The ZiG is not winning—Zimbabweans are merely offloading a currency forced upon them

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s latest claim that the ZiG now accounts for 30–40% of national payment system transactions is being paraded as proof that the local currency is finally gaining public confidence.

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But this conclusion is not just premature—it is profoundly self-delusional.

Even if we were, for a moment, to accept the central bank’s statistics at face value, the leap from increased usage to increased trust is a dangerous fallacy that ignores both economic reality and Zimbabwe’s deeply scarred collective memory.

Let me ask the RBZ Governor, John Mushayavanhu, one simple question.

If he were given a choice to earn his entire salary either in US dollars or in ZiG, which would he choose?

And if he insists—publicly and unequivocally—that he prefers the ZiG, then let him prove it by taking his full salary in that currency.

Until that happens, all claims of growing confidence remain hollow.

Because the uncomfortable truth is this: even those who run the country and manage its monetary policy do not trust the ZiG.

This lack of elite confidence is not hidden; it is flaunted in plain sight.

Zimbabwe’s ruling class has an almost performative love for cash—doling it out like confetti at a wedding.

We have all watched the President himself, senior officials, and politically connected tenderpreneurs handing out stacks of money to musicians, church leaders, footballers, and various public figures.

They give away vehicles.

They splash cash at events.

Yet that cash is never ZiG.

Not once have we seen anyone in power gifting thousands or millions in ZiG.

Why?

If the ZiG is stable, trustworthy, and the future of Zimbabwe’s monetary system, why is it absent whenever real wealth is displayed or transferred?

Just days ago, the nation watched in disbelief as tenderpreneurs Scott Sakupwanya and Wicknell Chivayo sat with new Scottland FC coach Peter Ndlovu, reportedly handing over an initial payment believed to be around US$300,000—in hard cash.

Where was the ZiG?

Why wasn’t this salary paid electronically, through the banking system, as is demanded of ordinary employers and employees across the country?

Why are those at the top allowed to transact in bricks of US dollars while everyone else is lectured about patriotism and confidence in the local currency?

If the powerful—who have access to insider information, policy direction, and state protection—have not embraced the ZiG, on what moral or economic basis are ordinary Zimbabweans expected to do so?

This brings us to the real reason why ZiG transactions may have increased.

It is not because Zimbabweans suddenly believe in the currency.

It is because they are forced to use it.

Civil servants, pensioners, and many workers receive part of their income in ZiG.

They do not choose this arrangement; it is imposed on them.

Once the ZiG lands in their hands, they have only one rational response: get rid of it as quickly as possible.

I witnessed this logic firsthand through my late mother, a retired nurse.

Each month, she received a paltry US$50 and an even more miserable ZiG component from NSSA, along with about US$120 as a widow’s pension following my father’s death—he was a retired teacher.

Although I took care of her and she did not need to rely on this money, she had a ritual.

Every payout day, she would insist on buying snacks for me and my son—often takeaways and her favourite Madeira cake from Pick n Pay—specifically to dispose of the ZiG portion.

The US dollars she kept safely aside.

Her reasoning was always the same, and painfully simple: ngatitoshandisei zvimaZiG izvi zvisati zvaloser value—let’s use these ZiG before they lose value.

That mindset is not unique.

It is replicated daily in households across Zimbabwe.

People spend the ZiG quickly because they do not trust it as a store of value, while hoarding the US dollar component at home.

Increased usage, therefore, is not a vote of confidence; it is a survival strategy.

If Governor Mushayavanhu cannot grasp this basic truth, then he will continue misleading both himself and the country’s authorities.

The ZiG is not being embraced—it is being offloaded.

Zimbabweans are not choosing it; they are enduring it.

Trust in a currency cannot be manufactured through press statements, projections, or radio jingles.

Zimbabweans are a traumatised people, shaped by some of the most devastating monetary catastrophes in modern history.

At my mother’s passing in October last year, we found wads of old local currencies in her bedroom—thousands, millions, billions, trillions.

Money she once believed might buy her something.

Money rendered utterly useless.

Like millions of others, she had watched inflation move faster than human comprehension, leaving her holding billions that could not buy a loaf of bread.

She also lived through the early 2000s, when savings, pensions, insurance policies, and investments were wiped out almost overnight.

A lifetime of work erased, as if it had never existed.

Do the likes of Mushayavanhu honestly believe that such deep, rational trauma can be undone by optimistic projections and media hype?

Even if the central bank were to amass the traditional three months of import cover to back the ZiG, that alone would not guarantee stability—especially under any attempt at a mono-currency regime.

Currency stability is not just about reserves; it is about confidence.

And confidence does not come from coercion or propaganda.

As long as the people themselves do not trust and willingly embrace the ZiG, no amount of gold, minerals, or billions in reserves will save it.

The authorities have serious work to do.

But the starting point must be honesty.

Stop treating Zimbabweans as fools.

Stop telling them they trust a currency when their lived reality proves otherwise.

The ZiG is not winning.

Zimbabweans are simply doing what they have always done in the face of economic mismanagement: adapting to survive, even if that means discarding a currency they neither want nor believe in.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/