Zimbabwe Absurdity

My favourte brand of local coffee, La Lucie, is under threat. I think it is a good coffee by any standards and yes, I have tasted the créme de la créme from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. The Faydherbe family (I was at school with one of the brothers) who produce it in the Chipinge area have been told that they can reap the current crop and then they will be off. There will be yet another local product missing off the supermarket shelves. I guess I should start stocking up.

It doesn’t get much lower than a photo in a newspaper of a suicide victim, saliva still drooling out of her mouth after she just hanged herself. I saw the title on the H-Metro (Harare Metro) paper “Suicide Shock” as I drove around to the industrial sites this morning after my French lesson. It seems that the publishers are plumbing the depths of sensationalism and finding it to be without a limit. H-Metro is a relatively new paper, this year I think, and I guess the publishers have discovered that trash sells. I did notice that some of the newspaper vendors were hiding the H-Metro behind other papers. Maybe they were embarassed?

I was around at Caro’s place yesterday afternoon for an extended and rather alcoholic lunch. The conversation drifted to the recent gig by American hip-hop star Akon. I’d never heard of him but a lot of other people had and were willing to fork out around $100 a ticket to see him perform. On the night of the performance some youngsters Caro knew had gone along. It was chaotic. The act only started at 1:00 a.m. by which time a lot of people were drunk. The stadim was then invaded by bands of prostitutes and thieves and they were not shy about plying their trade –
that’s the prostitutes AND the thieves! One prostitute allowed a client to use her in full public view at which stage the youngsters thought it wise to leave.

Shelton is my “professeur de Francais” and today he was recounting to me, in French, how last week he and some friends from his church had visited a rural school in the Hurungwe district near Karoi in the north west of the country. There are some 500 elementary pupils and 167 senior pupils. The fees for the term (about 12 weeks) for the juniors is $3 each and for the seniors $10. A large percentage cannot even afford that. The government is supposed to help out with the teachers’ salaries but given that the school is one hour off the main road not a lot of money gets to them (there are other reasons too). No wonder the rural education is such a mess and teachers so scarce. Private schools, mostly in the towns, are considerably better off and hopelessly difficult to get one’s children into. One I know of demands a $10,000 non-returnable deposit for each new child.

The Hurungwe school was very grateful for the gifts of exercise books, pencils, chalk etc. that Shelton and his friends took along.

I used to take Jenni with me to work when I knew I was not going into town – I was paranoid about the appalling standard of driving and getting her involved in an accident (I was once asked to pick up a friend’s children from school – it was the most tense driving I’ve done in a long time). Customers like her, she was very friendly and likeable. A black customer once asked me what type of dog she was. A Rhodesian Ridgeback I replied. Not Zimbabwean? No, Rhodesian – that is how the breed was described in 1928 and that is how it stays. He made some facetious remark.

In this country we whites seem to be pussy-footing around our history. I forget who said “You can re-write history all you like but you cannot change it” but I find myself increasingly less sensitive and using the R word where it is justified – in my opinion at least. At one time I used to put on my South African visa application that I was born in Southern Rhodesia, educated in Rhodesia and lived in Zimbabwe! The South Africans I’ve come across seem far less timid and very proudly call their dogs Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

This is typical of a Nigerian scam – there used to be lots going around but this is the first I’ve seen in some time. Almost funny.

Sir,

”PLEASE THIS LETTER MUST REMAIN SECRET”

I am Suriya Jungrungreangkit, former Thailand transport minister during Thaksin Shinawatra regime which was ousted by a military coup on Sept 19 2006,and Martial law was imposed by the Council for Democratic Reform, now called the Council for National Security. After the Sept 19 coup, i would have called you on phone , but because the new government is taping the past government officials phone numbers, so it is no longer safe for me to call you, that is why i think it is safe to send you this mail. we are placed under surveillance.

However my main point of contacting you is to seek your sincere suggestion and guideline to invest in your country. And please because of my previous position in the government, I do not need to tell you of the absolute confidentiality which we both must have to observe, if we are to go into investment, or rather if you are to help me in investing in your country.

I desired to contact you now that I am very sure that all eyes are not on us as it was when the problem first began though we are still going to court but the environment is good now. I’m seeking your assistance to invest the sum of US$14,000,000.00 [US$14.Million] but I do not want my picture to appear in any investment because of some certain issues which I will explain more to you.

> From the news publications attached here in respect of the government probes into much of the projects my ministry execution will make you to understand my position with the government now.

I thank you very much for taking time to go through my mail, and hope to read from you soon. I appreciate your anticipated co-operation and my regards to your family.

Please, contact me with my Private e-mail: suriyasuriya@live.com

Sincerely,
Suriya.
E-mail: suriyasuriya@live.com

I usually deal with Ant on seedling business but as his wife Helen said, he doesn’t cope well with running around Harare so prefers to stay on the farm so she had come into my office late this afternoon to finalize an order. I asked Helen, a cheerful woman a few years older than me, how it was all going. “Hello how are you” is a standard Zimbabwean greeting which rarely gets a reply much different from “fine thanks, how are you” but I decided for some reason to delve a little deeper.

They have already lost half of their farm in the middle of the country and as Helen revealed, they are only still on the remainder because the Minsitry of Agriculture is concerned that she should carry on with her side of the business – raising day old chicks. There is a Fat Cat after it but he has done nothing with the other farms he has acquired and surprisingly (to me at least) the Ministry is refusing to give him an Offer Letter (of the type one has difficulty in refusing) that would give him the remainder of Helen and Ant’s property. The Fat Cat is not the type of person to take this sitting down so has taken the issue to the Highest Authority with results yet to be seen.

“But really, we are fine. And quite happy” concluded Helen.

Fried is temporarily heading up one of the bigger corporations in town whilst they look for a new chief executive (the last one was “let go” for committing financial irregularities). By his own admission he is past retiring age but he also admits he is quite enjoying the challenge. One of the bigger challenges is recapitalizing. Like a lot of Zimbabwean companies, the one he heads has invested little in new equipment over the last 10 years and now have the task of finding the money, in a very short money market, to do so.

I was reflecting on this 2 days ago as I drove across town to the Tobacco Research Board near the airport and went through yet another set of traffic lights not working. ZESA, the electricity utility that intermittently supplies the nation, has probably not done any meaningful recaptialization in the last 20 years and now it really is showing in the power cuts. They are probably not even generating (pun) enough turnover to keep the company going on a day-to-day basis. Of course the endless shutdowns do nothing to help the moribund economy and like the economy, ZESA is going to need a massive cash injection to get it back up to potential (another pun for the electronic geeks).

I was going to the TRB to look at the potential of growing tobacco seedlings on spec, something we have not done for some time now but business is poor and interest in tobacco high with the high prices, more than $4/kg, so it may be worth the gamble. Parked in the way of the steps into the TRB was the director’s new Toyota Landcruiser, a shiny example of misplaced recaptialization. I wondered what the staff who probably cannot afford their own fuel even if they own a vehicle thought of it. Oh, I should mention that the director of the TRB is approved by none other than Robert Himself.

I wrote on this topic some time ago in the Zimbabwe dollar days but now the government is broke again in US dollar terms.

Shelton is my professeur de Francais who I am paying to brush up my conversational French in preparation for a June visit to Europe with Sybille. He taught me French in the local Alliance Francaise a few years ago and I bumped into him again on the flight to South Africa in March. Each hour’s lesson costs me all of $10 and we got on really well.

I asked him yesterday if he was getting paid by Air Zimbabwe. He said “occasionally”. It seems that he relies on infrequent work at the Alliance and teaching the likes of me to survive. No wonder he is looking elsewhere.

Chatting to the various Saturday lunchtime drinkers and “thinkers” at the Gallery Delta just now I heard that the IMF has predicted 0% growth in Zimbabwe next year which is quite an achievement given the hole we are in. It all makes me a bit nervous about the money I’ve got in the bank – the government has raided the foreign currency accounts in the past – but there is only so much I can put “under the mattress”.

I had to chuckle. There below the list of things not allowed into the MRI room in the Milpark Hospital was written: “Firearms”. I guess this IS Joburg!