The sun is setting in Harare when we drive towards Angwa Street right in the middle of town. It is midweek and the rush hour traffic is intense as people try to get home before the rains that have swelled up the clouds since mid-afternoon start pounding on them.
However, further down the road, it is a different ball game altogether. Just after the now demolished old Ximex Mall site, the “town boys”, the dealers that occupy this stretch of the road are relaxed with their cars double parked along the road. The atmosphere on this part represents a carnival like environment.
Alcohol and other illicit drugs flow freely as these dealers imbibe right in the middle of town with absolute impunity. We drive further down and park our vehicle at Karigamombe Centre and start walking back towards these dealers.
We are looking for Eddie (not his real name), one of the dealers for the umpteenth time. He has been elusive on the phone and we are beginning to panic. It is the sixth day since we transferred the local currency into an account he had provided in exchange for United States dollars. It is illegal to trade this way, but the formal banks hardly have any currency if one needs foreign notes. If they do, the amounts they allocate are too paltry and cannot be relied on.
Eddie and his cohort provide an alternative market to cover this gap. It is a market with no hard and fast rules, a wild market that we find ourselves neck deep in trying to salvage our money. My doctor friend Mike and I transferred money from a venture we partnered in almost a week back. From the very day of the transfer our intuition has been that of doom and time is proving us right. An hour after sending the proof of payment (PoP) to an account Eddie had provided ostensibly for the purposes of purchasing fertiliser, the wheels started coming off.
Eddie claimed we had delayed in sending the PoP; someone else had also done the required amount. This was in spite of the fact that we had provided him with the payment slip hardly 30 minutes after he had requested for the payment.
He then claimed it was not a train-smash, because he had in his own words, a lot of demand for the ZWL and he would find someone else to take the Zimbabwean dollars by the end of the next day, which happened to be a Friday. We gave him the benefit of the doubt; mistake number one! Friday came and passed with a new claim that most of his clients who were of Indian origin were in prayers since morning and he had failed to find a taker. He assured us that everything was under control and he would settle on the next day.
Over the weekend, his phone was completely unreachable only for him to surface on the Whatsapp messaging platform mid-morning on Monday with the new claim that he had rushed to a funeral over the weekend and had been totally offline. He then promised to meet us at the end of the day.
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The time came and the time passed. At this point, alarm bells had started ringing in our ears. Over coffee later that evening, I asked Dr Mike, my colleague if he also thought we were being taken for a ride.
“Unlikely,” he replied, “I know his brother all too well. He is a good client of mine and he referred me to him for any currency needs.”
Half-assured I calm my nerves and think that perhaps it is just a delay and we will get our money. Something within me twitches me to the fact that this is just a nerve calming experience we are just trying to switch into. We sip on our coffee in denial, trying to believe that this experience we are undergoing cannot really be happening.
Tuesday morning, I send Eddie a Whatsapp message checking on the funds. The message is ignored and he has his Whatsapp settings set in such a way that you cannot see when last he was online or whether he has read the message or not.
A couple of hours later I try to call, the phone rings and rings but there is no answer.
On the other side our goods supplier in South Africa is getting agitated as well. We had promised to pay him by Monday but still do not have the money to do the payment. On the fifth or sixth spaced attempts, Eddie’s phone reports that he is on another call and I keep holding. It rings then dies off.
I quickly try to call again and at this point it just rings and rings.
My colleague has also been trying the number and at this moment we conclude this deal has gone awry.
Dr Mike calls Eddie’s brother and relates the matter. The brother is distraught, he respects the good doctor who did a procedure on him just a couple of years back that could have left him buried six feet under at his traditional home in rural Murewa. He promises to call Eddie and revert within a few minutes.
Indeed, he calls back. His phone call opens a Pandora's box that leaves us despondent. He reveals details of the murky underground forex market in Harare. With the weakening exchange rate and cutthroat competition for deals, dealer margins have thinned.
A transaction worth 10 million dollars hardly makes a hundred dollars in exchange rate profits for the dealers and with the long chain that would be existing between the payer and receiver of funds that hundred dollars can be split four or five ways. This has led dealers to improvise and seek new ways to maximise revenue.
The street dealers have devised a new scheme that would leave the convicted American grandmaster of Ponzi schemes Ben Mardoff green with envy. Once they receive the local currency into their various trading accounts, they quickly purchase products that are in high demand using foreign currency.
They have contacts at the firms selling these products and through hook and crook they are able to get allocations of these products that would normally be sold only in foreign currency in supermarkets.
In our case, Eddie and his cohort had purchased tobacco ostensibly for the purposes of smuggling it into Botswana or South Africa where there was a ready market for the product.
The initial lie he had told us that there had been a double payment into the account was supposed to buy them time whilst they smuggled the tobacco. Unfortunately for them, the tobacco was seized by authorities before they had smuggled it to the buyers.
This had left Eddie and his cohort in a quagmire. They tried to negotiate a bribe to get the consignment released and when that failed they had abandoned the cargo and were prepared to throw myself and Dr Mike under the bus insofar as the recovery of our funds was concerned.
Had it not been for the pressure Eddie was receiving from his brother, he would most likely have even blocked our numbers as well. The parallel markets are perilous waters to sail, it is almost impossible to report being conned in markets you are not supposed to be dabbling in the first place. Courts will simply throw your matter out if you approach them with dirty hands and we were fully cognisant of this fact.
On the flip-side, raising a matter like this with the police could also put us on the radar of the feared Financial Intelligence Unit, an evil we wanted to avoid at all costs. Caught between a rock and a hard place we had no option but to trek Eddie down and try to negotiate a way to get our funds. We tried Roadport, we tried the tuck shops downtown before one dealer informed us that he was on Angwa Street.
So we set sail with Dr Mike’s phone ringing non-stop from the hospital where he was supposed to be. After a few minutes we spot Eddie high as a kite seated on the bonnet of a car.
Startled, he goes into a tirade on how delays are a regular occurrence in his business and that he is not a criminal. The irony of his street drinking and line of business is lost on him. He is delirious and has had more than his head can handle obviously. We ask to meet him in the morning and he agrees. Early the next morning, we rock up at his flat with his brother in tow. Sobered up and with apparent respect for his brother who is their family patriarch Eddie finally opens up with details of the transaction. They have lost both the product and the money. There is absolutely no way they can recover either as it stands.
I look at my colleague Dr Mike who by now is holding his head facing downwards with both hands. The despondency on his face needs no interpretation. Eddie’s brother is shaking with rage on the other end. He asks his young brother how many of these botched transactions he has had. The response shocks us. Eddie asks if he is asking for the number of botched deals during this current year which is barely into the second month or in the last year or if he wants a grand total over the years.
We are the tenth victims so far this year and he has lost count of the preceding years. Such is the way of life on Harare’s streets these days
The jungle has turned into a dog-eat-dog affair. Dr Mike suddenly gets into a tirade, he tells Eddie he does not care about the consequences but he is going straight to some senior police officers he knows to report the issue and he wants the “fertiliser” we paid for. At this point there is absolutely no mention of the underlying transaction. The good doctor is now demanding payment in fertiliser. He has lost his calmness and is swearing and cursing like a pirate from the old seas.
Eddie senses danger. He is yet to fully comprehend the link between us and his brother. The talk of senior police officers above the grade of those he interacts with has unsettled him. Immediately he offers a truce.
He offers a payment from his coffers to cover us and promises that he has a few cars being disposed of at car sales that will make the difference. He walks into his bedroom and after what seems an eternity comes with a bunch of notes. It is barely 20% of the money he owes us but with the month end payment pressure we are under, the Stockholm effect takes over. I mutter a thank you.
Back in the car after dropping off Eddie’s brother, I ask the doctor which senior cops he was going to call. He laughs. It had all been a bluff out of necessity, a bluff that at least had got us some of our money back. Nine other victims had not been so lucky this year. We vow to delete Eddie’s numbers from our phones as soon as this ordeal is over. As soon as we utter this pact we almost laugh at our misery, this ordeal will never be over. The chances of us ever recovering our full balance lie between zero and nothing in the fullness of time.
