Does anyone really care? People have struggled to get bank notes for years now and have little to buy with them anymore.
In the same week that Germany’s Giesecke & Devrient announced it would no longer be doing business with Harare, UK supermarket giant Tesco, which buys about £1m worth of vegetables from Zimbabwe a year, announced that it would stop doing business on moral grounds.
The announcements are the strongest signs of the increasing moral pressure being applied to companies seen as propping up the Robert Mugabe regime.
The debate is not new but the severity of the current situation in Zimbabwe has lent it momentum. It is the new talking point that is helping to relieve fatigue over Zimbabwe’s political dramas. Should foreign companies doing business in Zimbabwe be boycotted? Should they shut up shop?
Zimbabwean businesses, alongside foreign companies, have been silent on the issue of government repression, poor governance and destructive economic policies. Business aversion to publicly ratcheting up pressure for change appeared to be based on three central platforms  fear, self-interest and survival.
In a country run by a government bent on total control, it is easiest to keep your head down. And in any case, some businesses have profited from the weird economy, particularly those with links to the ruling party and the extensive benefits of government patronage.
There is no doubt that foreign exchange generated by exporters, particularly in the mining sector, has helped to prop up the government. And it is equally clear the ruling party is not using these funds in Zimbabwe’s best interests.
The Naspers saga, in which the company was contracted by a middleman to print brochures punting all the good things Zanu (PF) has done since 1980, is a case in point. That contract was certainly not paid for in worthless Zimbabwe dollars.
And it was not an isolated example. Efforts over the years by British-based magazine New African to defend Mugabe against western critics were rewarded with large government propaganda contracts paid in foreign currency. Last year, for example, the Zimbabwe government allegedly paid New African $1m for a 70-page propaganda feature following internationally publicised attacks on key Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials.
Many businesses operating in Zimbabwe argue that the weight of politics, which in turn has resulted in an increasingly onerous operating environment, has been its own kind of sanction.
Political risk has shot through the roof and uncertainty is the order of the day. Coping with inflation, now unofficially estimated at 9-million percent, is its own challenge.
The MDC has upped the ante, saying it will revisit licences given to foreign companies if it comes into power. It justifies its stand on the basis that investors are effectively supporting Mugabe’s regime, whatever defence companies use to justify their actions. This defence has mostly included the fact that companies do not want to worsen already high unemployment.
This might be a consideration. But the bigger issue is that it simply makes no economic sense to leave now, just when there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Companies also know that giving in to moral pressure will only open up opportunities for those companies less concerned with corporate governance issues, notably from the east.
If there is a grey area in this moral morass, perhaps it is that companies should maintain some reputational high ground by not doing direct deals with the current government.
Morally, there is no doubt that pulling out of Zimbabwe in its darkest hour would be the right thing to do. Commercially, it makes no long-term sense. Either way, does Mugabe really care?
Games is director of Africa@Work, an African consulting firm.
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