Zimbabwe Absurdity

It has not been a great week. First the immersion steamer we use to sterilize seedling trays stopped working. This morning the slow puncture in my truck’s right rear tyre was in need of attention but my compressor was not working properly. And the day/date facility on my watch packed up just one month outside the warranty period. So like any good Zimbabwean farmer I set about fixing. The immersion heater pump control was by-passed with a simple switch. The compressor is up and running again but I have to admit I don’t know how I did it as I could not see anything obviously wrong in the pressure switch.. The tyre will have to wait as the place that repairs punctures  did not have any electricity to power the machine that gets the tyre off (the attendants were not impressed by my suggestion to do it the old-fashioned way).

We are resourceful largely because we have to be in order to keep going. Spares are often not available or are prohibitively expensive. This was the case a few years ago when the automatic seed sowing machine broke down. I phoned the manufacturer in Durban and asked how I could service the pneumatic valves that drove everything. No, apparently it could not be done. Watch me I thought. The machine eventually stopped some four years later and all it took was a bit of ingenuity and some rubber grease.

The spares situation is only going to get worse in the short-term. The Reserve Bank has plundered the FCA’s (foreign currency accounts) of exporters yet again and have no means of paying them back. Perhaps it went towards paying for a certain shipment of arms, who knows? Private FCA’s have not been touched, yet, but anything is possible, even the government can be resourceful. Their next gambit may well the Indigenisation Act which will enable them to acquire a controlling interest of any company they choose. It has been on the cards for some time now but is creeping closer to reality. They are probably after the big companies who may actually have something left to acquire. I have it on excellent authority that the  company that is franchised to supply Coca-Cola to the masses is taking it very seriously indeed and will close down if there is so much as a hint of intent their way.

I was chatting to a customer last Saturday and asked him what his business was and how it was going. Signage and terrible was the reply. It seems that there are just not many companies left interested in any form of advertising. Chatting to another customer this morning she mentioned that a South African economist had commented that Zimbabwe and the “situation” would continue as long as there is private money invested and people are just too resourceful at keeping it all together. Maybe this Indigenisation Act will be the final nail (not sure how many nails this coffin will take) but I wouldn’t bet on it. We are just too resourceful!

I went into my local bank last Friday to draw out the maximum in cash that I was allowed, 5 billion local dollars (about 125 US dollars), or so I thought. Nope, sorry the maximum has been reduced to 1 billion (we seem have to adopted the US “standard” of 1000 million to a billion). And no, the new notes were not available either. I have since seen the new 50 million note which looks a lot like the 5 million apart from the colour and the zeros which they have actually formatted: 50 000 000 which is much easier to read than 50000000!

We are in a curious situation in this country of going into a recount of the presidential elections without actually knowing the result of the first round. Note that this is different from going into a second round (which we were going to do) without knowing the results of the presidential election. It seems that this has all stemmed from the posting of the election results outside the polling stations as required by SADCC standards for a free and fair election (SADCC = Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference). Now I must admit that as far as I could see the actual polling process WAS free and fair. There were more observers in the polling station that I went to than people waiting to vote. It was all orderly and surprisingly low key. I can only think that the ruling party were so confident of a clear win that they thought there was no need to fiddle anything. Oops. Now of course they are in a corner and not at all sure what to do about it. If Africa is really serious about being taken seriously (permanent seat on the UN security council etc.) it should be serious about sorting out the whole sorry mess.

It seems that the nation is undergoing a collective holding of breath as getting anything done or committments made is just about impossible. Businesses have slowed right down and we seem to be on hold and event the parallel market currency rate seems to have stalled. We are all getting tired of headlining on the international news too. One of the farmers who shares my premises commented to me yesterday that he was so tired of seeing Zimbabwe elections on the various news channels that he was rather glad to have a power cut yesterday so he would not be obliged to watch!

A customer called in earlier this week and amongst other things we discussed the growing of tobacco seedlings. She’d missed growing the crop for this season but was keen to “have a go” next season. So I asked what type of tobacco she wanted to grow, was it burley or virginia? She didn’t know. Well what did it look like? Big leaves. (Not too helpful). Was she going to cure it in a barn or outside. In a barn (so that makes it virginia). How much was she going to grow? 5 ha. Where was she going to grow it? Hwedza (an area that was particularly badly hit by the farm invasions). She asked how much seed she should get. I asked what the variety would be (depends on seed size). She didn’t know that. She asked me where she should get the seed (!) so I told her the Tobacco Research Board would be the place and she should get enough for 2ha (we are more efficient than the traditional seedbed method). I hope she has got the money to “have a go” – it could be an expensive experiment. Anyway, it looks like the future of Zimbabwe’s agriculture is assured with this level of “expertise” around!

I can remember as a child that we had a book called Tales from Long Ago (or something like that, hey, it WAS long ago) which basically drew on the myths and legends of the ancient Greeks and Romans. One that particularly caught my imagination was the story of Pandora’s Box. The book is still around somewhere and I still have an over active imagination but I’ll just rely on memory for the story which I think is relevant.

Pandora being the curious girl that she was found this amazing old chest and despite having been warned by various powers that be not to open it just could not control her curiosity. She was after all being tempted badly by all the voicies inside begging to be let out. So, she opened the chest and out poured all the nasty things of the world that bit and stung and insulted. You know, malice, hate, jealousy etc. Too late she slammed the lid down but the damage was done. She sat there and cried and muttered and then when she’d got over it all she heard another voice begging to be let out. No way was she going to fall for that one again! But the voice was so pleading and kind that she eventually gave up and thinking that she could not really do any more damage she let the “thing” out. It was beautiful and waiflike, without any definable form but it was indeed kindly. As it flew away she said; “Wait, what are you?” (there’s NOTHING to beat a woman’s curiousity!) and a gentle voice drifted back “I am Hope”.

For a while earlier this week we dared to hope.

I have just indulged myself with a  week’s trip to South Africa; mainly shopping but also to see some friends in the Jo’burg and Pretoria, one of whom is off to Australia because she sees no future for her sons in South Africa.

I am not particularly fond of shopping – it’s just a necessary evil to me. I must admit that it was satisfying to be able to go into a shop and be reasonably assured of getting what I wanted. Converting back to Zim dollars is of course meaningless and would be at best very depressing. What the hell; my mother had the philosophy that money was designed to be spent so I did her proud on the small luxuries; CD’s, breakfast cereal, Marmite etc.

I drove down to Pretoria, a trip of some 1100 km in one day and stayed with Megan who is off to Australia this Sunday. A perpetually cheerful character (she will live to be very old) she was in my horticulture under graduate class as university.  She is staying with a friend whom I vaguely recognized from varsity and 10 cats and 4 dogs. I am not overly fond of cats but will tolerate them but the smell from 10 cats all shitting and pissing in two kitty litters was a bit much. I also stayed with other Megan who was also in my undergrad class. She has done well for herself and is in senior management in on of the biggest fertilizer companies in South Africa. She just has one very large (75kg) boerbul (Afrikaans for “farm bull” although it’s a dog) that would not allow me to go to the toilet in the night! Her parents are retired and live next door and her mother kindly took me to a wholesale material warehouse. It suddenly struck me whilst we were driving what a contradiction South Africa is; yes, it is first world – the banks have money, there are the latest cars everywhere there are crowded freeways and the shopping centres (malls) are what you’d expect anywhere in the first world but… There is trash around, lots of it and the beggars are definitely third world. Dirty, really dirty and irritating.

Of course I knew when I was back in Zimbabwe when I went to get milk at the local supermarket yesterday. Bring your own containers and fill up from the 2000 litre bulk tank in the corner complete with refrigeration unit and instructions on how to clean and sterilize your containers. I remarked to a woman in the queue that there cannot be too many countries that shoppers keep there milk containers in excess of 8 months as I have done. Recycling? What’s that – we USE our old containers!

Being an atheist Easter means little to me. I do associate it with my mother’s death which was on the Thursday before Good Friday in 1992. I suppose I could look up the date but it is not that important. I think I’ll just have an early Easter egg and remember her fondly as the truly extraordinary woman that she was.

I pulled open my lower left desk drawer and wondered where to pack the next bricks of nearly worthless Zimbabwe dollars. Trouble was there was no space; it had all been taken by much more worthless (excuse the split infinitives) dollars. No, seriously, these were not even worth my time at the bank, they would not even count them and charge me for the privilege too! Most were even expired (yes, expired). I should explain that for the past 3 years or so we have been using “bearer cheques” which are essentially notes with expiry dates on them. They are not normally use in an open currency system but hell, we Zimbos are nothing if not ingenious. Then it came to me; there is a huge opportunity here in very high quality waste paper. Surely there must be thousands of people out there in the same situation? There has to be tonnes of the stuff around! Anyone out there know what can be done with very high quality wast paper – it even has the UV security flecks in it!

On Politics
As one wag put it recently: Bob’s biggest concern is that the election results will be leaked before the election!

On Inflation
It’s official; inflation is now over 100,000% p.a. And that’s according to the government satistics office which bases it’s figures largely on controlled price items (so much for the control). I saw that in Thursday’s Financial Gazette which commented that private figures put it at over 300,000%. I’m not too surprised. The street exchange rate for cash has gone from 6m to the US dollar on Monday to 11m yesterday.

On Loyalty
The government has reasoned not unreasonably that loyalty can and should be bought. I have it on good second hand authority that the presidential guard (who may be seen outside Bob’s Place with foliage on their heads) are getting one billion Zim dollars a week as cash. That’s OK by Zimbabwe standards.

 It’s a curious phenomenon; you can often buy things much cheaper in Zimbabwe in US dollars than in local currency. My other laptop has come to the end of its life; the cable that supplies the signals to the monitor has become damaged and the right hand side is very difficult to read. It was a choice of seeing if I could get it repaired or finding another. As it was approaching 4 years old I decided to see what was on the market. Quite a lot as it transpired, and it was reasonably priced if one could come up with real money. The accepted exchange rate to the US is about 8 million to one. However the price I was quoted on this machine was around 10 million (the price list quite clearly showed the US dollar price – apparently against the law) times the US price. So, I went to the piggy bank and dug out the 1200 dollars and am the owner of a new laptop, sans receipt and I did not pay VAT either! It’s an entry level HP and it comes with the Windows Vista OS which may not be something to be excited about.  The next task is to get all my data from the old computer across to this one. I am NOT looking forward to that.I suppose I should admit that I am practising the dual currency pricing too, but very selectively. We are growing a lot of granadilla seedlings for the export market; the fruit is exported. So when prospective customers ask me about the price I give them the US (on which we base our prices anyway – that’s not illegal but selling in another currency is) and then the local based on an inflated exchange rate. When they protest I point out that to buy inputs I may well have to use real money. They usually see the point.

It’s been several weeks since I have been able to blog; it was a lightning strike on the UHF link next door that did it. I was in my kitchen at the time and with the flash and bang together I knew it had been close but as everything was working in my house I didn’t give it too much thought. Despite everything being off on the computer network it trashed all their network cards and the UHF power supply. Such is the situation in Zimbabwe right now (hey, at last count 150,000% inflation and growing) that nothing much gets done without having to cough up in real money (more on that one later).

It was last week, I think, when Austin asked me in the gym what I thought of the latest development in Zimbabwe politics. I was clueless so he enlightened me that Simba Makoni, an erstwhile minister of finance, was standing in the presidential (and parliamentary) elections next month. On the surface this is indeed positive news.  Simba resigned from his portfolio due to the impossibility of his position and that he stood up to Robert’s directive. He is indeed bright and a successful businessman (as are a lot of the ZANU-PF hierarchy – though for different reasons) and really is our only hope for any meaningful change. Whether being Zimbabwean president would be any easier than Minister of Finance under the current regime, remains to be seen.

There are those who see this as just another ruling party scam to give credibility to what will undoubtedly be a crooked election process. It goes like this; they persuade Simba to stand for the presidency and make a fuss and bother about him being within the ruling party (even more smoke and mirrors here as no-one seems to know if he has been expelled or not). They engineer Robert to win and say “Well, there you go, the people did not want Simba – it must have been a free and fair process”. Or, they let Simba win, control stays with ZANU-PF and nothing much changes. I should mention that the opposition, the MDC, are a spent force before they have even started. They are hopelessly split along tribal lines and have no credibility. The leader of the largely Shona faction, Morgan Tsvangirai is just not much of a leader either.

Whether this really is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel or a case of the more things change the more they stay the same is irrelevant. We have no choice, we have to try.

Fabion is a decent guy and also one of my foremen. I think I have mentioned him in this blog before;  he is also a genuine warvet (war veteran), is totally reliable and useful as a driver. So I was somewhat taken aback when he came to me at the beginning of this month and said that he wanted to leave.  On closer questioning it emerged that it was all about a land issue.

When his father died he left the children a plot of land in the Rushinga area of north eastern Zimbabwe. He owned the land by dint of occupation as it was land allocated him by the district chief so he did not have title to it. Fabion’s siblings were not interested and he has farmed it ever since with the help of a youngster to keep an eye on things when he is absent. He has a few goats and cows and crops it in the summer as it does not have any irrigation.

This rainy season has been especially heavy in the northern regions and one of the cows got bogged down in the mud. Instead of helping out the neighbours simply ignored it whilst it died over a period of a week (the youngster had been called off on another errand by his father). I mentioned that community spirit seemed to be entirely absent.  Fabion agreed and a couple of weekends ago when he went back to see what he could sort out, the area headman also complained of the same problem. I asked why another person could not be found as a caretaker but it seemed that no one was interested. It’s a curious phenomenon this; why work for money when you can do nothing and not get paid at the same time. A neighbour was looking after things for the time being but was not interested in anything long term and was demanding a goat a month from March onward. This is of course totally unreasonable and unsustainable. I asked if the neighbour would be interested in a partnership to pool resources and build up a substantial goat herd but Fabion was not optimistic; “You cannot talk to these rural people like that”, he said. “They just don’t understand business like that”.

Fabion is reluctant to leave my employment and I have not run out of ideas just yet. It is certainly nothing to do with money but he knows that if he is not on the land or does not have a presence there he will lose it. I guess that unlike me he actually does have a pension plan!

In the traditional Shona (black) culture, the people have always looked up to their leaders for behavioural guidance – probably more so than the whites as they tend to think; well if he can do it then it must be OK. With the government hierarchy behaving extremely badly at the moment it is not surprising that the locals are losing their community spirit and will only help themselves.