During our trip away from Besterio, our home village, we were informed by telephone there had been a severe storm. Zulmira, the lady who comes in once a week to help clean and iron had called us explaining that on arriving at our house last Monday, our power had been off since the storm which occurred the day after her previous visit. Six long days ago with daytime temperatures in the thirties. This meant the fridges and deep freezers were full of rotten food which she, with the help of our neighbour Lucillia, had helped dispose of. The fridges, while empty on our arrival home were clean and smelled fresh. In Africa a number of times whilst absent from home, we would return to rotten food in the freezers, something to put a cloud on but not enough to ruin any holiday. On the farm, we stored large quantities, even months of food, as shops were many miles away and bulk buying of meat and fish was common. Fresh fish from the dam added to this. The smell of rotten fish could be particularly long-lasting not just in the kitchen but throughout the whole house. So, this time, despite losing the food and having serious car problems our spirits were uplifted by the clean fridges and freezers. This is, despite the fact our car was left behind broken down in the Algarve.
“Too often we get upset, even angry about those things that are merely an inconvenience rather than life changing.” - Peter McSporran
Sadly earlier this week we learned one of our neighbours and a long-standing member of our drinks group had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Who are we to complain about car and fridge problems, these are just so minor in reality. For myself, in remission, I try and make full use of every although age has become a noticeable limiting factor.
As for the car, still no prognosis. It turns out, to transport the broken car that long distance, they accumulate a number of broken down vehicles along the way to load onto one truck to help reduce costs. We are therefore only expecting it to arrive back at the agents in Coimbra later this week. Next week we are meant to return to Spain to meet my daughter, Storm, son Selby and my sister Fiona along with their partners. To this end, with the Jaguar off the road, we have enquired about hiring a car as the train journey would take two days including an overnighter. Yes, we can, but only Rozanne can drive a hire car, not I, being over seventy.
So why is there discrimination on age to hire a car? I decided to look it up and found that the statistics do not support the rule, therefore this age discrimination is by perception. Is that fair?
The wildlife around the house seems particularly active since our return with numerous owls heard in the evenings and early morning, while one evening we caught view of a herd of wild pigs by torchlight in the vacant lot next door. I should mention behind our house is forest, more akin to jungle. Home to Egyptian mongooses, foxes, red squirrels, wild pigs, deer (unseen by us) and numerous birds. The birds are not nearly as striking as we see in Africa but they are prolific and happy to sing for us in the morning. We cherish it all.
A late postscript on the above. My cousin Linda and her husband Robert Hamilton have just arrived in a hired car in a hired car here in Cascais and he is driving. He is also over seventy and it appears some companies will allow it while others may add a surcharge of about €20 per day if you are over seventy. The one we used last week and the one this week flatly refused.
Scotch Dynamite and The Lancaster House Agreement
On developing the farm, one of the hardest jobs was digging through the laterite when trenching to put in the irrigation mainlines. On deep red soil, one single labourer could dig as much as eight metres of trench a day, one metre deep and half a metre wide. We could only do one metre on the laterite. The pipes, to avoid being broken by the deep ripper tine ideally needed to be down a metre with a smooth stone-free bottom to avoid breakage through settlement over the years. Further to the laterite, we had granite outcrops and anthills, which in traditional tobacco production the farmer would leave uncultivated. However, with the advent of irrigation and the cost of installation, it was vital to ensure all the land commanded by it was available for cropping. Wet areas had to be drained, normally by open drains or contour, anthills flattened and if possible any rock outcrops, stones and trees removed.
The anthills were not too bad and generally when flattened in those days mostly by pick and shovel, their clay soil dispersed. Spread over a wide area they soon became productive soil requiring less nitrogen fertiliser than the rest of the field. As tobacco, after basal application had all fertilizer top dressing applied by hand, it was easy to accommodate. Stones and trees were also removed by hand, the trees were used for curing fuel. Many farmers in fact planted fast-growing eucalyptus for curing fuel in the poorer soils of their farms for this purpose.
The granite outcrops were a major problem. I resorted to their removal by using what was known as Scotch Dynamite. That is, you remove the soil from around the rocks then build a large wood fire which is burned overnight. In the early hours of a frosty winter morning you doused the whole lot with copious amounts of water released from a water cart. Hey, presto! This would split the rock allowing it to be removed. This method had to be repeated a number of times as you removed each cracked layer. It was a slow job but effective. I removed tonnes of granite outcrops this way. My neighbour, John Gordon had more outcrops and less patience, decided blasting would be a better option despite the fuel required for the compressors on the hammer drill. To this end, he retained the services of one of our neighbours, Chris Vermaak, an ex-miner and licensed blaster. Part of his irrigated lands were under the main Kariba power lines, so to try and protect them against flying rocks, tyres were stacked before igniting the explosives in the form of a slurry of ammonium nitrate and diesel. Subsequently, John arrived at my house rather shaken, seeking my advice as an errant flying fragment of rock had damaged but not fully cut the main overhead line. On inspection, together we agreed the less said, the better. The consequences could have been very expensive for John although the line was fixed later. I have no idea if they enquired of John on how the damage occurred.
In the meantime, talks were taking place in London leading to what is known as The Lancaster House Agreement. Many an evening both at home and in the bush we would discuss the issue. In our hearts, we knew we could not continue as more and more of our number left the country. As stated earlier, the white population left in Rhodesia were now only 100,000 from a high of 300,000 in the early seventies. Many of those that left, despite feeling we had a just cause unlike present-day Russians, were young men eligible for call-up. This was called, in hindsight, rather unfairly the Chicken Run. Parents were especially keen to send their male children overseas if they could for their last years in school to avoid call-up. Our regular army units were also undermanned, the majority of them now foreigners or territories except for the black units although now, even the black educated population was being conscripted. Worse still, we now had paramilitaries running around under the guise of Pfumo reVanhu, their loyalty questionable at best.
The political leaders of the so-called Freedom Fighters declared they were fighting for the land for the people as their main slogan, not the truth of seeking self-interest power. As farmers, this was our biggest concern, fighting all these years just to lose our land. So when a referendum was held and we were verbally told that our land was secure for at least ten years and even then the British and Americans would pay compensation if our land was required for resettlement if found unproductive, we thought it prudent to sign. In fact, we had little option. Further in our area alone, two of my close neighbours had lost sons as had our local storekeeper in Darwendale. Cornelius Vermaak, the son of Chris, our blasting neighbour. Constant Laubscher, John’s immediate neighbour’s son and Derek Kingsley-Jones whose family ran the one and only grocery store in Darwendale had all been killed in action. The daily toll on the news was rising and most of us were feeling lucky to have survived without injury or death until that time. Our luck could not continue.
Unfortunately, we were to find at a later date, due to Mugabe’s threat to walk away, the whole issue of land and its long-term security was fudged by false promises from the British and our enemies at the talks. In fact, as far as I can see there was nothing about land enshrined in writing within the agreement.
“Always remember any compromise driven by expediency will be most likely regretted.” - Peter McSporran
In December 1979 a ceasefire was called and elections were to be held in February 1980 which would lead to handing power over to our enemy in April of that year. Obviously, this led to much soul searching, leave or stay? Most of us farmers, as our land was all we had, decided to stay. Few of us were under the illusion our troubles would be over following the world recognising the ‘New Zimbabwe.’
“Politicians not only always think they know what is best for others but compound their ignorance by action that will be proven at a later date to have been stupid, even damaging in extreme.” - Peter McSporran
The Thatcher government were very keen to resolve the Rhodesia issue with little thought to the general population or more importantly the security of its own settlers enticed to move there under their rule of the colony. The Rhodesian regime and its internal spies, Special Branch, were riddled with British spies and informers sometimes openly abetting the opposition. Even with this knowledge, they had to admit in future to the following:
“Few at the time anticipated the sweeping nature of Mugabe’s election victory or the ruthlessness with which he would exercise his power over Zimbabwe in the ensuing decades.” - From the official UK Government History Blog attributed to Professor Patrick Salmon
And from the same UK Government Blog which is even more depressing as surely history has disproved the above statement on describing The Lancaster House Agreement at best, a flawed document, at worst, a betrayal to their British white colonial citizens in Rhodesia.
“...remains one of the most notable achievements of British diplomacy since the Second World War.”
How can they honestly claim this?
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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