My Non-Fishing Fishing Trip. The Importance of Integrity When in Office.

My view from the hotel balcony in Olhoa. It takes about an hour to navigate through the mudflats to get to the open ocean.

I am writing this in my hotel room at 10 am on Monday, overlooking the marina at Olhão. We booked a Bluefin Tuna fishing trip last year after seeing João, our friend and local restaurateur, land a three hundred kilogram fish. I am unable to go out on the boat due to health and family dictate, so Rozanne, my daughter Storm and her fiancé Duncan have taken my place and gone out with the same captain and boat as we hired last year. This is his web page: https://www.oceanfunfishing.com  

The captain and owner are yet another João, this time João Melo, of the immaculate SAL X, a fully fitted big game fishing boat. To add to my chagrin, I have just been told, as I write this, Duncan has already caught a 200-kilogram plus Bluefin, and they have only been out an hour. I will get back to you on how the rest of the day went after I have a consolation beer with the crew at the dockside this evening. We have a marlin trip booked later in the year in September; hopefully, by then I will be able to go out even if I am unable to fish.

The Sal X leaving without me.

They have now returned from their day of fishing to say they had one further hook-up with Storm in the chair for over an hour before the large fish cut the line when trying to manoeuvre around a buoy. If you enjoy watching ‘Wicked Tuna’ and want to catch a large fish as seen on the show, then this team is the one to hire. The best time is in early July. João informed us he had only killed two tuna and both times we were on his boat. Last year, after two hours of fighting the fish it got hooked up in net ropes on the bottom. This fish weighed 300 kilograms, then one which was badly foul hooked in the tail, causing it to drown (suffocate). His boat policy is strictly catch and release for both tuna and marlin.

Not long after joining the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) Anthony Swire-Thompson the new President and I as his vice sat down for a discussion and agreed on how we should run the Union during our time in office. Anthony’s favourite adage was, “He wanted to leave a legacy by leaving the CFU the same, if not better than he found it.” That being a viable organisation that can represent its members without fear or favour. It would be our task to keep the union relevant to the needs of the farmer and retain the respect of those we had to negotiate within their representation. 

Hence, with the change to marketing and levy collection, we both agreed to maintain its relevance, we must widen our services. We had not only to provide the services that existed in the past but also be proactive and innovative in retaining our membership and attracting new members all voluntarily. I should say that while levies were no longer collected, a farmer's licence still had benefits outside the CFU services, not least the exemption of VAT on some of our farming inputs and most capital goods for agriculture. In saying this, a farmer's licence could be procured not just as a member of the CFU but also cheaper through one of the smaller agricultural unions that represented the emergent commercial farmers and or smallholders. These unions offered limited service for commercial farmers or for that matter, their own members, to the extent they therefore were not self-sustaining.

The small farmers’ unions survived on grants rather than membership or commodity levies attracted by falsely inflating their membership numbers. Despite this, we worked with the other two unions harmoniously having a joint president meeting every couple of months. They loved the knowledge we provided, and in fact, we got on well with their leadership, being Gary Magadzire, head of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU), mainly small emergent commercial farmers and Robison Gapare, head of Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) representing smallholders. In receiving grants the requirement to represent their members to ensure their own viability was not as important as it was to us at the CFU who received no such support.

Storm in the chair. After an hour she lost the fish.

I have mentioned this before: one of our concerns was that some of the commodities over the years had built up wholly owned businesses from funds collected by means of levy from their producers, giving us fears that these, which required raw product for processing from their membership, would see these businesses taking priority over their producing members who they purchased from—a sure conflict coupled with a dilution of their reliance on membership for funding. Examples would be owning a cotton gin and processing the cotton from its own members. So, instead of looking for the best price for their farmer, they would possibly be looking for the best price to ensure their gin remained viable. Possibly the chairman of the commodity and his chief executive would divert much of their time to running the business rather than looking after their members. Oilseeds and grain could fall into this situation if not carefully considered. These are hypothetical examples. The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, as a contradiction, had many commercial enterprises, but luckily, or planned, most were service industries for tobacco growers. These services included input retail outlets and the selling floors where the tobacco was auctioned. As far as I can recall, they never got involved in the trading and processing of the actual tobacco. They had a dream of having a monolith and monopolised selling floor for the whole crop, I was averse to this, about the only thing their President, Peter Richards, and I disagreed on. As it turned out, it would remain untenable with political interference, and new floors would eventually lead to disruption in the orderly marketplace. Now tobacco is sold by contract like most farmers’ products, making them, the farmer price takers not price makers. These contracts only focus on the buyer's profitability and are often found to negatively impact the producer's viability, ignoring the actual cost of production and the rules of supply and demand in their insatiable hunt for bigger profits. 

Duncan next to his fish which unfortunately died but provided the locals with fresh tuna. You are not allowed to sell the tuna from a fishing charter so in the rare event of one dieing it is shared with the community

So Anthony and I were keen to ensure that the CFU represented farmers in the best way we could to ensure the union's viability through membership and voluntary levy. The next thing we discussed at length was corruption, even petty, which came to us mainly in the offer of “freebies” by some lobbying or business group seeking our influence in the support or promotion of some product or service not necessarily to the benefit of the farmers. Our agreed way forward was to reject all, no matter how small or seemingly innocuous although we accepted a free lunch on occasion to listen to a pitch always rejected unless of benefit to our members, not us. Anthony was a very honest man with morals that were much higher than mine. No early evening, let alone late-night carousing for him. We followed a very strong line of presidents who set similar standards. I will not name them all, men such as Jim Sinclair, John Brown, John Laurie, and Alan Burl to name a few whose examples had set very high standards regarding both dedication to the role and integrity. One of the first examples of us being approached was by a farmer seed exporter, who offered a trip to his island lodge on Magaruque, off the Mozambican coast which at that time due to the civil war was only reachable by light aircraft, which he would also be happy to provide. He did not ask for anything in return, but being the astute businessman he was, it would surely not have been because of the goodness of his heart. In rejecting the offer, we never knew what it might have been. 

“An unsolicited benefactor will initially portray themselves as a friend or at least an ally in helping you achieve a goal only to show their true spots as a predator in their demands and an extremely hostile one at that if their demands are rejected.” - Peter McSporran

Remember, what was often required was not necessarily illegal, perhaps only as simple as some information that could be used to the person or company’s advantage. David Hasluck taught me the benefits of unshared knowledge.

"Knowledge is power, and unfortunately those that use knowledge for power share it sparingly to retain that power."- Peter McSporran.

David could be slightly machiavellian, but I always found that it was for the union's or its members' benefit. Being called Machiavellian is not always a compliment, but in dealing with a hostile Government, it was a necessary trait. 

One of the most common offers was access to vehicles at huge discounts for our use while at the CFU. Anthony and I stuck to our old Nissan Sunnys and later small Daewoos’, one of which I was to nearly kill myself. Please understand what I am writing now is not calling one of my successors corrupt; I am just trying to illustrate how small steps in a direction can lead to, at best, a loss of influence and, at worst, a change of loyalty. I am convinced that the individual thought getting close to so-called connected people in the government was a way to resolve the land issue. I must say Hasluck thought the said person had the street knowledge and connection to do so. I have been battling to understand how we ended up with the Compensation Steering Committee (CSC) trying to sell us the Global Compensation Deed (GCD). I tried to instil in my successor, as Anthony did to me, the dangers of being beholden to anyone other than the membership, but shortly after my successor took over as head of the CFU, he and his vice president were soon driving brand new, top of the range, Fords supplied by Dulys. Chris Thorne told me recently, unbeknownst to me at the time, that Nick, before accepting the cars, had sought Chris’s advice, but had obviously not heeded it. A few years later, after Nick had left the CFU, I was heading down to watch a rugby international in South Africa. Waiting in the queue for customs at Harare airport, we were told to stand aside and let some VIPs through to board their private aircraft. This happened to be John Bredenkamp with Nick in tow. I do not think Nick saw any wrong in this. In fact, he insisted on me meeting Bredenkamp as he was convinced that he, being a friend of his, could help the farmers. He could not see the ulterior motive behind Breenkamp's offer of friendship. I differed. I am pretty sure these were the very early steps in the approach by the Government using 'friendly' intermediaries to gain the confidence of people with influence at the CFU, leading eventually to the capture of the CFU by those damn same business people with the ear of the Government and especially Munanagwa. We know where we are now regarding compensation and the GCD.

“It is possible to mediate with a foot in each camp but impossible to negotiate to the advantage or for the rights of one when under the influence of the other.” - Peter McSporran

I would say that successive CFU presidents that lost their farms bore testimony to their integrity—that is until Pascoe came along. I can only think it started in his case with self-preservation followed by greed, while for Orphanides, who never held a senior position at the CFU, I feel it always has been greed disguised as self-proclaimed business acumen.

Of interest to me, being ill, I watch a fair amount of YouTube videos, and many such sessions include the ongoing Post Office enquiry. Much better than Perry Mason due to the high standard of the real-life ‘King councils’ and lawyers involved in questioning the various parties. One such episode included the evidence being given by a belligerent, despicable George Thomson of the National Federation of Subpostmasters, who in theory should have been representing the subpostmasters but due to the fact, on receiving large contributions in the form of grants from the Post Office, found himself representing the Post Office rather than his own members. Sound familiar? I watched a follow-up video by a psychologist, Dr Paul Duckett, who explained the rationale of Thomson’s compromised evidence and how he had been used to argue for the Post Office’s case against his members. So if you are bored and want to better understand ‘capture’ this video is worth a watch. Post Office Scandal - George Thomson

Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.