Zimbabwe Absurdity

Wages are paid in Zimbabwe according to a structured system. The National Employment Council (NEC) for each particular industry works as an arbiter between the unions and employers and eventually a minimum wage structure is agreed. In February, which was the start of the official dollarization (we’d been paying in US dollars since October last year), the NEC for Agriculture came up with the current wage structure and set it as being valid for three months, purely to cover themselves in the case of, well, pretty much anything. My labour forces have latched on to this as being an indication that wages are going to go up this month, despite the fact that just about everything has got cheaper. I guess this is not too surprising given that over the last 2 years or more wages were going up over 100% a month, I mean, one can be optimistic can’t one? Why shouldn’t’ they be getting more?

Well, I’m back in the land of little (as opposed to plenty) and as usual the difference was evident on crossing the Zimbabwe border – very little traffic. It was very evident in all the roadworks in South Africa that they are gearing up for next year’s World Cup and of course there was a price to pay in all the delays. However it was a good trip and I was having mixed feelings on getting home to all the usual stresses though Jenni made it very clear that she had missed me! I went into work this morning and was pleased to find that there had been no obvious foul-ups in my absence; it’s the classic mistake of running one’s own company to think that no-one else can do it and therefore one should never go away. Chances are that nothing will go wrong!

At 14h30 today I was ripped off outside the Borrowdale post office. They must have been watching. I’d shut the door of the car and activated the alarm but not locked. I was going all of 10m to the post box and would be out of sight of the car for less than a minute. I’d just unlocked the box when the car alarm went off. There was nothing in the box so I shut it quickly and stepped back so that I could see the car. A black Toyota sedan was pulling away from my pickup so I took a look at the registration – it was an old style one starting 27 but that was all I could see. I knew straight away what had happened and sure enough my gym bag was missing off the seat with my wallet inside. Livid I went off to the police station and just managed to cope with the police woman’s ineptitude. Half an hour later I got a call on my cell phone from someone that I know; my bag and all my cards had been left at her gate in another suburb! Strangely it had been placed very carefully at her gate and only the wallet and money were missing, they’d not even taken my Swiss Army knife (fortunately I’d taken the cell phone out). In these cases the unwanted stuff is usually dumped in a bush or a rubbish bin. Very odd.

The knives are out for the white farmers who took their land issues to the SADCC court in Windhoek, Namibia. Last year 77 of them presented their case there and won. The judgement being that the land invasions and evictions were racially motivated and illegal and they should get their land back and be allowed to get on with farming. This morning one of my customers phoned to say that he would not be collecting his order as he’d been kicked off his land yesterday with 6 hours to get everything together. The chief hood admitted that the SADCC ruling was behind the move even though the farmer in question was not represented at the case. And besides there was a sacred grave in the hills on the farm and they wanted to make it a national monument. Crap. The small farm is in an urban area and he was just grabbing to get the crops and probably some future development.