Within two years, the U.S. dollar will no longer be acceptable for local payments in Zimbabwe, announced President Emmerson Mnangagwa, as the country has struggled to win back sovereignty over its own currency. “In two years’ time—in fact, two years is too far—we will get to the point where I see that the ZiG [Zimbabwe gold currency] is available in every part of the country. We are getting there. When you go to the shops carrying U.S. dollars, they will refuse to accept them,” Sputnik quoted Mnangagwa as saying at the commissioning of the Mutare Teachers College Fruit Juice and Water Processing Plant on July 4.
For more than a decade, Zimbabwe’s currency was considered less than worthless because of the Weimar Republic period inflation that had plagued Germany’s in the 1920s. As a result, Zimbabwe’s legal tender became the U.S. dollar, which was not only expensive for the population, but it took away one of the key sovereign rights of any nation, which is the right to control its own currency and credit system. Harare’s gaining control over local payments now means that Zimbabwe’s currency can now be used for the benefit of national development.