Zimbabwe Absurdity

The power went off in a storm last night. It was probably a tree falling on the lines. Getting to work this morning the foreman told me that the backup diesel engine was not starting from 2 weeks ago. Apparently nobody had told him until today. We have another smaller backup diesel pump and that was pressed into service whilst I tackled the bigger one. It appears to be a fuel problem but I could not solve it so went off to find some 110mm PVC piping to replace another section of pipe that is perpetually splitting, probably due to the excessively high pressure from the over-sized electric pump. We did have a pressure reducer but I can no longer find a reducer to give us the 2 bars necessary to run the various sprinklers. I can find one that reduces to 1.1 bars but that is insufficient. Amazingly I found the pipes and fittings at an outlet in Borrowdale that curiously advertises itself with a pneumatic chested young lass in a very small bikini “For the best after sales service and much more!”. I guess sex sells. I am almost certain I could have sourced the pipes and fittings for far less in the industrial sites but that was a good hour round trip so I paid over the top. The power was still not on when I got back to the nursery and as filling the emergency tanks was a priority, fixing the leaking pipe will have to wait until tomorrow.

I had an American guest recently. When I told her how much my staff were paid I detected a faintly accusing air of exploitation. I explained that our productivity was nothing like that in the USA but it was only earlier this week that I could quantify it.

On Wednesday we started packing sweet potato cuttings that we’d taken into boxes of 200 cuttings each for an NGO. The total requirement was 227,000 which I knew would take 2 days. At the end of Wednesday only 84,000 had been packed. So yesterday I told the foreman supervising this that the women could go when they’d finished and they would still be paid a full day’s wage. The balance of 143,000 cuttings was packed by 14h30!

I was in my local service provider’s outlet at the Borrowdale Village shopping complex yesterday to register my cell phone lines. I didn’t really want to do it but I’d been threatened with closure if I didn’t do it by the end of February. It also meant that I could have the dubious priveledge of being able to access the GPRS facility and use the phone to browse the web.

A women ahead of me had asked the obvious question; why do we have to do this? The sales lady trotted out the standard answer – mainly security and various other reasons that I did not catch. When I pointed out that when I went to the UK last year I bought a SIM card at Gatwick airport from a vending machine without producing any form of identification and that if anywhere should have security issues with cell phones it should be the UK she didn’t have an answer. So I just have to wonder who would be interested in my personal details (ID number, residential address, full name) and what phone numbers I own.

This apparently a la Nina year which should mean at least average rainfall for us. As I speak we are at less than half of where we should be for an average year and heading for even less rain than last year which was very dry. I took this photo early this morning. Development like this usually indicates a big storm later. We shall see.

I was making a deposit into the account of my insurance broker on Tuesday at a local branch of CABS, which despite the name (Central African Building Society) has been a registered commercial bank for some time. Behind the teller was a board offering interest rates on long term, up to 90 days, deposits. The highest rate they were offering was 7% which was a lot better than anything I could find “out there” in the real world. It’s no secret that a lot of money has been externalized from Zimbabwe, this could only be an attempt to get some of it back. I had to admit it WAS pretty attractive but just how secure is the Zimbabwe banking sector?

For the past 4 years Grace Mugabe’s farming company has been farming the land between where I live and work. Mainly they have planted late soyas there with mixed success. It has inevitably been too late – probably something to do with the ZANU-PF congress that takes place late in the year but I have to admit I am not sure what the link could be.

On Saturday they were still planting maize – at least a month too late so it will very likely yield nothing of consequence.
I am sure I have mentioned elsewhere that it is cheaper to import maize into Zimbabwe than grow it here at the moment. That is of no importance to Her Ladyship; she will not be paying for the inputs anyway but she will be pocketing the income!

It was a rather nice looking late model Case 4×4 tractor doing the planting. It was already running on one cylinder less than the full complement and pouring blue smoke out of the exhaust. I guess somebody else had paid for that too.

I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been to just assume that there would be power out at Mazowe to get my import permit printed. I closed my eyes and said something really controlled like “I cannot believe this”. The clerk said “It’s your country too” somehow implying that I was responsible for the inconsistency of the power supply. I could think of a response to that but I shut up and asked if they could print it another way. He said they were not going to start the generator to print one import permit and that I should wait a while (how long is a “while”?) to see if anyone else arrived to make it worthwhile. So I sat down and read the notices on the wall reminding customers of the various crop destruction dates that I know are not enforced. Then I needed to find a toilet and decided it was a good enough excuse to explore.

The Plant Protection Research Institute is, as the name suggests, the government agency tasked with keeping an eye on controlling pests and diseases in Zimbabwe in the various crops grown here. All import permits for any sort of plant products are issued here. Once situated behind Bob’s official residence (where he has not resided for some years) near the centre of Harare, it moved some 30km north of Harare to Henderson Research Station in 2002. It’s in a pleasant setting; the Mazowe hills back the property and its quiet and rural. Very quiet as I found out. In the three laboratories that I investigated only one even had chairs and they were office chairs too low to use at lab benches. There were half a dozen test tubes in a rack near a sink but that was all. The glasshouses out the back of the office block were empty.

Then I bumped into someone I knew. M is a pleasant lady who has been working at the PPRI for quite a long time; at least since we imported some olive trees from Egypt and South Africa to be grown by Wedza farmers. I asked her what was being done at the PPRI. Pleased that someone was showing some interest she took me into a growth room and showed me about 12 petri dishes in which imported seeds were being tested for contamination (they were contaminated) but it was all a bit sad. She admitted that there was no money being put into research. We discussed the general situation in the country for a while and bemoaned the depletion of the knowledge base as the commercial farmers had dispersed around the world. Then I asked why GMO was such a dirty word in Zimbabwe – all GMOs are banned.

It all started with a donation of GM maize to Zimbabwe from the US government for the express purpose of feeding the people in the pre-US dollar days. The maize HAD to be milled and the germ, which for various reasons is not included in refined maize meal in this country, HAD to be destroyed lest it find its way into cattle feed destined for the UK where GM cattle feed is prohibited. “Of course the politicians got hold of the issue, totally misunderstood it and turned it (the GM issue) into a monster” she continued with a shrug. The power had been on for some time now so we parted company and promised to keep in touch. I collected the corrected import permit from the front desk which expressly stated that the pine bark that I was importing from South Afrca had to complyh with the conditions – “NO GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOs) were involved in the production of seed, planting material, plant parts and/or plant material…” and drove back to the nursery.

Chatting, in French, to my teacher at the Alliance Francaise yesterday morning when the athletic looking fellows at the next table raced off into the car park. Two shots were fired in the vague direction of the opportunists trying to break into their car. When they came back I asked why they’d missed. They replied that there are some things you don’t do in Zimbabwe these days. I had to wonder who they were that they could fire weapons in public without having to worry too much about the police asking questions.

We settled back into the conversation about Air Zimbabwe’s woes. Shelton, my professeur de Francais, doubles up as an air steward with Air Zim. The previous day a messenger of the court had arrived at the airport to affix property in the ongoing squabble over unpaid wages. The aggrieved parties have taken Air Zim to court over the unpaid wages and the airline has had to pay – some pilots were back paid between $40,000 to $60,000 and the messenger of the court was after about $500,000 worth of property. Apparently luxury vehicles “belonging” to the senior management were confiscated along with a few buses and other assets. I had to wonder if this pay-out had anything to do with the lack of $100 and $50 bills at my local bank which is the de facto bank of the nation (see a previous post some time back). Earlier last week I drew out $2,300 entirely in $20 notes. This was odd considering in the early days of US “dollarisation” the smaller notes were in very short supply and the larger 50s and 100s were easily available.

In March next year I am likely going to Austria to see what can be done about my left knee which is giving a lot of trouble. Air Zim is usually the cheapest option to the UK but I am not sure they will still be in business. The government, which has a large share in the troubled airline, is trying to offload its shares but not surprisingly there are no takers. Very surprisingly Air Zim has just purchased two new Airbus long haul aircraft. I cannot think for a moment that Airbus gave them any credit. Interesting stuff but just maybe I will be booking on SAA or BA!

The composted pine bark medium we use for growing seedlings is no longer available in Zimbabwe. The company that used to process it in Mutare has closed down. They claim that the increased cost of sourcing the bark from outlying sawmills (the firm in Mutare where they originally sourced it had closed) was no longer worth what the market would pay for it but I think it was more to do with the manager’s years of drinking catching up with him. Anyway, we can either source the pine bark direct from South Africa at about US$100 per cubic metre or get it from the aforementioned company (who is getting it from the same source) at around $120 per cubic metre. Another “waste” product, coir (the outer husk of a coconut) is also available from Sri Lanka at around $50 per cubic metre but we are having a few problems getting the seedlings to grow properly in it. So we must go with what we know works until we can sort out the “wrinkles”.

I ordered the pine bark from South Africa some 4 weeks ago and making the payment was almost too easy. I simply went to the bank with the invoices, filled in a form and the transfer was made the next day. Bear in mind that in years gone by transferring money to anywhere outside the country was an involved process; the money to be transferred had to be found from the Reserve Bank, applied for, and if you were lucky it went through. It could take weeks. But those days of Zimbabwe dollars are gone now and if you have the money in your account (usually US dollars) and the invoice it’s easy! Well, the transferring bit is easy as I found out.

I rather naively assumed that the transport company I was using out of Jo’burg would sort out the border clearance at Beitbridge. Well, yes they could but it seemed I didn’t have all the right documents. Yes, I did need the import permit that I’d got but I also needed ANOTHER import permit to cover the first import permit. I dashed off to the Ministry of Agriculture and applied for it. By this stage I’d enlisted the help of a clearing agent who knew all the ropes. I’d also discovered that I needed a tax clearance certificate (i.e. I’d paid all the company tax to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority or ZIMRA) that I needed to over the last 2 years of “dollarization” – that’s US dollarization. Fortunately I was pretty much up to date on that except for a “presumptive tax”. Yes, you read that right but I should explain. We are supposed to guess how much profit the company is going to make and every 3 months pay an estimate of it to ZIMRA. In theory there are penalties for paying too little and at the end of the year it’s supposed to all balance up. It’s a hold over from the Zim dollar days when it was devaluing so fast that any tax paid at the end of the year as most civilized countries do would have been worthless. Well, I’d done nothing for this year so on advice from my bookkeeper I paid a nominal amount in for the first 3 quarters of the year (my bookkeeper was of the opinion that no-one would notice that it had all been paid on the same day). I took all the relevant forms along to an accounting firm that could “organize” for a small fee to fast-track the tax clearance certificate – I was assured it would be the genuine item, it would just take a few days instead of a few weeks to process.

The few days passed and no certificate was forthcoming. It transpired that the Business Partner number (nice phrase isn’t it – partnering the revenue authority. Right.) used to identify my company in all transactions with ZIMRA including the importation of goods did not match my company name. ZIMRA had spelt my company name wrong “Fitwood Farming” instead of “Fitward Farming” (I did not create the name – I bought the company name from an accounting firm some 11 years ago). This was a major snarl up as all the import documents listed my company with the correct spelling. This would have to be corrected and in the meantime the trucking firm would charge me demurrage for the truck that was now waiting at the border. The clearing agents told me it could be cleared without the tax clearance but it would cost me another $1100 in another “presumptive tax”. The alternative was to pay the demurrage at around $300 per day. I paid the $1100 dollars and as I type this the load of pine bark is waiting in the queue to cross to the Zimbabwe side of the border.

If the $1100 really is a presumptive tax it is not too serious – it can be offset against my company tax at the end of the year – although I did not have plans to be paying that much. Yes, it would have been cheaper to pay the $120 per cube for the pine bark in Harare!

Notes: the composted pine bark is normally a waste product of sawmills that strip the bark off the logs before sawing the planks as the bark can clog the blades. This bark is collected, milled into smaller pieces and composted in piles to reduce the acidity and make it suitable as a growing medium. This process usually takes about 3 months depending on the method. The coir we have been exprimenting with is also a waste product from the coir industry in Sri Lanka (and other SE Asian countries). The coir fibres we use are too short to weave into the mats and other products normally made from the coconut husk. It is also composted over several years but unlike pine bark has a natural ability to trap nutrients (usually potassium and magnesium) so has to be washed to make it usuable.

October is known locally as the “suicide month”. I am not sure that more suicided occur now but it is a reference to the sometimes intolerable heat. September this year was unusually cool and very windy but October is certainly living up to its reputation. At 17h00 the temperature on the kitchen window sill was 30 degrees C. It’s a dry type of heat so is not intolerable but it certainly drains the energy.

The cicadas are out in force in the trees on the way to work. Some trees are so loud that it would be difficult to have a conversation under them. There was one in the kitchen yesterday so I thought it would make a nice photo but although is was playing possum it was not around when I returned with the camera. I came home at lunchtime and there it was (well, I think it was the same one but they DO tend to look alike) but after nearly drowning in a bag of salt it made off through the open window. Well, at least I had the camera and the cicada in the same place so it was progress of a sort.

September was also notable for the fires. Every September the country burns but somehow this one was the worst that I can recall. At one stage Harare disappeared into the haze and it is only 4km away. I am often asked if the fires are set deliberately and I guess that they are. I think most are the result of burning lands to be cleared for crops and the fires are allowed to run out of control. Stewart rather cynically called them “Poor Man’s Fireworks” and I suppose there is an element of truth in that too.

The sweet potato project for the NGO is off to an inauspicious start. The Tobacco Research Board could only manage to micropropagate (i.e. use the few virus free cells at the growing tip of the plant to bulk up the plants we would use for cuttings) about a third of what we’d contracted them to do. Jeremy, a local ex-farmer who works with the NGO has managed to source some others but I am not convinced that they will be virus free as my contract with the NGO requires. They should be arriving tomorrow and we’ll have to get stuck in to plant them as quickly as possible. This heat of course makes it all that much more tricky and because we have a very limited water supply we have had to go for an Israeli made drip system. It is very satisfying to watch all the little drips going exactly where they are supposed to with close to 95% efficiency. Even Tony, my landlord was impressed and he is very much a traditional farmer who likes to see the more conventional sprinklers spraying water everwhere with as little as 65% efficiency.

In my most recent Scientific American a soil science professor at Washington State University (north western USA) was asked to predict the future of agriculture (other experts were asked on other topics too). He very confidently stated that organic farming was the future together with zero till farming and high efficiency irrigation. I have to agree on the irrigation though beg to differ on the zero till and organic farming. Curiously he stated that farmers would have to adopt such practices as crop rotation which have, or rather were, practiced in this part of the world for at least the 30 years I have been involved in agriculture. Some years ago now a booklet was produced by the Commercial Farmers’ Union in Zimbabwe on the practice of conservation tillage i.e. using the minimum amount of tillage necessary to achieve the result required which could mean zero till or just using a chisel plough where required. Unfortunately some crops such as potatoes have to be quite heavily cultivated. I certainly think certain elements of “organic” farming should be incorporated into what I’d call simply “good farming practices” such as mulching, composting and rather not letting fires set to clean land run wild – rather don’t set fires at all! Some very simple good farming practices would go a very long way towards feeding the world’s expanding population. It’s simply a question of education. We have slipped a long way in the last 10 years or so.

I also got two October issues of National Geographic at the end of last month. One was for 2010 and the other for 2009. I have occasionally read about post taking a long time to get to places but this is the first time it’s happened to me.