In the car park outside the headmaster’s office of one of Bulawayo’s most prestigious state secondary schools, the school bus is slowly rusting into obsolescence. In the secretary’s office, the printer is idle for lack of paper, ink ribbons and indeed the secretary herself, who along with a quarter of the teaching staff has left recently in search of a living wage.
“We cannot afford petrol. We cannot afford paper, I cannot pay my staff,” said the headmaster. He had just returned from the bank with a sack of notes to pay his teachers. Each brick of $Z500 notes, the only ones available, was worth about 20 US cents on the parallel exchange market.
