Bold readers who followed my September tip to take a punt on the shares of Zimbabwe Platinum at 27c may now form an orderly queue at the pay out window. Zimplats shot out of the starting gates to hit 46c, and are home and hosed. But they might now need a spell.
The shares are listed on the ASX, so you get your winnings in Aussie dollars, rather than the Zimbabwe version, which has been going down even faster than ours. Unfortunately, Briefcase failed to follow his own advice, which I believe is known in the trade as an absence of bottle.
Certainly that is what they are suffering from in Zimbabwe, where things are going from bad to worse. The self-styled war veterans army is seizing more white-owned farms in defiance of a Supreme Court order the government seems unwilling to enforce.
Foreign reserves have dwindled to a point where there is only enough in the kitty to pay for eight weeks of imports. The wheat crop, which was predominantly grown on white farms, has halved, and auctions of tobacco, the biggest cash crop have been suspended. President Mugabe is still spending up to $1 million a day on a senseless war in the Congo 1,000 kms away.
Zimplats, which is 51 per cent owned by Delta Gold, is sitting on the Hartley platinum prospect it acquired from BHP, reckoned to contain the world’s largest undeveloped source of the metal in its Great Dyke prospect running 500 kms down the centre of the country.
