1. Business
2. Other woes
3. Some positives
4. Tribute to Michael Jackson
Business(or rather the lack of it) is terrible. There are plenty of inefficiencies largely because business, as we knew it, remains in intensive care. “Big” businesses are not big anymore. Meaningful volumes of business are still hard to come by in virtually all sectors. Power cuts in my neighborhood are lasting anything up to twelve hours, which is a considerable improvement on normal. I have not had running water in my house since March 2009. Apart from that I am having a great time.
In mid-July 2009 I drove past my bank and suddenly realized that I had not been in there for several months. That is how informal the Zimbabwe economy has become. We are now a de facto cash only society. That means the only significant financial instrument available to run the economy is M1. If you think the credit crunch is unbearable, spare a thought for us in Zimbabwe. There is no credit at all here. In practice that means business transaction magnitudes cannot exceed small beer. Unless things change, youngsters starting out today have no hope of ever buying houses for example. It is a tragedy at a personal level and even worse at corporate levels. Whenever money comes my way, I keep it in the proverbial mattress. Like many others I am still wary after my experience with the banks last year. Severe restrictions on bank withdrawals left us depositors queuing and begging for money that was ours in the first place.
There is still no guarantee that similar peremptory measures could not be invoked again anytime. The Zimbabwean financial services sector desperately needs restoration of customer confidence.Most countries that have made it have done so on the back of domestic savings on deposit with formal financial institutions. Foreign investment might help but it is domestic investment that seeds conditions conducive to foreign capital inflows. I remember an article in The Economist that summarized it well. A foreign investor was asking why he was expected to invest in Africa when the Africans themselves were reluctant to invest in Africa. Even African thieves stash away their booty in Swiss banks, not African banks!
Without formally pooled savings, it is not only the financial institutions that are threatened. Industrial and commercial concerns are struggling for working capital finance. Many are now moribund and not likely to make it. This is in turn threatening their suppliers and their suppliers’ suppliers and so on. In a nutshell, Zimbabwean industry remains snarled up and unemployment is not abating. The total market capitalization of all the companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange put together was US$4billion last week. In contrast the market capitalization of Google (a dot com company listed on the New York Stock Exchange) alone was US$143billion. So Eric Schmidt’s petty cash float could probably run the whole Zimbabwean economy! Incidentally Google is only ten years old while Zimbabwean industry is 110years old. However, therein lies some hope for us. With a bit of innovation and discipline, just a handful of success stories could save the day.
Having said that, the road to national recovery is bound to be long and hard. It is with a touch of deja vu that I watch events unfolding in Zimbabwe. It all puts me in mind of the time I started my own business. I was starting from scratch with unrealistic optimism. Someone had told me that it takes three years on average for a green-field business start-up to attain positive cash flows. I was convinced mine would do it in six months. In the end it did take three years.
So it is with the Zimbabwean economy. It died last year and we are starting off from ground zero if not lower. Someone told me that it takes longer to rebuild than it took to destroy in the first place. Not to accept and understand this is to set ourselves up for disillusionment and frustration. This might seem rather pessimistic an outlook to take, but I believe that only when we have faced reality can we stand any chance of transcending it. Unfortunately the hollow political rhetoric, now emanating from both sides of the political divide, continues to espouse the idea of re-branding Zimbabwe for a panacea. To me it sounds as futile as trying to re-brand a slum before re-developing it. It is not likely to fool anyone.
When my brother and his contemporaries were studying in Nigeria in the seventies, they would bring back horror stories of life in West Africa. Looking back, the stories were generally symptoms of a demoralized chaotic society. Apparently West Africans of both sexes would not hesitate to relieve themselves along city streets in broad daylight without shame! We laughed long and hard when the stories were related. Now the same problem has arrived in Harare. Once again it is a symptom of ebbing morale. It is hardly surprising considering there is more than ninety percent unemployment and little prospect of jobs in the near future. Last year politicians blithely gave the people to believe that everything would be instantly honky dory once a political power sharing agreement was signed. So people prepared for a 100-metre sprint only to discover there was a marathon ahead of them. Some analysts believe the MDC went into the whole deal without knowing the score. So they are now in real danger of being tainted with the incompetence and failure of others (kusara nechitsveru).
Maybe the reason why people are relieving themselves on the streets is that there is no water in the water closets. There is plenty of water on the streets from burst water mains.
While there are perennial burst water mains all over I have not had running water in my house since March 2009. If nothing is done about it before the rainy season kicks in in a few months’ time, cholera may flare up again. Meanwhile the municipal authorities have had the audacity to send me water bills. I will strangle someone one of these days!I recently witnessed busloads of people relieving themselves by the roadside. On 18 August 2009 the Zimbabwe Government introduced toll gates on most intercity roads. It was chaotic to put it mildly. I had to queue for 26 minutes at a toll gate in Harare South.
Inevitably multitudes in the snarled up traffic were taken short. They had only scant bushes by the roadside for cover. I watched so many disappear behind the same bushes that there must have been significant compromises there. You should see the state of the roads they are charging tolls for! It is like collecting rentals on shacks in a slum. They really should pay us to drive on such roads.
Last month I drove past the spot where Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife died in a car crash in March 2009. That stretch of road was still in really bad shape more than four months later. It was a death-trap with or without foul play.
In spite of our dire circumstances, the march of civilization continues. My rural home area recently got a cell phone base station. I know it is not profound under normal circumstances but considering how inaccessible that place was, it is a giant leap indeed. Previously it could take all day to get a message across to Harare. The base station is at Mahusekwa Growth Point (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 18minutes 23.88seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 11minutes 52.00seconds EAST) that is about 9km as the crow flies from my rural home (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 22minutes 51.87seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 14minutes 42.63seconds EAST). That is where I grew up. You can see how far I used to walk to Chakadini Primary School (Google Earth Coordinates: 18degrees 21minutes 34.85seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 13minutes 57.82seconds EAST) and how far I went after that to Fletcher High School (Google Earth Coordinates: 19degrees 30minutes 52.39seconds SOUTH; 29degrees 50minutes 56.66seconds EAST). My sixth form college in London (Google Earth Coordinates: 51degrees 25minutes 42.37seconds NORTH; 0degrees 06minutes 13.70seconds WEST). has since been closed and converted into a warehouse. In contrast, the University of Surrey (Google Earth Coordinates: 51degrees 14minutes 36.03seconds NORTH; 0degrees 35minutes 21.59seconds WEST) continues to grow from strength to strength. So is the University of South Africa (Google Earth Coordinates: 25degrees 46minutes 02.51seconds SOUTH; 28degrees 11minutes 56.50seconds EAST). That ends the educational history digression. The irony of it is that after all that effort I am not doing much with the education at the moment. You can see my garden in Harare (Google Earth Coordinates: 17degrees 49minutes 48.72seconds SOUTH; 31degrees 04minutes 23.32seconds EAST) where I kill time sunbathing. Now that spring is in the air, it is getting too hot to sunbathe. So I don’t know what I am going to do with my time; maybe look for a wife.
Prior to this installation, there are a few milestones in my life relating to cellular telephony. My first experience of it was in the autumn of 1991. I was attending a reception for University of Surrey alumni held by His Royal Highness, The Duke of Kent, who is the Chancellor of the University, at St James’ Palace in London. During the proceedings, I remembered I had to phone Sheila, a classmate who could not make the reception. So I sneaked out to find a public phone booth. I asked a passer-by where I could find a public phone. He did not know but was happy to let me use his cell phone instead. As far as I can remember, it was my first un-tethered phone call ever.The handsets were substantial in those days, but nevertheless thoroughly impressive to a bemused first time user!
It was eight years before I eventually got my own cell phone. Relative to local men about town, I was a late starter. I am told those who got in early reaped social dividends. Vaitogona kunyenga nadzo! By the time I came along the gadgets were already commonplace and so did not improve my chances of marriage. Now even the herd boys around the rural areas wield cell phones.
Back in the year 2001, Zimbabwean companies were still creditworthy. So we could roam on Zimbabwean SIM cards. A sublime roaming experience came to me while I was at Masada in Israel. Perched up there on that hilltop I was busy surveying the parched landscape when my phone rang. It was Barclays Bank in Harare! The signal was not even coming via an Israeli network. It was coming through a Jordanian network from across the Dead Sea. That was especially significant. On an Emirates flight I had noticed that they listed telephone dialing codes for virtually all countries except Israel. I was told that was because Arab countries generally refuse to recognize the existence of Israel. Now here was the power of technology dramatically breaching a conflict curtain! We are bound to see more of the same as globalization comes into its own.
For now the struggle just to stand still continues. Yes there is still hope for Zimbabwe, believe it or not. The threat of a failed state that loomed large last year has subsided. We no longer have to travel all the way to South Africa just to buy soap. Civil servants are back at work (but the hospital doctors have gone back on a pay strike). The multitudes of spivs that roamed the streets of Harare last year have all but disappeared. Street sweepers are back at work and Harare’s Central Business District does look a lot cleaner.
One foreign investor who once came to Zimbabwe scouting for investment opportunities was Michael Jackson. In the end he decided not to invest, even though Zimbabwe was still in much better shape then. I nevertheless remain his fan. Michael Jackson’s music forms part of the bedrock of my cultural heritage. We are generally most receptive to the influence of music in early adolescence. Michael Jackson ruled the pop charts during the time I entered that critical stage. When I listen to the drivel they call pop music today it makes me glad to have grown up in that era. The New York Times gave the opinion that MJ was a "musical phenomenon", and that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else."
Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released shortly after I arrived at the University of Surrey. Thriller is the best selling music album of all time. So Students’ Union discos played tracks from Thriller a lot, which thrilled us. It still evokes great memories. One track called Beat It, in particular, reminds me of a classmate Alwyn Pereira.
Alwyn could dance so well to it, and indeed to many other tracks. I still can’t disengage the tune of Beat It from Alwyn’s poetry in motion. I remember Pete Gaskin
saying, “It is well worth coming to the Lower Bar even if only to watch Alwyn dance!” My admiration of Alwyn took a bit of a knocking when I discovered, to my horror, that he had an eye on a girl I was after. Fortunately she did not appear to notice his dancing prowess too much. However, in the end neither of us got her! I think she was too busy concentrating her energies on her studies. Ian (aka Scobies) reckoned she was just frigid though. My respect for Alwyn was restored and we remain friends to this day.
