The one day I worked for a labour broker

On my way to Mamelodi January 2018

As so called black middle class, we pretend to be detached from the working class struggles such as the trade unions' fights against labour brokers and the shocking service from Metro Rail.  We lie to ourselves that we are not affected by these events. Beginning September 2017 after exactly 10 years in the same job I had a decision to make. Do I stop my piggery project in Zimbabwe that I had already invested over $20 000 and concentrate working here in South Africa? It was not a very difficult decision to make as I did not see any career growth prospects so the next day I started serving my 4 weeks’ notice. Running a project in Zimbabwe whilst staying in another country is a challenge and especially when it comes to money issues it becomes even trickier. When a customer pays when you are not there you might never see a cent. So every two weeks either I or my wife would go to Zimbabwe to make sure that we buy stock feed and monitor the project. I have seen many people in the diaspora sending money for projects such as building a house and only for money to be squandered by relatives. In 2010 we also lost about $1 000 meant for plumbing when a close relative ran away leaving our small children with workers at our house in Zimbabwe.

My late cousin spent more than a decade in the United Kingdom and he sent a haulage truck and money to buy cattle, residential stands etc. When he came back to Zimbabwe around 2010 he had nothing and had to start constructing a house in Chitungwiza and when he died a few years ago he had not done much construction at his house. So on 2 October 2017, on the day I finished serving my notice, I took a bus to Harare that night. Travelling by bus is the cheapest way to get to Harare from Pretoria as it costs around R400 as long as you have time. I would spend most of October in Mutoko and I managed to buy about 6 tonnes of maize bran at about 40% of the price I had paid to farmers nearer to Chivhu where my piggery project is located. That feed would last me about 2 months. After transporting the animal feed, I came back to concentrate on my small transport venture in South Africa.

In December 2017, I had about 2 dozens of pigs ready for market and the price I was getting from our local butcheries was around $3 per kg. At times it would take between 2 weeks to 2 months to get paid even though the butcheries would sell the pigs within a few days. In December 2017, there was a huge demand of pork, where some supermarkets would sell pork for around $9 per kg, however for us farmers we never got to benefit from this windfall. I know of many small scale producers who had to stop pig farming as the status quo only favoured retailers and not farmers. In February 2018, I decided to increase my production so that I could raise 600pigs per year with the aim of opening my own butcheries. I then decided to go back to work temporarily in order to help raise the required finance to buy butchery equipment. I responded to a six month contract position at a big financial institution through what I thought was an employment agent and this suited me very well.

In the second week of February 2018, I went for an interview at the big campus closer to Florida. Two days later the agent told me, I had done very well and the company wanted to hire me. I was not very sure if I wanted to go. The agent had indicated that I might start on Monday. On Friday morning I had an appointment to transport a load for a client in Pretoria East. The client then asked me if I could transport an urgent load to Zimbabwe that day. When you are self-employed you do not let work pass by. By early evening on Friday morning, I was on my way to Zimbabwe. On the Zimbabwean side, I really battled with tyre punctures as I was carrying a heavy load and I only reached Hwedza on Sunday morning. I then drove home to Zimre Park took a bath and drove to Chivhu to check on my piggery project and then drove back to South Africa.

After driving two nights without much sleep I ended up sleeping in Polokwane. Around 8am on Monday the agent phoned me and I was still in Polokwane. When I arrived in Pretoria she phoned me again and I told her that I was not sure if I wanted to take up the job offer. After discussing the issue further, I told her I would start work tomorrow. I took Gautrain to Park Station very early in the morning as I hate being late especially for work. There was no way, I would drive 130km every day to and from work and put that much mileage on any of my cars. I went to Reya Vaya bus station and they said they don’t have buses going there. I then went to Metro Rail wanting to buy a ticket to Florida and the ticket seller told me that the train was running late. My only option was to go to a mini bus taxi. Given my experience with taxi drivers, I avoid them like a plague. I arrived at work around 07:30am and waited for human resources. I had to sign a few declaration forms but there was no employment contract.I ended up discussing with one of the guys who had started a few weeks earlier who informed me that the bank had a huge backlog and had employed a lot of contract workers and more were on their way.

I would spend the day in the claims department with a kind gentleman who was showing me the systems. The agent also phoned me and confirmed that she had e-mailed me the employment contract and this was a bit strange why the agent and not the bank was giving me the contract. After work, I ran 3km to Florida station to catch the Metro Rail train to Park Station. I can write books about my experience with Metro Rail shocking service as I used it almost every day from Pretoria Central to Mamelodi and then run 5km to Pretoria East and vice versa in the evening from November 2017 until March 2018 when I was self-employed. The way Prasa runs the commuter train service is pathetic; they do not care about passengers as well as the safety of their staff. I feel sorry for tens of thousands of commuters from Mamelodi who are now suffering ever since Metro Rail suspended the service. Some of these commuters are students, unemployed, factory workers, security guards, domestic workers etc. who are mostly people who are on minimum wage. A six day week monthly taxi fare costs around R720 whereas  a monthly train ticket costs about R160 and for a person on a minimum wage or unemployed that is a huge difference. In January 2018 Menlyn Taxi association increased their fees by 25% and they will be increasing again due to high fuel prices you can see the that the inflation for poor people is much more than the official rate of inflation.

After arriving at Florida station I had to ask fellow passengers about the expected arrival of the train since metro rail do not operate like Gautrain and they never inform any passengers about anything and you have to rely on the information from fellow passengers. The train soon approached around 5pm and we arrived at Park Station around 5:30pm and I disembarked from the train and I started asking where I could get the Pretoria train and they pointed out that the train I had disembarked was actually the express train to Pretoria. I quickly rushed back. The train started moving and skipping a lot of the stations until we got to Kempton Park and it started stopping for longer periods without explanation. At a bushy area around Olifantsfontein it stopped for close to an hour and we just waited. I asked fellow passengers and they said that was the norm and even in the morning it would behave that way.  I only arrived in Pretoria after 9pm and by that time my phone battery had run out and maNyoni was worried about my whereabouts. luckily in Sunnyside businesses open very late e.g. our Shoprite store opens from 6am to 11pm Monday to Saturday.

I rushed to the internet cafe’ and printed the employment contract. I have been in the insurance industry now for 20 years and I am also currently a law student and one thing I understand in this life is a contract I don’t just sign anything. I remember some years ago when I had to sign a lease agreement I had to ask the land lord to amend a few clauses. Reading the employment contract from the first page onwards, I realised that it did not comply with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. I then wrote an e-mail to the agent pointing all these deficiencies in her contract and also informed her that I would not be signing it and I was no longer interested in the position. I gathered if the bank really wanted my services they would employ me directly and not through some labour broker who had no clue and would get a large portion of my salary and for what? The next morning I still woke very early as usual and caught a train to Mamelodi to continue with my usual schedule instead of going to Florida

ZANU PF YAKARUMWA NECHEKUCHERA

I had already made up my mind that I was going to vote for Emmerson Mnangagwa but for MP would vote for an MDC MP since we do not have a credible independent MP in our constituency of Goromonzi South. That was before Chamisa came up with his manifesto that was anti Palestine people and I decided that I would vote for a Zanu-PF MP. It is very difficult to be objective once you have chosen a side but at times something has to give. The opposition has been making a lot of noise about the independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and I never took it seriously until the postal voting in Bulawayo involving the police and the recent interview between Ruvheneko Parirenyatwa and Justice Priscilla Chigumba. I have also taken note of what Christopher Mutsvangwa the War Veterans Chairman said about them not allowing Chamisa to assume power should he win the 30 July 2018 election.

A question I asked myself after pondering over the answers by Justice Chigumba in the interview, is the ZEC chairperson or ZEC itself free from government control and by extension free from Zanu-PF control? I looked to my past accounting studies for the definition of independence:

Independence is: (a) Independence of mind – the state of mind that permits the expression of a conclusion without being affected by influences that compromise professional judgment, thereby allowing an individual to act with integrity, and exercise objectivity and professional scepticism; (b) Independence in appearance – the avoidance of facts and circumstances that are so significant that a reasonable and informed third party would be likely to conclude, weighing all the specific facts and circumstances, that a firm’s, or a member of the audit or assurance team’s, integrity, objectivity or professional scepticism has been compromised (CODE OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT FOR CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS)


In the insurance industry when it comes to a tricky claims adjudication that may or not involve non disclosure of material facts presented before an insurance contract was entered into , we have a similar measure simply called a reasonable man test. In simple terms would mean, if you call an ordinary and neutral person and present the facts of the scenario to him or her what would their interpretation be of the question asked at inception stage and the answer provided e.t.c? Given the conduct of ZEC would one say they are independent and care about competence. My impression is that the conduct of ZEC does not inspire confidence and they are not truly independent of Zanu-PF. Hopefully with the advent of social media citizens will be able to continue exposing any weaknesses in their systems and their conduct and shining light on all the deeds being done in the dark.

The more Justice Chigumba tried to explain the Bulawayo Postal voting the more I became worried, she kept on saying it is the law and it got me thinking. For god’s sake the justice is different from other people who have presided over our election since 2000, people such as Mariyawanda Nzuwa and Tobaiwa mudede, she is actually a judge of The High Court whose job is to interpret laws and deliver impartial judgements. My understanding is that Zimbabwe is a constitutional democracy and hence we have constitutional sovereignty and not parliamentary sovereignty. In simple terms it means laws passed by parliament such as the electoral laws if they violate the constitution they can be declared as invalid by our courts. This insistence of, “ it’s the law “, sounds hollow as we have heard it before for example Slavery was legal, Apartheid was legal and Holocaust was legal.  As the Justice herself does she think the process is fair and what is she doing to bring about confidence in the whole process?

Let us remind ourselves how we got here. On the morning Saturday 18 November 2017, I landed in Harare to a different atmosphere. Finally Robert Mugabe was on his way out and there was no going back. In the afternoon, I also participated in the demonstration to State House and it was a time of great hope. Zimbabweans of all social classes and races came together that day to demand Mugabe’s resignation. People were carrying photos of Emmerson Mnangagwa and General Chiwenga. These were our heroes as they were finally helping us to get rid of Robert Mugabe. Millions of Zimbabweans were resigned to the fact that Mugabe would rule us until his death and his crazy wife Grace Mugabe would take over and there was nothing anyone could do so we thought until the generals rolled military tanks on the streets of Harare. There was so much goodwill for Mnangagwa and Chiwenga the heroes of the moment.

The biggest opposition to Zanu-PF rule has always been the economy so many people assumed that when Mnangagwa became president he would put together a unity government for a few years and sort out the economy. In true Zanu-PF arrogant style he retained much of the dead wood from Mugabe era in the cabinet and put back Chinamasa in finance and announced that the 2018 elections would go on as scheduled. Chinamasa and Mangudya the authors of the bond note were now back in charge. The decision to introduce bond notes was not a considered decision as it has created more problems for the economy and I still maintain that it must be scrapped (http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-zimbabwe-needs-to-discard-bond-note.html . With elections around the corner it means money has to be found for campaigning, money that the country does not have. We saw chiefs getting new cars, increments for civil service, funding ZEC and a lot of other spending by the government. The budget deficit is getting wider and we are back to the Mugabe way of managing the economy.

The transfer rate in Zimbabwe is almost 1:2 and prices are rising in tandem and it might get worse and one is reminded of the immortal words from the late Morgan Tsvangirai, “Zanu-PF can rig the election, but they cannot rig the economy”. Now Zanu-PF is panicking but the problem is of their making. For money to pour into the country the elections must be free and fair but on the other end a free election means that Zanu-PF might lose power. How can a person sleeping in bank queue day in and day out vote for Zanu-PF. Already the election is not really free when one considers that millions of Zimbabweans will not be allowed to vote unless they come back to Zimbabwe. ZEC already is showing the whole world that it is not impartial.  Over the weekend I had a twitter exchange with a comrade and the consensus was whoever wins must win outright in the first round because if this election goes to a run off, the military will remove their mask and there will be pain.

I have to say I do not feel sorry for Zanu-PF as they are clearly panicking but this is of their own making. All I have to say to about ED, akarumwa nechekuchera, he thought he held all the cards. If he wins a disputed election there won’t be meaningful investment both from the international community as well as the diaspora community. Who wants to pour their hard earned money in a failing economy? I was not going to vote for Chamisa as he is clearly not qualified but now these are not normal times. If he wins he must assume power and our country can move forward.

We must also learn from the University of Life

As usual I woke up early this morning after my 5 to 6 hours quota of sleep had been exhausted. I came across the above tweet and it got me thinking. With elections about three weeks away, Zimbo Twitter is mainly dominated by elections and it is very toxic. Its common knowledge that some of the most vocal accounts are for people out of the country who are not even registered to vote. People are relating to each other as if the world is ending on 30 July 2018. I am reminded about the following statement from my former chairman Mr Shingi Mutasa when I was still at Zimnat Lion Insurance company. He was quoted as following by Newsday just before the 2013 elections, “My feeling is that for the longest period as Zimbabweans we seem to have this wait-and-see attitude. We are now waiting to see what will happen during elections. In fact, this has been going on since 1980, we are waiting to see what will happen,” said Mutasa." I have gone through six elections. I don’t understand why we are waiting. The biggest challenge is about self confidence and self belief in our own totality. So as long as we are in that space, we will continue to have a challenge with liquidity.”



The best way to tell a story is from one’s experience. I used to be in the same boat as the marketing graduate mentioned in the tweet. In 2007 when I left Zimbabwe I had been a branch manager and the next position was to be an Assistant General Manager (AGM). The thinking that I had from school was that you work hard pass a course and be promoted. So when I joined the insurance industry at the end of 1997, I wrote my first and then only local insurance exams in March 1998 and passed them and then enrolled for courses leading to Associateship with the Insurance Institute of South Africa. By end of 2002, I landed my first management job that came with a company car. The following year I completed my Associateship and landed a bigger job with Zimnat Lion Insurance company as an underwriting manager with an even bigger car and other benefits such as a company paid contract phone.  In 2005, I completed my fellowship exams and it was a surreal moment in early 2006 when I attended the Society of Fellows meeting at the Harare Club with some of the Fellows of the Insurance Institute  who were mainly Managing Directors and General managers in the industry.

In 2006 I was transferred to Bulawayo as the branch manager and that job came with the use of a company house in the leafy suburb of Burnside. I had bargained and was allocated a Toyota double cab bakkie, it did not matter that according to company policy my grade did not qualify to get a vehicle with such as a big engine capacity. I had been offered a job by one of the competitors and as part of the counter offer the managing director had relented and given the vehicle I wanted. When I look back I had this feeling of entitlement. The company took care of all car maintenances, insurance, fuel etc. I would get 300 litres of fuel per month paid by the company. Now I only buy 60 litres per month. The company would buy newspapers for us and I would insist on getting both The Herald and The Chronicles even though they normally contain the same articles. My wife would remind me that we needed to start building our house in Harare and I did not agree as I could not see myself going to live in such a small house when I compared to the company house I was occupying.

On 23 August 2007, I collected my work permit from the South African embassy in Harare. The next evening we arrived in Sunnyside, Pretoria.  There is something that humbles you when you are a foreigner and maybe that explains why foreigners tend to make it in the same environment where locals struggle. Earlier that year when I was still in Bulawayo with no intentions of leaving the country, I had given a lift to a lady coming from Gweru to Bulawayo. The lady had left her job at a South African owned bank in Zimbabwe and was now working as a waiter in Pretoria and what she was being paid was four times what I was earning as a branch manager. So the next day after I arrived in South Africa I started enquiring on restaurant jobs as well as insurance jobs. Luckily on 31 August 2007, I got a job in the insurance industry. I was not worried that I would be starting as a clerk as I thought I would leave and then get a suitable job but that was not to be.

I started applying for management positions in the insurance industry and I learnt that most big insurance companies would not consider a foreigner due to employment equity policies. Also the insurance industry in South Africa does not prioritise qualifications, I have gone to a dozen interviews where they don’t even talk about your qualifications. I remember in 2008 and 2009 going for internal interviews and the feedback I would always get was, “you are not visible”. I just knew then that I would never get promoted as I would never change who I am just to get promoted.


 My first work permit was expiring in 2012 and there was no guarantee it would be renewed. The the labour laws in South Africa do not protect workers like in Zimbabwe.  I was not very secure in the job I was and learnt not to feel very comfortable. I learnt of a Zimbabwean engineer who had been retrenched with a very small retrenchment package, he had a home loan, car loan etc and was struggling. I started thinking about building our house in Zimbabwe and this would keep me awake most nights. The first few years, I regretted the decision I had taken to come to South Africa in the first place. I would visit Zimbabwe almost every month during a weekend. At times I would literally arrive in Harare on Saturday evening and then catch another bus back to Pretoria the same night. I would see how bad the situation was back home and I would come back and endure. With every trip to Zimbabwe, I started seeing opportunities and I knew that I had to prepare to go back home for good. Some of my friends went back during the GNU era when the economy had stabilized and we decided to postpone until we had built our main house. I also knew that I would not go back home and look for employment in Zimbabwe as the salaries are very low as compared to South Africa.

We started sharing flats with strangers in order to save money. I was fortunate that my job paid a performance based salary so I started working very hard, would work long hours, during lunch and most Saturdays. My team leader would tell me that I was earning more than her. In 2009, I decided a career change and started studying for an Accounting degree in order to qualify as a chartered Accountant.  I do not know how I did it, I would come home exhausted but whenever I thought that I deserved better than my current state, I would study well into the night. In 2014, I completed my accounting degree and I failed to get a training contract and it did not matter because what I learnt in my accounting degree is very valuable in the journey that I am pursuing.


By end of 2009 we had saved enough and I took leave, went home and I started building our house and in 2010 my family went back to stay at the house and finish the construction. After my family went back Zimbabwe, I started sharing even a room and I would send about 80% of my salary home every month. Most property  managers charge foreigners double deposits when renting  out apartments and you struggle to get it back when you move out and that drove me to want to buy our own home. In 2010 we applied and all the banks except one were willing to give us a loan on condition that we raise a big deposit. When I got my annual bonus in 2010 I paid the deposit and lawyer fees and at the same time we were finishing our cottage in Zimbabwe. In January 2011, I was so broke and I do not know how we made it through to payday

As a foreigner in South Africa it is very hard to get the first car loan, some Zimbabweans do stokvels (rounds) to  buy  each other cars for cash. In 2007, our company was still part of a bank and eventually there was a staff scheme and I still needed to raise a deposit to get the car. I would wonder if I had done the right decision to leave Zimbabwe. In July 2007, I had been driving a big Toyota bakkie and now in December 2007 I was driving a Toyota Tazz. Locals can finance more expensive cars and I later learnt that most of the cars were being bought on residual finance. A lot of the guys would never own those vehicles. I would feel sorry handling insurance claims for some of these guys because even after 6 years of financing the cars, they would still owe banks more than a hundred thousand Rands and the vehicle would not be worth even half of the debt. At the end of 2010 when I bought my first Mercedes Benz, the bank initially insisted that I pay the instalments within 2 years to match the expiry of my permit. At that time it seemed harsh but now I am happy it turned out the way it did.

In 2011, I had a new manager and he insisted that I act as a team leader and I did so for two months and how I hated that job. I did get very good reviews and I was asked to continue acting and I declined. To me the train had already left the station. That year for the first time, I had made it into the top 2% of the department and won the Top Perfomers' incentive overseas holiday. At the end of 2011, I went for a company sponsored holiday to Thailand with my wife. I would win the incentive two more times and came very close a few more times. I would feel sorry when up to about a half a dozen of some of the guys who had been promoted to team leader positions because they were 'visible' were now being demoted because they could not keep up with the work. All of them ended up resigning. I frequently get asked why I am not applying for management positions and now I have a good answer, "I am working on my visibility". The truth is that I am so grateful for the rejections I got whenever I applied for those internal management positions and it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. My focus is now on Zimbabwe and every paycheck I get is helping me closer to financing my projects in Zimbabwe.

 Now I spend more time daily communicating with people back home in Zimbabwe getting updates on when are we putting tobacco seedlings in the ground, when next are we selling the next batch of pigs. I find that I now know exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life. I have written in my blog how well my personal business was doing in early 2007, that I even managed to buy an Isuzu bakkie for cash around the Easter holidays. My branch manager salary was then averaging R1 000.00 due to the massive and frequent devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar then and the high inflation. My shops in rural Mutoko and Macheke, my minibus and my truck were giving me over R20 000.00 per week. So I resigned in May 2007 and started serving my three months notice. During that time the government ordered a price control blitz and I lost a lot of money. It is understandable that when I settled in South Africa to start over, I was bitter with the the Zimbabwe government. In 2008 I visited my relatives at their respective agricultural plots in Zimbabwe. I came back to South Africa and I said to my wife that although the economic situation in Zimbabwe was dire, I found my relatives to have better prospects than I had and how I envied them.



From my experience unfavourable situations we find ourselves in can either make us or break us. I believe as humans we are born to overcome obstacles in our path. What is normally needed is to change the way we see the world and at times people around us sees what are not seeing and tell us and all we need is to listen. The very first week, I started working in South Africa, African colleagues would come to me and tell me how much they admired Robert Mugabe about how he had empowered Africans by giving the best education and also giving them their land. During my accounting studies, many South Africans would remark to me that they struggled to complete their bachelor of commerce studies because they would not pass the accounting module in first year. In the group chats with fellow South African students, they would struggle with mathematics found in taxation, management accounting, partnerships, group statements. It is no coincidence that most of the private tutors are Zimbabweans. I would remark that all that mathematics they were struggling with was only basic O’Level Mathematics and not even A’Level Mathematics.
 
My experience of living in South Africa taught me many valuable lessons especially the importance of my Zimbabwean heritage. I had initially felt ashamed of coming to start from the bottom but I realised that I was blessed as a Zimbabwean, firstly I had better school education than most people around me and secondly back home, I had access to land back home as land gives a person dignity. Also because of my experience during the Zimbabwe crisis, I was  better prepared than the locals when the South African Rand began to devalue during the presidency of Jacob Zuma. We had lied to each other  that South Africa would never follow Zimbabwe. In 2015, 2016 and 2017 I found myself investing a lot of money in Zimbabwe just to hedge against the uncertainty in South Africa.

The problem I see with many young people leaving school in Zimbabwe is the lack of opportunities and inadequate career guidance. Even during my schooling days there was no proper career guidance. As I wrote my O'Levels in 1993, the career I only knew as better paying was being a medical doctor. I had to concentrate on Mathematics and Sciences and not subjects such as History and Geography that I was good at. It was only later in A'Level mathematics when we wrote the Old Mutual sponsored Mathematics Olympiads that I realised that there were careers such as Actuary. Later on I learnt of Chartered Accountants. In 1996 when my A'Level results came out and I had not made it into the University of Zimbabwe and really got depressed. At home in Marondera, we used to raise broiler chicken and I was sent by my mother to go and buy feed at Mashco and I saw this young man coming driving a brand new Nissan sunny box car. I asked him what he did for a living and he told me he was a salesman, some of my seniors at school had joined the tobacco industry and they were doing very well. When I started working as a temporary teacher in 1996, I saw guys with agricultural, BA, engineering degrees teaching etc also teaching and here I was thinking that people with degrees had made it in life.



I would then join the private sector the in mid 1997 and started to rise in my career. I have written about that in my previous blog    http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-i-have-learnt-in-my-21-years-of.html The advice I would give young people in Zimbabwe leaving school at the moment. If you do get a place at university or college, please take up the offer and pursue the course in whatever discipline it is. It is important to learn something that assists you to challenge as well as open your mind. Learn to relate to people of different backgrounds.  Look at people like Tendai Biti, Simba Makoni and Nkosana Moyo, these people did not study finance or economics initially at university, however even in our current polarized environment we can all agree that they make better finance ministers than the ones currently occupying the position.


I have read  how some now successful people in America after school with no clue on what to do next would first join the army for a few years. What I have learnt in life all experiences are valuable. Young people are very prone to peer pressure and the early years after school are very key, you rather occupy your time and do something progressive. Hopefully you meet mentors in your life, by having positive role models in life such as your church leaders, lecturers, bosses if you go for attachment, genuine business people in the community. Nowadays with technology you can be mentored by someone that you will never meet for example you can follow on Facebook or LinkedIn people such as Strive Masiyiwa, Bill Gates, Richard Branson etc. Mentors are very valuable in one's life as they influence your life towards a positive direction. If you get a chance to get any job, take it. I remember in 1993 after writing my O'Levels, I would sell bread in the township from a bicycle. Some of my peers looked down on me and I am glad I did that job for about 3 months before I went for A'Level.



When I look back to my working life so far, my mentoring started with my late mother and the values she instilled in me, I would later work for many companies and meet many bosses and they would mould me during coaching and  meetings. In late 2002 when I landed a job as an Account Executive at Zimbabwe Insurance Brokers, I was in charge of servicing VIP clients, I would go to companies such as OK Zimbabwe and meet the Managing Director and the Marketing Director, Air Zimbabwe General Manager, IDC general manager, Vice Chancellor at the University of Zimbabwe as well as some of the Deans, Professors and lecturers, Members of Parliament, Business owners, many executives within the SMM holdings at that time our company was part of the SMM group. I would just listen and learn for example most of these people though they had very good jobs but you would see them running successful private businesses on the side as well as commercial farms. As an underwriting manager, I would daily meet executives from insurance broking as well as Reinsurance Managers and at times would go for surveys and meetings at big companies such as Zimasco, Hwange colliery, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe etc.



Hopefully as youth gets enlightened they realise the truth that you must first change your thinking and how you see the world. Any positive change starts by you believing it first. One might have a marketing degree and they are looking for a job in their field, however the truth is that the economy is not performing as we all know. Why not try something else just for a while. In my example above when I was in Zimbabwe I would never consider working as a waiter but just by crossing the border to South Africa in 2007 I was already looking for a job as a waiter. The bottom line is to change one way of thinking.


I was born a son of a policeman in the then Rhodesia and my father would be moved around from Belingwe, Kwekwe starting firstly in Amaveni township in 1982 and then Mbizo township in 1989 and then Marondera in 1990. I also worked in Harare and Bulawayo before I left Zimbabwe and settled in Pretoria. I have been fortunate to have dealt with many people from diverse backgrounds and that helped to shape my perspective on life. Here is something I realised during my stay in Zimbabwe, if you go and look for a room to rent in the following townships: Amaveni, Mbizo, Rugare, Tafara, St Mary, Dombotombo, Nyazema (Macheke) etc. Chances are that your landlord originally came from Malawi. I had a discussion with my uncle many years ago and he told me that when he came back from Zambia in the 70s, he bought a house in Glen Norah and he then sold it as the wisdom was that a true African would rather have a house back in the village. In 1991 after my father's death both sides of the family were not happy with my mother's decision to buy a house in town as they expected her to come back to the village with the kids. Now when my cousins had to go to Harare to look for work, they had to rent rooms. This just reinforces that people coming from foreign countries will seek and utilize every opportunity that come their way more than the average local guy would do.



My wish for young Zimbabweans is that they get to think like foreigners do in host countries. I have this saying, "Zvirinani kuwomerwa nehupenyu kwegore rimwe uchigadzirisa zvinhu zvohupenyu hwese". Do what you think is uncomfortable and sort your life once and for all. Never feel defeated, use your brain. Remember the future of the country is literally in the youth's hands. Right now the roads in the resettlements are not being maintained because the rural councils do not have money. Previously those rural councils would get rates from white farmers, now the new farmers can't afford to pay rates because they are struggling themselves. Whenever I go home and meet farmers, I remind them that they are actually business people in their rights and they must not take their new plots as burial places. Right now the government of Zimbabwe can't pay decent salaries to its workers because the government does not get enough revenue as there is very little production from farming and other industries. People in Zimbabwe complain about unemployment but in the shop they don't buy local goods but they buy foreign goods.



In September 2017, I had been 10 years in my job. The previous month, I had worked extremely hard and got a very decent salary. Even though due to my qualification, performance and experience I should have been in an executive role if the career progression was done on merit, however I was living comfortably as long I kept on working extremely hard from month to month as I did not earn a guaranteed salary. At that time, I had invested over $20 000.00 in my piggery project in Zimbabwe and the project was not going very well not because of the economic conditions in Zimbabwe but due to poor management as I could only go to Zimbabwe every forty night on weekends. I decided to resign from my job and I finished serving my notice on 2 October 2017 and on that evening I took a bus to Harare and I would spend most of October in Zimbabwe. I had always told myself that I would go back to Zimbabwe for good once Mugabe had resigned and I knew my failures had nothing to do with Mugabe. I went back to Zimbabwe in October 2017 and spend weeks in Mutoko buying cheap pig feeds for about 30% of what I used to pay when I was sending money from South Africa.


One of the things I learnt is to always be objective and find out the truth on your own. For example a person who has not been to Zimbabwe in years and rely on the media, would be mistaken for thinking that Harare now resembles Mogadishu. However by going home to Zimbabwe frequently it helps me to find out the truth on my own. I also wrote in my previous blog how vital the right information is. 

I wish the best to all young people struggling to find their purpose in Zimbabwe.

For Africa to assume it rightfull place, all leaders must rise up

A question is posed in the MBA module I was studying this morning, “How much do leaders contribute to the success of their enterprises?” It got me thinking that leadership is required and found in all fields from politicians, businesses, charities, universities and down to a family unit where a father, mother or a first born child must show leadership to transform lives. This July we celebrate 100 years after the birth of one of the most consequential leaders of our generation, Tata Nelson Mandela. In his own words Nelson Mandela says something profound about leadership, “There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, and go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.” I am a Zimbabwean who has been in South African since 2007 and I can confidently say that despite current problems of inclusivity in South Africa, by large Nelson Mandela’s vision has been a success.

Nelson Mandela did his part and cannot be blamed for current problems in the same way as we can’t blame America’s founding fathers for the election of Donald Trump. Leadership is required in South Africa from politicians to improve the quality of education for all South Africans especially in the townships and rural areas. Leadership is required in the industry to stick to the spirit of employment equity as there will be no stability until the majority of the black population feels they are included. The question that all human beings ask before they act is, “What is in it for me?” If people believe they are part of the solution they won’t burn malls. In Zimbabwe there was a community project called, The Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) where residents in rural areas would benefit from wildlife in their area. Community members would protect wildlife in their areas and it was a success.

 

On Sunday 1 July 2018, whilst going through my LinkedIn newsfeed, I came across a post by Bill Gates titled, My favourite commencement speeches of 2018. There was a snippet of a video containing a commencement address given by the Emmy Award–winning actor Sterling K. Brown at Stanford University. I ended up looking up the whole speech on you tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW_iM38_BbA. I was not disappointed after watching the whole 29 minutes of the video. My few takeaways from the speech: all of us must not be afraid to shine as when we shine the world can only benefit from it; we are all not self-made but are part of our community; no one religious group has a monopoly on wisdom.

 Leadership is very key in human development and I am reminded of the leadership provided by Allied leadership in World war 2 in order to stop the Nazi and one can think of leaders such as Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt and also not forgetting the then South Africa’s then Prime Minister Jan Smuts. From time to time, I have had to reflect as a black African that if Adolf Hitler had prevailed all Jewish people, black people etc. would have been wiped out.  The world has become a better place due to the leadership we have seen from the fall of the Berlin Wall, FW De Klerk leading the National Party in political reforms in South Africa. I know as pan Africanists we do not want to acknowledge the leadership provided by FW De Klerk in this regard. De Klerk could have chosen the route of confrontation like what Benjamin Netanyahu has done for Israel.

 

I am a corporate man having worked 21 years in the private sector and 20 years in the financial sector. I firmly believe that the growth and economic transformation in Africa will come from private sector participation. My example of leadership in the business sector is Whitey Basson who led Shoprite Group from 8 stores into Africa’s biggest retail chain. Most of us will only read about Mr Basson in the press when they mention his salary and bonuses and of course that is not the full story. Shoprite now employs 148 000 people across Africa and its annual turnover is almost twice the annual budget of the government of Zimbabwe. Other notable leaders are Strive Masiyiwa who founded Econet Wireless, Aliko Dangote etc. Leadership is required at every level. My most notable leader in my life was my late mother and I have written about her in my blog. My other leaders include my O’Level mathematics teacher Mr Muzite and many more people that I have written about in my article http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-i-have-learnt-in-my-21-years-of.html. I also want to mention my current employer, the company was started 20 years ago and now it employs more than 3 000 employs across two continents.

 

I am passionate about Africa’s development. Whenever I got home to Zimbabwe and meet small scale farmers, I am always reminding them that they are business people in their own rights they must constantly be in production throughout the year and not only wait for the rain season.

A girl eloping to you is one of the hardest thing to deal with for a man

Guys by now you know I like writing so I can neither confirm nor deny that the following events actually happened, I will also not put names of people in my story. Anyway here is the story. End of 1997, I hit a jackpot, I got a permanent job with a South African owned insurance company  in Harare city centre earning $3 000 Zimbabwean dollars with benefits such as pension contributions, medical aid, study loans, housing loans, car loans etc. In Zimbabwe many companies contribute 50% or 100% of your medical aid. So in 1997, I went to consult a private medical doctor for the very first time in my life. My future was very bright, if I concentrated on my studies I would rise through the ranks. In the Zimbabwean insurance industry if you need to get into management you must at least pass Associateship exams. After failing to get into the University of Zimbabwe and then going for temporary teaching, the clearest path for me was to go to a teacher’s college and train either as a science or a mathematics teacher. I had also done a 5 months stint as an apprentice and I felt it was a waste of my brains. I could also train as a Radiographer but I never even applied after one of my former school mate who had also done science subjects at A'Level told me that the job did not pay very well. I missed the Cuban science teachers' training program by a year or so, obviously if the opportunity had presented I would have gone to Cuba without question. After the collapse of Soviet Union, Cuba could no longer afford the generosity of sponsoring students from Zimbabwe. I had also applied to UK universities and at that time they were giving full scholarships for nursing courses. I knew I would never go to UK as it was time to look for a job and help my mother to raise my four siblings and my nephew.

After teaching for a year, I knew teaching was not for me. By mid 1998, I had passed my Certificate of Proficiency exams with the Insurance Institute of Zimbabwe and I was now a permanent employee though still on training and my employer was assisting me with study loans for my studies with the Insurance Institute of South Africa towards my Associateship studies which was payable in Rands. Zimbabwean dollar had devalued sharply at the end of 1997 and it was hard to contribute almost 40% of my salary to service the study loan but I had to persevere. I was not in any serious relationship, anyway how can you worry too much about girls when you are not sure if you could be moving back home the next month. So when I joined Eagle Insurance Company in 1997, there was this girl who had joined a year earlier and was training me and she was very beautiful and I was really interested until we had the Christmas party. The Christmas party was held on the top floor of our office building. The party started very well for me when I won during the raffle one of those iconic Zimbabwe brass watches. As the evening progressed, I saw the girl getting drunk and I saw something going on with one of the bosses and I immediately cancelled her from the register. We would later become very close friends the same way I had male friends and nothing else and we would even go out for movies  and hangout just as 'boys'.


 In 1998, two guys who were in the claims section resigned immediately and the Head of department ordered that I be moved to claims from the underwriting department . When I was now in claims a younger girl joined and I would also assist in training her and we became very good friends first and we started sort of dating. I had been stayed with my aunt and her family in Sunningdale and I was moving out. The new girl’s parents had a house in a low to medium density suburb not very far from the city and she told me I could rent their staff quarters. I am told this suburb had been mainly reserved for citizens of Portuguese origins during the days of segregation and it was not as affluent as other suburbs. So I moved in to the suburbs. Zimbabwean economy can be funny, even as a professional working for a multinational company I could not afford to buy a bed cash, luckily our company had an arrangement with Nyore Nyore Zimbabwe Furnishers (I am told it was the first shop to give credit to Africans during the colonial days) where you could go and buy furniture on credit and payroll would deduct the instalments from your salary and pay the credit store. I went to select a bed and later kitchen chairs and a table as I needed a desk to study from as I was busy with my insurance studies. On my payslip the deduction would appear as, Sounds Kufara. which I am told was the old name for Nyore Nyore Furnishers.

 With the new girl, it was a very emotionally draining, one day we would be happy and the next day we would fight. We worked together and stayed at the same house and we would see each other everyday. When the movie Titanic was released in 1998 it was hard to get tickets and eventually I went to queue at Ster Kinekor Cinemas at Westgate Shopping centre on the outskirts of Harare and bought two tickets. On a happy weekend we went to watch the movie. For some reason my mother got to know about the relationship. I do not know how my mother always got to know about my business even though she was staying 80km away in Marondera, maybe she worked for the FBI. On one of my visit home my mother said, "Your girlfriend is too skinny". I did not want to continue with the discussion, I just kept quiet. The relationship with this girl was very complicated. She worried too much about what other people thought about us. She was Catholic and I even attended a few Catholic church services with her. I did not see any future with this girl. Most of the time her parents would be at the village where they were farming. Her older sister and her brother stayed at the house. The older sister was very strict and I never crossed her path and we were very civil to each other. She girl would later attend my mother's funeral when she passed on in 2002.


Sometime in 1998 I decided to visit my mukoma (cousin) in Mutoko at the shop where he was working for my uncle. I met this girl and what happened happened. Two of this girl's cousins where married to my cousins. It was before we had cellphones, three weeks later I received a letter  from the girl with a serious message. My mother had been clear to me all my life and the message had always been the same, "Dabbie if you make any woman pregnant no matter who she is, you will marry her. You won't go around having babies everywhere". In the Zimbabwe schooling system they were also very strict, whenever a school girl got pregnant, that would be the end of schooling for both the girl and the boy. By the time I finished O'Level a number of girls in my class had already dropped out of school due to this. I also had a practical example closer home. My father's only brother had left school in form 3 (grade 10)  around 1983 after her girlfriend fell pregnant. My uncle used to get very good grades but after dropping out of school his life was never the same. In my final O' Level year, I had a dream that my girlfriend had eloped to me and the next morning I told her it was over. I would meet her again in 1999 when I moved to Chitungwiza and she was looking really fine and had grown into a beautiful young woman, she was still cross with me  6 years later and any attempt to convince her was dead on arrival.


So I took a bus to Mutoko and visited the girl's home and she told me she was pregnant. I was not street smart then and very innocent, I accepted what she said without demanding any pregnancy tests. I went back to Harare and two weeks later she came to Harare with a letter from my mukoma. The letter went something like this, "my young brother, you are now a family man, be strong". A girl eloping to you is one of the hardest thing to deal with as a boy. I had seen it happening many times back in the village and I had no idea it was this difficult. I had a few difficult few days. I had to explain to the girl whom I was supposed to be dating how I had ended up knocking up someone else when we were supposed to be dating. Life can be funny this girl at whose house I was lodging and working with still saw a future for us together and I didn't but not because of the girl that had eloped. I was not ready for marriage, earlier that year another girl I had met during 1997 Christmas holiday back in the village had she asked me when would I  be ready to settle down and I said maybe in 8 years time and the following week she eloped to some other guy. I was still at that stage where you even question the idea of paying lobola for someone else when now in the modern times men and women are supposed to be equal. The girl had come with only the clothes she wearing and the next evening after work I found myself in Edgars store along Robert Mugabe road. I had no clue what size she wore and luckily I found a shop attendant who wore the same size with her and I explained to the attendant that I was looking for clothing for someone her size and she showed me around.

My friend at work, the girl from the work Christmas party asked me why I seemed troubled those days and I explained to her that a girl had eloped. She then asked me if I was in love with her and I said no but since she was pregnant I had no choice but marry her. She then told me that I could only marry her if I really wanted to but not because she was pregnant. I had never thought of it that way. The next day I phoned my older sister at home and I asked her to come and fetch the girl and take her to our grandmother back at the village. I needed more time to process this, I just thought that maybe by the time the baby would be born I would have come around. My favourite song those days was Remember Me by Lucky Dube. My sister came to fetch the girl and instead she took her to my mother. My mother phoned me and told me that I would marry the girl and knowing my mother I knew I would have to do like I was told. My mother then said her daughter in law would not go to my grand mother and she would stay with her in Marondera. Luckily Marondera is only an hours drive away from Harare and I would go to my mother's house early in the morning and leave in the afternoon as I did not want to sleep at home due to the presence of the girl. The few times I slept over at the house I refused to sleep in the same bed with the girl. My mother remarked that it seemed this girl was her wife and not mine.

On 1 January 1999, I went to Mbare musika and hired a bakkie (pick-up truck) and I arrived at my lodging. I then went to the main house and told the girl and her older sister that I was moving out that day. It was obvious that the girl still saw a future with me but I did not. She tried to convince me but I had made up my mind. I knew that day I as walking away from some of the troubles in my life. I loaded my belongings with the help of the bakkie driver and left the suburbs and we drove to my mother's elder sisters house in unit D Chitungwiza just opposite the Old Mutual owned Chitungwiza Town Centre Shopping mall. I stayed there for 2 days and I got a room to rent in Unit J. My mother came to my house and she wanted me to buy some stuff for my younger sister who was now a boarder at girls' Catholic school, Nagle House. The following month my mother came to work and said it was time for me to buy clothing for the baby and we went together to Miekles Departmental stores and I did not have cash and I had to buy on account. I did not know that baby clothing could be that expensive but I had no choice.

I only stayed in Chitungwiza for five months and I met my future wife in Chitungwiza. In May 1999 I got a new job at Diamond Insurance company and I had received an offer that would pay me double my then current salary. It was a welcome relief as I needed a new environment to get away from the girl on whose house I used to rent as we were no longer in good books although we remained civil to each other. I responded to an accommodation advert in The Herald newspaper. I went to view the place in Avondale just behind St Annes hospital. The block of flat had belonged to the state broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting  Corporation and they had now sold the flats to employees. At the back of one of the garden flats there was two rooms that used to be staff quarters and they would now rent them out. A lot of people had come to view the flat before I came, I was fortunate that the lady decided to lease the place to me. Avondale was very close to town and very convenient as there was plenty of public transport and transport was very cheap. I would easily walk to Avondale shopping centre to watch a movie during weekends. Transport in Chitungwiza was very expensive and during peak hours you would stand in queues for hours and hours. I told my future wife that I would be moving to Avondale and she said she envied me. To those who remember 2000 when Jonathan Moyo took over as the minister of information and turned the state media into a propaganda channels, most of my neighbours were responsible for churning out that vile and my house was next to the producer of the 8pm news bulletin on ZTV.

After I just moved to Avondale, I was phoned by mother mother to come home on the next day that was a Saturday. I was told by my sisters that my mother's youngest sister had travelled all the way from Shurugwi about 300km away. On the way home, I was wondering if I had done something wrong to warranty my mother to get her sister to travel that huge distance. When I got home and greeted everyone I was surprised that the girl was not wearing maternity clothing that I had last seen her wearing on my last visit and she appeared not pregnant. My aunt then started the discussion by asking the girl to tell me what had happened. The girl did not look at me and she said she was never pregnant. I started thinking about everything I had gone through emotionally and financially up to this point and it was all because of a lie. I asked her why a young woman would leave school and jeopardize her future. I took her to her relative in Murewa Centre and then caught a bus back to Harare. I arrived in Harare and went straight to a flat that my friend Cornelius Takawira was renting. Cornelius had briefly came back from United Kingdom and I remember telling him and his cousin that I felt like I had been given a second chance in life and I would never blow that chance ever again. Back at the village the girl told everyone a different story and for years I did not get along with my uncle. luckily my aunt knew the true story.

 

The right information is worth much more than money

Comparing notes in Pretoria

 

I took this photo this past Saturday at a piggery project being run by a black South African sister at her plot outside Pretoria. The sister is raising around 1 000 pigs per year. What I have learnt in about 19 years of trying out new ventures is that the right information can be worth much more than money because with the right information you can make money and with the wrong information you can lose all your money. On 2 October 2017, I resigned from my job here in South Africa after 10 years of working at the same level and I wanted a change. I took a bus from Pretoria to Harare that same evening. My idea was to try and manage my piggery project hands-on, we had already invested over $20 000 in the project. I also wanted to grow tobacco on my own since I was not happy with how my cousin had managed my tobacco crop in the previous farming season. I got home in Harare the following evening. On the next morning, I went with Mr. Mereka Maruwira to my piggery project in Chivhu. I have known Mereka since 2002, when I first employed him as a shop-keeper on my very second ever shop that I opened at the farm where his parents had been working in Virginia commercial farming area of Macheke next to our village in Mukarakate communal lands in Murehwa. Around 2001-2002 the farm was allocated to black farmers during the land reform exercise. I would be the first person to open the farm shop after the exit of the white farmer.


Mereka is now a brother to me as over the years, he has been involved in almost all ventures I have tried from managing my lorry, buying and selling cattle for me, going to open and managing my market gardening project at a plot in Kensington, Bulawayo, also coming to South Africa and we have started new ventures, helping to construct our house in 2009, staying at my house in Zimbabwe after we kicked out the last lodger for non payment of rent and now assisting with managing my piggery project. When we got to my piggery project in Chivhu, the worker a son of my wife's cousin was not expecting us. I have also learnt that when it comes to business it is better to deal with strangers and not relatives as it always end badly. The worker told me that feed had run out the previous day and I asked why I had not been told before hand. Around 100 pigs were almost starving, luckily I had brought a sack of vegetables that I had taken from my garden at our house in Zimre Park. I let Mereka do the talking as I was already agitated due to lack of sleep. When Mereka asked if we could get makireshi (maize bran) at the local grinding mill, the worker said there was none and the nearest place we could buy was about 15km away. We then walked to the nearby business centre and we managed to buy 2 sacks of makireshi for about $4 a bucket and that was going to be enough for a day.

 

We then went back to Harare, the following morning we boarded a bus to Mutoko to see my cousin. 3 years ago when I became a partner in the piggery project before taking over full ownership of the project in January 2017, I had spent almost $2 000 to buy and transport a grinding mill machine and left it with my cousin in Mutoko. All I was interested in was to get cheap maize to feed my pigs. Most farmers cannot afford the $1 or 50cents charged to crush a bucket of maize so they rely on batter trade where they will give you a 5 litre tin filled with maize in exchange for the grinding services. During harvest season when maize is in abundance you can increase the charge to 2 tins and you can easily get more than 100kgs of maize per day. When I got to my cousin's place and I asked how much of my maize he had, he told me he had none and he told me some story. I was livid and I kept my emotions in check and decided to take a nap for a few hours and calmed down. It did not make sense that after a whole year, I would be getting such an answer from him. 

Ready to leave Mutoko

At Siyaso, Mbare

Along Mutoko road at Corner Store

 

In my experience ever since I left Zimbabwe in August 2007, when it comes to investing in projects in Zimbabwe,the biggest challenge has been dealing with relatives and workers and not necessarily the economic situation in Zimbabwe. Initially when I started working in South Africa, I was disappointed in the lack of career advancement. South Africa is a complex place where due to racism even black African citizens struggle to get ahead however black citizens can at least benefit due to employment equity. As a black foreigner, I do not qualify for employment equity and many established companies would not consider a foreigner. At times, I would go to the so called interviews where interviewers would not even talk about your qualifications and you would be wondering why you were called in for the interview in the first place. Coupled with the lack of prospects as well as the nightmares that came with dealing with Home Affairs department in trying to renew work permits, I realized within three months that I had to work on sorting out my stuff back home starting by building a house. Towards the end of 2009, I had managed to save some money to begin building our home. I took leave from work and drove to Zimbabwe, pitched up a tent at our stand and started buying building materials and interviewing potential builders.Luckily my first job after High School was as a building studies school teacher at secondary school level.

Around 2001 before we got married, both me and my wife we were working for separate financial institutions in Harare and our employers where assisting with housing loans. We then identified two separate houses in Glen View high density suburb in Harare that we needed to get mortgage finance on. When the valuators from the two banks went to inspect the properties, both properties did not pass the test as construction quality was so poor and both banks refused to bond the properties. I have seen many people based outside the country, they send money to their relatives in Zimbabwe. Some of them misuse the money completely and others will still do construction but use sub standard material. I monitored the construction during my leave and left when the house was above window level. My wife and kids then went back to Zimbabwe in early 2010 to monitor the rest of the construction. In January 2011, we started renting out the house and I also constructed started running a tuck shop at our house and my wife and I would alternate travelling to Harare to monitor the shop.




End of 2011, I started a broiler project at the house and I would visit Harare every weekend of December 2011 to monitor the project. On 25 December 2011, I arrived in Harare and the workers told me that they were battling to find market. I then drove to Mbare Musika and I came with guys who bought 300 birds cash. I then went to Chitungwiza and secured market for the rest of the almost 300 birds and the customer wanted them dressed. I was going to be on duty on 27 December and I instructed the workers to slaughter the chicken and deliver to the customer and I drove back to South Africa on Boxing Day. Unfortunately they did a hurried job in preparing the chicken that all the chicken went bad and we had to throw them away and I lost a lot of money. I then stopped the project.


The business environment in Zimbabwe is very challenging for example the shortage of cash but that can be managed.The high prices in Zimbabwe cushions you when you have to convert your money into hard currency. The current high prices are as a result of the Bond note currency which in my view is causing more problems for the economy and must be discontinued, in December 2017 I wrote the following article and I still stand by those views. http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-zimbabwe-needs-to-discard-bond-note.html. For example the prices of maize being offered in Zimbabwe to farmers is $390 per tonne and compare that with approximately R2 086.00 being offered in South Africa according to Grain SA. Soyabean producer price in Zimbabwe is pegged at $780 per tonne compare that with R4 460.00 in South Africa. The price of fertilizer in Zimbabwe is about twice the price in South Africa however the other inputs especially labour is much cheaper in Zimbabwe. Over the weekend when I was discussing with South African sister and she was complaining that the producer price per kilogram for pork was around R20 and I was telling her in Zimbabwe the producer price can be almost $4 and it is easier to open your butchery where you can sell for up to $6 or more depending on supply and demand. Also in South Africa, they have to buy all the feed from the shops as there are no communal farmers selling maize cheaply. I mean most South Africans have not seen chigayo (grinding mill) in their life. When I told her that in Zimbabwe you can buy sunflower cake for around $100 per tonne from villagers, I really gave her an idea.

In my experience the biggest challenge has been dealing with relatives in Zimbabwe when it comes to money. Towards the end of 2010, my wife left $1 000.00 with a relative in order to pay for plumbing as well as our sons' school fees. The next week, we got a phone call that our sons then aged 8 and 6 where left on their own and they were not going to school and the relative had ran away with the money. Then end of 2011, there was the problem with almost 300 chicken going bad because people did not care. That is the reason why at least one of us has to go to Zimbabwe every two weeks so that we would buy feed on our own as it becomes difficult to trust anyone with money. Towards end of 2016 almost $2 000 was paid to a relative from the butchery that had bought pork from us and when I went to Zimbabwe in December wanting to buy fertilizer for my tobacco and the money had been used and I had to swipe my SA bank card to buy fertilizer. I don't want to talk about how badly the tobacco was managed from the word go. Many people in Zimbabwe are short sighted in that if they could manage funds well we could mutually benefit in that in countries with better economies, the salaries are much higher and also it is easy to get credit at much better terms and we can fund even bigger projects back home. The idea is that you need to have a working project back home before you decide to relocate and to do that you need to raise as much capital as possible for the business.



Anyway back to my story of October 2017. We then walked about 4kms back to the business centre where I used to run one of my three shops from 2004 until I left for South Africa in August 2007 during the infamous price control blitz of 2007 and then resuscitated the shop again in early 2008 before realising that it was difficult to run a shop all the way from Pretoria. I started to enquire and I managed to buy makireshi for $1.5 per pucket and this was much better than $4 that was being charged in Chivhu. That evening I managed to buy 2 tonnes and also some sunflower cake. The next day, my brother in-law came with his two tonne truck and we managed to carry the feed to Chivhu. I then went back to Mutoko and I spent almost a week walking from one grinding mill owner to the other and managed to buy another 4 tonnes of the feed and a friend offered to transport for me for free to Corner store along Mutoko road. A Malawian truck driver on his way to Masvingo Province agreed to carry the feed for me to Chivhu for R500. I had enough feed to last 6 weeks so I started looking at tobacco farming. In October 2017, the bond note was devaluing very quickly and the price of fertilizer was going up. I went to Mutoko and I was offered seedlings enough for 2 hectares. I was sceptical of sending more money to Zimbabwe. I decided to skip growing tobacco this past season. In December 2017, I went back to Mutoko and bought another load of makireshi again and transported it to Chivhu.

Price of fertilizer in October 2017, Harare, Zimbabwe

 

Towards the end of October 2017, I had about two dozen pigs ready for market and I struggled to get buyers for the pigs. The economic prospects in Zimbabwe were very bleak. I came back to South Africa and the next week Robert Mugabe fired his deputy and I thought things can't get any worse. In early November 2017 we visited my brother in law outside Pretoria where he is doing market gardening growing vegetables normally bought by Zimbabweans in Pretoria and Johannesburg. I told him that I was considering establishing a piggery project in South Africa and then close the one in Zimbabwe and he took me to this plot to see what the South African sister was doing. At the plot, I was stuck by the housing that she had for the sows (female breeding stock), back home we were struggling with housing for soars because if you put more than two together they started attacking each other but this lady could put almost 40 soars in one pen. When Robert Mugabe resigned around mid November 2017 things started looking-up back home, another day I got a phone call from a guy who wanted to buy all my pigs and I said no I was no longer selling.

 

 Last weekend we were in Zimbabwe and we had sent fencing the previous week and we tried to explain the kind of pen they must now construct since number of our breeders has also gone up. The more we explained what kind of pen we wanted for the breeders the more people got confused. So mid last week, I bought a bus ticket for Mereka to come to Pretoria and on Saturday we went to the plot so that he could see the plan. We had a very fruitful day as the lady managed to share with us a lot of practical information. When you are running a project or want to start running a project, it is very important to read a lot of information about the project and also visiting those who are already running a similar project as  you will get insight. In English there is a saying, "You do not need to re-invent the wheel", in Shona we have similar sayings such, "Kugara nhaka huwona dzevamwe" , or "Nherera teerera panorayirwa mwana wamambo".

To show the value of information. In early 2007, I was working as a branch manager for an insurance company in Bulawayo. Due to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which can be traced back to 1997, for a long time salaries could no longer match inflation and a lot of people already had side businesses that ended up paying more than their salaries. At that time, I was running three general dealer shops in the resettlement areas of Mutoko and Virginia Macheke. The Zimbabwean manufacturing industry was already on its knees and most of the goods we were selling in the shop was coming from Musina, South Africa. On this particular weekend, I had left work on Friday after lunch and drove to Francistown in Botswana where I would buy clothing and shoes for resale. On the Saturday  morning, I had gone to Musina to buy cartoons of cooking oil, soap, petroleum jelly etc. I left my house in Bulawayo around 3am on Sunday morning driving to Mutoko about 600km away and I would come back during the night as I would be on duty the next day. I gave a lift to a number of people whom I gathered were coming from shopping in Botswana.



During the trip, we started talking about a number of things, I always like to discuss with strangers as I get to learn a lot. Before we got to Gweru a guy was going to drop off and he asked me in passing if sugar beans was available in Mutoko as that year there was a big shortage in Bulawayo due to the fact that the irrigation schemes in Masvingo that normally supplied Bulawayo had been hit by a drought. He then gave me his numbers. When I reached my shop in Mutoko that morning, I remembered the conversation and farmers would come around the shops selling their sugar beans and I managed to buy about 4, 50kg sacks. The following day when I was back in Bulawayo, I contacted the guy to say I had brought him the sugar beans and he started giving me the run around. I then started researching the market and I could see that some companies were offering me about 6 times what I had bought the sugar beans for. I finally settled for a company called Quality Foods and this company was supplying the in-house brands for the major retailers such as OK Zimbabwe and TM supermarkets.The following week, I took leave from work and spent a week buying sugar beans in Mutoko and I managed to get about 5 tonnes and I was able to borrow a trailer and with my company issued Toyota Hilux double cab, I transported the sugar beans in three trips.
 

By the time we went for the Easter Holidays, I had made around R100 000 from thin air and I managed to use about $3 000 to buy myself an Isuzu pick up and the rest against the advice of my wife who warned me about putting all my eggs in one basket,  I invested into my shops and once every month, I would drive to Johannesburg and buy expensive stock wanted by farmers eg solar panels, radios, batteries, kitchenware etc. Every week, I was now making sales of around R25 000.00 and that was a lot of money in Zimbabwe. My salary as a branch manager was only averaging about R1 000.00 even though we were getting monthly increments, however the salaries could no longer match inflation. One of the reasons I had kept on going to work was that I had the use of the company bakkie and now that I had now bought my own bakkie, I decided to resign from my job and start serving the three months notice. I was going to concentrate on my shops, my minibus taxi, my 7 tonne truck that was contracted to carry cotton crop and my market gardening that I was pursuing in Kensington Bulawayo.



Whilst I was serving my notice, the government introduced the price control blitz to try and tame inflation and overnight we incurred heavy losses and the lady managing my businesses was also arrested and she was fined. At that time many people were applying for work permits to come to South Africa at first I was reluctant and my wife encouraged me to apply. The day I collected my work permit at South Afrian embassy Harare, we drove overnight to our house in Bulawayo to collect my certificates and we immediately left for Pretoria and within a week, I started working in South Africa and I opened a new chapter in my life.



Some people have said the current time we are living is one of the best throughout human history and I tend to agree. I remember when I was in high school during the early 90s we did not have internet, if you wanted information you would need to read the whole book just to get a concept. Nowadays there is so much information for example you can go to Youtube and you will see a practical example on how to do something. In the past you needed to physically engage with a mentor but now with the internet and social media, you can easily follow an accomplished business leader such as Strive Masiyiwa and you can begin to learn a lot from him even though you might never meet him in person. Another important issue is to learn as much as you can about business management. In late 2005, my employer funded for my studies in order to pursue the three year program that would lead towards an MBA through Open Learning Centre in Harare. I managed to complete one module before I dropped out. What I learnt in that module when it came to competitive advantage was so life changing in that I managed to apply it to my own personal business and it grew.  



Back to my current situation with our piggery project, I get to visit farmers who have successful projects and I learn practical examples from housing, markets, getting lower feeds etc.