Zimbabweans are a very funny lot

IT came as a major relief that the United States embassy in Harare clarified the validity of its many bank notes which have been so overused that they have turned so dirty and torn to the extent that some among us are now rejecting them.

The issue of dirty US dollar notes has been a subject of pain for many people to the point that some have even made lucrative business accepting the dirty and torn notes at devalued rates. Everywhere one goes they are met by a cacophony of hailers beaming the pre-recorded repetitive message: "Vane maUS dollar akabvaruka bvaruka huyai nawo tinotenga (We buy all torn US dollar notes)."

It is quite comforting that the US embassy has told us that: "US government policy is that all designs of US Federal Reserve notes remain legal tender or legally valid for payments, regardless of when they were issued. This policy includes all denominations of Federal Reserve notes from 1914 to present.

"Any badly soiled, dirty, defaced, disintegrated, limp, torn or worn out currency note that is not mutilated and does not require special examination to determine its value, is considered legal tender by the US government."

However, while this is really very good news in the Zimbabwean context, the issue of using US dollars in this economically troubled nation is more than controversial.

Using the US dollar for day-to-day transactions in a country that staunchly declares itself to be a sovereign State that will never be a colony again is as controversial as it is anomalous. And given this very strange status quo, taking each other to task over dirty and torn notes that do not even belong to us as a country makes us a funny people, indeed.

The US dollars we are using are printed thousands of kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean and not at Fidelity Printers and Refineries in Harare, so we should not even be wasting our time and energy to the point of having the luxury to make preferences on a currency that does not belong to us.

Twice in the short history of this nations our own currency has been reduced to nothing due to our own poor financial and economic policies. So, we should not have the luxury and audacity to refuse to accept these dirty and torn foreign notes because we have none of our own worth using as legal tender.

Those refusing these dirty and torn notes are probably sitting pretty and only deal in crisp US dollar notes.

And what all this points to is a tragic state of affairs which has deteriorated to such low levels that we are now fighting each other over a currency that does not belong to us. It is quite outlandish that, desperate as we are as a people, we should be seen arguing among ourselves over a currency that we have absolutely no control over.

We lost faith in our own currency, and now we are starting to lose faith in a currency that does not belong to us. It is quite bizarrely eccentric.