Riot police in Zimbabwe fired tear gas and beat up opposition protesters marching Wednesday through Harare against the new "bond note" currency, an AFP reporter said. Zimbabwe's central bank on Monday rolled out the "bond notes" - equivalent to the US dollar - to ease critical cash shortages, despite fears of a return to the hyperinflation that wiped out many people's savings in 2009.
About 100 activists from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the pressure group Tajamuka were chanting anti-government songs when police moved in to disperse them. The protesters also carried placards denouncing the economic policies of President Robert Mugabe, 92, whose 36-year authoritarian rule has come under increasing public criticism this year.
"Bond notes = Toilet tissue" read one placard, as others declared "No To Bond Notes" and called Mugabe "a limping donkey". Police confronted the marchers with tear gas and water cannon, and beat up several of them with rubber truncheons. Some shops in the capital's central business district pulled down their shutters as police chased after the demonstrators.
"We are not going to embrace bond notes," Hardlife Mudzingwa, a spokesman for Tajamuka, told AFP. "They are being used to mop up the US dollars that people have in their accounts so that top government officials can import their personal goods." Many cash machines now disperse half US dollars and half bond notes. Zimbabwe abandoned its own dollar currency in 2009 after hyperinflation hit 500 billion percent.
The adoption of foreign currencies like the US dollar and the South African rand brought relative economic stability. But the gains were soon lost as the government pursued aggressive policies that scared off investors, including indigenisation laws forcing foreign-owned companies to sell majority stakes to locals.
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