Zimbabwe Absurdity

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!

It was not before time, I thought. Austin was looking for finance to upgrade the equipment in the gym. I couldn’t recall any new equipment being added to the circuit training selection in the 12 or so years that I’d been going to the gym and it was looking a bit dated.

Finding finance for business in Zimbabwe these days is a tricky affair. The banks are looking for extortionate rates and silly conditions for collateral. It seems the route to go is private lending. My cousin “Jumbo” was listening in on the conversation. He is a wheeler-dealer extraordinaire and knows anybody who is anyone about town. He seemed to think that one of his contacts could be tapped for a repayment rate of 1% per month which is not at all cheap when compounded but Austin had done the maths and it seemed acceptable to him. It all sounded rather dodgy to me but the gym DOES need new equipment.

I was up early this morning, drinking coffee and enjoying the view from my verandah as the sun rose. On a clear day I have the best view in Harare – 70km to the Great Dyke in the north west where we fly paragliders on the weekend. This morning was such a morning and there was valley mist over the Mazoe Dam. The morning is the best time of day in Africa; it’s cool and fresh and the birds are about. My neighbour, Charles, has a view of vegetables and mielies (maize). He is one of the black managers on the farm where I rent my house and cannot understand why I don’t want to see mielies for a view. He is not an oddity – it is common to go past a very smart house in the suburbs and see a garden with a large patch of mielies growing. Goodness knows, the owner certainly can afford to buy the mielie meal if he wants to at a fraction of the price it costs to grow the crop – that’s why there are commercial farms that grow it (not too many left in Zimbabwe though).

The previous tenant next door was a white guy who also enjoyed the view so when Charles moved in he moved in a tractor and had his garden converted to production. I was wondering why the whites tend to enjoy the view and the blacks prefer to gaze at crops?

As European descendents us whites tend to feel secure with a view. In days gone by we could watch for the invading hordes which in the country now called England would have included Celts of various descriptions, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Scots, Norse, Italians (Romans), French, Dutch, the odd armarda and the German airforce. And that’s just England. Invasion has been part of European history for a very long time. In Zimbabwe this has not been the case. Mzilikazi used to send impis (raiding parties) to raid the Shona for cattle and women but they were small parties and a view would not have been a lot of use, and besides, there is little water to be found on hilltops in Zimbabwe. Far more important would have been food security. Before Zimbabwe became a country (Southern Rhodesia) it was colonised by the whites but this was an “invasion” of the subtle kind and a once off affair. The grand irony here is that the Europeans introduced maize to this country and it is poorly adapted to the endemic droughts.

Droughts are not all bad news for farming in Zimbabwe. Tobacco, for example, yields very well when stressed a bit. In fact tobacco farmers have a lot of problems when the rains are good; the crop grows too quickly and the leaf is difficult to cure. So this season some very qood quality and excellent yields are expected from those few farmers left who have the skills. Of course where there is feast the scavengers gather too. On Christmas Day a white farmer in the Rusape area (east of Harare) was kicked off his farm just as he was about to start reaping his first planting of tobacco. He won’t be the last. I suspect some will probably do ALL the work and then lose the cured crop. Especially as prices were excellent last season and expected to be even higher this year!