Z$5 — Five Dollars
The artwork
Front: Green and buff, with the Chiremba Balancing Rocks at Epworth outside Harare stacked in improbable order above scrub and msasa — the geological oddity that became the Reserve Bank's emblem on paper money. At left a Burchell's zebra stands in grass beneath the promise to pay FIVE DOLLARS, the governor's signature (K. Moyana) and the place and date line, HARARE 1983. Serial BA 4442581 K in black at upper left and lower right.
Back: A communal-lands scene in fine intaglio: two women in headcloths at a wooden mortar, pounding grain with long pestles, a basket beside them. Behind rise thatched pole-and-dagga huts and a shaded granary, chickens scratching in the swept yard, and beyond a fenced gate the ploughed and planted fields run back to a low hill. Colour is restrained — olive and green with a woven band of ochre, blue and red at left and along the foot.
In circulation
The first family of notes issued after independence, dated variously 1980 to 1983 and circulating through the decade. Superseded by the redesigned series of the mid-1990s, which kept the Balancing Rocks motif but reworked the whole face; inflation later swept the five-dollar denomination away entirely.
Details
- IssuerReserve Bank of Zimbabwe
- CurrencyDollar (Z$)
- DenominationFive Dollars
- Collectedon the Zimbabwe journey, 1992
- SeriesFirst independence issue, dated Harare 1983
- SignatureK. Moyana, Governor
- WatermarkZimbabwe Bird