THEY are Zimbabweans, these nameless mothers and fathers
You walk into the bank, the atmosphere is tense. You wonder!
The movements of the many into the bank are tentative, they are not sure they will be allowed inside.
The first in the queue gets to the teller: “Ndingakubatsirai nei?” the female teller asks indifferently.
The mother answers: “Tinotsvakawo mari.”
The teller says: “Mirai panze, the manager will address you. Imi mose muri muraini kana muchida mari, endai panze, vachauya ipapo manager.”
A few people stay behind, they are quite at peace.
They don’t look intimidated at all. They get to the teller and one after the other, they get cash.
A youngish urbane male walks into the bank and takes a seat.
The female teller beams at him: “Muri kuda mari here bhudhi?”
Smiling quietly, he says: “No thanks sis.”
It is obvious he only had to say the word and it would be done.
Day after day this is what happens. There are many who are harassed by tellers and security guards, by the manager, as if they have come to steal or they are queuing for handouts from a reluctant donor.
And you wonder who are these few who get money when the rest don’t! Who are given individual attention, so special they actually are offered money before they ask?
This is when the answer to the majority is: “Hakuna mari!” and when people ask when it will be available, they are told: “We don’t know!”
It’s final, you just have to go out and see how best to get by.
It doesn’t matter how far you have come.
On this particular day, a lady customer asked why the one in front of her got money and she was turned away. The manager, a male in his early 30s answered:
“He is our corporate customer.”
“What’s a corporate customer?” the lady customer asked nonchalantly?
“They are our big customers,” the manager replied arrogantly.
At that point, something did not work for the ‘non-corporate’ lady customer.
“Why don’t you open a bank with your corporate customers only, and leave us alone with our small amounts?
“Who says a corporate customer needs money more than I do, I want my money?”
The manager tried to dismiss her but she cautioned him not to be too hasty.
Reminding him ‘a dollar is a dollar, it is not labelled corporate’, she shouts: “I want my money!”
The manager is not moved. The security guard pretends he is elsewhere other than the escalating tensions.
She reminded him that he was there because of her money, he got paid from her money and the money of all those outside so there was no need for him to be so high and mighty.
The manager’s eyes blazed at her as the ‘corporate’ and ‘non-corporate’ customers edged closer.
“Imi ambuya, have we not helped you before?”
“Helped? Is it charity to give me my money? Give me my money! You can close my account if you won’t give me my money now!
“Rusarura urwu runorevei?”
Still the manager would not budge.
“I see,” she said.
“Where did you go to university or maybe you do not even have a degree, did you ever learn anything about customer relations?”
“I do not have to tell you where I went to university,” the manager retorted.
“Haha-a haa-a,” she was angrily amused.
At that point the security guard realised he might lose his job if he did not intervene.
He spoke quietly to her.
She said: “Ah ndatopedza,” and she walked out.
The manager was livid, visibly shaken.
The ‘non-corporate’ customers left the bank.
They were not wanted, they did not belong.
The ‘corporates’ straightened themselves up in their very short queue.
I was ‘non-corporate’. I also made my way to the door, making a mental note to remind the manager to tell us where he went to university the next time I came to the bank.
The next time I decided I would not go to this small branch, but to the HQ in the heart of Harare. Hopefully some sanity reigned there, I encouraged myself.
There was no sanity there either. The ‘corporates’ still got the money and as far as the bank was concerned, we small fish ‘had no money to talk of’. We left empty-handed.
On another day I tried the HQ again. We almost tiptoed into the bank. No-one wanted us. It was that obvious but for some reason on that day they gave us some money, plastic bags of coins were all over the countertops. Ahead in our queue was a ‘corporate.’
He was given notes, not bags of coins like the commoners.
After him was a commoner who asked: “Can I please have some of the money in US dollars and the other in Bond notes?”
The male teller scowled at such audacity and then condescendingly smiled: “The US dollars are for the master-card holders only.”
The commoner paused some moments, hurt, and then left.
I was behind him, and when I got to the teller, I could see US dollars and Bond notes in the open drawer, as well as bags of coins on the counters.
I got my bag of 100 by 50-cent coins and left.
Something was disconcerting?
Is this Rhodesia; what is going on? Is this money-racism, what is going on?
I could not be at peace.
People work hard for their money, they bank it, now it is almost impossible to get it out because they are ‘commoners’.
It has become such a headache and a heartache.
They can never get dollars because they are not master-card holders but they were told the bond notes are equivalent to the US dollars; by what magic is it that only mastercard holders can get US dollars?
Was this the contract Mr (John) Mangudya (RBZ Governor) made with the people of Zimbabwe?
People should not be discriminated against — least of all in Zimbabwe.
Mass yakazviramba, yakazvirwisa, ikazvikunda.
When mothers come from far away with babies on their backs, that is not easy.
The least that should happen is that they should get their money, not to be treated as beggars.
The last thing they need is to be admonished and ordered to stay outside to be addressed by irate arrogant managers, when in fact they are critical stakeholders who have caused the bank to be — they don’t owe the bank anything.
It is the bank which is beholden to them.
If there are hardships in our country, let us all share the burden.
It is these mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, the ordinary of Zimbabwe, the ‘non-corporates’, the commoners who are Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is their country too.