Newsletter 2009

Contents:
1. There is life in the old dog yet.
2. A doctor in the house.
3. Baby Gwata arrived.
4. Participated in building a house of God.
5. Helped save forests
6. Participated in cholera prevention.
7. Discovered long lost relatives

In a moment of weakness a few years ago I enrolled for a degree in Mathematics with the University of South Africa. If I had known how much time and effort it demands I probably would never have started. This year I passed the Real Analysis module, easily one of the most difficult exams I have ever sat all my life. Real analysis is the mathematical study of infinite phenomena using the calculus. I was really pleased with my results. One of the tools we used extensively is called D’Alembert’s ratio test. It is used to test for convergence of infinite series. D’Alembert’s story is remarkable. Jean-le-Rond d’Alembert was abandoned as a newly-born infant. He was subsequently raised by surrogate parents and went on to become one of the leading French mathematicians of the eighteenth century. Looking at the street children of Harare,

I can’t help wondering how many potential D’Alemberts are going to waste.

It has been a good year for my family. My niece Nyasha Gwata passed her medical school finals this year. This represents a landmark for the family. She is the first doctor in the family. Prior to that the highest scholastic attainments in the family were masters degrees. It is not clear yet whether Nyasha will decide to come back to practise in Zimbabwe. Life in Zimbabwe is now infinitely better than last year but we are not out of the wood yet by a long way.

By far the biggest economic reform of the year was the official switch from Zimbabwe dollars to using US dollars. It is working like a dream. Apart from slaying hyperinflation, it provided incentive for formal business to come out of hibernation. Retailers and petrol stations in particular have restocked. It is such a pleasure to be able to drive up to the forecourt and fill up whenever you like. I know it is not profound but after last year’s ordeal,

we appreciate it more than most. It has all eased the pressure to emigrate. Previously one of the attractions of emigration was the opportunity to earn real money as opposed to Monopoly money(Zimbabwe dollars).

Currency reform is probably the biggest achievement of the new government of national unity (GNU). Significant achievements beyond that are unlikely because the government remains technically broke. So far there is nothing significant in the pipeline likely to change that. The GNU is drawn from only the biggest three political parties. Other political parties were not invited to the party. So my political career remains in the doldrums for now. However every dog has his day.

While life is much better for individual consumers, the same cannot be said of Zimbabwean businesses, particularly the big ones. Therein lies the rub. The new-found welfare of the consumer cannot be sustained without productivity at a national level. More than ninety percent of what we are consuming is coming from South Africa. Even the milk in my fridge right now has come from Stellenbosch, South Africa. Paradoxically, milk coming from 2000km away is landed at my local Spar cheaper than the locally produced equivalent coming from 4km away!

Many Zimbabwean corporations were born and/or bred in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia under sanctions (there were real sanctions then). The prime concern was to circumvent sanctions, not necessarily efficiently. After independence, the inefficiency of some companies and parastatals alike was compounded by the Marxist experiments of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Government subsidies were wheeled in to keep consumer prices down and prop up non-viable corporations. In the nineties I was in the milling industry and we used to receive such government subsidies. All in all Zimbabwean companies have been sheltered throughout most of their history.

Now the climate has changed in more ways than one. In practice, the Zimbabwean economy(or rather what remains of it) is now more liberalized than the South African economy. The floodgates have been swung open almost instantaneously. As expected, Zimbabwean companies are not coping with the global competition and many of them will not survive the shake-out. The last time I looked, of the listed companies that had published their annual results then, only two had made a profit. The dying dinosaurs are saddled with overheads they cannot afford to retain or retrench. Needless to say it is a dynamic dilemma, so it is only a question of time before something gives. We are likely to witness spectacular takeovers and mergers if not outright bankruptcies. If the resultant contraction weeds out second rate managers, then it won’t be such a bad thing after all. What this means is that there are bound to be immense business opportunities for the emerging small and agile companies. Unfortunately the opportunities remain elusive to me so far. I will probably only recognize them after others have taken them, in much the same way as I often recognize strengths in ladies after someone else has already married them. That reminds me of the joke of the year: Marriage is like going to an a la carte restaurant with friends. You order what you want but when you see what the next guy has got, you wish you had ordered that!

For now the Gwatamatic continues to support me but only just. The potential customers are so impoverished that “potential customer” is now a misnomer. Accordingly I have developed a truncated version of the Gwatamatic that gives 80% of the functionality for half the price of a full rig. It is called the Baby Gwata.

It is an idea that I conceived sometime back but the first one was only delivered last month

Since last year I have graduated from worrying about my next meal to worrying about my next investment. I also worry whenever I have to fix anything. While food prices have come down considerably, it remains inordinately expensive to fix things in Zimbabwe, whether it is fixing the car, the house or haemorrhoids. Even an ordinary car service remains quite pricey. Whenever I get my car serviced in South Africa it hardly ever exceeds US$100. A similar service in Zimbabwe costs anything up to US$500. There is no small irony in the fact that many of the motor mechs in South Africa are Zimbabweans.

With business slow, I found myself with more time on my hands than usual. So I took up a bit of voluntary work. On one of the projects I started off as a minor donor. Somewhere along the way I let my guard down and found myself the de facto project manager.

It was a project to put up a new church building for the Methodist Church near my rural home 80km south of Harare.

It took a year to build and was officially opened on 22 December 2009.

In hindsight, I am glad I participated. The project is bound to have more eternal value than any sadza machine I could build.

While the project’s primary purpose was to facilitate spiritual food, it also had to address culinary needs. The ladies requested a heavy duty wood fired cooking facility. So I set out to design something more fuel efficient than traditional methods. The result is the Dandamatic.

The grating at the bottom improves ventilation and hence facilitates complete combustion. In practice this means more heat and less smoke. The concentric rings serve a dual purpose. They focus the heat as well as provide variable diameter “hobs” for different sizes of saucepans up to a maximum diameter of 60cm. The Dandamatic had a successful maiden run on 22 December 2009 and fed the thousand-strong crowd that attended the official opening ceremony.

The other voluntary project I undertook was coordinating development of an alternative water supply for my old school, Fletcher High School.

In common with the rest of Zimbabwe, municipal infrastructure in Gweru is falling to pieces and they failed to supply water. The headmaster of Fletcher High School found himself with 700pupils and no running water. As former students we passed the hat round and managed to purchase a heavy duty borehole pump for the school. The borehole is up and running now

but nobody knows how large or small the underground water reserves are.

It appears unreliable municipal water supply is the bane of Africa. I was in Tanzania a couple of weeks ago and saw the tell-tale water tanks atop many buildings. In Zanzibar the electricity was also a problem. They did not have mains electricity supplies for weeks. Fortunately they had a generator at the hotel.
However it broke down on my last night there. We get a lot of power cuts in Harare too. So I should have felt at home in Zanzibar but I didn’t, maybe because I was paying.

My experience of Zanzibar was chequered. For a start I arrived without my luggage. I had a cruel attack of deja vu as I stood at the airport carousel hoping against hope that there was more luggage coming. Fellow passengers had already collected their luggage and gone. It was when the attendant switched off the carousel that I realized I could not deny the truth any longer. I had a similar experience in Cyprus eight years ago, when I had to live out of a Woolworths carrier bag for four days.

Unfortunately there is no Woolworth in Zanzibar. I scoured Stone Town (the old city of Zanzibar) looking for a toothbrush and other emergency supplies. It took a major effort just to find a toothbrush. There are no supermarkets there, just a handful of corner shops that are not well marked. The silver lining was that it forced me to explore extensive portions of Stone Town. Otherwise I would never have trudged along in such sweltering heat for so long. I wondered whether any of the modest shops would stock a micro-screen shaver. The moral of the story is that in future, personal care items will be carried in my hand luggage.

My business sessions were due to begin within 48hours and I would need formal clothes. So my anxiety intensified with every passing hour. Fortunately, late the following day I was re-united with my suitcase in a short but moving ceremony at Zanzibar Airport.

Talking to others afterwards, I discovered that Kenya Airways have a bad luggage handling record. That may well be but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi has become the hub of African connections. Sadly investment in the Airport has not kept pace with the growth in traffic. So the airport facilities appear stretched. The airport terminal building is perennially overcrowded. There are not enough piers for the aircraft and no buses to ferry people to and from the terminal building in cases where planes are parked elsewhere. We had to walk across the apron mingling with roaring jets and dodging tugs. The incidence of delayed flights

could be yet another symptom of stretched infrastructure. Our flight from Nairobi to Harare was delayed by two hours. I knew we were in trouble when five minutes before the scheduled departure time we were still in the departure lounge and I could see a cleaner dashing up the aircraft stairs carrying a vacuum cleaner. Even the departure lounge was overcrowded, with bodies sprawled all over the floor.

Once on board, the actual flights were not too bad though. At least nobody had to sit on the floor. The crew on board tried really hard. Incidentally, in common with other airlines, Kenya Airways also have their share of the following inevitable species:
1. The poseur – a guy who palpably ignores the on-board safety demo to prove to fellow passengers that he is a frequent flyer.
2. The colonizer – a guy who takes over two armrests. He even has his elbows straying into neighbours’ airspace, especially when he eats.
3. The cargo carrier – a lady who has a million pieces of hand luggage. She proceeds to squash or throw fellow passengers’ luggage out of the luggage bins to make space for her own.

I had glorious views of the sea from my room at the Tembo Hotel. Like the rest of Zanzibar, the hotel also features highly ornamental doors.

Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar. (In spite of his weaknesses, he was one of my boyhood heroes). However he seems to get limited recognition

in his hometown compared to say Montreaux.
Maybe it is because in Zanzibar they are battling to meet basic needs. They do not have the luxury of appreciating the arts. As I explored Stone Town, I saw lots and lots of young men just sitting idle along the streets.
It appears there is serious unemployment there.

Overall, I found Zanzibar dilapidated,
a bit reminiscent of Mombasa. The surprising thing is that in spite of its state, the island still enjoys significant tourist arrivals. For me it was like a breath of fresh air when I left Zanzibar and checked into the Holiday Inn in Dar es Salaam. It really is a good hotel, much better than the Holiday Inn in Harare.

Before I traveled, someone warned me that Dar es Salaam is essentially one big Mbare sprawled by the sea (Mbare is a seedy township in Harare). As it turned out I was pleasantly surprised because Dar does have some good bits. I was however left with the general impression that, for some reason, the British colonial authorities put a lot more planning effort into Southern Africa relative to East Africa. Harare’s layout is superior to all African cities I have been to north of the Zambezi River.

In spite of cultural differences, I think the Tanzanians are our close relatives judging by our common linguistic root. I found Swahili strikingly similar to Shona. Sadly there is no reliable record of our migration history.

Taking it all in all, it has been a good year for me in spite of and also because of the circumstances.
That’s it for now folks.
I trust you had a good Christmas.
Wish you a good New Year.