Zimbabwe Absurdity

A customer called me yesterday to organize payment for seedlings to be collected. Being someone who grows for the export market I quoted him the US dollar price. He then asked for the local price so taking the previous day’s rate I hiked it a bit to make it unattractive and told him the total. He said he’d do the transfer right away. Damn! I found out why he did not opt for the “cheaper” option. It was quite simple really; I’d not been up with the rate. Instead of the 25 million to one US dollar that I’d used it was actually around 30! I took my eyes off the ball and it cost dearly.

 Well maybe “stumbled” would be a better description but we can certainly see a fall coming for South Africa.The English language has some great words and I think none is more descriptive than “gloat”. Yes, we in Zimbabwe are taking a perverse delight in the South African power supply debacle and are definitely gloating! They don’t even have a credible excuse. Yes, our power supply utility has not done its maintenance either but then they can’t afford to due to the ludicrous (government dictated) prices that they charge. My insurance broker pointed out that running her generator for one hour costs the same as paying for admittedly highly erratic power for one month. It’s surprising that they even have the money to turn the switches on! Mind you, we have now had uninterrupted power for nearly two weeks. Are they being nice to us in the run up to elections or has something actually changed to improve the system. The consensus of opinion is that it cannot last!

The South African Eskom utility has been charging realistic prices but has bungled the maintenance and due to a number of other factors, BEE being one of them, has fouled up in style. Johannesburg now has major power cuts every day (I could not get hold of a company there all Wednesday probably due to phones being without power) and I am told that candles are now in short supply! What this means for the World Cup in 2010 we can only guess. Of course they are scrambling to sort out the mess but it’s going to take years to sort out. By the way, BEE stands for black economic empowerment, a policy of selective employment to boost blacks into higher positions in the economy. While this may have been more successful in the private sector, government has not been so selective (nepotism is as rampant there as here) and the results have shown in the likes of Eskom who have ended up with employees who are not that “switched on”.

The once stable rand (SA currency) has fallen a bit too. Less than 7 to the US dollar last month it was at 7.8 yesterday. I wonder if this has anything to do with the South African image right now. I can’t think Jacob Zuma is helping either.

The power has been off for 24 hours now so I’m typing this up on the laptop. I should be working but there is little else to do without power. The power did come on for 2 hours last night and then ominously faded when I was half a paragraph from the end of The Saints – The history of the RLI. Fortunately I’d made a cup of coffee earlier and had the foresight to grind enough coffee for this morning (I’ve made that mistake earlier). Stupidly I assumed the power might stay on long enough to allow me to turn on the pump to the emergency tank and fill all the hot water cisterns and the toilets. Oops, it didn’t. So it was my fault that this morning (after vainly hoping that the power might come on in the night) that I had to have a cold bucket bath, the hot water (well, any water for that matter) in the geyser that supplies the bath having run out. Now I’m sure that in any civilized country the power utility would have taken the blame but not here. Here we blame ourselves for not having the foresight to have “made a plan”, we should have (appalling words) foreseen the problem. This blaming of others can of course be taken too far; the USA being a case in point where people will not accept responsibility for their own stupidity and of course the lawyers profit. Here I suspect we have gone too far the other way with the result that the various “providers” who should be taking responsibility for their actions (or more usually lack thereof) are getting away with it and are now expecting to.

My initial impression of The Saints was unusually accurate. It is a great book, well written and put together. Alex Binda and Chris Cocks make skillful use of contact reports and notes from all sides of the military, most of the emphasis being on the RLI but not excluding the Air Force with whom we worked s closely. Of course it means more to me than most as I was in the unit and know a lot of the characters photographed and mentioned. I even get a mention myself once by name (2 Commando wounded in 1979) and once by inference in the Medical Officer’s diary when he notes that some of the wounded will have to live with the results for the rest of their lives e.g. paralysis (I came across no others in that category during my convalescence). Ah well, fame of a different sort! There is a lot of humour within the pathos of war and of course we know how it all ended but for me the most tragic detail was the last fatality suffered by the RLI, a young trooper shot by his own stick leader. The war ended the next day.

Oh, by the way, the title “The Saints” comes from the regimental march, adapted from the tune of “When The Saints Go Marching In”. If you want to know more, buy the book!

Another 24 hours later and the power is back, a bit more permanently perhaps. Apparently ZESA was replacing a faulty line just down the road. A pity they did not check their wiring better; all our 3 phase motors are now turning the wrong way (which means they crossed some wires over). We now have some options. Do we a) re-wire our motors to get them turning the right way in the assumption that ZESA will do nothing or b) wait until they do something and hope they can remember which wires went where? I don’t think we need to tell them as there are a number of other farms on the same grid so I’m sure they will all be phoning them up.

Now: The power’s back on after another 8 hour break. I have not checked if the pumps are turning the right way, it can wait. I’ll take Jenni past the farm storage reservoir and see if the pumps are working there as I know they were not.

What exactly does that mean? What is the it in “howzit”? How is what exactly?

It’s a general greeting I suppose. Maybe it should be “How’s it going?”

But that’s not even English, what is actually going where?

I knew better than to argue the point with my mother. She is long deceased but like the good parent that she was she left me her lasting irritation of badly spoken English.

Another phrase that I find more irksome is the ubiquitous Zimbabwean, “How are you?” Again it is just a greeting, the questioner has little interest in how the other person actually is so I rather like to say things like – terrible, and see if they notice. You’d be surprised at how often they don’t. The blacks especially will ask, and I will say fine, because I don’t feel inclined to go into the details of why I’m NOT fine and they will reply fine, even though I haven’t actually asked anything. When I point this out they are just nonplussed. So yesterday when someone came down the line of cars at the traffic lights with the intent of selling me a well made grass wastepaper basket and said hello and how are you I decided to let him have the full story. No, actually I am not fine, I am thoroughly pissed off!

Why?

Why? Because I’m tired of this place, that’s why.

He agreed with me, yes, it is not good.

I then launched into my synopsis of why the Zimbabwean economy is such a mess and all the fat cats are just in it for a quick buck and couldn’t care less about the country or anyone else.

He didn’t even ask if I wanted to buy a wastepaper basket.

So when is it going to change he asked.

When we get rid of this government, I said. But there is no guarantee that the next one will be any better.

You are right he said, gloomily as the lights changed and I moved off.

There was a 47CD number plated Toyota Venture in front of me waiting to turn right up Second Street. A young, rail-thin beggar woman with the obligatory baby on her back (hers?) was begging at the intersection. A hand came out of the Toyota and gave her a wad of notes. They were $5 notes, about a 100 of them I’d guess, about US 0.05c in total value. She looked pleased then realized that she’d been given waste paper and just laughed a helpless sort of this-is-not-funny-but-what-else-can-I-do sort of laugh. I pulled up alongside her and though I don’t generally give money to beggars, said, I think I can do better than that, and gave her a $100000 note. Only 10c in US terms but at least it was useful. She was genuinely pleased. The prize bastard in the Toyota, a diplomat who could certainly have afforded something useful, was long gone.

Avondale Bookshop is a small but often quite well stocked bookshop in the Avondale shopping area. The foreign currency shortage has of course taken its toll so it is not as well stocked as it has been but it still has some surprisingly provocative titles in stock that are less than admiring of the current regime. I was quite surprised to hear last night at the concert that it had the latest RLI history in stock, albeit at the eye watering price (for me) of 30m dollars. Now the Rhodesian Light Infantry is my old regiment so I had to go along this morning and have a look though I was a bit sceptical of finding anything but some lower grade “whenwe” book. I was pleasantly surprised. The Saints: The Rhodesian Light Infantry by Alexandre Binda and edited by Chris Cocks is an immaculately produced hard cover history of the regiment loaded with photographs and a DVD to boot.

I was conscripted into the Rhodesian Army straight out of high school and at the time I took it with stoicism – it was what one had to do. I was ill-suited to the army and did not make a particularly good soldier. I think now that I just did not have the required aggression to make a good soldier and I was probably a bit immature too. Like a lot of the conscripts at the time we grumbled and complained a good deal. Yes, there was a lot of boredom and time wasting not to mention the terror of combat and eventually I paid a high price. But I have no regrets; “should have” and “if only” are words for which I have little time. War breeds camaraderie like no other experience and as I turned the pages and looked at the photos of faces I’d long forgotten the memories all came pouring back.  So this afternoon was spent watching the DVD and scanning through the book. I suppose it is not so surprising that the bad memories fade and the good ones remain; we’d all be nutters otherwise. This evening, taking Jenni for a walk, I came to a conclusion that surprised me somewhat; I was proud to have been a part of it. Charlie Aust, the last CO (commanding officer) of the unit (it was disbanded in October 1980), in the foreword puts it much better than I can. “There is little doubt that every individual looks back on those, now distant, days of RLI service, filled with a complex, wide spectrum of emotional memories – some sad, some bad, some shadowed by anxiety and fear, some with pain … but all with pride. Such is the legacy of war”. So while others settle down to watch the final of the Rugby World Cup, I’ll settle down with a glass of wine or two and wander through my past.

We had our first storm yesterday evening. It was all noise and not a lot of action, but there was enough rain to give that exquisite smell of rain on hot ground that to me is so African. In the past I have always associated it with hope. Hope of a good season, hope of new growth, hope of good things. This year I am having difficulty with hope. The light at the end of the tunnel has not been turned off to save power, it has been stolen and no-one can afford the replacement cost. I suppose it does not help that I am desperately lonely with no real solution in sight. Fortunately I do have Jenni, and though I know she loves me, she is still a dog and conversation is difficult.

I went flying on Friday afternoon with a friend who has a private pilot’s licence. I could not bear to be around the office any longer and needed a change of scenery so when Rob offered to take me up I jumped at the opportunity. I have no problem with light aircraft though I do wish they could be a little quieter. Flying for me is a release, not least because you HAVE to concentrate on the task at hand and all other worries are temporarily forgotten. I guess being above the source of all my problems also helps in a psychological way! We went up for an hour over the training area adjoining the small private airport north-west of Harare. It was interesting to see the area from the air as normally it is a highly productive farming area. Things have not been normal in agriculture for some years now and it showed in the hopelessly late and pathetic crops of wheat that have still not flowered. A number of once neat greenhouses are now just remnants of tattered plastic. Large areas of the bush have burned and even Grace M’s house that she “acquired” from a local successful businessman/farmer has succumbed to flames. Pyrrhic justice in the truest sense but she will simply “acquire” another if she feels like it. Quite a lot of land has been prepared for the coming wet season but it is obvious that the “new farmers” have neither the money nor skills to farm through the dry season with irrigation and must rely on the coming rains. It does not help that the electricity supply is often too erratic to be of use.