Where does time go?

On this day 13 years ago I moved to Bulawayo to start a new role as the branch manager for Zimnat Lion Insurance Company. I had always wanted to stay in Bulawayo and this was a dream come true for me. I booked into Cresta Churchill Hotel and was meant to stay there until the occupants in the company house in Burnside had moved out. 

 

The first time I visited Bulawayo was during the school trip from Kwekwe to Gaborone,Botswana in 1989. I remember the train rolling into the city of Bulawayo early in the morning and seeing all those big industry buildings. We then left Bulawayo on our way to Francistown and the train was being pulled by a steam locomotive engine. One day I will write about my first trip to Botswana.

 

After I joined the insurance industry in 1997, every second year we went to Bulawayo for the annual sporting weekend. For most of us it was more of a holiday that we eagerly looked forward to. In 2002 maNyoni and I would go on a 9 day long holiday to Bulawayo, Hwange National Park and Victoria Falls.

 

Towards the end of 2005, there was a merge between AIG Zimbabwe Limited and Zimnat Lion Insurance Company. I had been an Underwriting Manager/ Client Manager at Zimnat Lion since January 2004 with full underwriting authority. With the merge, the plan was to follow the AIG route of having profit centre managers having underwriting authority in their lines of business. My role would be purely marketing going forward. I did not see myself doing that job. There was voluntary retrenchment before the companies came together. I applied for voluntary retrenchment and the Managing Director turned down my request. I spoke to my boss about the Bulawayo position and I was appointed as the Bulawayo Branch Manager.


After two weeks at the hotel, I was told that I needed to move out as the hotel had already been fully booked for the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair. I even appealed to the General Manager of the hotel that as a manager in the group, they need to accommodate me. I moved out and stayed at a lodge nearer to Mater Dei Hospital for the rest of the month. I then started staying at a self-catering unit in Burnside as I could not go back to the hotel after the way they treated me. My wife was working for a building society in Harare and her request for transfer to Bulawayo was granted. She had been working in the back office for years at head office and when she came to Bulawayo she started working as a bank teller which she did not like. She now had to work extra hours as tellers have to balance their books everyday before knocking off. She also now worked on Saturdays and also had to go to the bank on holidays to load cash to the ATM.


In the fourth month, we moved into the spacious company house in Burnside. Almost every weekend, I would drive 1200kms to visit my business in Mutoko and Macheke. Besides the shops, I had a minibus and a lorry. I also farmed tobacco for the first time at the end of 2006. What happened is that war veterans in Virginia area of Macheke hired my 8 tonne truck to go and fetch their inputs from a farm in Headlands. When I delivered their fertilizer, they then convinced me to farm one acre of tobacco which I did. I would also travel to Francistown, Musina and Johannesburg to buy stock for my 4 shops. I also started renting an agricultural plot in Kensington just outside Bulawayo where I was doing market gardening and raising broiler chicken at the house. During the Christmas of 2006, I spent it selling broiler chicken within the townships of Bulawayo.





In early 2007 maNyoni resigned from her job. After I bought myself an Isuzu bakkie, I seriously considered if it was still worth it to continue working seeing that we were now relying on our business and not the salary which was no longer keeping up pace with the inflation. On 1 May 2007, I started serving my three months notice. During that time the government launched a price control blitz and in the process I lost a lot of money. My manager was arrested during that blitz. The country started experiencing shortages of almost everything from meat, basic goods and the living conditions in the country got worse. I had always said I would never leave Zimbabwe.





I was asked to sign recommendation letters by guys who had previously reported to me for their work permit applications at the South African Embassy. I was not sure if I should also apply. My wife encouraged me to apply but I was still very doubtful. Three friends phoned me namely Joseph Museva, Jonah Mutizwa and Rutilio Usayi and they all encouraged me to apply, I reluctantly applied for the work permit. Rutilio Usayi called me to Gweru and assisted me to get a bank draft that was required to apply for a permit. At the end of July 2007, we moved out of the company house to the plot in Kensington. My plan was to rebuild my business and I started that process.






On 22 August 2007 I was on my way to visit my shops and I passed by the South African Embassy to check on my work permit application. I got my passport back and saw that I had been given a 5 year quota work permit. We travelled overnight to Bulawayo and the next morning left for Pretoria arriving in late afternoon. The idea was to apply for jobs and then go back to Zimbabwe. On 31 August 2007, I signed an employment contract to start on the 1^st of September 2007. Due to my absence my vehicles were badly used and running shops from Pretoria was no longer viable due to the hyper-inflation environment of 2008 as well as the violence that accompanied the March 2008 elections I closed all the shops.


At times I wonder if I did the right decision to leave Zimbabwe in the first place. Being a foreigner is a very difficult thing, however given the continuing deteriorating economic situation one does the best they can and hope for the best.