Zimbabwe Absurdity

At last someone has said it! Pius Ncube, outspoken Catholic archbishop has said that Zimbabweans are cowards. I said it a little more diplomatically in my previous post; they are waiting for someone else to take action.

Yesterday I was out shopping and doing other business things. I  can only draw 1000000 Zim dollars in cash from my corporate account; that’s about US$50 at yesterday’s rate. There’s not a lot one can buy with that, especially as businesses are shying away from cheques that take 5 days or more to clear. eBanking does get around that one to some extent but you usually  need to know the company involved. I believe that the new $50000 notes are now out (US$2.50) but they have only been seen in Reserve Bank wrappers and are not in the banks. Curiously the governor of the RB is accusing the fuel suppliers of driving the exchange rate!

The exchange rate (parallel or black market for the less PC) is around 200000:1 for cash and up to 30000 for electronic. This is a jump of around 25% in less than a week. The 0’s, 3 of them, that were knocked off at the beginning of October last year are now effectively replaced. The de facto unit of currency is now back to 1000. How much is that? 234 (000). I paid 300 for that last week! I mean 300000.

Those selling currency sell only what they need to get them to the next sale. This sounds obvious but with the rate moving several percent a day there is no point in changing anything but the essential. It therefore makes it difficult to find substantial amounts as a small buyer.

Last Thursday as battles apparently raged between riot police and disaffected youth of the opposition, I was in Avondale installing software for a potential client. I was warned not to go into town but as I drove out the gate I was struck by the absence of anything untoward. No racing vehicles full of battle weary police, no chanting crowds or distant gunshots, no pall of smoke from burning barricades. Just business as usual.

In discussing the ongoing unrest with my next door neighbour she mentioned that her black staff (well educated) were seemingly waiting for someone else to  do something. I said that I thought that if the opposition did not seize the moment it would soon pass, the momentum would fade and nothing would be achieved.

It seems that this has happened and Bob has won another round. Not stupid is our Robert Gabriel. He knows that he just has to see each “event” past a few days and it all falls apart again. So on we go with the daily survival experiment. I am amazed that people who had no trouble at all picking up a weapon in what is now referred to as the Second Chimurenga (the independence war) are sitting around in a far more challenging situation just waiting for someone else to do make the changes for them. No, we should not underestimate the determination/brutality of the Mugabe government but you don’t argue with a million people on the streets. Just ask Caucescu et al.

I’m sure you’ve all come across those irritating inspirational posters; you know, the breaking wave against the sunset, the soaring eagle against the majestic sky that are supposed to inspire one to higher things. Well, yesterday we had the modern version of a tinker come around to work as he’d heard that we needed some watering cans mended. When I saw him at work I was inspired to go  and get my camera to record what could only be termed INNOVATION (picture the first I and the last N larger than the rest which is underlined). Us “Zimbos” are renowned for being resourceful but this was really an extreme version…

The tank in the background is an old fire extinguisher. It contains water and some carbide stone in a small cage under the top that is screwed down with considerable force! The carbide reacts with the water to produce acetylene mixed with the air in the tank. There is a simple clamp on the gas hose leading up to a home made nozzle. While the jet could have done with a bit more work it did an acceptable job of soldering and brazing.

I have heard of carbide lamps when we studied chemistry at school but this is the first practical application I have ever seen! Appropriate technology.

I  can remember in my 16th year that my parents gave me an allowance (I forget how much) and told me that it had to do for everything except school uniforms and don’t come back to us if you run out of money! It worked. I learnt to budget my money and get only the things I really wanted or needed.  The lesson has stuck with me for the rest of my life and to this day I am somewhat over-cautious when spending money which may be why I am still non-rich (though getting by). While I am thankful to my parents for the valuable lesson it is totally inappropriate for today’s Zimbabwe. I have to consciously force myself to get rid of money in the bank, which if the supermarket manager is right and is devaluing 4% a day, is halving in value every 18 days. When I started my business 8 years ago I anxiously watched the bank account, agonizing on every withdrawal and cheering every credit. I still am grateful for the credits but they only stay in long enough to clear and be spent. It’s very tiring.

The cosmos looks very pretty today…

Local legend has it that the cosmos in Zimbabwe made its way into the region via horse feed imported to South Africa from Argentina for the British army in Anglo-Boer war in 1901/2. I have no idea how true this is but at this time of year it is spectacular, filling the verges to roads and the edges of cultivated fields and vlei areas. I photographed this yesterday evening on the farm where I live. I certainly appreciated the beauty of it all at the end of a stressful day. Cultivated cosmos has some darker red/burgundy colours but the wild cosmos is only found in these 2 pastel shades.

Conventional wisdom states that in a beyond-hyperinflationary environment one should always invest in resaleable assets rather than have money in the bank. I was pondering this yesterday having decided that there was too much money (Zimbabwe dollars that is) in the company bank account. But it is not that simple. Suppose that I buy a tin of 100000 hybrid cabbage seeds at $10 a seed. It may take me a month to sell these seeds to customers in the form of seedlings. The cost of the seed is passed on – obviously. My supplier is continually putting up his price as the seed is imported and he has to buy forex on the black market. Let’s assume that his price increases linearly (in reality it will be some sort of geometric progression but it is easier this way) and by the end of the month the price is $20 a seed. I have phoned up his secretary every day and increased my price with his. At the end of the month my AVERAGE seed price is $15 so I have lost money on the next tin that I have to buy. This is a problem. I could either charge what I think a new tin of seed will cost me (customers will leave in droves) so that I end up with an average price above his end of month price or I can use very small quantities of seed (impractical). Or as soon as ANY money comes in I can convert it to US$ and then use these to buy more seed. But that’s illegal!

I was chatting to my landlord yesterday too and he recounted a story his friend had told him. He’d gone to one of the big discount stores in town to buy a freezer for his wife. On hearing the price he enquired if there were any more (it seemed like a bargain). Yes there were so he arranged to buy them – all 12! On returning the next day with the bank cheque he found that the price had increased. Incensed he demanded to see the manager who agreed to sell them at the previous day’s price. The buyer enquired if the manager would be interested in buying the freezers (less the one for his wife) back. Yes, he would. A price was agreed, money changed hands and the freezers (except for one) stayed where they were!

On Monday I’d phoned up a company to buy some agricultural chemical and a price was quoted at $560000 a litre. Buy the time I got there in the afternoon it was $800000! I complained and got it at the old price. It IS possible to pick up the occasional bargain where the store has forgotten to put the price up on some goods but as the exchange rate to the US is changing all the time one needs to be quick off the mark! Yes, we are effectively dealing in US$ though all prices are supposed to be given in Zimbabwe $.

We have had a spate of burglaries at work, that’s what one gets for hiring “real” security guards! Anyway, anticipating that the problem is only going to get worse I decided to get a burglar alarm system installed. What one would normally do is get a series of quotes but things ain’t normal any more! I realized that by the time I’d got all the companies interested to give a quote the prices would have changed, so I went ahead and just got the first company that was interested. Expensive today, cheap tomorrow.

I was chatting to Austin at my local gym about this at lunchtime. He had just had his brother up from South Africa for his mother’s funeral. He just could not grasp the figures. The brother works for a German owned firm and they do their budgeting and planning for 10 years at a time! Planning? Budgets? It’s been a while since I did either of those! I will just settle for survival thanks!

“Doctor G has not come back from Malawi” the receptionist said; “would I like to see Doctor P instead?” Considering that my tooth was all but fallen out I didn’t have much choice. 

Doctor P looked young enough to be my daughter (I don’t have one but you know what I mean) and not at all what I expected. She was petite, wore black rimmed glasses and had an impish smile and a sense of humour to match. I took an instant liking to her, not least because she is the first dentist I have ever come across wearing shorts in her practice! After all the usual questions regarding my health she got down to business. After a short while she was leaning heavily on my chest, scraping away at the offending tooth. This was almost pleasant! I managed to unclench my left fist and ostentatiously lay it flat on my stomach. At the end of it all I was told to come back in 4 to 6 weeks.

“Oh, but that’s going to be difficult” the receptionist said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well”, and she looked a bit uncomfortable, “we are not going to be here”.

It seems that doctor G is wrapping up her business and going off to the UK and cannot find anyone to take it over. I wondered if perhaps she was asking too much for the business; she does after all drive a very new looking Benz SLK. “What about doctor P?” “Oh, she’s going back to the States” she replied. 

I really cannot blame anyone for wanting to leave Zimbabwe at the moment, I can even sympathize with them but this is the first time that I have been directly affected by a health professional leaving. I suppose it had to happen. They have been leaving in steadily increasing numbers, frustrated by the poor working conditions, the difficulty in obtaining raw materials and ever increasing hours as other professionals shed their work loads. There is one specialist physician left in the country.

I paid for the appointment and a second hand book that was on sale amongst a whole lot of pulp fiction (Robin Cook et al.) on the mantelpiece (the book was more than the appointment though my medical aid paid for most of it). It was a Zadie Smith book that I’d heard about some years before. I looked at the comments and reviews on the back cover; yes, this was the one I was looking for. Only when getting into the car did I take note of the title; “White Teeth”.