It’s not how well you say it
When the cock crowed, euphoria filled the land. Five year plans were brandied about with enthusiasm, gusto and the future seemed bright. We looked beyond our borders and thought, just like the South Africans do now, “Thank God we are not like those countries up north.”
When Mozambiquean refugees sought haven from the RENAMO stoked civil strife in their homeland, we were prone to treat them with contempt, calling them mamoskeni” while we gloated in our own sense of wealth, success, stability and invincibility.
We laughed at our Zambian brothers and their “worthless” Kwacha (back then) and how they needed wheelbarrows to carry enough money to buy a loaf of bread… Little did we know that bearer cheques lurked in the shadows or that a new currency would have the suffer a fate similar to that of the bearer cheques in a short, short period. Read more
