Interview with a cash baron

THE AVENUES locale in Harare is famous for its ubiquitous Jacaranda trees that line its wide roads, that when in full bloom during the short but mild spring season dazzle residents of the capital with iridescent colors of purple and white and pink flowers. In recent years, the veneer of stateliness that once exuded from the avenues’ suburbs has slowly evaporated. 

It is now known as a seedy place, its cheap lodges and motels, from the descript Jacaranda Lodge to equally derelict Selous Hotel, crawling with prostitutes that cater to the well hilled in our decadent society.

The eastern avenues, immediately off the downtown area, are home to Road Port, the premier transportation hub from which buses ferry the extremely mobile Zimbabwe people to distant shores and destinations across Southern Africa, from far-away J’burg in the south to far-flung Lilongwe in the north. Brimming with travelers, Road Port is also home to illegal ‘money changers,’ that tough, profiteering, ingenious breed of Zimbabwean people, one of whom told me in passing: “Verily, we are the ones who have been running the economy of this country for the past six years.”

One afternoon, with the sun full and bright and warm, the air crispy and fresh and sparkling like French champagne, I made my way to Road Port along Jason Moyo Ave., passing by the Africa Unity Square, now devoid of its former garrulous flower vendors, who we swept into history books as casualties of Operation Murambatsvina.

I walked along the quiet streets briskly on a Sunday for I had an ‘appointment’ with one of the money changers that I had befriended a week before. The money changers, they being secretive and suspicious and afraid of everyone instinctively, in the mold of cunning jackals, are difficult bunch to befriend. After much cajoling, several rounds of pints of Lion Lager, and a demand of a substantial sum of US dollars, one of them ‘Takaz’ as he called himself, had agreed to let me, a novice, inside of his world, the secretive but lucrative world of the money changers.

At the corner of Jason Moyo Ave. and 3rd Street, I paused and took a cursory glance at the newspaper headlines. “Tsvangirai plans to give control of RBZ to Germans” one of The Herald headlines, in blood red, screamed. I had thought the paper would carry the presidential election results, of which everybody was waiting for with rising anxiety that now bordered on trepidation.

This was the uncertain and difficult time when the opposition had won the House of Assembly elections. “The ZEC boss, Justice Chiweshe, is sleeping with the presidential elections results under his pillow in lieu of releasing them to the public,” one angry man I met in Harare Gardens had fumed. “Either way, rinemanyanga hariputirwe, the truth will come out in the end,” he had added and walked away shaking his head.

I was looking forward to meeting Takaz when a Kombi nearly knocked me down inside 4th Street bus terminus. The driver cursed at me. I crossed 4th into the Road Port compound, a assemblage of ‘money changers’ accosting me at the moribund gate, talking and gesticulating and huffing and puffing, all in the hope of selling or buying money from me.  Like jackals, the money changers had an inane ability to sniff out potential clients, almost as if they had developed a sixth sense that gave them  immense powers to identify their query in among the multitudes of people coming and leaving Road Port.

The place, Road Port, with its two story white building brimming with hordes of travelers, many of them women carrying voluminous bags balanced dexterously on their heads, was a hive of activity as usual, with the long distance buses coming and going.

It resembled a great bazaar in a sense, as people hawked all sorts of items to the travelers, from fruits, drinks, cameramen snapping photos. I saw a gaunt tired looking man, the soles of his shoes almost none-existent, selling jewellery—hairpins, shiny bangles, pendants, bracelets, rings, earrings, hand held mirrors—all pinned systematically on a piece of brawny cardboard.

I saw another man, at the edge of the security fence that enclosed the Road Port compound. He was a scantly clad emaciated man, his ribs showing in the light of the warm sun, squatting nearby selling boiled eggs in a small round white enamel bowl. He sniffed constantly, trying to keep the viscous mucus from escaping his nostrils, if that failed he rubbed it off occasionally with the back of his hand. “Who would even attempt to buy boiled eggs from him with that kind of disregard for hygiene?”

I sat under the big Jacaranda tree behind the white building, as I had been instructed by Takaz. I waited for his arrival patiently, for me being a Zimbabwean, I had abundant patience.

“Sorry, but we had to make sure you are alone. It’s only the foolish who would trust a stranger like you,” the fast talking Takaz, wearing gold chains, baggy decorated black jeans, a baseball cap sitting on his shaven head at a jaunty angle, explained to me. His dress code reminded me of that prolific rapper from NYC, that man who sand ‘In Da Club.’ It was three hours after my arrival at the rendezvous, when a gloomy mood was threatening to overwhelm my earlier gay and sunny demeanor. “This is a dangerous business; I have to keep my guard up all the time. Let’s go.”  

I followed him and when we exited the gate, he beckoned me to get into a waiting white Toyota 4x4 double cab. Yep, money changers can afford to buy cars, they being part of the middle class, a class that was impervious, untouched by the vagaries of the Zimbabwean economy.

“No sit at the back,” Takaz instructed me and I did as I was told. Dr. Takaz, a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe medical school, started the car and we drove down 4th St. toward Chitepo Ave. “Trymore, there is a hood besides you. Put it on.”

“What?” I asked nervously, for talk of hoods reminded me of Mafia movies or those Chinese Ninja movies I used to see at the bioscope out in Old Mabvuku when I was growing up in the early nineties. “Why should I put on the hood?” I asked him. Dr. Takaz maintained his cool.

“It’s for your safety and mine too. It’s best you don’t get to know the directions to my boss’s headquarters…” He spoke of how secrecy was at the core of his ‘business.’ “Like I told you before, I’m just a small fish in this business.”

“Your boss, he agreed to meet with me?” Takaz stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“My boss agreed, but there were some reservations. One condition the boss put was that you come to the headquarters, only after you have agreed to put on the hood.”

I put on the hood over my head and the world became black. Even though the sun was still up, I couldn’t see a thing. I must confess that I felt like being a kidnapee, you know like being in a Alfred Hitchcock spy movie?  I steeled myself, and Takaz spoke about life as a money changer.

“I have accomplished that I never thought I would at this young age,” he said with a chuckle. He claimed he was 27.

“Really?” I said, adopting the skeptical tone of a journalist designed to draw out the ‘victim’. “Like what? What have you done?”

“For starters, I bought three cars, including this one, with car!” He laughed that laugh of one who has won the lotto, a laugh full of glee and satisfaction. “I have also bought my mother a mansion out in Ruwa, and young kid is in South Africa at a private school…”