Barter trade latest, man buys beer with goat currency

Shakespeare Muzavazi

In a latest development on the “pay using your goat agenda”, a man from Shurugwi has managed to buy six packs of Super Chibuku opaque beer for his uncle’s funeral using ‘goat currency’.

Phanuel Mapuranga of Dombojena resettlement village in Shurugwi can be scribed as the first man to follow the government’s idea of using livestock as mode of payment, and Chengeto bottle store as the first retail enterprise to accept goats as legal tender in the cash strapped Zimbabwean economy.

In an exclusive interview with this reporter, Mupuranga who was seen busy pulling his goat into a bottle store and later came out with six packs of opaque beer said he just got the idea from social media and put it into practice.

“Ndakakonzawo pa whatsapp kuti mbudzi dzotenga so pandawirwawo nenhamo just thought kuti vanhu havangashaye chekunwa pamaririro saka ndauya nembudzi kuzochinjanisa nemaSuper(I was told via Whatsapp that goats are now a new form of currency in Zimbabwe, so when I lost a relative I decided to use my goat to pay for beer at the local store),” he said.

The storekeeper also said that there was no problem with livestock barter trade as long as business partners agree on the value of the stock.

“There is no problem with people coming to buy products using livestock as long as we agree on the value of your goat we can transact, for example, we valued Mapuranga’s goat at US$36 and we gave him 36 bottles of opaque beer,” he said.

When asked how the storekeeper was going to use the goats to purchase goods for resale from wholesalers the storekeeper said they won’t, but they will rather slaughter the livestock and sell the meat or use it as a relish for the siege they sell at their bottle store.