Speed markets
A couple of years ago, we used to enjoy shopping in Zimbabwe. Pushing a trolley and the other hand picking and selecting items from the shelves. I still remember reading one of the instructions neatly printed on the shelves “If you break consider it bought”. In other words if you break, you pay.
Groceries are no longer available from the shops or from the supermarkets where you expect to get meat, laundry stuff, dried and fresh foods. If you get into any of these supermarkets you find people doing hand shopping – not even enough to fill a hand shopping basket. Others will be checking or rather comparing prices of those few items found on the shelves of supermarkets with those displayed on the small tables and empty cardboard boxes of vendors just outside the front doors of the supermarket.
My friends prefer to call them speed markets because the vendors are always running away from the police. However, what is missing only from these speed markets are the trolleys because you can actually do most of your shopping in front of the supermarket. But prices will be chewing your pockets as the pricing will be based on your appearance. If you drive a car, put on spectacles, or look expensive the price will come up to your standard.
Thursday, March 20th 2008 at 11:40 am
[...] To get a driver’s license in Zimbabwe has become one big hurdle for most would-be drivers. No matter how good a driver you are if you don’t cough up some Z$850million (inflation adjustable), you risk being stuck at the CMED stage for a very long time. Sometimes you fail a test for even the smallest, possibly forgivable mistakes like straddling your parallel parking white line with only two inches of your back wheel. However, your instructor would have told you point blank: pay Z$850million – you still take the test with a lot of leniency that in essence guarantees a pass. Pay a billion, and you need never go for the test at all. Just get your pass mark and proceed to VID where you can also pay your way for possibly double the amount. Oh, and these charges also vary according to the conceptual basis of what Dennis Nyandoro described as ’speed markets’. The more elite or better dressed you look, the higher the cost. But then again, for most would-be drivers the question of moral integrity shapes the final way forward. [...]