Money & Morality

Over the weekend I read about how the first lady of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe, raided the country's coffers of foreign currency to help finance the family holiday in Malaysia.

You can't really blame her. After all, Zimbabwe has the world's highest rate of inflation, which was nearly 80 billion percent per month as of November 2008. At US$92,000, the amount really wasn't much for a month long vacation of a VIP family of five. Besides, it looks as if the US dollar is becoming the de facto currency of the country in any case, even as new $20 billion and $50 billion Zimbabwean dollar notes have been announced, and health workers along with others will soon be receiving their pay in US currency.

While the first family of Zimbabwe goes on its annual vacation, thousands of Zimbabweans pour over the border into South Africa to find work and escape from increasingly difficult conditions there. One such family ended up in Cape Town.

Late last year, Masiiwa and Miriam crossed from Zimbabwe into South Africa in order to buy food, leaving behind her 12 year old daughter and 9 year old son. Miriam thought she would return shortly with much needed food. Instead, unable to afford the bribes to get back over the border, she got stuck in South Africa and separated from her children. Masiiwa, her husband and a former teacher in Zimbabwe, put an ad in the paper to get work so that they could return to get their children out of the country.

In steps my wife's uncle, Dave Rattle, and his wife, Annie, who were looking for a part time gardener. They saw Masiiwa's ad and decided to help. They spent approximately US$2500 to help reunite the Zimbabwean family.

Dave and Annie are not super rich by any means, but would be classified as comfortably middle class using American terms. They retired a couple years ago from a real estate agency that they founded, and have a couple of holiday properties that they rent out on a short term basis to supplement their income.

The point to this is that you can decide what to do with your wealth once you have created it, even if you aren't in the Gates's or the Buffett's league. Sure, if you have the money, you can go on holiday while your nation sinks into an economic malaise, as did the Mugabes, or you can use a portion of your wealth to make the world a better place, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett... or for that matter Dave and Anne Rattle.

(Originally published at The Creating Wealth Blog on 1/11/09)