Zimbabwe Faces Chaos and Confusion with Launch of First Gold-Backed Currency

JOHANNESBURG—On the streets of Harare, people are calling it “fool’s gold,” referring to Zimbabwe’s ZiG (Zimbabwe Gold) currency, officially launched on 8 April as the latest attempt by the ZANU-PF government to rescue its failed economy.

“Zimbabwe is a mafia state characterized by rampant inflation. It is effectively a laundromat for illicit gold smuggling, so it seems appropriate that its gangster government has adopted a version of the gold standard to bolster its imploding currency [the Zimbabwe dollar],” said Ed Stoddard, one of Southern Africa’s top financial writers.

“Zimbabweans are correct; the end result of the ZiG will probably look a lot like fool’s gold,” he told The Epoch Times.

It is looking “especially” like that, said the chairman of the Zimbabwe Crisis Coalition (ZCC), Peter Mutasa, because citizens don’t trust the new currency.

“Come here to Harare and you’ll hear bankers and business people saying, ‘We don’t believe in the ZiG.’

“Eighty percent of business in this country is in U.S. dollars because that’s the currency people want and trust,” he told The Epoch Times.

The ZCC is a group of more than 80 non-profits in the country, including organizations that focus on the nation’s finances.

Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed in the early 2000s when then-President Robert Mugabe sent “war veterans” to seize land owned by white farmers. Some were murdered; others fled the country.

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