RAND VERSUS DOLLAR
In my day…
A fun look at inflation I BY CHANDREA SEREBRO
MANY NOT-YET-MIDDLE-AGED REMEMBER WELL
when things cost cents rather than rands,
a time when change less than 1c (even
though, believe it or not, there was such a
thing as half a cent) was given in chappies, enough to give a kid a whole afternoon of gob smacking. It does feel like we
are in a time which the Hollywood of the
80s chose as some far out future date, although instead of alien citizens, aerial
highways and the end of humankind to
some monkeys, we have massive inflationary living. So I thought that instead of
being a prophet of doom, I would go back
down memory lane to see just how much
– pun intended – things have changed.
COUGH UP….
Remember when petrol was R1.74 a litre? Nope, this is not a joke and neither
was it before your lifetime. It wasn’t even
that long ago. When unleaded 95 octane
petrol was introduced here in February
of 1995, R1.74 a litre was the price we
were paying. And go back a little bit further, to 1989, and we were paying something in the region of 39c. That’s a far cry
from the R14 or so we’re paying now.
IN 1938…
For a sixpence, you could get: A matinee show at the local bioscope and a
sweet included!
For two shillings and a sixpence, you could
get: A scholar train ticket from Randfontein to Springs for the school term.
And for a tickey, you could: Travel on
the train one way. – Stanley Woolf
IN THE MID-50S…
For a shilling, you could see a film at the
bioscope, buy a coke in a bottle, and four
toffees, and at the end you could still get
your deposit back for the bottle, which
Thinking of travelling abroad?
Think again, when you will have to
pay R10.50 on average for a dollar.
That means right now in America
you will be paying that for a tin of
coke, which if you are lucky enough
to get there, might make you
choose tap water, five straws, instead. Would you ever believe that a
rand was worth US$1.40 from the
time of its inception in 1961 until
1982? But sadly, at the ’94 elections, it had depreciated to R3.60 to
the dollar, and it went to R6 in the
next five years. But, for whatever
it’s worth, today’s dismal rand isn’t
the worst it has ever been. In 2001
it was at its weakest historical level,
at a whopping R13.84 to the dollar.
www.wikipedia.com
would provide you with your bus fare
home. How did this add up? It was sixpence to get into the bioscope, a tickey
for a coke in a bottle, and one penny for
four big toffees. You would get back a
penny for the deposit for th H