Zimbabwe Absurdity

Yes, this is an unashamed plug for a favourite web site of mine, Edge. Provocative, yes, entertaining, always, it is a collection of essays and articles by leading scientists and thinkers and definitely worth a bookmark if you like to give your brain cells some aerobics.

A couple of days ago I was reading an Edge article by Jaron Lanier on why he thinks anonymous collective web sites, such as this one, that allow anonymous postings are such a bad thing. He explains far better than I can so I would refer you to the page. Having realized that this blog falls squarely in the criticized I have decided that maybe I should explain why I have chosen to be anonymous (though all my friends know who the author is!).

I initially set this all up to try and explain just what goes on in Zimbabwe and just how absurd it all is. It can be difficult to explain even to people who are visiting the country just how weird it all is, often defying the most basic logic (I will address more of this in the next post). I was anticipating being very critical of the Zimbabwe government not to mention the highest authority of the lot. However, it is illegal to be critical of the president (and the police force) and that could get me into serious trouble. One can be held without charge for up to 21 days in Zimbabwe and like most third world countries, Zimbabwean jails are just not worth visiting. So, I thought that maybe staying anonymous and being critical was a good idea. Then I realized that maybe the “authorities” are not that stupid and could if they wanted find my email address and track me down from there. Call it paranoia, but there is a law lurking in the background called the “Interception of Communications Bill”. The title speaks for itself and as I understand it, it would require the various ISP’s to install the hardware and software to filter incoming and outgoing communications (this would also allow the government to eavesdrop on phones). For the moment it has been withdrawn under the recommendation of a parliamentary select committee as being “unconstitutional” (seriously!) which it most certainly is, though this has never stopped the government doing whatever it likes in the past.

So I have not been nearly as critical as I intended and I have stayed anonymous.

The dog and her author. 

Well, Unity Day is nearly over for another year. It is not nearly as traumatic as Christmas Day with all it’s obligations and it is a public holiday so I suppose it has that in its favour too. Why we need a public holiday this close to Christmas is anyone’s guess – it really is a hassle to organize staff to come in to water seedlings at this time of year anyway. Unity Day’s origins are as obscure as they are dubious. We are apparently celebrating the end of the civil disturbances that marked the latter part of the 1980’s with substantial bloodshed in the south of Zimbabwe. It was largely an ethnic conflict between the ruling Shona and the minority Matabele (see the Wikipedia reference to Gukurahundi) but all sorts were caught up in it. The death toll probably exceeded 20000, mostly civilians massacred by the army’s N. Korean trained 5th Brigade, and at the end of it Joshua Nkomo who headed up the Matabele rebels signed a peace accord and now we are celebrating (the result of the government enquiry into the massacres was never released). Now Josh is toted as the “Father” of Zimbabwe and seen as a hero for coming to the negotiating table. The waters of history are however a lot murkier than that. Back in the days of the Rhodesian conflict when Josh headed up the ZiPRA faction, his troops were responsible for shooting down 2 Vickers Viscount civilian airliners. He was filmed for the BBC laughing about it. His “excuse” was that they were legitimate targets because there were Rhodesian military on the planes, even though they were on civilian business at the time. There were also women and children. I was at university with a girl who lost both parents on the second crash. Not quite the overweight cuddly father figure depicted on the Econet cell phone service provider billboards.

Some years ago I was staying in a backpacker hostel in the red light district of Sydney (Kings Cross). Yes, I was propositioned by a prostitute and NO, I did not take advantage of her, or pay her to be taken advantage of either. In the drawer next to my bed a previous occupant had left a letter from his mother in a farming area somewhere in Matabeleland at the time of the Gukurahundi massacres. I remember little of what she said save that she’d been talking to Father “someone” at one of the local missions and he was so looking forward to going on leave the next day and doing some fishing but that night he was murdered.

I have not noticed anyone celebrating anything vaguely nationalistic today. harare is mostly shut down anyway, most businesses are closed and staff have gone into the rural areas to visit family. They call it going “kumusha” . So I guess it was a good time for the government to allow the bakers to double the price of a “government” standard loaf of bread.

Otherwise it has been a perfect day. Incredible visibility; I could see the Great Dyke clearly 70km away. Not too hot, about 27 C. I was sitting having coffee on the verandah at 6.30 a.m. and enjoying the morning when a long crested eagle landed in a tree at the bottom of the garden about 30m away. He chose badly. It was a small branch that sagged badly so he had to move on to another better perch. They are impressive birds, large and black with a long crest of feathers on the head and big white “windows” under the wings.

The stars are very clear tonight. We are spoilt for stars in the southern hemisphere. We have the Milky Way and at the moment Orion is overhead in all its glory. Taurus is off to the west and Sirius is climbing just behind Orion. I was at a party earlier but had little in common with the people there who were only really interested in talking cycling (it was a cycling club do that my cousin organized). No-one seemed to care about the stunning sky overhead, still clearly visible despite the lights of Harare. I left early. Sometimes it is easier to be a social hermit and anyway, a friend once remarked that I have no social skills. No diplomat is Suzanne, though she is married to one!

In a country that has never seen snow and is unlikely to, it seems a little incongruous to have black men hawking faux fur lined Santa hats and children’s inflatable swimming pool Santas; overweight little round white men with rosy cheeks. But it’s the silly season so anything goes. “Season’s Greetings”, “Compliments of the Season” (what exactly does that mean?) and cards of daft looking puppies with equally daft anthropomorphic smiles wearing, you guessed it, a Santa hat. Excessive drinking and excessive eating in a country where some 80% are unemployed, the average male can expect to live to 35 or less by the time you read this and there still has not been significant rain – it is too late anyway, maize planted now will only produce a paltry harvest. Never mind. Those of us who can will and so what if the minimum wage for agricultural workers is US20c a day (or US$2.20 if you use the “official” rate)? Let them eat cake, or grass or roots or whatever pathetic bird has the misfortune to stray within range of a “rekken”. Surely they can take comfort in the knowledge that we are celebrating the birth of a man some 2000 years ago who was born around September in our calendar and almost certainly was not given gifts by long bearded white men following some star in the east (where did they come from anyway that they could travel for so long without having to swim across the Mediterranean?). OK, so maybe it was north east before that. Then one must remember that this was a virgin birth (right, so who was not paying attention in human reproduction in biology class – EVERYONE in my class was paying attention) so what is a little aberration in map reading anyway? If you pause for just a little thought you would realize that Jesus was carrying God’s DNA – imagine that, sequencing God’s DNA from a sample of the True Cross!

What the hell, it’s only a day that we have to put up with the nonsense and then we can all go back to being bitchy as hell to our nearest and not so dearest and we won’t have to feel bad about it for another year. So eat excessively, drink too much and have a hangover the next day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Try not to drink and drive (outside of Zimbabwe that is) – the genuinely brain dead are not a pretty sight.

Snow clouds building near Harare! 

I attended a farewell party yesterday afternoon. Farewells are depressingly common in Zimbabwe at the moment. But this one is worth mentioning as the departing couple are actually desperate to stay in Zimbabwe.

Terry and Suzanne are Canadian citizens who have been here for about 5 years; Terry was a senior diplomat with the Canadian Embassy here. He has just retired and envisaged supplementing his pension as a political risk assessor for companies wishing to invest in Zimbabwe, using the considerable political contacts he made during the course of his work. You could have been forgiven for thinking that his (and Suzanne’s) application for a work permit, after all it could only help improve Zimbabwe’s dire economic situation. He was turned down flat.

It is seldom that simple in Zimbabwe. We have to go back a few months in looking for a possible influence on the negative outcome of this application. When the  United Nations General Assembly was on, the Zim delegation was flying in from the UK and asked Canada for permission to overfly that nation. They were turned down and had to make an expensive detour. On the plane was the senior immigration officer.  The work permit application procedure require the applicant to be out the country while his/her application is being processed. This usually takes a couple of weeks but Terry had been out for two days when his application was turned down. At the time I thought it ominous but I did not express this to Terry and Suzanne who were still optimistic. Their appeal was also turned down and no reason given though an official did say to Terry that if the government were to change his application would be favourably received.

I could not help thinking yesterday how ironic this all was. Here were a couple who were desperate to stay in a country that they’d come to love, (a lot of Zimbabweans are desperate to leave) and here was I needing to leave the country that I love. I’m not sure if I have touched on this elsewhere but I should explain; I don’t WANT to go. I HAVE to go. Zimbabwe and Africa are not good places to be if you have health problems as I do. Yes, I am reasonably fit but in future years I will probably end up in a wheelchair and with no family and no properties I must go somewhere where I will be looked after. If I want to stay in Zim I need to put aside AT LEAST US$1000 per month for the next 20 years and that does not allow for emergencies, assuming that I want to retire at the normal age. That is not going to happen.  Yes, if one can earn real money and live in Zim that is first prize; but few have that option. The other option is to make a LOT of local money but agriculture, in which I am involved, is not a growth industry at the moment.

Erratum. Speaking to the better connected yesterday, I was informed that the figure of US$300m embezzled in the diamond scam was way over-inflated. Whatever, mabe it was 30m. It was still a LOT of money and you can be certain it was embezzled!

The illegal camp of gold panners on the boundary was moved on the other day. I reported on this blog that they hadn’t all moved off and some had made an attempt at rebuilding their shacks. No more. The police moved in on Monday and set up their camp, a smartish looking military style tent. All the shacks and inhabitants thereof were moved off. It seems that the Reserve Bank was fed up with the gold panners selling their gold on the open market at whatever price they could get which you can bet would be at least eight times the official rate (the bank rate for buying US$ is ZW$250, the black market rate is ZW$3000). My foreman tells me that the police are camped throughout the Mazowe valley below my house to enforce the issue. Methinks that the Reserve Bank should concentrate on solving the US$300m diamond embezzlement reported last week instead of chasing petty “thieves”. Curiously, the bigger the scam the less likely it is to be solved.

The Zimbabwe government has a curious desire to cut off its head to spite the body. To wit: yesterday I was buying some calcium nitrate fertilizer (amongst others) that we use to raise the seedlings in my nursery business. It is wholly imported so the price is a direct conversion to local currency using the black market rate of the day. As I was in the process of updating my costings I asked the sales clerk for all the prices on the fertilizers and chemicals that we use. Ammonium nitrate was conspicuously absent. I asked why. Oh, we are not allowed to import that one he said. I think he meant that they were not going to import a fertilizer on which the sale price is dictated by government as being sub-economic. A surprisingly large number of products have their prices set in this manner, especially those considered to be essential. Ammonium nitrate is used extensively in the growing of the maize staple crop so comes under the “essential” heading. Not surprisingly therefore, it is extremely difficult to find at the official price though it can magically appear if one indicates willingness to pay a premium. So, it seems that it is better to have no ammonium nitrate available at the official price than to have some available at any price (at least where the peasant population is concerned).

The good news: the ZANU-PF Youth League “official” was a mere driver, and after the police were contacted and then they consulted with the higher powers, he was booted out of the house he’d commandeered on the farm where I live. That battle is won but the war is far from over. Now we wait for the next fatter cat to have a go.

The not so good news: “US$300m feared lost in diamonds scam” is the front page headline on today’s Zimbabwe Independent. It has emerged that the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe, the sole legal trader of gems and minerals in the  country and a government body to boot, has been selling off packages of stones at around 9% of market value. The claims actually belong to a UK listed company, Africa Consolidated Resources, and are some 60km south of the border city of Mutare in the Marange area. Of course there has been other leakage in what has become a good old fashioned scramble since the government sponsored “invasion” of the claims. The senior foreman at my work comes from that area and says it is just a cholera outbreak waiting to happen. I assume it has not happened in part at least due to the late rains.

I mentioned the figure of the missing US$300m (it could buy about 6 months worth of fuel for the nation) and his response was “Do you think it was individuals or the government?” He missed my point entirely. Why was he not outraged? I was.  Have become so shell shocked as a nation that we accept the pillage of vast quantities of diamonds as the norm – just another jigsaw piece in the grand pillage puzzle? There seems to be an acceptance of the “What’s In It For Me” attitude that is so pervasive. Where have all the statesmen gone, if indeed they were ever around? Africa is haemorrhaging, and it is not at all interested in applying a tourniquet.

Yesterday the police burnt down a small squatters’ kraal (village) in the bush adjoining the entrance to the farm. Apparently it was part of a clear up of illegal gold miners operating in the Mazowe valley. There were pathetic piles of possessions outside the  blackened remains of the pole and daga structures this afternoon. A few roofs had gone back on despite the threat of a beating from the police if the people stayed there. I wonder if they know about the illegal diamond rush in Marange?

The Zimbabwe Independent is not a bad paper. One of the few “NGO” papers around (most are government controlled) it is a weekly that I quite regularly buy. No, it is not even close to the standard of the Saturday papers in the UK, but the English is sound and the reporting interesting. Paging through it this evening I noticed that we have a Women’s Affairs, Gender & Community Development minister. Now I did know that Zimbabwe has the world’s biggest cabinet so I suppose this should not have come as a surprise.  Even less of a surprise was the totally non-eventful budget presentation by the Finance Minister blaming Zimbabwe’s woes on amongst other things; “deliberate efforts to undermine our economic turnaround initiatives” – the nasty West was imposing sanctions again. Government spending of course was up.  (see www.theindependent.co.zw for further mind bending logic)

In the African summer, the best time of day is the golden hour after sunrise. It is often cool and calm and worth savouring if you can get up early enough. Actually it is not that early at all. Sunrise is 05h15 at the moment and we don’t have daylight saving (which my brother thinks is nonsense – “Just learn to get up earlier”). Anyway, yesterday I was sitting on the verandah enjoying my early morning cup of coffee and admiring the view and wondering why I want to leave Zimbabwe.

Everywhere there was avian activity, and if I couldn’t see it I could certainly hear it. A pin tailed whydah twittered and fluttered with ridiculous optimism in the corner of the garden, desperately trying to impress a future member of his harem. I could hear a crested barbet trilling away incessantly in the neighbour’s garden to my left. Every year they nest in an old gatepost on the fence surrounding a coffee trial plot. Last year there was a pathetic and sad corpse of a fledgling at the base of the post; it had tried to fly too early.

Bulbuls squabbled in a small tree and I could hear a flapper lark wacking his wings together to attract a mate. I have heard them do that for hours on end and it does not appear to damage the wings. It does not seem to work attracting mates either. Sporadic flurries of activity emanated from the mulberry tree in the corner of the garden, even though the fruit have long since gone. Cicadas were starting to whirr in the msasa trees beyond the fence. There has been a paradise flycatcher in the garden; a deep orange bird with a blue head and long tail. They build a nest that is about the size of an egg cup and is camouflaged with lichen. Mango trees are favoured.

A flock of quelias might pass through later. Pretty and small they are nevertheless voracious seed eaters and can ravish a wheat crop when they descend in their millions, but these ones are innocuous. They pick hopefully through the dregs of my lawn, infinitely tired by the dry winter. They have done it before. They will do it again.

In Africa (well, I speak for Zimbabwe) there are always birds to be seen or heard. Later in the day once the thermals kick off, the raptors and scavengers start to soar and one can always see something flying. On the road into Borrowdale there is a municipal rubbish tip that is frequented by the marabou storks. They are not pretty birds; scavengers by nature, they have a wingspan of nearly 3m and I occasionally see them perched incongruously on my neighbour’s centre pivot irrigation system, huddled like a line of depressed accountants. Oh, but you should see them in the air! They soar gloriously, inspired by the welling air currents, wheeling, curving with divine grace, primary feathers feeling for the subtle air currents.

I was in New Zealand in 2003, doing a compulsory visit to keep my residence visa alive. While in the South Island I did a 2 day canoe trip with Kevin, a computer programmer who’d passed through Zimbabwe a few years earlier on his way to NZ. I was struck by the silence on Lake Wanaka. No birds, just the splash of our paddles. It was rather sad.

So why do I want to leave Zimbabwe? Actually I don’t. I need to though. The spinal injury that I had all those years ago in my teens has decided to collect its dues and the old age that I knew was coming has arrived rather earlier than anticipated. I always knew there would be a payback but I never anticipated that it would be this soon. The health services in Zim are OK for someone in good health but not for the likes of me. Yes, for the moment I get by but that will not always be the case and then I must be somewhere where I will be looked after. I have no property to my name, no immediate family here, just my dog Jenni. Much though I love her she cannot support me in the years to come when I will need care of some sort. So I must go. Somehow leaving is proving difficult.

Acacia sunset November 28, 2006.

Nothing to do with G.W. Just a photo I took in September on the way back to Bulawayo from Vic Falls. To me there are two types of bush in Zimbabwe. This is one of them.

Mopane veld at its best. There had been good rains in the Matabeleland area so the bush was spectacular and rivers all the way up to the Falls still had water in them this late!

Of course no Zimbabwean trip is complete without a picnic beside the road. This was taken some 2 hours out of Bulawayo on the Falls road. It is a Forestry Commission forest and it too was looking stunning!

Zimbabwe DOES have a few friends left. Our esteemed president has been in Iran, rattling up support and no doubt some much needed fuel supplies. We certainly got some moral support if the government owned The Herald newspaper is to be believed. Yesterday’s banner headline “Iran slams Zimbabwe Sanctions” crowed that the Iranian president fully backed Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and condemned various western nations for being so nasty to us. We are also friends with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who likes to poke his finger in George Bush’s eye on occasion. I suppose I have to give him points for that. The sanctions issue is a favourite scapegoat for the Herald. It likes to intimate that a large proportion of Zimbabwe’s economic woes are due to “sanctions”. Yes, there are sanctions imposed but they are targeted at specific individuals, not the economy.

If you have the money you can buy just about anything in Zimbabwe. New Zealand kiwifruit (not great), a new Benz or several, even diesel! I have not seen Toblerone recently and of course our local milk supplies have dried up but I covered that in a previous posting. The Reserve Bank has even splashed out on some very nice new Italian made tractors, for various government farming enterprises. Sanctions? Certainly not economic ones!

I can only speculate what is probably the world’s fastest shrinking economy might have to offer Iran. I wonder if president Ahmadinejad has heard about Zimbabwe’s credit rating? It is non-existent but I’m sure the various comrade dignitaries with President Mugabe have gilt edged tongues that can smooth over any silly stories propagated by the Western media! Comrades? Yes, the abbreviation is “Cde” as in Cde Dr Joseph Made who has presided over the land redistribution programme. Redistributing the poverty, as a Malawian once commented to me. Wow, imagine that one in your CV!

That reminds me; there is a particularly anarchic computer game called Grand Theft Auto. I have never played it but one goes around stealing cars and getting into fights. There is another called SimCity where the object is to build up and successfully run a city. There are variations such as SimIsle I think but they all centre on successfully running a local economy and coping with various challenges; traffic clogging the city, flooding etc. Now, you saw this here first… I am proposing a hybrid of the two, call it “Anarchy” though “Loot” would be equally apt. The idea is to trash a country. A third world country, we won’t give it a name. One buys one’s position in the “order of things”. The more you pay the more power you have and the more influential friends “in positions” you have. You want to be top dog? You pay BIG MONEY! You can be a nobody and it costs nothing but you have no friends and no power. Or you can come in anywhere else on the scale. Limits have to be set on how far down the economy can go before the game is over and the winner is the one who ends up with the most offshore assets (local assets are worthless). Which is the best strategy? Trash quickly and grab while you can or stretch it out over a longer period and milk more slowly? It would be an online game. Economists would have to be sought and economic models used in the programming but it could work. The possibilities are enormous! Other limits would have to be set of course; how many times money can be reprinted for example. It would be quite challenging to define the end of the game, how does one define just how dismal an economy is? Inflation? Absence of GDP? Shortages of commodities? Food for thought – oops, food’s short too!