The last day of 65

16 11 2025
13 and a bit hours to go

The watch has seen better days – it’s a lot like me in that respect. I don’t usually wear it these days. As a time piece I use my cell phone which is a bit irritating though not as bad as the watch. It swings down to the outside of my arm so I have to use my right hand to rotate it back so that I can see the time. Added to that is the need for my right hand to hold onto my walking stick – it’s easier to use the cellphone. I am wearing the watch today for nostalgic reasons – not to remind me that tomorrow I’ll be 66. I’m not looking forward to it.

Most people in the civilized world retire at the end of 65. Some are forced to, like my old boss who now lives in Australia. He’s lucky in that his wife has a successful psychology business so he’s doing the bookkeeping and is busy. My brother chose to retire at 70 from being a truck driver in the UK. Apparently he’s busier than ever though is vague on what “busy” entails. There seem to be a lot more photos on our family WhatsApp group (they are definitely improving) and we get rainfall figures to nearest 10th of a millimetre thanks to a new weather system he’s installed at his house. I don’t know anyone in Zimbabwe who’s retired at 65. I won’t be.

I took the decision earlier in the week to tell my staff that they were on notice that I would be closing my seedling company at the end of the year. It’s been losing money for quite some time now but it had finally got to the stage where I couldn’t pretend to myself that somehow it would keep going and I could stay in my comfort zone. The bank account is dangerously low, in no small part to an unwise decision to purchase a container of the coir pith that we use as a growing medium, again based on the misguided belief that somehow we could keep going for another year.

When making the announcement to the labour force my senior foreman reminded me that there were only six weeks to the end of the year and I needed to give three months notice. I told the labour that they would get paid everything owed to them but given the precarious state of the company’s finances they would just have to wait until I could sell off the coir pith and get outstanding debtor’s payments in. They were uncomfortable with the idea so I suggested we get the National Employment Council (NEC) representative, who mediates in employment issues, in to discuss the issue.

On Thursday the NEC lady arrived to talk to the labour force at exactly noon. In a previous discussion she’d advised me that she would try to get the staff to agree to a mutual settlement based on the fact that they’d been paid well over the required legal minimum wage and we’d all benefit. Not surprisingly they stuck to their guns and said they wanted the full payout.

Way back in 2005 when a stamp could be worth $100,00…

Laying off staff in Zimbabwe is not a cheap exercise, especially if they’ve been employed for a long time as have mine. Fortunately I’d paid them off in 2004 when the Zimbabwe dollar was in meltdown and they were signed back on as contract workers for a further three years before becoming permanent employees again. This meant that the loss of employment compensation, one month’s salary per year of employment, would “only” be calculated for 18 years. Add the required gratuity, a more complex but less expensive (for me) calculation, and the amount per person would come to over US$3,000.

I told the NEC rep that there was simply no way that I could pay the approximately US$36,000 at the end of the year on top of the required three months salary per person. She emphasized that it was a legal requirement. I explained that even if I could sell off the meagre company assets it would not cover the bill and could anyway not be done in the time frame. We were at an impasse. She said she’d talk to her boss.

The next morning I came to a decision: as I was going to have to pay an extra six weeks wages at the end of the year I might as well close the company at the end of February ’26 and at least get some work out of the labour force. It would also buy me time to sell off the coir import (due to arrive in about two week’s time) and get in outstanding debts. The extra time is unlikely to make any money for the company given the record of the past few years but at least I could breathe a little easier.

So in the time left before I turn 66 I’m going to try and forget the stresses of closing down a business that I’ve run for 26 years, mostly successfully, and do things that I enjoy.

If the weather holds, it’s supposed to rain this afternoon but doesn’t look like it will happen, I’ll go to the local polo grounds to fly my FPV (first person view) drone. I’m not much good but it’s fun flying through the car park surrounded by trees. There will be other model plane fliers there if I need help. Then I’ll head back home for a late tea and a supper of salmon (yes, just about anything is available for a price in Zimbabwe).

Tomorrow morning we’ll be up at 10 to five to go walk the dogs and I will be 66.


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Mick Jagger, a frog and AI

27 10 2025

Memory’s a funny thing. I woke up one morning recently and told Marianne I’d just remembered the punch line of an old joke; “It’s a knick knack Patty Wack, give the frog a loan”. She smiled and said “But there’s more to it than that” and added “he’s old man is a Rolling Stone”. Of course I had to see if I could find the original on the internet and called up the faithful Google search engine which Google assures me heavily uses AI.

Just entering “Patty Wack” came up with one suggested search for the correct joke even correcting for my alternative spelling of “Wack”. Quite impressive, there aren’t too many patty wacks out there.

Not bad for a start but on reading the original joke I discovered that a knick knack is a critical part. So I thought I’d include it in the search. Just by itself and Google didn’t come up with any alternative searches that would have led me to the joke.

Searching on “knick knack patty” was surprisingly successful with an accurate search term as the third item. Not too many other suggestions though it seemed to suggest that I might have meant Paddy not Patty.

The most successful search term was “knick knack patty wack frog” which brought the joke up to the top of the list for suggested searches but I thought that I was giving rather a lot of information out to start with so decided to up the task difficulty a bit.

The punch line of the joke, you can look up the whole thing here, is: “It’s a knick knack Patty Whack give the frog a loan, his old man is a Rolling Stone” where the Rolling Stone is referencing Mick Jagger. I decided to see if the AI would associate Mick Jagger with a frog joke and entered “Mick Jagger frog loan joke”. Nope, not a single other search was suggested – clearly I was being very specific. Curiously “Mick Jagger frog” did suggest another more specific search as the first item. Can’t think why Angie got in there. Yes, I can remember the song! We all used to crowd into a prep room in the school hostel on Saturday night and watch Top of the Pops on a black and white television. Mick doing his best emotional bit in a big floppy hat. “Angie. A-aaaaaangie. Can’t say we never tried”.

Perhaps a case of less is more?

There are of course many variants of AI to be found all over the internet. Perhaps one of the best known is ChatGPT. I have used it a bit when stuck on my programming projects and it’s been useful in suggesting solutions. I did get to use it today on another project and was really impressed.

My business is in trouble. Two weeks ago I was within a few days of running my bank account dry. It was time to see where the problem was. It didn’t take a lot of doing. I am selling my seedlings for less than they cost me to produce. My bookkeeper commented that my salaries and wages were too high a proportion of my overall costs but there is little that I can do about it now – nobody is going to accept a wage cut. I wondered if I could put the business into administration (yes, I Googled what that entails) and be closed down. I didn’t see how I could sell a business that is not a going concern.

There are at least five other commercial nurseries in Harare that I know of. My foreman on occasion phones them to see what they are charging. The biggest is charging substantially less than I am and I have no idea how they do it. I also know what they are growing as we use the same seed supplier and I am friendly with one of the staff there. It’s mainly tomatoes and lots of them. This makes me think they are supplying the farmers who grow for a well-known fast food company. It was time to see if I could get in on the action.

Zimbabwe being what it is, it was not difficult to find out who the procurement officer of the above-mentioned fast food chain is. Marianne, being more adept at marketing than me (not difficult – there are disadvantages of a science degree), helped me put together the approach email. The reply was non-committal. A different approach was needed but at least we had not been rebuffed.

Given our lack of marketing skills we decided to ask Maria. She’s a formidable communicator and the driving force behind HIFA (Harare International Festival of the Arts) that ran for several years and was the arts and entertainment highlight of the year. She agreed to draft something.

While I was mulling over what Maria had put together Marianne was chatting to her sister in Cape Town who has a tour company for older women . Mandy suggested we get ChatGPT to draft something as she uses it quite a lot and was impressed. She did mention that it was a good idea to be polite when asking it for assistance! So I logged in and made my request. The response is too long to reproduce here but I was very impressed. It was just what I was looking for with all the right marketing language. So tomorrow I will send off another email to see if I can get access to the produce suppliers. Nothing ventured. There will be a few adjustments to the original text – “Warm regards” will be replaced with “Regards” which I consider a bit less familiar.

I can of course remember back in the 1980s when AI stood for artificial insemination. One of my housemates at university was doing an animal science degree and they had been harvesting semen from a bull. He wondered aloud if an orgasm for a bull was as much fun as it was for a human. Someone else chipped in that it was physiologically identical, the difference being that the bull could not remember what was so pleasant.

Looking up artificial insemination on the internet (yes Google AI) I saw that it is widely practiced for women who cannot get pregnant the natural way. While there doesn’t appear to be human AI on offer in Zimbabwe (but plenty of livestock options) there are a couple of sites advertising IVF (in vitro fertilization). Most of us older folk can remember that Louise Brown was the first example of this “test tube baby” process. As one fellow student commented all those years ago: “The worst thing about being a test-tube baby is you know for sure that your old man’s a wanker”. If you don’t know what that means try a Google AI search!


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To buy or not

17 08 2025
A healthy gum tree seedling

We grow our seedlings in compartmentalized expanded polystyrene trays. The cells are filled with a growing medium, in this case coir pith, and a seed is placed in each cell and grown out to maturity. This can take as little as four weeks in summer for tomato seed or up to four months in the case of gum tree seedlings as seen above. A seedling is deemed mature when it can be pulled from the cell and the roots hold the medium in a plug which will remain intact until it can be planted into the field. It also needs to be tall enough to be planted easily and not so tall that the leaf area will tax the roots ability to take up enough water in what, for the plant, is a stressful transition. There are other criteria that need to be met such as hardness of the leaves but that’s getting boring.

Being made of polystyrene the trays are light and rigid, which makes them easy to handle. It also makes it easy for the plant to grow its roots into the polystyrene which makes the seedling difficult to pull out of the tray. New trays have a smooth surface which is difficult for the roots to penetrate but as the trays age their surface becomes pitted and the plants’ roots can penetrate the polystyrene. To reduce this effect we dip the trays in a solution of copper oxychloride and water soluble glue. This creates a localized toxicity in the tips of the roots which stops them growing into the polystyrene and serves to sterilize the tray. Mostly it’s effective but as the tray ages and the surface becomes rough the roots grow into it anyway. The buildup of copper over many uses of the tray also causes a more general toxicity in the plant which can manifest itself as leaf discolouration and poor growth.

This general toxicity is most evident in gum seedlings as discoloured leaves and poor tip growth though in other seedlings it manifests as a general lack of vigour. I have noticed this for some years and when new trays are bought there was a noticeable “new tray effect” which I couldn’t really nail down to anything specific.

The coir pith we use is a by-product of the coir industry in India and other Asian countries. It’s the cork material that’s left over when the fiber has been extracted for ropes and mats. It has no nutrients in it so all must be added in the form of various chemical fertilizers. Organic we are not. This means that there’s little space for error and small changes in the formula can have major effects. Fortunately most of the work in this type of horticulture has been done long ago, albeit on other media, so it’s not as hit-and-miss as it may sound. Unfortunately I have a tendency to fiddle to try and get just that little bit of extra performance out of the system.

So when the gum seedlings started to become discoloured some years ago I put it down to something I’d done to the fertilizer formula. Thinking that it was a phosphate toxicity I designed a simple experiment. I bought several new trays, made sure they weren’t dipped in copper, then mixed differing quantities of single superphosphate that we normally use into the coir pith and grew out the gum seedlings. They were all good seedlings including those that should have had toxicity symptoms and those that had no single superphosphate added at all. It was that “new tray effect” and I knew it had to be the copper dip.

In Zimbabwe trash recycling is not a vibrant industry. There is a large municipal dump that I drive past on the way to work with a large warehouse building on it with “RECYCLING PLANT” painted on the front. Whether any recycling actually happens there is unknown. It’s part owned by one of the President’s sons but that’s a topic for another blog post. The old polystyrene trays we use end up on this dump site and add to the general pollution. It bothers me but the alternative is to import plastic trays from South Africa and they are very expensive and would likely not be recycled either. So I buy more of the local trays when I have to.

The gum seedling in the above photo is a good one. Though still young it has good root development, good leaf colour and good growth. It’s a product of a new tray – part of a batch that I bought earlier this year to replace older trays that were causing the copper toxicity symptoms. I have been seeing a general malaise in the tomato seedlings we are growing in old trays and should really replace them too. But there’s a problem.

I lease part of a property that supports my landlady’s ornamental nursery, another tenant’s rose nursery and the landlady’s son’s container rental business. The remainder of the property, some 10ha, is not utilized largely because we are in a bad area for sub-surface water and the three boreholes would not support irrigated cropping of any sort.

The 400ha of land on the boundary of “our” land is owned by a politically connected person whom I will call G. She acquired the land some time ago and set about building a wall around it. This is not just any wall – 3m high it has, a reinforced concrete core, a course of bricks on either side, pillars every 4m and topped with cornicing. It’s 9km long (measured on Google Earth) and is estimated to have cost US$500 – US$600 per metre. At a minimum $45 million G has clout and access to capital. So it was not without concern that we waited to see if the wall would include “our” property. It stopped either side.

My landlady’s son decided that the best way to make the property less attractive to acquisition by G and her ilk would be to develop it. Half the property was duly sold to a development company for construction of high density housing on condition that they changed the title deed to “development” rather than “agricultural” which is less attractive to the likes of G.

This development means that I will lose about a third of my current capacity and access to two boreholes that provide the bulk of my water. Remaining viable in a business that relies on large turnover on low value items/seedlings is going to be a challenge. So do I invest in new trays?

I was initially told that I would have about two years use out of the current two boreholes and that was six months ago. My landlady has had another two drilled on the remaining property but they are not very prolific. Uncertain times but to throw in the towel now on the premise that my business will fail would be defeatist. Tomorrow I will place an order for 2,000 new trays.


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The missing concept of maintenance

30 07 2025
The reconstruction of Alpes Road – my business is top left

“The lack of a strong maintenance culture is a significant obstacle to sustainable development in many African countries, leading to premature deterioration of infrastructure and equipment. This “missing concept” stems from a combination of factors, including a perception that new items don’t require maintenance, inadequate financial resources, lack of skilled personnel, and a lack of clear O&M policies“

The above quote is the Google AI overview of a search for – “missing concept of maintenance in Africa“. There are a whole host of links listed but my attention was drawn to this one on Instagram. The presenter argues that there is no concept of maintenance and indeed no word for it in many African cultures. Zimbabwe is not an exception.

Having watched the above clip I asked my staff what the local Shona word for maintenance is. They replied that it is chengeta which actually means “to look after” as in “chengeta mbudzi” – look after the goats. It’s a sore point in Zimbabwe that the road system, and indeed the country’s infrastructure in general, has been sorely neglected. The cynic in me says this is largely due to the kleptocratic nature of those in power – a concept that is highly developed.

Alpes Road along which my business is situated has been spectacular example of neglect for quite some time now. There was a splurge of road maintenance and building a couple of years back in preparation for the upcoming 2024 SADC summit and opening of the new Houses of Parliament, the latter being funded by the Chinese. An existing two lane road to the parliament was refurbished and another two lanes added. Roads along which visiting dignitaries might travel were re-tarred and road markings painted. Alpes Road (photo above) was partially restored but only as far as President Mnangagwa’s son’s waste dump project that aims to bring order to Harare’s waste disposal “system”. The remaining three kilometers to the Hatcliff suburb was ignored. Like a lot of Zimbabwe’s road system, both urban and rural, it is beyond repair and has to be rebuilt.

Driving along a near totally destroyed road to work every day is more than a bit tedious for me. Customers have either complained bitterly or gone somewhere else; few put up with the drive. I looked around in the area for an outlet site for these cash customers but nothing was available. There were occasional efforts to grade over the potholes but this resulted in clouds of dust that have necessitated washing our greenhouses every two weeks as the seedlings were being affected by the resulting shade. A regional petition was circulated and a few hundred signatures gathered, pleading for something to be done. It was passed on to the relevant authorities with more than a bit of cynicism. Nothing happened.

About three weeks ago piles of rubble started to appear on the road. Speculation was rife: was this really a rebuild or just a bit of gravel to temporarily fill the potholes? It seems that it’s a real rebuild. A message appeared on the WhatsApp group for the road (it really does warrant a group of its own) stating that the government road department (CMED) had responded to the petition and “engagement of community members” and was going to rebuild some 3km of the road. In return they were asking for assistance with fuel and lunch for the workers involved! Yes, all cash donations would be receipted.

A barrier has been erected by the rubbish tip to stop unnecessary traffic driving along the road whilst the construction vehicles are working. I have no trouble getting past it given that my company logo is on the door of my pickup but others have had difficulty and the trickle of customers coming to the nursery for cash sales has become less than a dribble. A large contract customer complained that she had to bully her way past. I teased her that $2 would have made it much easier – she said “never!”

Yesterday I had to get in a load of rooted gum tree cuttings from South Africa for a local company that has been tasked with re-afforesting large parts of the country where the native trees have been cut down for curing tobacco grown by small-scale farmers. All 320,000 of them were in a big truck with tri-axle trailer. I had to get permission to bring it through the neigbouring farm in case the road was impassable for such a big rig. At first the answer was a flat no, it would never fit down the narrow roads or gates but maybe we could use tractors and trailers to ferry the boxes from one side of the farm to the other – an option I was really hoping to avoid. I mentioned the issue to Miriam, who represented the company importing the gum cuttings, she told her boss who asked for the farm manager’s contact and suddenly permission was granted to get the truck through.

I took the truck driver along the proposed route and he said it was doable. An hour later we were offloading the boxes and by 5.30 p.m. he was out the gate and down the road being repaired.

This afternoon, whilst grappling with the logistics of transplanting the gum seedlings into trays to hold over for the customer, Jane called by for a donation to help pay for the diesel for the heavy machinery on the road. She was optimistic that she’d reach the target of $30,000 but did mention that roads engineer had admitted that government funding would probably not cover the rebuild of the last 800m or so.

Today I asked one of my foremen, Fabian, who’d just come back from Zambia if it was any better than Zimbabwe. “Not really” he replied. “Lusaka is filthy. The road to the parliament is new and clean and the rest of the roads are terrible with potholes.”

Taken five days later – they are moving fast!

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Running dry

6 07 2025
Replacing a borehole motor in a borehole that ran dry

That the borehole motor was burnt was obvious. The metal casing was blue, there was oil in the water and it wasn’t pumping water. But the reason? The borehole in question has given me endless trouble. It has gone through more than a few motors over the years. We thought we’d finally got it solved last year when it became evident that the old steel borehole casing had rusted away and was collapsing and dumping mud into the pump. It was re-lined with a PVC liner, the pump and motor replaced and I thought our worries were over for the foreseeable future. I was wrong.

Marianne suggested I try contacting Allan, listed on my phone as “Borehole Repair Recommended”. When I described the problem he was straight forward – “Is the pump protected against running dry?” When I answered in the negative he said “That’s your problem. The pump controller you have installed does recognize when the pump is dry but it doesn’t work that well and the pump inevitably cooks. At this time of year (it’s winter and the dry season) the water levels drop and the pumps inevitably run dry. Get yourself a smart controller with liquid level detection and your problems will be over”.

There’s a irrigation equipment supplier close to my business so I paid them a visit to get a new motor and whilst there asked if they had an intelligent controller. Whilst perusing the manual I noticed Nathan, a plumber, who’d done the plumbing on our new on-suite bathroom, was also there. When he heard what I was looking for he recommended going to a nearby hardware store for the controller – “I have personal experience with them and I know they work” he added. I took his advice and installed the new pump and controller and, after decoding the bad Chinese English in the manual, managed to get everything working.

A mere two weeks later Fabian (one of the foremen who does the maintenance amongst other tasks) came to me with a long face and reported that another borehole had stopped working. I told him to get the pump and motor up and sure enough, the motor had all of the characteristics of being burnt. Another trip to the supplier, more cash changed hands, and this time I came away with a replacement motor and two intelligent controllers – including one for the third borehole that I was hoping to preempt the motor burning out.

It all seemed straight forward at first – after all we’ve had plenty of practice at getting borehole pumps and motors up and changed. This one was no different but the intelligent controller just wouldn’t cooperate. The motor drew current like it was working but nothing else happened. Allan was mystified – “I’ve never had a problem like that” so I just had to take a deep breath and book one of his teams to come out this Friday and have a look.

Driving back from work at lunch time I took a more scenic route than usual past the old Mount Pleasant golf course. It hasn’t been used for that purpose for many years now and is largely over grown. It’s not prime development land being low lying and very wet in the rainy season so is untouched – for now. Houses adjoining the area seem to have good ground water and sprinklers were merrily whirring over verdant verges oblivious to (or ignoring) the Harare City Council’s directive that it’s illegal to do so for, make no mistake, Harare is running dry.

Harare’s main water supply is Lake Chivero to the south-west of the city. It is downstream and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to grasp the scale of the pollution. It’s nothing new, as an eight year-old child I attended a sailing school on the reservoir and can remember a deep revulsion of the state of the water. It recently made headlines when four rhino and various other animals at a lakeside national park were killed by the polluted water. Very little of the available water in the lake now makes it’s way into the Harare water supply. It requires pumping and there’s seldom power to do that and the water purification works have long ago fallen into disrepair. So in true Zimbabwean fashion we’ve had to “make a plan” – usually in the form of having a borehole drilled. That of course is no guarantee that it will not be dry (and most are) but for those of us lucky enough it can be a massive relief and money saver. The unlucky majority have to rely on the burgeoning water supply business and at US$50 for 5,000 litres it isn’t cheap. Water tankers are ubiquitous on the streets and come in all shapes and sizes. Some are made for the purpose but most are just plastic tanks strapped onto disheveled trucks. They source their water from outside the city limits.

Nathan is succinct – “Harare will run dry in five years at the most”. We are luckier than most in having a working borehole but it is not prolific. Tested at 1,000 litres per hour we don’t push our luck and the lawn dies off in the dry season. This year we’ve pumped the swimming pool dry (it’s filled with rainwater runoff collected off the roof) so that we can get the leaks fixed and the pool tiled. Grey water from the kitchen and shower is collected and used on the garden too. We keep our fingers crossed and try to balance having a nice garden without having to recourse to buying in water.

That there is no interest on the part of the government in changing the situation is best summarized in a conversation I had with Anton, my personal trainer, at a nearby gym. His wife, also a person trainer, used to have the Egyptian ambassador as a client. She, the ambassador, told Anton’s wife that Egypt had offered to completely rebuild the water treatment works at Lake Chivero. It would have been a gift from Egypt to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government turned it down; there was nothing in it for them. The ambassador commented that she’d worked in a number of African countries but had never encountered one in which the government cared less for it’s people.


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Criminal ethics

30 05 2025

“Boss, come and have a look at this” Mapeno, the gardener exclaimed, clearly excited. He held up two expensive day packs. “Where did you find them?” I responded. “Over here right by the gate” came the reply. “Are you sure they don’t belong to the builders?” I asked. “No, I already checked with them”. I wasn’t surprised, they didn’t look like the sort of day packs a Zimbabwean builder could afford.

I was just about to go to work so he brought them over to my truck and we started to go through them. Diaries with copious notes on what looked like engineering projects, a wallet with South African gun licences, credit cards and no cash. Two South African passports (one full) in one pack in the name of a male and another in the second pack with a woman’s name and photo. This was obviously stolen property but why had it come over the wall into our property? And how was I going to contact the owners?

Fortunately the diaries had contact phone numbers in them albeit different ones. I tried both – one did nothing and the other was unreachable. Maybe I could contact the South African Embassy and give them the passports and then the owners would likely go there and then be able to contact me. I was on the way to work when I realized that WhatsApp works everywhere irrespective of phone number so I entered the unreachable number and called. It was quickly answered. “Is this Mr M and are you missing a couple of day packs?” I said. “Yes we are – did you find any passports?”. I answered that we’d found three and asked what they’d lost. A laptop and US$2,000 was the response. “It was just stuff, the passports are the most important things, at least we can get back home tomorrow” he added.

They had stopped for breakfast at a café at a local shopping centre and left the laptop and day packs on the back seat of the pickup in plain view. As they sat down to breakfast thieves smashed the back window, grabbed the packs and computer and got away in a waiting car.

“While this is not Jo’burg you still have to switch on. Thieves hang out in car parks just waiting for that sort of opportunity” I commented.

“Yes, we know that now” he replied. “Please send me your address so that I can come and pick up our stuff”.

I wasn’t there when they arrived but our maid phoned me to confirm who they were and wrote down the registration number of their pickup truck. I did wonder why the thieves bothered to “return” the day packs and their contents – a distinctly curious form of criminal ethics. If I were they I’d have kept the rather smart packs and dumped the contents into the nearest ditch.

Crime in Cape Town is an altogether different league. One could easily be lulled into a false sense of security by the first world shopping centres, immaculate roads and civilised driving standards (traffic lights are actually respected) contrary to Zimbabwe. Tourism is booming – the driver we used from the airport told us that in December 2024, 1.6 million tourists came through the airport – tourists we met on Table Mountain commented on how cheap Cape Town is. People are positive about their future and investing and developing in agriculture – rare attitudes in Zimbabwe.

Visiting Oaklands Estate near Wellington in the Western Cape was a case in point. David, a friend of my cousin, bought the abandoned racehorse stud in 2009 before occupying it in 2011. The derelict buildings have been renovated into tourist accommodation and the old stables will once again house a stud. Hillsides are being planted to proteas for their flowers for export. Other stables have been converted into a conference centre and come the tourist season the accommodation is full. I asked David if his positive outlook was down to living in the Western Cape. He answered “Pretty much. You can still avoid the corruption bullshit if you want to”. The Western Cape is relatively well run compared with the other provinces in South Africa. It is under the control of the Democratic Alliance with Alan Winde as the premier.

Oaklands Estate close to Wellington in the Western Cape. Who could not be optimistic in this environment?

While Oaklands Estate is far enough out of Cape Town to not be overly attractive to criminals, the township of Guguletu is an epicentre of crime. The taxi driver was quite clear on this: “If you are a person of colour” – he tapped his own light brown skin – “or a white, you stay out of there” – he gestured to the left of the motorway. It was a maze of corrugated iron shacks, broken fencing, goats, rubbish and bizarrely – satellite dishes on nearly every dwelling I could see. We asked him about the white tourist who’d been killed there earlier in the year. “Actually there were two who went in there” he responded “but one survived”. “You see that road up there?” he gestured with his right hand to a road sweeping a curve over the motorway into the township. “There was traffic backed up on the other side of this road so both asked their traffic navigator apps for an alternative and it took them into Guguletu. One guy was robbed of his car and beaten up but got out to a hospital and survived. The other was a doctor and they shot him. Dead. You don’t mess with the gangs in there – they run the place.” I mused that they were probably not the type that would return high quality day packs over a suburban wall in the expectation that they would be returned to their owners.

We arrived at the airport and said goodbye to Mario. It was time to head back to Harare. I got chatting to the porter who was assisting us whilst Marianne filled in forms to get VAT back. I asked him where he lived. “Oh, Guguletu” he replied. When I asked him how he coped with the gangs and crime he shrugged “God looks after me”.


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Categories : Agriculture, Economics, Environment, horticulture, Social commentary, Travel

Economies of scale

8 04 2025
The innards of a cheap clock mechanism. A VERY cheap one!

The clock mechanism above cost about £6 on Amazon UK. I bought several about 4 years ago and it seems that they have come to the end of their design life. That’s in contrast to the one I was given by Trevor some 15 years ago and is still going fine. He did tell me at the time that it was a good Swiss brand and just gave it to me so of course cost doesn’t come into the equation.

I have been looking on Amazon for some replacements and they all seem to be of much the same quality – cheap. In fact if I bought 30 I would pay £24. How can they possibly make them so cheaply ?Economies of scale I guess. If we look around us there are plenty of other examples. The one that immediately comes to mind are the Bic razors.

I admit to using a Bic razor once a week. On Sunday I take a step back from the tyranny of daily shaving and let my beard grow. I hate shaving. Of course as a teenager I couldn’t wait to start shaving and be a man. That all changed the first morning after being inducted into the Rhodesian army in 1978. We were made to stand to attention by our foot lockers the duty sergeant. “Shaved this morning Roberts?”, he demanded, poking his face to within a few centimetres of mine. “No sarge!” I replied. The question was repeated at the next man and the next. After a few more negatives he gave up. “Anyone who has not shaved go and do so now!” he bellowed. Most of the barrack room dashed out to the washroom, shaving kit in hand. Ever since it’s become a daily routine except for Sundays and no, there’s no truth to the common idea that the more one shaves the more one has to. I wish there were – I would apply it to my increasingly sparse head hair!

Bic has of course taken economies of scale to the limit. Razors are designed to work for two shaves, three if you can handle the pulling, then they are consigned to the bin. It would be easy enough to use harder steel that could hold an edge for longer like the old Gillette G2s of my youth but that’s no the point. You must buy more. The same with their ballpoint pens. They are so cheap that it doesn’t matter if you lose one – you’ve bought a box of them anyway. There are six fountain pens in my drawer and they all work. One was my mother’s and another I had at school nearly 50 years ago. But who uses a fountain pen now? Much as I like using them it’s easier to use a smartphone and just dictate the message. So they sit in the drawer, fond relics of an age when my right hand worked well and I won the Headmaster’s Prize for Handwriting (at junior school).

My business works on large numbers of plants, mostly seedlings, sold at a relatively small markup. Last year I sold 8,474,903 seedlings, for US$, which sounds like a lot but only gave me a profit before tax of $20,284 and there’s not a lot one can do with that in Zimbabwe’s economic climate. I have not included those sold for local currency which is too small a number to be of consequence. It doesn’t help that I’m charging the same as I was 10 years ago when we last had the US$ (there has been one local currency in between) and business was much more profitable. Now there’s a lot of competition around with people who probably evade tax and use family members for unpaid labour. So I’ve had to keep my prices down. I haven’t been able to keep the nursery full and costs have risen, labour especially. I need to fill up the nursery and, like in the Bic model, make a small profit per unit but really sell lots of them. Any ideas gratefully accepted.


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A storm approaching

31 03 2025
Storms develop south of the local microlight club where we fly model aircraft

“Nah, it’s a ZANU-PF problem, they must sort it out themselves” Fabian responded when I asked him if he was going to join today’s protest march in the centre of Harare. Fabian was a non-combatant porter in Robert Mugbe’s ZANLA army as a young man in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia’s bush war which ended in 1980. He has little time for the ZANU-PF political party that Mugabe founded.

The current Zimbabwean president, Emerson Mnangagwa, is looking to extend his presidency to a third term of five years. Zimbabwe’s constitution forbids this and protests have been planned for today which will be spearheaded by Blessed Geza who was a ZANLA veteran. Not surprisingly this has led to accusations of treason from Mnangagwa even though demonstrations are allowed under the constitution. While a lot of Zimbabweans are thoroughly fed-up with an inept and kleptocratic government the cynics are saying that it’s just a changing of the guard – a different herd of snouts to the trough.

Last week saw amoured cars and troop carriers on the streets in an attempt to intimidate would-be protestors. There were road blocks manned by police stopping traffic going into town though yesterday evening, when I came back from the airfield, the one on the main road in had packed up.

The organizers of the protest were clear in their instructions to the general public; stay out of the city centre though this may have been disinformation by the government. Schools are shut today and most businesses are closed or working with reduced staff. There was very little traffic about when we went out to walk the dogs on ART farm. My business is working on essential staff only as we really didn’t know what to expect.

There were videos on social media this morning of protestors starting to march into town. They must have been aware that the last time this happened it all turned nasty when the army opened fire killing six. This is not like Turkey at the moment where thousands of students are gathering every evening to protest the collapse of the country’s democracy. They only have to put up with tear gas.

On the way back home I stopped at a local hardware store to get a jerrycan for my paramotor fuel. “Have a nice day” the cheerful teller girl said as I was leaving. “Yes”, I replied, “and tomorrow we’ll have a new government” giving her a large wink. She giggled, “So, what are you doing here then?” was her response.

It did rain last night. In some areas the storms were violent but here it was just 14mm of rain. Enough to make us thankful for the 4×4 capability of my truck on the very sticky ART farm roads.


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Taxed if you do, taxed if you don’t

26 08 2023

It had to be a mistake, I couldn’t possibly owe the tax department (ZIMRA – Zimbabwe Revenue Authority) that amount. Even if I converted it to US dollars it would amount to an impossible figure – about 17,500 at the unofficial rate and 23,000 at the bank rate. I checked the email address – it was from a person with whom I’ve corresponded over the years. Then there was the wording; FINAL DEMAND. Where were the other demands? I did what any sensible person would have done and contacted my bookkeeper in a state of panic.

Alison was more than a bit puzzled but told me she couldn’t do anything without seeing how they’d got the figures. “Your are entitled to see what’s going on” she said. “Ask them for the ledger”

The last part of the ledger

The ledger was duly sent and the waters immediately became a lot murkier. It stated the figures were in US dollars and the numbers, if the currency was US dollars, were impossible. I sent it on to Alison. It was a while before she came back to me by which time my imagination had run riot. What if I really did owe 105 million dollars? I would have to buy it on the open market with my US dollars and would be left with no operating capital and nothing with which to pay wages. The company would be unlikely to survive.

Alison assured me that the figures on the ledger were Zimbabwe dollars and I probably did owe the 3,835,807 listed. She had no idea where the 105 million came from. “Ask them” she said. So I did.

The reply was abrupt; the 105 million was to be ignored (RTGS is another way of saying Zimbabwe dollars). The amount on the ledger was also incorrect as it didn’t account for some US$550 that I’d paid in presumptive tax (they are called Quarterly Payment Due or just QPD) which would have reduced the amount owed close to zero.

I speculated to Marianne that it was all just a bit of psychological bullying to get me to pay attention to the outstanding amount, then two days ago I bumped into Gary whose wife had had a strikingly similar experience.

Gary works for a seed company that occasionally uses my nursery to grow seedlings for various trials. They have a trial on ART Farm which is a neighbour to my nursery and I sometimes use it access my nursery so as to avoid the appalling direct road and take in a bit of soothing farm scenery on the way. Gary was having a look at one of their trials near the road so I stopped to chat.

We discussed various things then I related my experience with the tax authority. He said that Clare, his wife who works as a bookkeeper for a local church, had received a final letter of demand for payment from ZIMRA for an impossible amount about three months ago. She replied that as a church they were not liable for tax and any money made was given away to various charities and nothing more was heard. He agreed with me that as the government was desperate for money it was likely endorsing ZIMRA’s intimidation tactics to get in whatever money they could, maybe they were even giving a commission.

On getting to work I related the story to my senior foremen. They were decidedly cynical. “They are all on the take” opined Chingedzerai. “Yes”, added Fabian, “they see the rest of the government officials stealing and think that they should have some of the pie too. They see what they can bully you into paying and then split the extra between themselves”. It was obvious that they thought I was being naïve.

Marianne had been doing some questioning of her own and posted my problem on the local community WhatsApp group. Someone had responded with a name and phone number of a senior official at ZIMRA whom he thought would be able to help. I gave him a call and related my problem and asked if it was official ZIMRA policy to send out threatening demands based on nothing much at all. His indifference was striking; I should send him a copy of all the correspondence and documents and he’d forward it to the relevant manager. I duly sent him the copies but I am not expecting a reply.

It’s no secret that Zimbabwe is in deep financial trouble. Mismanagement, corruption and incompetence have seen our GDP plunge after the Mnangagwa government took power in a coup back in 2017.

At the time it was welcomed by the majority of the population who were relieved to be rid of the much hated and feared Mugabe regime but it was not long before the new government of E D Mnangagwa revealed its true colours of repression and corruption. Chingedzerai reminded me that the current administration has never bothered to investigate the estimated US$15 billion worth of diamonds that went unaccounted for from the Chiadzwa diamond fields in the east of the country in the latter part of the Mugabe era. More recently there was the gold smuggling exposé by al Jazeera that showed how top Zimbabwean officials were, with the highest approval, smuggling gold out of Zimbabwe and laundering the resulting cash. Indeed, for a country that is struggling financially, there is an eye-opening amount of property development around town. In the past this would have attracted the attention of ZIMRA who would have demanded to see the accounts of owners of expensive properties and made to account for the development. Now it’s easier, and more personally profitable, to send out threatening letters.

I paid wages on Tuesday. We chose the date years ago when getting cash from the bank at the end of the month meant enduring long queues and not getting the desired breakdown. Chingedzerai had heard the income tax limits had been increased and asked me to check on the internet before he entered the attendance and overtime figures on the computer. I was fairly sure it was only the Zimbabwe dollar tables that had changed but checked on the US dollar tables anyway (I have been paying my staff in the latter currency since August last year).

In Zimbabwe salaries are taxed monthly and the system is known by its acronym PAYE; Pay As You Earn. The rates are iniquitous. Wages are taxed from US$100 per month upwards! Given that the minimum agricultural wage starts at US$60 before any of the required allowances, most of my staff are taxed. Some do get age exemptions but the rest of them have to endure.

Such is the government’s demand for money that it has taken to taxing money transfers at 2% per transfer. It goes without saying that most transactions are cash though it’s not always possible. The government used to tax cash withdrawals from banks but gave up when it became evident that people were simply not depositing cash in order to avoid paying the tax.

Given the high cost of living and taxation in Zimbabwe one would assume that the majority of the population would be keen for a change of government. Indeed, given that we had a general and presidential election on Wednesday, one could be forgiven for thinking it imminent. With the recent exception of Zambia, southern African is not known for changing its governments and Zimbabwe is not about to become an exception too.

My foremen and I were all in agreement on this; the incumbent ZANU-PF party, which has maintained its grip on power since 1980 by means mostly foul, will certainly cheat its way to victory; only the level of the fiddle is not known. So far it’s been “limited” to delaying delivering voting papers to polling stations in regions known to be opposition strongholds, sending voters to polling stations where they found they weren’t registered, making sure one couldn’t check the online registration database and of course blatant intimidation. Few, if any, believe the logistical problems to be anything but deliberate. We remain cynical.


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The brick is back

7 05 2023
The bundles of 500 notes in bank wrappers were commonly known as bricks in 2008. Now it’s 2023 and they’re back!

The senior foreman said the customer wanted to pay in Zimbabwe dollars, cash, were we going to accept them? We didn’t have much of a choice as it is legal tender so I said yes and asked how much it was. 67,000 he replied. I groaned knowing they would be in small denominations. The biggest, $50, is worth all of US2.2c so I knew there would be quite a few bundles but the majority were $20 notes. We filled a medium-sized box.

Quite a few were in bank-sealed plastic bags of 500 notes which were called “bricks” back in the hyper inflation days of 2008. We didn’t bother counting them then and didn’t bother now. Back in those days the government attempted to get around the problem by printing ever larger denomination notes (an example is in the picture). Our inflation now is not quite that bad but anyway, local currency notes have largely been superseded by electronic money. It’s very easy to add zeros onto electronic money.

The other currency in Zimbabwe that is also legal tender is the US dollar. Having nothing to do with the government it is by far the most preferred. Although the government tries to set the exchange rate and can prosecute those not using it there is an easy work-around. It goes like this: the official rate is 1,097 Zimbabwe dollars to US$1 and with a few exceptions, fuel being one of them, businesses have to quote their prices in the local currency. On the unofficial market the rate is currently around 2,200 to one US dollar depending on to whom one is talking. Businesses price their goods in the Zimbabwe dollar and then offer a fat discount if you want to pay in US dollars – this effectively brings the official rate up to the unofficial one and it’s completely legal. Many businesses don’t bother with the official rate and just quote the unofficial one. My business is one of them and so far there hasn’t been a comeback.

There is a sense on around town that the unofficial rate is running again and people are offloading their Zimbabwe dollars. I sent the driver into town the day following the above deposit to get rid of the cash. In reality it was about US$30 so didn’t go far but I managed to find a fertilizer company accepting them and topped up with a bit of electronic money in the form of a debit card we managed to get a meaningful amount of agricultural chemicals bought.

The government is of course also looking for a dependable currency and has hit on tax as the easiest way to get in US dollars. All US$ cash deposits are levied at 20% and the government reimburses the amount in Zimbabwe dollars – at the official rate! This means that in reality the recipient can be losing 10% or more of the deposit in real terms. Exporters are levied 40% of the amount remitted to their forex accounts. It gets better; 3% of all USD cash withdrawals from a bank are taxed. While one can still pay car licence fees and other government levies in the local currency the sense is that it cannot last.

The local Reserve Bank has an idea to shore up the local currency; digital tokens backed by gold. It won’t work – the population’s trust in the government has long since evaporated. There is nothing new about digital currency in Zimbabwe but my staff for one will only be interested in the greenback.


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