value, meaning even if one changes money from Rands to Zimbabwean dollars, it won’t make any sense as the manipulated exchange rate there would still mean one remains with nothing meaningful,” said Gumbo.

For agricultural experts, with inflation ravaging Zimbabwe’s currency, cattle have become the alternative currency.

“Inflation has meant that many people now abhor the local currency and rather prefer foreign currencies like the USD, but many have no access to the USD, and cattle have become the readily available currency,” Steven Nyagonda, a retired agricultural extension officer in rural Mwenezi, told IPS.

To Nyagonda, as long as cattle are well-fed, it means they gain more weight and, therefore, more value if one wants to trade them off.

Pummeled by inflation here, even urban dwellers like 51-year-old Kaitano Muzungu are having to hoard things like solar panels, which they trade off with cattle in the villages while they shun the worthless local currency.

“When I get the cattle on trading off my solar panels in the villages, I feed the cattle in order to increase their weight so that I sell them to butcheries in the city in Harare in USD to business people here, save the profits and keep ordering solar panels to keep trading in the villages where I get cattle currency,” Muzungu told IPS.

With cattle currency gaining traction across Zimbabwe, entrepreneurial Zimbabweans have formed cattle banks, where investment in cattle has become a sensation.

According to Ted Edwards, who is the chief executive officer of Silverback Asset Managers, one emerging cattle bank in Zimbabwe, they have established a unit trust investment vehicle where Zimbabweans can invest in cattle using the local currency.

In this model, when a cow produces offspring, the value of that calf is added to the client’s portfolio, meaning a rise in worth for a particular cattle investor.

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© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service