the colour purple

Purple is the new colour in Zimbabwe. In town today, I lose count of the purple tops I see: sequinned, strapless, spaghetti-ed. All are zhing-zhong and all are new (I know because zhing-zhong loses its bling fairly quickly).

Now that the shops are full again, it seems like everyone's shopping desperately. There are new clothes shops, restaurants (a recent Australia returnee wants to open a kids' party franchise. She's planning on matching the South African motherstore: 3 warehouses and expanding).

How do you square the shopping (most at imported prices) and the oft-repeated complaints about no money? There are a few clues in the paper: an ex-UN chemical weapons inspector who's earning 4,500 US on the side with his two butcheries, teachers in Harare demanding 20 US per child for 'compulsory' extra lessons (a class of 40 would give a tax-free monthly bonus of 800 US, pointed out one letter-writer in the government Sunday Mail paper), even the woman advertising a local church who said her beauty business and her prayers had bought her an 18-roomed mansion in Zimre Park and a Toyota Tundra.

Zimbabweans are famed for their ability to Make a Plan. They did throughout Zimbabwe's decade-long economic crisis: they're still doing it today.