Why I no longer fear failure. My journey so far as a pig farmer

Why do I write? As they say in Shona, “kugara nhaka huwona dzevamwe”, maybe someone in the diaspora who is also trying to start a business back home can learn from my mistakes, they do not need to reinvent the wheel. Writing is also therapeutic. I am passionate about the development of Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. I believe one reason why we are lacking in development is the shortage of entrepreneurs and risk takers in the country. The more entrepreneurs we are going to have as a country, the faster we will develop. Farming is also a business. A lot of people in the diaspora have access to capital and they are looking for projects to do back home. Zimbabwe has a favourable climate and there is a lot of farming projects that one pursue such as growing maize, tobacco, soya beans, wheat etc. One can also go into livestock farming. Any solid economic recovery in Zimbabwe will be anchored on increased agricultural outputs.

Things were looking up in early 2017

 

The coming weeks I will be selling over 60 pigs to the abattoir. When I went home for the 30 July 2018 vote, I was seriously considering shutting down my piggery project. I actually felt that every time I took one step forward, I would then take two steps back. I also regretted the decision I took to temporarily go back to work in April this year. In April 2018, I thought everything was set up I had over 70 pigs ready for the market and with the projected sales the project would be able to sustain itself without me injecting fresh capital. I decided to go back to work in order to raise finance in order to buy butchery equipment.

The day after I flew home for the 18 November 2017 Demo

The butchers I dealt with so far, do not do their business on a sustainable basis. They were paying us very low prices only in the form of EcoCash even though they were selling mostly for cash at much higher margins (cash is king in Zimbabwe),the money was taking too long to be paid (I once waited for 2 months for a payment from a butcher in Chitungwiza) and some of the butchers don’t even pay (right now another butcher owes me $1 000.00 and there is no hope of getting the money as the records between people who sold the pigs on my behalf and the butcher are in shambles). I know a number of pig farmers who have gone under due the to conduct of butchers. If more farmers go under it means there will be a serious shortage of pork for the butcheries and in the long run they also lose out on business.

From my experience the biggest challenge in running a business in Zimbabwe is not really the unpredictable economic environment but the management side e.g the bond note is currently devaluing and shortly prices will also go up. If you are based outside the country when it comes to the money side of things especially when you throw relatives into the equation you will have a toxic internal environment. On 2 October 2017, I finished serving my four weeks notice at my employer in Pretoria. I had worked for 10 years in the same role. Ever since I came to South Africa in August 2007, I had quickly learnt that as a foreigner your prospects are limited. For example some companies do not even consider qualifications for promotions and those that do recognise qualifications won't consider employing a foreigner. I knew within 3 months of coming to South Africa that I would work at a lower level, keep my head down, work overtime as much as possible raise the money and build a home in Zimbabwe and raise money for projects and then go back home.

That same night I resigned from my job, I boarded a bus to Harare at a cost of R450. That is the other problem of running a project in Zimbabwe when you are based outside, you can only go home on a weekend. The bus journey normally takes up to 24 hours especially coming from South Africa as the bus can spend up to 8 hours at the Zimbabwean side of the border and though cheap it is not possible to use the bus on a weekend. Driving to Harare can cost you about R4 500.00 in fuel, toll fees, border fee expenses and there is also costs such as damaged tyres, mags, suspension etc. due to the terrible roads in Zimbabwe especially the Beitbridge- Harare road. A return air ticket from Johannesburg to Harare will cost you up to $600 and you will still need to make arrangements to get transport to your destination to and from Harare.

After many years of experimenting, what works for me is to drive my car to Beitbridge and leave it on the South African side and cross the border on foot and catch lifts either in buses that would have completed all the border processes or in private lifts (the level of crimes in Zimbabwe are much lower in Zimbabwe than South Africa hence its safer to hitch hike in Zimbabwe). I would arrive in Chivhu early in the morning on Saturday and buy the feed go to the piggery project and late in the afternoon I would get transport back to the border and by Sunday morning I would be back in Pretoria. The whole trip would cost me less than R2 000.00 and the money I saved by not flying, I would invest in my projects back home.

After spending a lot of money over the years on the project, I now had more time to properly manage the project. I was also thinking of growing two hectares of tobacco. The following morning after I arrived in Harare, we visited my piggery project at my In-laws plot in Chivhu. I was in the company of Mereka Maruwira who now looks after our house in Zimre Park. I first met Mereka in early 2002 when I employed him as a shop keeper when I opened my second ever store at the farm in Macheke where his parents had been working before the white farmer lost his farm during the land reform. Ever since, Mereka has worked with me in my many other ventures in Macheke, Mutoko, Harare, Bulawayo and even in Pretoria. We met the worker a relative who is uninterested in the project who just does it for the money. It is never advisable to employ a relative. The worker then told us that feed had run out the previous day and I asked why I had not been told of this and he was not bothered. It is not a pretty sight when you have 100 hungry pigs.

We asked the worker if we could get crushed maize at the nearest grinding mill and he said there was none there and the only feed available was to give him money and he could buy maize locally for $4 per tin. Mereka suggested that we still go to the grinding mill, we were able to buy a 50kg sack for about $9. The next morning we boarded a bus to Mutoko to my cousin’s plot. In mid-2015 after I became a co-owner in the piggery project, I had invested almost $2 000 to buy and transport a grinding mill machine to his place. All I wanted was the maize and the crushed maize for my pigs. Most villagers can’t afford to raise the $1 or 50cents cash required for grinding 1 tin of maize, instead they would pay with a 5 litre empty paint tin filled with maize in order to crush their maize. That maize was supposed to be mine. When I asked my cousin about my maize he told me there was none available. Imagine after nearly 1 year of not collecting maize I could not get even one tin of maize. I had not slept properly for three days in a row and I was really cross by the answer I got from him (another reason why I don't want to do business with relatives) and I took a nap for about two hours. I then walked 6km to the local business centre where I used to run a general dealer shop between 2004 and 2008.

Buying feed in Mutoko

At Corner Store in Mutoko

Using my grinding mill

 

At the first grinding mill, I found makireshi selling for $4.8 per 50kg as well as sunflower cake for $100 per tonne. I paid for 2 tonnes and I went back to Harare and came back in the evening with my brother in law’s two tonne truck and we delivered the feed to Chivhu early the following morning. Three days later, I went back to Mutoko and started moving from grinding mill to another buying as much as I could get. I met a farmer who had been making maputi and he had many sacks of maputi rejects he was on the verge of throwing away. I spent the day at his house busy removing debris from the maputi. I left his plot after 8pm and walked 7km to the business centre and luckily found a bar that was still open just before midnight, I bought a packet of biscuits and that was my supper. I then asked another guy for a place to sleep. I risked catching Malaria so every dusk I would apply the mosquito repellent to my body. I also moved around with water treatment tablets. Next morning around 5am I woke up and walked back to the plot and we finished sorting out the rubbish from the maputi around mid day. I had about 3 tonnes of feed.

I went back to Harare to organise transport, my brother in law was not available. I came back to Mutoko and a friend helped me to transport the feed to Harare- Nyamapanda road. I was lucky that evening as an empty Malawi registered truck was going my way. The Malawi driver did not want Bond note currency and luckily I had R500 on me and he accepted that as payment. The following morning we arrived in Chivhu. I came back to South Africa to see my family for a few days and I went back to Mutoko and I bought more feed and transported the feed that same way. I now had enough feed to last me for about three months. I had about 20 pigs ready for market and I sold them and I managed to buy concentrate for the next big number of piglets numbering almost 80. After the resignation of Mr Mugabe, the business environment towards end of November 2017 started to improve.

HOW I ENDED UP RAISING PIGS

I never thought that I would ever consider going into pig farming until one afternoon in mid 2006 in Mhangura commercial farming area. In April 2006, I had been transferred to Bulawayo as a Branch Manager for an insurance company. On the side I was running a personal business of 4 shops in Mutoko and Macheke resettlement areas at that time. I had also grown tobacco for the first time. I had a 7 tonne Bedford truck that I had bought the previous year. A friend of mine who still works in Chinhoyi suggested that I bring the truck to Mashonaland West Province and he would assist me to get a contract from cotton buyers. The truck had spent a few months in the province and now it was constantly breaking down and I now needed to recondition the engine. I drove with my youngest brother in law and he was going to drive the truck back to Macheke.

When we arrived in Chinhoyi, I was told the truck was in Mhangura so we drove along Chirundu road up to Lions Den and then turned right to Mhangura Business centre. We spent a number of hours at the business centre. I could see the previous Standard Chartered Bank that had closed down after many white commercial farmers left the area and in its place there was a CBZ Bank. I did walk around closer to the houses. Having read Peter Godwin's autobiography, Mukiwa, I kept wondering which of these houses had Peter lived growing up as a boy. Eventually I was told that the truck was going to be carrying tobacco belonging to a retired army general who had been allocated a commercial farm around Mhangura.

We drove to the farm and the farm house a very modern structure built on top of the hill and next to the house there was a Toyota Hilux KZTE white double cab bakkie parked which was similar to my company issued vehicle I was driving. We then met retired General Chingombe at the house. Behind his house there was a big piggery project and he showed us around and explained a lot about pigs. The pigs and the pens were smarter than the pigs that I had seen in our village in Murewa. From that day, I decided that I would raise pigs. In the discussions with the general, he mentioned that one of his neighbours was vaMugabe (he was referring to Leo Mugabe the former president's nephew). I was renting an agricultural 6 acre plot in Kensington outside Bulawayo. I went to the Pig Industry Board in Bulawayo and bought building plans and books on raising pigs. By the time I left Zimbabwe in mid 2007 I had not started on the project. I read on the news that the general had died in 2008 and he was buried at the heroes acre in Harare.

In 2009 before I started building our house in Zimbabwe, I visited Pig Industry Board along Mutoko road outside Harare to go and get more information. That following year, I bought 100 iron roofing sheets and steel mesh screens and paid a transporter to take them from Pretoria to our house in Zimbabwe. End of 2011, I raised about 600 broilers at our house and abandoned the project after I lost about half of the birds when the helpers badly dressed the birds after slaughter and all the chicken went bad and had to be thrown away. In 2012- 2013 my father in law borrowed the roofing sheets and the metal screens as he was starting a piggery project. He wanted me to be a partner in the project and I initially contributed some money and then I pulled out as I know that it is always difficult to do a business with relatives.

During the Easter holidays of 2015, I drove to Murewa to visit my grandmother and on the way back, I passed by my in laws farm in Chivhu. I asked my father in law how his piggery project was going and I learnt from my mother in law that he was about to close the project. I went to inspect the project and I saw the situation was dire. I then asked him if I could take over the project and he said yes. I came back to South Africa on Easter Monday and on the Friday afternoon of that week, I took half day off at work and flew to Harare. The next morning, I went to buy feed. I then suggested that since I was based in South Africa instead of taking over the project entirely, I would provide capital until the project was back on its feet and we would be equal partner as he would doing day to day management. I would then go to Zimbabwe almost every forty night and when I was busy my wife would go to Zimbabwe. In March 2016, I took my annual leave and I saw an opportunity to barter goods with maize in Mutoko. I would buy things like beds, iron roofing sheets, plastic dishes, blankets, empty 20 litre buckets etc. Some of the villagers paid cash and some paid me with maize. In mid 2016 I drove to Mutoko during weekends and I would do about three trips on Saturdays carrying maize between Harare and Mutoko. I stocked the maize at my house in Ruwa.

March 2016 in Pretoria carrying goods for sale to Mutoko

 

Mid 2016 carrying my maize from Mutoko to Harare

Some of the villagers especially those who grew tobacco decided to pay me cash. When I collected the US dollars, I decided to also grow tobacco and I paid to build a big tobacco barn. The partnership in the piggery continued without serious problems except that at times a pig would be slaughtered for one or more reasons without my consent. Whenever we sold the pigs, we would share the profits equally. Around October 2016, a number of pigs where sold to a butchery in Chitungwiza and it was my turn to get the sales proceeds amounting to almost $2 000.00. I delayed going to Zimbabwe in November 2016 when the money was supposed to be paid out. I wanted to use the money to buy fertilizer for the tobacco. By the time we planted the tobacco in late November, I kept on being promised the money and it never came. I had to withdraw money from South Africa to buy the fertilizer.

 I drove to Zimbabwe for the New Year's holiday in January 2017 to also monitor on the tobacco crop and on my way back to South Africa, I passed by my in-laws. My father in-law not only could he no longer pay me my money he had used, he no longer had the money to buy feed for the pigs. We agreed that I should take over the project entirely. I wanted to transfer the pigs to our village in Murewa where my father is buried at the plot where my paternal grand mother still stays up to this day. I delayed doing so. Chivhu being only 450km from Beitbridge was more convenient to me than our village in Mukarakate in Murewa which is over 700km away from Beitbridge. I started taking the maize from my house to feed the pigs and within a few months the number of pigs rose from less than 20 to over 100 pigs by the time I resigned in October 2017.

Things looking up again early 2018

Early 2018

In December 2017 when I sold about 20 pigs, I used that money to buy feed for the next group coming up. I was just making sure that I had enough feed to last at least a month. I decided to employ someone else to look after the pigs and let go of the relative. My goal was to increase the annual production to at least 500 pigs and I needed to increase the number of breeding sows to 30. I was having problems with my truck drivers in South Africa so I would spend more time with the drivers but I would still go to Zimbabwe at short notice. I noticed that at times when I gave instructions, some of the decisions would be overruled. I gave instructions beginning of 2018 not for the worker to sell 8 grower sows and when I came to Zimbabwe after two weeks those sows had been sold.

I also saw that the relative who I had told to stop working on the piggery was still working there which meant I had to pay him again. By end of March 2018 the worker I had hired resigned.

By end of March 2018 I had over 70 pigs ready for market and this was the best and highest number of pigs I ever had ever since I started the project as they were well fed. I got quotations from abattoirs in Harare. The price being offered in the local town of Chivhu was slightly higher. This turned out to be the biggest mistake for me. The first two pigs that we slaughtered the carcass weighed over 70kgs and I estimated that I would get over $14 000.00 for the whole batch. The pigs would be delivered to local butcheries every three days. We were supplying about 3 butcheries and they would buy two or three pigs every three days. I wanted the money to buy as much maize as possible since farmers would be harvesting and the price of maize would be very low. I returned to formal employment on 1 April 2018 and since I was preparing for Comrades Marathon on 10 June 2018, I did not want to risk catching flue so close to the marathon I stopped going to Zimbabwe frequently. I would communicate by phone to request to be given sales sheets and expenses and nothing was forthcoming.

End of March 2018

 

Over the last weekend of May 2018, we drove to Harare as maNyoni also wanted to register to vote. On the Saturday afternoon when we arrived in Chivhu, I asked the worker why we have so few serviced sows. I could see that a lot of sows were malnourished. Where I expected to see at least 30 tonnes of maize there was none. I asked again for the sales and expenses sheets and I was given the book and I took a photo as we were rushing to get to Harare before voter registraion centres were closed. When I got back to South Africa, I added up the sales sheet I had been given and it was not exceeding $3 000.00. I realised that something was wrong. I then sent Mereka to go and monitor for me and get more information on all the expenses and the sales for all the animals. When he got there his response was, "Mukuru, I don't think you will ever get more information and I suggest you concentrate on feeding the next lot". This was too much for me, here I was thinking of taking my project to the next level and I should have got maybe over $8 000 after buying many tonnes of maize. Instead I was being asked to pump more money.

A week before I went home for the 30th of July vote the worker phoned me enquiring about his salary and this was news to me that he had not been paid for months. I really wanted out of the project and I contacted a local pig farmer who is keeping pigs on a big scale to go and inspect the remaining animals and make me an offer. He came with a ridiculous offer of $2 000 for 52 pigs that were only 5 weeks from being ready for market. All the hard work that I did from October 2017 is down the drain and I am back to where I was before October 2017. Within the last six weeks, I started sending R5 000 a week to buy feed and fortunately with the fall of the bond notes I did not have to send much more money.  

As Winston Churchill once said, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to control that counts". I am personally many years behind my plans when it comes to this project. I have learnt a lot of things in doing this project. In the near future, I will write about my experience of running general dealer shops from 2001 up to 2008 in Zimbabwe as well as how I started farming tobacco in 2006.

I get asked by people wanting to start piggery projects. Here is my advice:-
- Visit the Pig Industry Board either in Bulawayo or Harare and get information
- Visit other pig producers (I visit pig farms in Zimbabwe and South Africa to learn)
- Read as much information as possible especially on the internet. There is information from producers in Uganda and South Africa
- Start small and learn on the job. I found out the most critical time is the date the piglets are born as the mother can lie on them. During winter its important to provide warmer environment for piglets. Once the piglets survive the first few weeks then you do not have problems. Older pigs are generally not prone to sickness as compared to sickness.
- Monitoring and managing your project is key. I hope in future many Zimbabweans based in South Africa come together to share costs when it comes to travelling to Zimbabwe in a cost effective way e.g 4 people sharing costs to drive from Johannesburg on a Friday night to Harare and then on Sunday afternoon they drive back in time to be at work on Monday.

I would like to hear from other farmers on their experiences.

God bless Zimbabwe!

MY THOUGHTS ON THE LEGALISATION OF DAGGA AND OTHER LEGAL DRUGS

Of course I once smoked a joint. I still remember the day, it was towards the end of 1996 and I was in Mudzi district of Zimbabwe closer to the Mozambique border and that was during my first year of teaching. I could only smoke or drink alcohol once I had left my mother’s house. My late mum was a no-nonsense person and growing up in her home, I honestly believed that she would kill me if I ever did anything stupid. My mum would frequently say, “Dabbie ndokuuraya ini, vanhu vanongoti ihuku yadya mazai ayo”(Dabbie, I can kill you and I will get away with it as the society will say it is a hen that has decided to eat its own eggs). My cousin sisters would come from the village to stay at our house whilst looking for work as domestic workers in the town. One cousin sister once threatened to hang herself and my mother went to fetch a rope and gave to her and that was the last time my cousin ever threatened to commit suicide.

The day I smoked the joint was during a weekend and we started smoking around mid day at the teachers’ residences and after we were done, we prepared a meal of pap and relish. We then decided to walk to Suswe business centre along the Harare- Nyamapanda road to buy alcohol. The distance to the shops is about 3km from the school. Somehow on that day, we decided to take the longer route and I suspect this was the result of being high on the drug. The next morning when I was cleaning the pots, I could not believe that we had eaten such a poorly prepared meal.

The last time, I got really drunk was also around that time. We had an end of year party at the school on a Friday afternoon. After drinking for a few hours a decision was made that we had to walk to the shops to buy more liquor. I remember walking to the shops and after that everything was blank. When I woke up in the morning, I was sleeping on the veranda of one of the shops next to a madman who always slept outside. I was told that by the time we got to the shop, I was so drunk that I could no longer walk, hence the other teachers left me there. The previous day an O’Level exam had been written and I was the teacher on duty to take the exam answer sheets to the post office at Kotwa in order to post them to Harare via registered mail. I can still remember the heat in the post office, there was no air-conditioning whilst I struggled with babalaas. Mudzi district is generally very hot in summer like most arid places. I then promised myself that I would drink in moderation from there onwards.

My attitude towards alcohol and smoking tobacco growing up was shaped from also watching my late father battling with alcoholism. I always told myself that I would not drink alcohol. During my A’ Level studies in Biology I chose the option on drugs. I still remember part of the definition I learnt then over 23 years ago which starts like, “A drug is an externally administered substance.........) I still remember learning somewhere that alcohol was as bad as other drugs to the extent that if it had been recently been discovered, it would have been banned like other drugs. During Organic Chemistry lessons most boys in my class would get excited when we learnt about alcohol. I knew it for a fact that some of the Physics guys whom I would meet during Mathematics and Chemistry lessons were already drinking alcohol as some days they would be clearly intoxicated.

At the end of 1997, I would then join the insurance industry in Harare. After each and every payday, I would see brilliant professionals battling with alcoholism leading to absent ism. End of 2002, I got a job as a junior manager in an insurance broking firm and one of my roles was to entertain client. One of my big clients was a parastatal and the gentleman who controlled the account expected to be entertained and some Saturdays, I would take him for a braai and drinks. I would also drink with him. In 2004 I would join an insurance company starting as an underwriting manager and later as a branch manager and in those roles, I would take some insurance brokers for a braai and drinks and I would also drink with them.

When I moved to South Africa in 2007, I started drinking on rare occasions. As a foreigner it will be even more trickier being arrested for drunken driving. I once read an account of guy who was always being arrested for drunken driving in Zimbabwe. The guy relocated to New Zealand and he stopped drinking and driving and when he was asked, his answer was that he feared being deported being deported back to Zimbabwe should he ever be caught driving under the influence! At times I would go for two years without even drinking one glass of alcohol. A few years ago I watched the movie Flight starring Denzel Washington when it premièred on MNET on a Sunday evening. That movie had such an effect on me that I went to the fridge that night and threw away all the alcohol I had and ever since I do not stock any alcohol at home. A few years ago, in my brief period as a caretaker of our body corporate, I used to have problems with two gentlemen who smoked dagga in their flat and other residents would complain. We ended up having a gentlemen agreement that they would go and smoke in their garage away from the residences.

Now that the apex court has spoken and legalised marijuana, it is up to the society to pick up the pieces from the effects of the addiction and the societal ills that will flow from this decision. On an individual’s level we need to know that with rights comes responsibilities. The best advice that I can think of is what Judge Willem van der Merwe told the then ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma after the conclusion of the rape trial, “Had Rudyard Kipling known of this case at the time he wrote his poem if he might have added the following: “And if you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man my son”.

I worry as a parent to two teenager boys who are at a critical age where they can be easily influenced. This ruling has just made my job as a parent a little bit much more harder as I worry they can succumb to peer pressure and acquire addictions that will follow them for the rest of the life. On a society level law enforcement authorities will have their work cut out for them when it comes to crimes such as driving under the influence, there will also be implications for social services as well as the health departments. There will be implications for employers as well who will have to deal with the fallout. On the economy front it has a potential of generating income if the government licences producers and properly taxes the growers and also there might be tourism benefits since only a few countries have legalised marijuana though-out the world.

WHY THE NEW FINANCE MINISTER INSPIRES CONFIDENCE

For me the greatest tragedy when it came to Zimbabwe was the mismanagement of the economy and state sanctioned corruption under the government of Robert Mugabe and not necessarily the lack of human rights. Other African countries also have bad human rights record e.g the treatment of the opposition leader and the disregard of the high court order in Zambia and the reported sham presidential elections in Rwanda. However these other countries manage economies properly making sure that their citizens stay home. Just look at the huge number of Zimbabweans in South Africa as compared to other nationalities.I left Zimbabwe in 2007 and as I have previously written in my blog the reason was to escape a failing economy. As the saying goes-Its the economy stupid!

 

So on 2 October 2017 I completed serving my 4 week's notice after 10 years of service with my employer in Pretoria. That same night, I took a bus to Harare. I would spend most of October 2017 between Harare, Chivhu and Mutoko concentrating on my piggery project that I already spent over $20 000 to develop. I also planned to farm tobacco since now I had the time. When I saw the devaluation of the bond note currency I decided against farming. After I had sourced feed that could last almost three months I came back to South Africa.I was fortunate that I got my terminal benefits within 4 weeks and I had a few hundred thousand Rands in my bank account and I let it stay there for more than a month. One thing was clearer I was not going to invest more money in Zimbabwe due to the economic distortions caused by bond notes. I had even considered taking our family back home to Zimbabwe and me and maNyoni we both decided that our kids had better prospects in South African.

 

Around December 2017 and January 2018, there was a dry spell that affected a lot of crops. I visited my in laws in Chivhu as well as my cousin in Mutoko, the situation was the same. I did share some of the photos of the wilting crops on Facebook. There is something that I did not disclose. Less than 1km from my in-laws' 35 hectare farm there is a big dam that was left by the previous white farmer and non of the new farmers have put up irrigation facilities. Also in Mutoko where my cousin stays there is a perennial river next to his plot.

 

A Chinese made diesel heavy duty water pump costs around $1 000. If I decide to buy the latest I phone it will be much more expensive than that. The question is will you get a return on your capital. I want to be honest, at times I have asked my self whether we did the right thing building and investing in Zimbabwe. Every time I go home with my wife, she is always chiding me about not completing our main house. I always remember the pain that I endured from 2009 to 2010 when I had to work overtime almost everyday, share houses and even rooms with the strangers to raise the money to build our two bedroom cottage in Zimbabwe. Now ever since bond notes came we battled to get rent and we ended up chasing away our tenants. The irony is that our home in Zimbabwe is far more spacious and comfortable than the one we stay in Pretoria. The question is will we ever go back to live in Zimbabwe?

 

As I previously shared with my friends on social media, I ended up deciding to vote for Mr Mnangagwa on the eve of the election after Robert Mugabe endorsed Chamisa. I was regretting my vote for ED after the post election violence where soldiers shot unarmed citizens. My message to president Mnangagwa is that if he let his economic team do their work unhindered he will have the support of many citizens both in and out of the country. It is hard being a foreigner, many people wants to come back home and are willing to invest their hard earned money back in Zimbabwe. We do not want handouts, all we want is a conducive economic environment.

 

With a functioning economy, there is no need to rig elections because citizens rewards good work, he just needs to look to Botswana Democratic Party and Chama Cha Mapinduzi of Tanzania which had been winning clean elections for years.

Its the economy stupid! I believe the only way for Zimbabwe now is up.

Maybe boys should also cry

Two days ago, I listened to maNyoni talking to our last born early in the morning preparing him for school. She asked him, “why are you crying, do you want to be a girl?” Our son was not happy that he had to stop watching cartoons and prepare for school that day. Last night I watched on ENCA news the story of the water polo assistant coach at Parktown Boys High School who pleaded guilty to 144 charges of sexual assault acts on young school boys on the school's premises. 144 is a staggering number maybe if boys were allowed to cry, this would not have occurred. I grew up in the 80s in Zimbabwe hearing the same message, boys don’t cry. Maybe boys should also cry.

I still remember the night around 1983 to 1984 at Amaveni Police Camp in Kwekwe when I was abused. That time I was only 7 or 8 years old, the girl was around 13 or 14. My father had been transferred from Belingwe to Kwekwe at the end of 1982. The girl was staying with his uncle after the death of her father. Her uncle also a police officer was also being transferred from Belingwe to Kwekwe and she was starting high school at Amaveni Secondary school and she had to stay with us for a few weeks before her uncle and family also moved to Amaveni. My mother that night innocently suggested that she sleeps  in the same bed with me and not with my two younger sisters as they were still wetting the bed. I woke up that night and she was molesting me. I just pretended to be asleep throughout the whole ordeal. Of course I knew what was happening, I had older cousins and I been taught about sex during the games called mahumbwe that was played during the school holidays back at the village. The next morning, I did not tell my mother about what had happened. Boys don’t cry and boys don’t talk about their feelings.

In 1999 when I was working in Zimbabwe, I visited a client in Harare and I saw the woman and I remembered her even though I had last seen her in 1989. I remembered that she had married towards the end of the 80s and her marriage had failed. I gathered the courage to ask her why she had done that to me and she never answered me by the time the client came back to the office. A few years, I learnt that she had died. The first person I told about that incident was my wife after we got married.

Growing up mainly in the police camps and at the village, I learnt that boys would only solve problems through fighting. I remember one evening I was playing in Amaveni Police Camp with Welly short for Wellington and he called one of the uncles a derogatory name of Nyatera (scandals made from used tyres normally won by poor men) and the uncle’s name was Taylor. We started fighting and Welly won that fight. A few months later we had another argument and we fought again and I won that fight. There was always a hierarchy based on who was the best fighter. At school, we were not allowed to fight but after school kids would solve problems by fighting on the way home. I was lucky that when I went to the village during the school holidays my father and mother came from the same village. I had a cousin on my mothers side who was 4 years older than me and he was feared and he would protect me when we went to herd cattle as that were the time when most of the fighting was done. On my father’s side, his younger cousin brother the late babamudiki Masimba protected me.

One day I was not in the company of my cousin brother and this bully whom we called Tina short for Tinashe and he is now late, I had been playing with him and out of the blue he pinned me down and wanted to spit into my mouth and luckily he missed. I had not provoked him and I would have done that as he was clearly stronger and older than me. The other day I was in the company of my older cousin sisters going to the fields and they initiated a fight between me and this guy of my age his name was Kumu short for Kumutsungirira. We did not finish the fight but he was clearly giving me a hiding. My older cousin sister Hazel would taunt me for years to come about that incident. Back at my mother’s house, you could not come home crying that so and so had beaten me up as the answer would always be the same, “go back and fight”.

 

The other issue that was complicated was on dating. Girls never told you whether they were interested in you, the first dating advice I got from my older cousins was that you had to pursue a girl as much as you can as girls were always shy and no did not exactly mean no. I remember in early 1999, I started staying in Avondale, Harare and most Sunday mornings, I would catch a taxi to Trinity Methodist church behind the High Court and the President’s Munhumutapa offices to attend the early English service. I liked that service a lot because it was very short and after that I would to do window shopping along the iconic 1^st Street of Harare and that before the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. I would then walk home. There was this girl who always sat next to me and would always look at me. I always thought that her glances where a disapproval for my terrible tunes whenever we sang from the hymn books. Growing up, I was told that I could not dance nor sing. It was only later that I realised that maybe she was just interested in me, I did not find her attractive. Around 2000-2001 she got married in the church.

In February 2002 during my mother’s funeral I barely cried. A Shona funeral is always complicated due to the politics involved. My mother did not want to be buried at the village and elders from both side of the family wanted her body to be taken to the village and I had to stand my ground. My father’s only brother had issues with me and I told him that we would address whatever issues he had with me after the funeral. My wife and sisters were being mistreated by relatives and I had to confront those relatives. I only managed to shed tears after the last body viewing at Lendy Park Cemetery after I saw my friend and best man Tonderai Masvosva.

Our three sons are growing up in a different environment than mine. At home they fight but at school fighting is not allowed and pupils can be expelled from school for fighting. Unlike my generation, they spend more time indoors as they have TVs, play stations, internet etc. Their world is changing and we should encourage them to talk about their feelings and not to bottle everything in. Boys must also be protected as well and they must taught properly so that they don’t contribute to the culture of violence and rape towards other boys and girls.

You want to go into business? Learn to make better and timely decisions

We all wish to advance in our careers as well as in business. Leadership can be a very lonely place mainly because of the weight of decisions that one has to carry. Towards the end of 2002, I landed my first management job as a team leader at Zimbabwe Insurance Brokers. I soon learnt how lonely it can be as a leader. In the insurance industry if you lack integrity, you will not last one day longer than necessary. Before I joined the company there was this team member who had conducted a corrupt transaction that eventually came in the open. Unfortunately for the team member, the Mazda 626 Cronos that had been poorly repaired belonged to the spouse of one of the senior managers at SMM Holdings. Then our company as well as dozens of prominent companies were  subsidiaries of SMM Holdings. This SMM Holdings senior manager went on to become an influential government minister and he was still a minister in the outgoing Zimbabwe cabinet.

 After I joined the organisation, the Managing Director came with the client to my office and told her that I would take over the issue and I started solving it. I started dragging my feet when it came to the disciplinary of the staff member. I do not know whether it was the fact that he was old enough to be my father or the fact that I could not gather the courage to start a process that could lead to his dismissal. One day the MD passed by my office and he did not even go through the General Manager whom I was reporting to. He was angry and he told me that, “Mr Kanyoka, you are handling this guy with kid gloves”.  Eventually with the help of the Human Resources officer I concluded the disciplinary case and we let go of the employee. It was a very difficult process for me. Leadership is not about being popular but about doing the right thing for the organisation to survive and prosper, however everything must be done within the confines of the law as well as the culture of the country

If you want to be a leader, you must start learning to make timely decisions wherever you are. For example you might be a trainee at the lowest level, when you refer any issue to a senior instead of just asking what to do you must also make your suggestions and if your suggestion is overruled find out where you went wrong and correct yourself. With time you will realise that more and more of your suggestions are being accepted and that is how you grow. Leadership mentoring also starts in the community, I come from North East Zimbabwe from the Zezuru clan we also speak Shona. In my tribe males are automatically assigned leadership roles. For example some of my older cousin sisters would wait for me to make the final decision. My father died when I was 14 and as the eldest child and son, I would have to take decisions that my father would have ordinarily have taken. I only realised later that my mother started mentoring me to be a leader long time ago. When my mother started receiving the megre widow’s and dependent’s government pension, she would always ask me for input on doing the budget for the household. As a result, I started learning to save money at the age of 15.  When she started a tuckshop at home, I would run it for her. When she started poultry projects, I would be involved in the running of the project.

One of the most difficult decision, I had to deal with was in early 1996 when I was told my sister was pregnant. My sister had just failed her O’Level examinations. It was up to me to tell her to go away from the house to stay with her boyfriend as per the custom in our tribe.  My sister left for a number of months and stayed with the boyfriend. At that time I was now teaching about 200km from home and during the school holidays, I saw that my sister would walk about 2km from the place where she was lodging to come with the child to eat at our house. It was clear that her boyfriend was not taking care of my sister and my nephew. It was painful for me to see her like that eventually I told her to come back home with her son. The following year my sister went to night school and passed her O’Level with very good results. She then came to stay with me in Avondale, Harare and went to the University of Zimbabwe’s A Level night school. Around 2001 my sister eventually got a good job and she was able to look after her son and she sent him to good schools and she raised him into a good and responsible boy. About two weeks ago my nephew who is now in his second year at University of Pretoria came to visit us and I thought to myself that life could have turned differently for him and my sister.

Every decision has consequences and in my over 22 years of working, the worst managers for me are those who get paralysed when the time comes for them to make decisions. It is better to make bad decision than no decision at all. We all make bad decisions at one time but the idea is to learn from our mistakes. Last year after I resigned from my job in October and went back to Zimbabwe. I had the time and the resources to farm tobacco and I eventually decided against doing so because of the economic environment. In November 2017 Robert Mugabe was eventually forced to resign and the environment changed for the better and I regretted my decision. This year after a gruelling election period, there has been times that I have asked myself if it ethical to invest in a country where elections are clearly stolen. I know that it is not about my personal feelings. If I pull the plug on my investments, it means dozens of people can be affected adversely. The other truth is that for democracy to flourish, there must be economic growth in Zimbabwe because the more people are impoverished the more Zanu-PF can hold on to power. About 24 months ago, there was an SRC election at the University of Zimbabwe and there were serious allegations that students were bought with plates of food to vote for Zanu-PF candidates. If educated people can be bought with food then what about poor peasants in the rural arrears?