WHAT WENT WRONG WITH PRESIDENT MNANGAGWA?

I normally don’t want to write about spirituality or religion. I remember what my mother’s sister Mrs Konde told me around 1988 back in Bokwe village in Mukarakate, Murewa. She told me that if you commit bad deeds towards other people, you will pay the price in this lifetime. This is similar to the principle of karma.

I grew up in Kwekwe in the 80s and I have written many times about the violence of 1985 elections towards PF-ZAPU, our member of parliament then for Kwekwe was Emmerson Mnangagwa. Senator David Coltart wrote in his Autobiography about the involvement of Mr Mnangagwa then Minister of Intelligence in the Gukurahundi Massacre that saw over 20 000 Zimbabweans being murdered by the state in the 80s.

In 1990 we all saw what happened to ZUM especially to the late Patrick Kombayi the former Mayor of Gweru. The security agents who were convicted of the attempted murder of Mr Kombayi were later pardoned by Robert Mugabe. During 1995 and 1996 elections we laughed off the spurious charges on Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole even though they posed no real electoral threats to ZANU-PF.

Around 1998 Zimbabwe was involved in the DRC war and the current president was named in the UN report on the plunder of DRC resources. In 2000 ZANU-PF lost the Constitutional Referendum and they faced defeat in the coming parliamentary elections. Zanu-PF started violence against mainly MDC supporters and some people were killed and other seriously injured. Towards the 2002 presidential elections farm invasions were organized by ZANU-PF, a number of white farmers were murdered together with an even larger number of farm workers. In the process they destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy.

In 2005 Zanu PF government started with the Murambatsvina operation, the idea was to drive people from urban areas to rural areas where they could easily be controlled to vote for Zanu PF, this caused untold suffering to many people😢 I remember my young brother being told to move away from a room he was renting in Chitungwiza and I had to organize accommodation for him.

In 2008 after ZANU-PF lost control of the March elections, by Mnangagwa’s own admission he took hold of the ZANU-PF election strategy and we all saw what happened towards the 2008 election run-off. In 2009 a child hood friend of mine came to my house in Pretoria after he resigned from the police protection unit and recounted to me and my wife the violence of 2008 and the many bodies that were recovered from Wenimbe Dam. I also wrote about the callous murder of Mr Shepherd Janhi in Murewa😢 what kind of persons sanctions the murder of innocent civilians🤷🏿‍♂️

When Mnangagwa took over in 2017, the whole world was tired of Mr Mnangagwa from SADC, AU, EU, Russia, China, citizens in Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans in the diaspora all gave him the benefit of doubt. No one shouted coup even though it was obvious that it was a coup. There was so much goodwill from everywhere towards Mr Mnangagwa and he was even invited to Davis.

We always used to say anyone who comes after Mugabe would not do any worse. How wrong we were😢 Maybe our president is cursed such that anything that he touches turns into dust. You can’t be the reason that so many people go to bed hungry every night and cry to their god about you every night and then expect to have peace in your life 🤷🏿‍♂️

Events of 1 August 2018, fuel protests of January 2018, police brutality of yesterday and the disproportionate sentence on Chief Ndiweni are too much guys. We can’t keep quiet in the face of such injustice. The government continues with its voodoo Mugabe Economics and many people will be forced to leave the country. It’s tough living the life of a foreigner especially when citizens in those countries are also finding it hard to keep up with the cost of living and unemployment.

God please heal the nation of Zimbabwe 🇿🇼🇿🇼🇿🇼 we have suffered too much. We can’t be held ransom by a few people🙏🏿

AS ZIMBABWEANS DO WE DESERVE OUR GOVERNMENT?

 

There is a saying, “ people get the government they deserve”, I think this is a fair statement. As Zimbabweans we are not victims but we are accomplices in our suffering. As much as we mourn about the disastrous ZANU-PF policies and corruption we are part of the problem. One day I will write about the corruption by ordinary people in Zimbabwe. Dr Nkosana Moyo said Zimbabweans are fighting to be part of the system but not to change the system.

Last year we had an election in Zimbabwe. MaNyoni and I debated whether we should go to Zimbabwe or not as our budget was tight, to cut costs we ended up driving to Beitbridge left the car on the border and got lifts to Harare. The border was deserted. On the day of the elections it was very cold in Zimre Park when we woke up around 3am and went with our neighours to become the first people on the queue at our polling station. We had only taken 1 day leave as we had just started working and we did not have many leave days.

By 9am we were done and took a minibus taxi to kuMbudzi and then got lifts to Beitbridge. We left the border after 4pm and drove to Pretoria. On the way we were listening to SAFM where many Zimbabweans in South Africa were phoning complaining that elections are always rigged. How do you complain about elections that you don’t even bother to participate in🤷🏿‍♂️

The elections in Zimbabwe are not fair but they are the best shot of effecting change, I wrote in the blog how the parliamentary elections are made to benefit Zanu-PF (http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/…/even-two-thirds-majority-att…). The fact of the matter is that ZANU-PF won the parliamentary elections fair square even MDC will tell you that. The only challenge was in Chegutu. ZANU-PF is the master in manipulation but at the end of the day they get the votes especially in rural areas I once shared my experience on that (http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/…/why-there-is-little-hope-for…)

Before the elections on separate occasions, I spoke to two of my friends who are professionals in Harare and they told me voting was a waste of time and they would not participate in elections. A few months ago one of the friends told me that life was becoming unbearable in Zimbabwe and I almost told him why are you complaining when you did not bother to vote. In resettlement areas ZANU makes sure everyone goes to vote yet people in towns just complain.

I have no sympathy for Zimbabweans especially those in neighboring countries. After New Year’s holiday in 2013 I spent almost 3 days at Beitbridge Zimbabwean side due to the huge numbers of Zimbabweans in South Africa who were queuing to get back to South Africa after the holidays. Imagine my shock in July 2013 the day before the elections, it took me less than 30minutes to have my passport stamped on both sides of the border including walking the 1.5kms. I got even cross when I got home in Zimbabwe, the four adults renting our house did not even register to vote😡Estimates vary on how many Zimbabweans are in South Africa. I can tell you if only a quarter of them had voted Zanu-PF would have lost the elections.

The fact that MDC combined got more seats than ZANU-PF in 2008 and Morgan Tsvangirai became prime minister and the economy improved is all thanks to our votes in 2008. Some will mourn that ZANU did not allow diaspora vote, that is a no brainer, ZANU-PF will lose power if they do that. Come December holidays everyone goes home including those who are illegal immigrants. What is more important?

Is enjoying Christmas more important than sorting out the future of our kids🤷🏿‍♂️. If you are deported from Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana etc, what sort of Zimbabwe will you face? About 200 000 Zimbabweans in South Africa are on the Special Dispensation 4 year permits that are expiring in 2021, what type of Zimbabwe will you face if you have to go back home?

As Zimbabweans we get the courage to face crocodiles in Limpopo river but somehow we are scared of our tormentors. The blame goes even to my relatives in rural areas who privately admit that ZANU has no capacity to solve our problems but we still vote for them. People in Zimbabwe are dying from midieval diseases whilst we are looking.

The rest of the SADC region is now fed up with Zimbabweans and it is time we look in the mirror and accept the blame for our actions and solve our problems and go back home. In South Africa over 50% of African youth are unemployed, we compete with them for low paying jobs from restaurants, supermarkets, domestic staff, manual workers in the construction industry, fuel attendants, farm workers, selling goods in the streets.

Come on guys we can’t be laughing stock of the world forever guys. I am remembering the words written by the late Professor Masipula Sithole wrote in early 2000 on the eve of the 2000 Constitutional Referendum,the first time Zanu-PF lost the vote, he said,” The collective wisdom of the Zimbabwean people is wiser”

We deserve better as Zimbabweans!

God bless Zimbabwe

THE OPPOSITION IN ZIMBABWE NEEDS NEW STRATEGIES

Over the weekend President Emmerson Mnangagwa was a guest at a ZCC gathering at Defe, Gokwe. A lot of people were mocking him. Most of us agree that Zanu-PF has failed Zimbabwe but the surprising thing is that they keep on winning elections across the country. 

Last year before the elections ED was also a guest at Marange Church in Bocha and a lot of people were also mocking his speech on social media. In March this year I visited my late uncle’s home kunobata maoko. Whilst talking to my cousin a member of Marange church, I gave him my WhatsApp number and he told no his is not on WhatsApp 😳

The younger cousin then explained to me that the church leader had banned all the church members from using social media. ZCC, Marange, Madzibaba, Magaya’s, Makandiwa’s churches have millions of potential voters combined. A lot of these members listen to their church leaders on whom to vote for. I also gave an example of EFF leaders visiting ZCC churches in Moria, Limpopo during large gatherings and I was ridiculed.

A lot of Zimbabweans on social media are not even in Zimbabwe and are not registered voters yet MDC does not go to change hearts and minds of people on the ground🤷🏿‍

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT PERSONAL FINANCES

Guys I don’t want to judge but come on, why would you use all your salary to fill-up petrol in your car?🤷 Why don’t you for now park that car and use minibus taxis, subsidized ZUPCO buses or even hitch hike. Better still sell that car. I know the economic situation is worse in Zimbabwe as I do have a pig farming project in Zimbabwe, nothing seems to be working there. Also we haven’t received any rentals from Zimbabwe in over 3 years now. This economy is bad for everyone, as the saying goes, “You can’t always control what is thrown at you but you always have a choice on how you react”.

On 2 October 2017, I finished serving my four weeks notice after spending 10 years with my employer in Pretoria. I wanted to try and do my own thing. After spending the month of October in Zimbabwe shoring up my piggery project,(http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-i-no-longer-fear-failure-my-journey.html?m=1).I came back to South Africa. I then bought my fourth truck and one of my mechanics recommend an excellent truck driver. The next morning the new driver was waiting for me by my car. We drove to the truck parking yard in Pretoria East. On the third day we got work and I paid him his commission.

He had told me about his financial situation and things were not looking good, he was a few months behind on his rentals in a shack that he was renting closer to Hercules, Pretoria. His wife was temporarily staying with her relatives in Brits. To my surprise he went into the Food Lovers closer to where we parked and came out with very nice food including flavored water the bill was over R150. During mouthfuls whilst we were enjoying this feast, I had to ask him why he was spending all this money given his financial situation 🤷

His answer was whenever he got some money, he always spoil himself as he would never make enough to meet his financial obligations. 😳 I told him look at me I try not to use more than R15 for lunch. If I wanted a cool drink 4 of us would contribute R4 each and buy a 2litre. If no one wanted to contribute, I would buy 2 Litre and drink 500ml and carry the rest home for my family(pana mhofu mari haibude zvekumhanya🙈)

I think I am a good judge of character so when I got home that evening I told maNyoni that this guy would not last. The next morning at 6am I saw the guy standing by my car. I was excited to tell him that on this day we were going to use minibus taxis and he had to pay his his own fare.

The next day I was going back to my routine of running almost 2km to the train station and then board the Metro Rail to Mamelodi and then run almost 5kms to Pretoria East and Vice versa in the evening. This situation fitted me perfectly since I was also practicing for Comrades Marathon, I was guaranteed to run 12kms from Monday to Saturday and then on Sundays I would do my normal long runs. It made perfect financial sense to do so as the monthly train ticket cost less than R200 as compared to between R50 to R80 daily petrol on my cars . The next day at 6am he was not there, I then ran to the train station as per my usual routine. I even tried to phone him and his phone was off, I then moved on.

Two months later he came to see me and he had a story and he said his wife had left him (I can totally sympathize with the wife, I imagined if she was my sister I would have advised her not to look back) He also wanted his job back, I told him it was too late as I already had another driver. Look you don’t have to live a frugal life, you have to spoil yourself once in a while. It’s like blowing all your salary with friends in a bar before you buy groceries for your wife and kids and before you pay your rent🤷.

The problem is that most of us we live to impress society that is quick to judge. When I moved to South Africa in 2007 my first car that I bought was a Toyota Tazz. I then drove to see my cousin in Mutoko. My cousin asked me why was I not considering coming back and rejoining my previous employer in Zimbabwe. I asked him why and he pointed out that when I was in Zimbabwe I was driving a big Toyota Hilux double cab and now in South Africa I was now driving a small Toyota sedan.

I laughed at this and pointed out to him that the small Toyota Tazz was my own car whereas the prestigious big Toyota Bakkie was owned by the company. I told him that once we finished building our home in Zimbabwe and also bought our own home in South Africa, we would buy a better car.

You should not live for the approval of the society. Maybe it’s time you look into the friends that you hang out with. Not everyone can start a business to improve your income. All you need to watch every cent. In Shona we have a saying ‘ Saga reshuga rinopedzwa ne Teaspoon’ an equivalence of how one a huge elephant carcass can quickly be devoured a piece at a time. Imagine at work everyday you buy two cups of coffee for R10 each, you buy a chocolate for R12, a muffin R15, takeaway R50, cool drink R15 and a packet of cigarettes for R40. Total of R152 per day multiplied by 21 working day it is R3 192.

R3 500 can pay for a monthly installment on a R350 000 mortgage or you can pay an installment on a sedan worth R175 000 and use it for Uber or taxify🤷️.

My point is that hardships don’t last forever but you need to plan and make small and sound decisions each and everyday.

http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-same-income-you-complain-about.html?m=1

Debating the legacy of Nelson Mandela

Many years ago I had an unsettling conversation with my friend a black African South African, she told me, “Nelson Mandela did nothing for black people in South Africa!”. To her Robert Mugabe was better because at least he managed to educate Africans and gave land to his people. My friend had finished her degree at one of the top universities in Cape Town, she told me she owed fees and had not been given her certificate. We both ended up in a call centre. I am not sure whether it could have made any difference if she had been given that certificate as my experience in South African private sector qualifications do not really matter. I have seen so many qualified African citizens frustrated in their careers. It is even worse if you did not get your degree from one of the previously white universities. It is no coincidence that EFF gets its support from mostly black middle class educated Africans as well as the working class.

Of course as a Zimbabwean, I have a different opinion when it comes to the subject of Robert Mugabe. Although I credit Mugabe with not playing politics with the education of Africans which is something that successive ANC governments have failed to do since 1994. Mugabe also managed to impart skills to many Africans and he insisted on transformation in the private sector. The same South African corporates that are resisting transformation their subsidiaries in Zimbabwe have been led by Africans for more than 3 decades now. 25 years after attainment of freedom, the private sector in South Africa has failed to transform and Africans have barely made it into the top management structures.

My nearly 12 years experience living in South Africa tells me that the biggest threat that this country faces is the increasing in-equality. The face of poverty and unemployment is mostly African. The in-equality in South Africa should trouble the conscience of all us. I have seen around Pretoria residents in affluent suburbs booming off public roads and putting fences and barriers making some public roads no go areas as a coping mechanism against violent house robberies and crime in general. My gut feeling is that this won’t work. As long as the in-equality gap continues to increase the crime will get even worse unfortunately. The only sustainable solution is to bring more black people (Africans and Coloureds) out of poverty. This can be done by improving quality of education especially in townships and rural areas, sticking to the targets set out in the employment equity legislation and paying fair wages to workers. A lot of people are leaving the country because they are fed up with the crime.

Over the last months many corporates have been rushing to announce massive retrenchments. As someone who has spent more than 20 years in the private sector I understand that. The companies have to churn out profits for the shareholders. However shareholders must understand that high unemployment in South Africa is counter productive to everyone’s future. Companies should be getting out of their way in providing learnership opportunities for many black citizens who are currently not employable. I also do not support for example the automation at Mcdonald’s restaurants or even self service at retail shops or fuel service stations given the huge unemployment in South Africa.

History has many examples of why in-equality is dangerous. From the rise of the Nazis before the second World War in Germany, the election of Donald Trump in America and the disastrous decision to vote for Brex-it in United Kingdom. It should not only be about profits at all costs as a lot of struggling people start to resent the noble goal of globalisation. I have shared my experience in Zimbabwe when the wheels finally came off. After the Zimbabwean dollar fell at the end of 1997 the economic situation became worse. Robert Mugabe was forced by civil society to draft a new constitution. The constitutional referendum was slated for the beginning of 2000. Robert Mugabe was facing defeat and one of the sweeteners that he introduced in the draft constitution was the expropriation of agricultural land without compensation. We still voted against Mugabe’s draft constitution.

Unfortunately for us Zanu-PF government had a two thirds majority in parliament and they went on to amend the constitution and gave itself powers to expropriate the land and forced out Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay. The government then amended citizenship laws to deny citizenship to citizens who had foreign parentage in order to disenfranchise perceived supporters of the opposition. A plan was hatched to invade commercial farms. In 2000 I had joined the farming claims department of AIG (American International Group) Zimbabwe Limited. Our company insured the majority of the farmers in Zimbabwe. Our village in Murewa was about 4kms from the white commercial farming district of Virginia in Macheke. Dozens of my unemployed cousins back in the village were part of the mob that was commanded to go and invade neighbouring farms. The situation played itself across the country. The police was instructed to look the other way whilst the commotion was going on. The shocking scenes were beamed through-out the world by CNN, BBC, SKY News etc. My cousins and other hundreds of thousands of youth in Zimbabwe were able to be manipulated by Zanu-PF when the party was facing defeat during the coming parliamentary elections in 2000. Within a few years the economy of Zimbabwe imploded and now Zimbabweans are scattered throughout the globe.

My message to the corporates, shareholders and anyone who has power to effect real change in South Africa is that you need to bring more people aboard. When you watch news on service delivery protests in African and Coloured areas you see many unemployed young people leading such protests. The government, labour, business leaders, civic society, religious organisations, academics must put their heads together to solve this problem. More and more citizens needs to feel like they belong in this economy and must feel that they have a stake. At the end of the day people ask themselves, “What is in it for me?”. In Zimbabwe if you compared life in our village and the affluent lives that commercial white farmers lived, you can see why it was very easy for the unemployed villagers to be persuaded that they were the problem. It was only later that many people realised the domino effect that their actions had on the rest of the economy and more importantly their own welfare.

As we sit debating the legacy of Nelson Mandela and his generation of leaders. My take is that his generation did its part in bringing about freedom, drafting a very fair constitution as well as laying strong foundations for important institutions such as the independent judiciary. It is now up to our generation to rise up to the occasion and solve the current problems such as inequality, unemployment, dealing with climate change, continued emancipation of women’s rights. Nelson Mandela understood that you did not have to dispossess someone to help someone but you have to grow the cake more. South African economy has grown since the end of Apartheid and at the same time the inequality gap has widened and that to me is the danger that we must guard against. Just as it was in Germany before World war 2, in early 2000s when Mugabe convinced mobs to destroy the agricultural industry, in United Kingdom when the electorate thought Brexit was a good idea or in USA when someone as incompetent as Donald Trump was elected. The majority might be convinced to elect someone who will destroy the country.

Not everyone can be a business person right? Not when you are in Zimbabwe

There is a debate on the social media currently raging among Zimbabweans regarding the shocking policy announcement by our Cambridge educated Professor Mthuli Ncube our Minister of Finance announcing the return of the Zimbabwean dollar. I have my own views about this and I am remembering the words that my former MD Mr Carlson Chiswo used to constantly tell me during our weekly Client Management meetings at Zimant Lion Insurance company in Harare between 2004 and 2005. Mr Chiswo would tell me, “Mr Kanyoka, you can’t continue doing the same thing and expect to get different results!”. We might have one of the most educated finance ministers who among other things once owned his own asset management company, once taught at Wits Business school, also taught at University of Oxford and previously was the Vice President and Chief Economist at Africa Development Bank. What the government has done fits with the definition of insanity, it will simply not work.

If you are in Zimbabwe and you only rely on your salary, I sympathise with you. We are going back to Mugabe Economics of the period 1997 after the fall of the Zimbabwe dollars up to 2009 when the government was forced to ditch the Zimbabwean dollar. For you to survive in Zimbabwe you need to be doing an income generating venture even something as basic as keeping chicken and selling. The salary will always lag inflation as what is happening now where a civil servant is earning less than US$30 per month. Despite the fact that the government has banned US$ and South African Rand, the prices of almost everything will be pegged to forex. If you have something to sell, you will always be able to increase your price and as time goes on, your venture will be more than your salary.

Those professionals who have a chance to leave the country, please do so. There is no point in being despondent and getting into depression, remember you are not a tree you can move. Eventually the market will prevail as the market is more powerful than even the nuclear Bomb, just look at the once mighty Soviet Union which was brought down by market forces.

The current mess can be traced back to 1997 when the Zimbabwean dollar devalued massively after Robert Mugabe’s government gave in to the demands of the War Veterans and awarded them unbudgeted gratuity of Z$50 000.00 each . That was a lot of money and it was equivalent to my 2 years salary as a temporary teacher then. Some of us who were studying with foreign institutions we saw the changes immediately as we could no longer afford the fees. The government tried to cushion us by subsidising price of fuel for the next 4 years. Some of my friends, workmates and my cousin saw the signs early they left mainly for UK, Canada and New Zealand.

Inflation started to bite and one’s salary could not keep up with inflation. I started to do projects. By 2007 it became worse inflation had entered record books, according to the Cato Institute, Zimbabwe recorded the second ever highest recorded inflation in history in 2008 where inflation topped to 79 billion % an equivalent of 98% daily.

By 2007 many people stopped going to work as it made sense to work for yourself. Professionals skipped the country for mainly South Africa. Many people ended up working as waiters, domestic staff, farm workers, truck drivers. By 2007 I was the Bulawayo Branch Manager for Zimnat Lion what sustained me where benefits such as the use of the company car, subsidised accommodation and the fuel I got from the company. As a middle manager my salary was always an equivalent of R1 000.00. Due to high prices in Zimbabwe the R1 000.00 did not buy as much as R1 000.00 in South Africa. I was being paid less than a farm worker in South Africa. I had been running my own general dealer shops in Macheke and Mutoko where my sales averaged R20 000.00 to R30 000.00 per week. I was driving weekly to Francistown, Musina and Johannesburg to buy stock for my shops. It no longer made sense to continue working. My wife had already resigned beginning of 2007. I started serving my three months notice after the Easter Holidays in 2007.

Then US Ambassador Christopher Dell was quoted having said that with such high inflation levels Robert Mugabe risked being toppled due to the runaway inflation. The government unleashed a price control blitz and arrested shop owners as well as directors of retail and manufacturing companies. I lost tens of thousands of Rands. I remember some of the stock I had bought in Gaborone were sold for less than 20% of our cost price and my manager was also arrested and taken to court. She was charged for trying to bring down the government by way of increasing prices in the shop. Shortages of all goods from meat and groceries became the order of the day and queues became the order of the day. I had always said I would never leave Zimbabwe but this was not the Zimbabwe I had in mind. I applied for a work permit to come to South Africa.

At our shops people started coming asking to pay in forex, we also started to do batter trade for groceries with maize. During the night I would load a tonne of maize drive through Marondera and avoided police road blocks on our way to Mayambara in Chitungwiza where maize was now being sold in Rands (during that time maize was a controlled product). A tonne of maize was paying about R700.00 that was a lot of money then. I did that for weeks and we started to rebuild. On 22 August 2007, I collected my 5 years quota work permit at the South African embassy in Harare. Ma Nyoni and I left travelled for our home in Bulawayo that night. The next morning we travelled to Pretoria and started to looking for a job and I started working on 1 September 2007 and started to rebuild again.

I hope this can work as the government is saying but we have been through this before it is the same script and more or less the same actors so we know how it will end. Right now in boardrooms of companies in Zimbabwe they are busy strategising how they will not only survive but prosper in this economy. We must do so as farmers, small business owners and individuals. You have to deal with what is on the ground. Life goes on, please recover quickly and wake up to the reality.

If you run a business in Zimbabwe you deserve an honorary MBA as you experience in a year what other businesses will never experience in a life time.

I know it is easy to criticise without offering solutions. My suggestion is that Zimbabwe adopts the South African Rand for a few years. We do not need to join the Rand Monetary Union all we need to do is to informally adopt the Rand like we did with the US$ in 2009.

http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-zimbabwe-needs-to-discard-bond-note.html

God bless our Zimbabwe.

THE POWER OF INTROVERTS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4

https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts

I did not know that I was such an introvert until I came to South Africa almost 12 years ago. I am so blessed in that I got a job in the insurance industry within a week of arriving in South Africa. I collected my work permit at the South African Embassy in Harare on 22 August 2007 and that evening maNyoni and I travelled overnight to our home in Bulawayo to collect my certificates and our clothing. The following morning we left for Pretoria. I started job hunting and went to a couple of interviews and signed the contract on 31 August 2007 and started the job the following day.

By that time I had been working in the insurance industry in Zimbabwe for almost 10 years. In Zimbabwe you could not become a manager until you had passed or at least made an attempt to complete the Insurance Associateship examinations. After I joined Eagle Insurance Company in 1997 then a subsidiary of SA Eagle, I concentrated on my insurance studies. At the end of 1997 the Zimbabwean dollar fell sharply making it difficult to raise the foreign currency required to pay for my studies. I persevered with my studies. At the end of 2002 just before I qualified as an Associate, I got a job as a junior manager in an Insurance broking firm. I got to meet many important people such as CEOs of private companies, parastatal heads, Vice Chancellors, Deans of universities, politicians, senior civil servants, successful business people etc and I related with them very well.

In 2003 I completed my Associateship exams and landed a job as an Underwriting Manager for Zimnat Lion Insurance company starting January 2004. Zimnat Lion then was the second biggest insurance company in Zimbabwe and was also listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. I initially doubted my abilities as I did not consider myself to be adequately qualified. I got a lot of support from my direct boss Mr AZ Shoko who was the AGM and head of our department and I was his 2IC and he let me run the department and I did many tasks including recruitment. Also every week we had a client management meeting with the MD where I learnt a lot and my confidence just grew.

In 2005 I completed my fellowship exams and I even enrolled for the MBA degree before dropping out. The following year I was appointed as the Bulawayo Branch Manager and this was even challenging. I was looking forward to enrolling again for the MBA and hopefully rise to an AGM post. By mid 2007 the economy in Zimbabwe was fast deteriorating and a few guys who had reported to me started applying for South African work permits and they would ask me to write them recommendation letters and I obliged. I never thought that I would leave Zimbabwe. I had stayed put between 1999 to 2000 when my friends and my cousin left for United Kingdom. Eventually I realised it was time to move. Before my permit came out, I started applying for management positions in South Africa for posts such as Head of Claims, Head of Underwriting. The feedback I got was if only I had a permit they would have called me for an interview.

So when I arrived in South Africa with my work permit, I thought I would be able to land a job that matched my experience and qualifications. My experience was this was not going to happen so I accepted it. Most of the advertised jobs were designated employment equity positions and as a foreigner I did not qualify and also most jobs required a South African ID but not a mere work permit. It was a period of disappointment, I could not go back to Zimbabwe as the economic situation continued to deteriorate. Within three months of me joining my new employer, there was an announcement that the company would be sponsoring relevant studies. I then applied as I wanted to get exemptions and then also sit for a few papers and then also qualify as an Associate with Chartered Institute of Insurers (UK).

I was called in for a meeting with the HOD and my manager's manager. The HOD suggested why I had not considered first doing the local Insurance Institute of South Africa exams first and I then pointed out to him that I had completed all the local exams in 2005 and he sounded impressed. He then suggested that they would wait for a few more months before they considered my request. I never applied again as I thought I would go home after the March 2008 election that the opposition had won in Zimbabwe. Anyway the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorated sharply so it meant that we would stay in South Africa longer. Around 2008-2009 there was an internal advert for aspiring first line managers. We first had to write a motivation letter which I did and I was then called in for written assessments.

After the assessments we were then invited for face to face interviews in front of a panel of Heads of Departments and other senior managers. I still remember that interview it was unlike any interview I had attended before. I was accustomed to interviews on the other side having done so for almost 5 years as a manager in Zimbabwe. I failed the interview dismally. I went for feedback with my HOD and he told me that myself and another gentleman from the Actuary department had done very well on the assessment especially the mathematics assessment but I had failed the face to face interview. It was a new culture for me, in Zimbabwe your qualifications as well as your work ethics were very key in management positions and in this interview no one even asked me about my qualifications.
A few months later one of the first line managers resigned, I applied and went for the interview and the feedback I got from my HOD was that I was not visible and I did not participate in activities. The impression was that they were looking for an extrovert. I knew that I would not pretend to be who I was not. I remember one of the major lesson I learnt from my mother growing up in her house- you are okay the way you are!

At the end of 2009 I went to watch the new movie - Invictus and I was inspired. I decided to apply one more time. When another first line manager resigned I applied again. I was called in for the interview. When I got to the interview room the only person who came was the HOD and he started giving me feedback on why I would not make it into management. He asked me which managers I looked up to and I mentioned the first line manager who had recruited me and the next manager whom I had reported to after that. He told me point blank that those managers were not good examples had not made it that is why they had moved onto assessing. They were introverts like me. I was shocked, after the interview I immediately called my very first line manager and told him and he later told the next manager and he phoned me and I confirmed what had transpired. Also a lady who had acted as my first line manager for a long time but was never appointed besides the fact that she had an actuarial degree from a top South African degree and was very good in her work. She also complained that she was being told the same thing, " you are not visible". All three of them eventually left the company.

Some of the guys who got promoted where very visible, they would sing at monthly meetings, crack jokes, reply to chain e-mails and were generally loud in the office. Some of them failed dismally and ended up being demoted. I later worked with two of them after they were demoted and they still failed as clerks and ended up resigning. That was my very last management interview in our department as I never wanted to go through that experience. I was fortunate that earlier on in my career I had very good mentors who taught me that you don;t work for a company but you work for yourself and also the fact that if you do your work very well someone will notice.(http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-i-have-learnt-in-my-21-years-of.html)

That nasty experience pushed me towards a career change. I had no prospect of rising internally and externally many companies that considered qualifications were not recruiting foreigners. I had always wanted to study accounting. I wrote my first accounting exams at the end of 2009 and I completed my accounting degree at the end of 2014. I learnt to put my head down and concentrate on my work and earned as much salary as possible. In the first half of 2011, I made it into the top 2% of the department and won the Top Perfomers' Incentive for the first time for an overseas holiday with my lovely wife. At that time I had a new manager and he was baffled why I had not made it into management. I told him that the feedback I got when I had applied two years before was that I essentially had to change who I was and I could not do so.

I was asked to act for two months for one of the first line managers who had gone on maternity leave. Within the first week I regretted why I had accepted to act as it was not what I expected. I still completed my two months of acting. I was happy my team gave me a good assessment and my manager asked me to act for another two months and I declined. My manager then left shortly for Australia with his family. I went on to win the Top Perfomers' Incentive 2 more months. During the time I acted the general manager grouped us into a group of threes and asked us to write a combined report. Two of us were acting managers and the logic was that the substantive manager would guide us. I kept on asking the 'visible' manager when where we going to write the report and he kept on postponing. With only two days to go I realised that nothing was going to come out of this, I had to write the report on my own and presented it in the management meeting. That visible manager did not last long he resigned, up to this day I wondered how he made it to become a first line manager in the first place?

The experience I went through was not pleasant but in some good ways, I refused to become a victim, instead I used the experience to motivate myself. The saying, "Someone's opinion of you should never become your reality", is very difficult to put in practice when the odds are stacked against you, but you owe it to yourself to overcome the challenges. I would work long hours including weekends and I still had to study for the accounting degree and I would write up to 6 modules per semester. Whenever I felt like giving up, I would remember my current circumstances. Also with the good earnings I got I was able to build a home in Zimbabwe and try to start some ventures.
As human beings we are meant to overcome challenges. Where it not for the challenges I met, I would not have pursued all these projects and impacted the lives I did. It helped me to see that I could overcome big odds and this boosted my confidence even more.Years later I am so grateful that I went through what I went through as it made me grow as a person it was more valuable that any degree or qualification that I ever received. To be honest the experience dented my confidence and it took me time to build up my confidence again. I am a survivor.