A New Record - 24 March 2007

A NEW RECORD

While I was traveling abroad a few weeks ago my beloved country Zimbabwe was in the news for all the wrong reasons yet again.

So when I came back to Harare the other day I felt a vague emotion that I had never felt before. It was a murky blend of apprehension and curiosity against a backdrop of ambivalence. At Harare Airport a multitude of dubious looking characters lining the pier from the aircraft to the immigration hall did not help the tension. Fortunately, the tear gas dust had all but settled. The only incident reported in the media since I got back is a petrol bomb attack on a police station in Mutare.

Physical confrontations appear sporadic but there is a more immediate problem confronting everybody everyday. It is inflation. Prices of some commodities that I buy are going up by as much as 30% a day. Curiously toilet paper is one of the worst offenders. I told a friend Matt that I had stopped buying luxury toilet paper, at which he retorted, “You are lucky, I stopped buying The Herald ages ago!” (The Herald is a newspaper).

Then Sandy gave me a very practical definition of hyperinflation, “Hyperinflation is when you could afford the item when you joined the queue, but by the time you got to the front of the queue, you could no longer.”

True to Zimbabwean nature, there is now a well established survival support network to help navigate the ever harsher economic environment. Here are a few extracts from the annals of the network:
When you go to a restaurant in Harare, it pays to pay before you eat.
When in Zimbabwe, use both sides of each piece of toilet paper. This should stretch not only the imagination but also the budget.

The bar continues to rise everyday. Melancholy is written all over people’s faces as they pace up and down supermarket aisles agonizing over which essential to forgo next. A much more poignant tragedy is unfolding in the form of a crisis of expectations. The country is setting itself up for major disillusionment. We are pinning all our hopes on the retirement of one man. In a sense I can identify with that.

In the early days of my business I admitted a venture capital company. They brought in much needed capital and they were indeed an asset. We initially had a superb relationship. However as time went on they metamorphosed into a liability. In the end I was so determined to buy them out I was prepared to pay any price. Fortunately my brother saw through my emotions and came to my rescue. If it were not for his mentorship, I could have easily paid a disproportionately high price for their shares. My determination to see their back was so intense that it assumed a life of its own. It became an end in itself, to the exclusion of all business strategy and common basics. My brother reminded me that buying out an investor was merely a means to an end and did not absolve me of the responsibility to fashion a sustainable business strategy. He was vindicated! When the venture capital guys were out of the picture, Utopia did not materialize. Their departure helped but economic fundamentals such as productivity that I had neglected in my blinkered determination were still there, now beckoning with a vengeance.

Similarly my countrymen are pinning so much hope on the retirement of one man that they expect it to be an instant panacea for all the country’s ills. This is too limited a view. At best it will lead to disappointment. At worst it could precipitate counter-productive disillusionment. I recently read a book about Zambia’s passage through an analogous journey. It says, “When Kaunda left, the lot of Zambians did not improve much.”

Meanwhile life goes on, so far anyway. Amid all the gloom and doom, I came back to great family news. I have two nieces and a nephew who sat their “O” Level school examinations late last year and their results came out a few weeks ago. They all did exceedingly well. Simba, the nephew, set a new family record. He got eleven grade A’s. In my day we sat only eight subjects and even then I managed only three grade A’s. We knew Simba is bright but did not realize he is that brilliant. However, as they say, no matter how big you get there is always someone somewhere bigger than you. Simba was only the second best student in his school. Apparently the best student pulled off a whopping thirteen grade A’s.

Will.