Some of us began to smell a rat when, in early August, Zimbabwe’s Finance and Economic Development Minister, Mthuli Ncube, banned the publication of annualised inflation figures until February next year.

Ncube and his Cabinet colleagues are obviously unaware of the African saying that it’s futile to cover a horned beast with leaves in order to hide its presence, as it will tear its way out sooner or later.

This is exactly what has happened up north. Ncube – an economics professor who once worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, before heading for the African Development Bank and later the University of Oxford’s Said Business School – did not want Zimbabwe’s statistics agency, ZimStats, to tell the world that the country’s economy has slipped into hyperinflation.

Those who are familiar with the goings-on in the rest of the continent will recall that the country first experienced hyperinflation from 2007 to 2009. Inflation during that period peaked at 79 600 000 000% in November 2008. The Zimbabwe government, then under Robert Mugabe, the unlamented long-ruling tyrant who breathed his last on September 6, responded by printing bank notes with a face value of billions or trillions of dollars. Everyone became a billionaire or trillionaire. The absurdity of it all was that these were hungry billionaires and trillionaires who, in many cases, could not afford three square meals a day. When you went to the shops, you had to finalise a purchase chop-chop, as prices could change any minute.

The revelation that the country might be returning to that terrain was made by the Public Accountants and Auditors Board (PAAB) earlier this month. In a statement, the PAAB said businesses in Zimbabwe had to apply the IAS 29 standard in their financial reporting.

It said in its statement: “The PAAB can advise that there is broad market consensus within the accounting and auditing professions that the factors and characteristics to apply the financial reporting in hyperinflationary standard (IAS 29) in Zimbabwe have been met.”

By muzzling the statistics agency, Ncube and the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development clearly did not want Zimbabweans to know what the country’s inflation rate is. But new data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that monthly inflation in the country reached 300% in August, the highest in the world.

While ZimStats has not publicly confirmed the IMF’s figures, ordinary Zimbabweans are feeling the sting of the diminishing value of the country’s currency. This month, for instance, electricity tariffs went up by 300%, while motorists now have to pay 26% more at the fuel pump. Most basic commodities are beyond reach for many.

The latest hyperinflation is the fifty-eighth on record worldwide and has been added to the Hanke-Krus World Hyperinflation Table, which first appeared in the authoritative Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History in 2013.

Perhaps the best known example of hyperinflation occurred in Weimar Germany following World War I, when the country suffered severe economic and political shocks, resulting in large part from the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which ended that war. The treaty required Germany to pay reparations through the Bank for International Settlements to the victorious nations for the damage caused to them by the war. Prohibited from making payments in its own currency, Germany had to trade it for hard currencies at highly unfavourable rates. As the country printed more money to make up the difference, the rates worsened and hyperinflation took hold. It peaked at 30 000% a month, causing prices to double every few days.

The re-emergence of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe puts paid to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’ mantra. The situation facing Zimbabwe is nowhere near what Weimar Germany had to deal with. I put Zimbabwe’s second descent into hyperinflation down to mismanagement of the economy. When Mnangagwa and his crowd rose to power in November 2017 – following the coup that toppled Mugabe – hopes were raised that, at long last, the country’s fortunes would change for the better. Those hopes were misplaced and it appears Zimbabweans will continue to languish in the doldrums for much longer.