The cost of habit is far outstripping social resources and rendering close to a quarter of Botswana's labour force functionally useless. They say 'money does not smell,' in common parlance, stolen chicken tastes the same as bought chicken. So the morality of avoiding stolen goods may not be attested to by the number of shredded cars for parts, or television sets and cellphone 'repairs' that destroy more cellphones than repair them. So money does not smell only in places where money is really least known. Yet the reek of old currency notes continues to assault the unsuspecting nostril.The smell of well thumbed notes is by now legendary. Yet strangely, money is the only commodity that does not respect order or sense, any hierarchy it humbles down until it establishes itself as the referential commodity that is a noncommodity. A currency. Think of any other type commodity that is as fanciful.
But also think of its uselessness against starvation or thirst, when there is no seller of the more vital commodities. Money is a funny categorisation that makes perfect sense out of absolute nonsense and all the other way round, possible. In the bourgeois society we are creating there is little room for compassion. The saying is, 'wafa-wafa', 'wa sala, wa sala'. Everybody looks after their own interest, God is for us all. We are just now repairing a babalased economy after a long weekend that combined 'month end' smanzana and the period of anomy that is national independence celebrations. It is the occasion where very large amounts of Chibuku are consumed, and made readily available to halt all national interprise. It is a national rigor motis. The way the promotion, sale and consumption of Chibuku has been fetishised as Chama, 'the consoller' then very widely distributed seven days a week, in places as far afield and as varied as urban centers, rural villages in the country side and farmlands beyond.
