A few years ago, an image of a crying Greek pensioner circulated the internet. It was so popular that it became the flagship image for the Greek Debt Crisis. It is the picture of an unfortunate man who lost his life savings because of compounded effects of austerity measures imposed by the IMF to decrease his country's debt and the fact that other countries stopped lending to Greece.
This image comes to mind when I think about the Zimbabwean situation right now. Last week, the much dreaded bond notes were released into the economy. In truth, the government has been promising to introduce bond notes as a 'surrogate currency' in order to alleviate the cash crisis in Zimbabwe since 4 May.
Most citizens, however, are negative about bond notes, with good reason — the last time Zimbabwe had anything akin to its own currency was 2009, when inflation was so high (231 million per cent in October 2008 according to the IMF) that the currency had to be dropped to salvage the economy.
How did things get so bad? In late 2001, the Zimbabwe Democracy and economic Recovery Act was signed by Western countries and shortly afterwards the nation faced economic sanctions. Just like Greece, Zimbabwe faced a credit freeze. And, just like in Greece, people went to banks to find their life savings depreciated. However, no one was jumping in to bail the country out.
A drought in 2005 only worsened the situation, as agriculture is the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy. By 2008 the economy was on its knees.
The US Dollar was adopted as a substitute currency in 2009 and it seemed most of Zimbabwe's financial woes were over. That is until the GDP started falling and El Nino struck again in 2015, resulting in another drought. To make matters worse, the mining sector, which had improved after 2008, has been in a state of decline.
This time, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe couldn't print more money like they had done with the Zimbabwean dollar in 2003-2008, because the economy has been running on a borrowed currency.
Now that the US dollar has failed to revive the Zimbabwean economy, the Reserve Bank has decided to instate the bond note. This decision was met by protest action which culminated in the 31 August #TotalShutDown Protest.
"Will things change for the better? If not we'll be back at square one: illegally crossing borders to reach countries where we