Zimbabwe Absurdity

We have just survived five days of no power at the nursery. The ancient Lister enginge that powers the backup pump also decided to give up the ghost (4 cylinder head gaskets later – not a good buy) so we were dependent on a little Lombardini hooked up to 5000 litre emergency tanks and another tiny electric pump that we ran a cable to from the generator in the storeroom. By lunchtime today nerves were getting more than a bit frayed as I gave the Lister one more chance. It coughed and died again then the power came back.

It all started on Saturday with some load shedding and a fire that ripped through my garden in the afternoon. With no power there was little that I could do (we rely on a pressure tank for water pressure) except dribble a little water and swat ineffectively with a wet T shirt. Property was never in much danger but now I have to look at a blackened lawn until the first rain in a couple of months or so.  Elsewhere the fire burnt a tree that fell onto a power line on Sunday night (still no power at the nursery) and it took the electricity authority until today to rectify that and another three faults in the area.

Then this afternoon the unofficial union official (the union is not even registered) pitched up whilst I was wrist deep in old diesel oil detaching the Lister from its mountings to go in for repair/whatever. He’s an obnoxious bastard whose only interest is keeping his members from straying by ensuring that HE negotiates their transport allowance on a monthly basis. I have, in the past, proposed a straight percentage but that was far too simple and would obviate his “negotiations”. The law is vague and requires “the employer to pay any incurred transport costs” to and from work. While there is transport along the road to work no-one uses it and they don’t give out receipts. No incurred cost – no need to pay anything. Oh no. They want their transport allowance (which they put in their pocket). I could provide transport and the whole issue would go away but I am the only driver around and I am not going to go collecting and returning every day at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Words were exchanged, an impasse generated and now tomorrow we go to the arbitrating body. The union person was most offended that I did not consult him if he was available and demanded to be picked up. I’d had enough and walked off. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Cash notes are in short supply again so the black market rate cash for cash (US for Zim) is weak if one is selling US dollars at around 200 Zim to the US (it started the month off at 15:1 – remember?). By contrast the transfer rate (transferring from one account to another) is around 3500:1. It is legal to give whatever discount one likes so what I do at the nursery is price everything at the transfer or cheque rate and then give a fat discount for cash. Paying in real money is still proportionately cheaper as I mark up well above the black market rate. Annoyingly people still seem to just write cheques when what I really want is US dollars. Other companies are less scrupulous. On my way into town yesterday whilst trying to solve the problem with the Lister engine (injector OK, pump OK) I stopped to get some simple spares for the Land Cruiser engine I am rebuilding. A rubber bush and hose clamp that should have cost maybe 3 US dollars came to 7 and no they did not have change. Paying in Zim dollars was a silly price and no they did not give a discount for cash. Up until now I have resisted naming names in this blog but if you are in Zimbabwe, Universal Rubber & Hose can be given a miss.

The power has been on for nearly an hour now and I have to resist the urge to keep opening the fridge to see how cold it’s getting! True to form I’d just finished having a cold bath when it came back on. It was off for nearly 36 hours from yesterday morning. I was coming back past work yesterday evening when I saw a pickup truck pull into the car park. We’ve had a few theft problems recently so I decided to see what was going on.

As I pulled up next to the truck people started offloading an 8m extending ladder. It looked rather familiar. Thoroughly suspicious now I quizzed the driver of the pickup but it was all quite innocuous. He had a plot further down the road and concerned about the lack of power to irrigate his crops he’d taken the initiative to borrow my ladder (the duty foreman had lent it to him) to assist the electricity supply company in accessing the broken cable. As they did not come back today to borrow it again they must have been able to source another so hopefully things have not got that bad, yet.

Driving to work this afternoon I noticed a substantial number of people in the old soya land between home and the nursery. I was quite surprised that there was anything left to pick up (combine harvesters are not perfect) as the land was harvested in May and people had been going through it intermittently since then. Then I realized the cause for the resurge of interest; there had been a fire last night along the edge of the land and they must have been concerned that the trash (and fallen beans) might burn.

Yes, it’s fire season again and for the past three weeks or so the landscape has been dotted with palls of smoke of varying intensities. Africa burns and no more so than in southern Africa with its alternating wet season and dry seasons that provide ample material to burn and excellent conditions to burn it. The dry usually coincides with the windy time of year which of course really gets things going.

That people should find it necessary to scavenge old soya lands for beans is not that surprising. The new currency is now a twentieth of its introductory value at the beginning of the month and more and more places are trading in only exchangeable currency (SA rand or US dollars). What food there is is extortionately expensive and I was chatting to someone in town today who informed me that bus fares to Bulawayo and Mutare are increasingly being demanded in rand. It’s quite illegal of course but nobody seems too phased by it. Unfortunately my business is hardly essential so demanding real money is unlikely to do more than drive customers away. It does not help that our seedlings are priced at all of 28 USD for 1000! We are, after all, a wholesale nursery and most of the customers sell their produce for Zim dollars so are very unlikely to pay real money.

It is perhaps not surprising that Bob is unwilling to share power with Morgan. Habits must be pretty well entrenched after 28 years of kleptocracy. The MDC appears unwilling to give any more concessions than they already have because they know that all they have to do now is wait for the economy to really crash. I have it on excellent authority that the one remaining significant forex generator, ZimPlats (South African run platinum mine) is out of production for some time. Apparently routine maintenance of the furnace went wrong when an electrode dislodged and fell through the base of the furnace putting it out of action for some months to come. Imagine a country with only one significant source of foreign currency (the diamonds in Manicaland don’t count as “income” – it’s mostly outgoing)!

Maybe this was behind the new law that allows the electricity supply authority to apply a licence fee (in US dollars too) on all owners of electric generators. You may have spotted the irony that we are being charged to do what they cannot; supply electricity. My friend Terry reckons that they don’t have the manpower to enforce it but it does potentially carry a penalty of up to 6 months in jail for non-compliance. I suspect that it is not constitutionally sound but we’ll have to wait and see if anyone is prepared to challenge it.

I was half way around the very empty supermarket when I realized that the bottle of Scotch that I thought was a bargain was anything but at USD80! It’s always a problem knocking off the zeros; suddenly everything appears much cheaper when it really is not and the outlets know this and move their prices up. I was replacing the bottle when I was approached by a youngster asking if I was going to pay by cash which I was. He asked if he could pay part of the bill with his debit card and then take some of my cash. I was not really sure about this so I made some vague non-committal reply and he wandered off. I went back to the chore of shopping (I detest it at the best of times). Some things were halfway reasonable and I pegged the standard to a tin of baked beans which at USD5 I considered extortionate. I actually had a fair bit of cash on me from a customer who occasionally likes to deal that way so that he pays less tax. It didn’t really help. I am so conditioned to not being able to afford things that I found it difficult to say – what the hell, you have the cash and want it so get it. I guess the experience with the scotch has left me with post traumatic stress. There was little to choose from anyway and what little there was had been spread out along the shelves to create a pathetic impression of plenty.

At the checkout I was again accosted by a woman who wanted to get some cash if she could pay with her card. When I acquiesced (the supermarket staff gave no indication that it was a scam) she leaped to the card scanner and swiped her card before I could change my mind. I didn’t bother asking why she did not just go to her bank because I already knew; most had run out of cash and the queues were formidable. Yes, it did occur to me to charge for the privilege but somehow it seemed a bit of a grubby practice – I guess I am a lousy businessman!

The fun started when the checkout operator started to count my low (old) denomination notes which you might remember are a 10000000000 times the face value on the computer monitor. There was not enough so I added in some of the new notes. Then I needed change which I was given in old coins. I declined. There was quite a considerable queue by now but Zimbabweans are a patient lot (way too patient – we’d have got rid of this regime in any other country) and some were even a bit amused.

On the way back home I dropped in at the office. I’d ascertained earlier in the day via the grapevine that the cash exchange rate had run to 3.6 to one US dollar, up from the beginning of the month when it was 1.5 (the 10 zeros have been removed). I adjusted the price list accordingly. It seems we are well on the way to another useless batch of currency.