Oh No! It's Back!
Before I was diagnosed with my stomach cancer my surgeon in South Africa, who was monitoring my PSA count, informed me if my PSA count continued to rise, I should get it checked as my prostate cancer may have returned.
Thus I was in the process of doing just that having had a consultation with a urologist here in Portugal. Unfortunately, this investigation was superseded by my episodes of heart failure immediately followed by the diagnosis of stomach cancer. That is when I started writing this blog to keep me busy during treatment and as many of you know this was followed by the surgery and removal of a massive tumour from my stomach. At my last consultation with my surgeon in January, he said while my blood tests and scans for stomach cancer were still clear and therefore remaining in remission, my PSA numbers had jumped prompting him to refer me to a urologist. It was no surprise therefore when visiting the consultant urologist at the University Hospital in Coimbra (CHUC) on Monday when he informed me my prostate cancer had returned. No doubt over the next few months I will get to know him. His name is Temido which when translated to English means feared, despite this, he seemed very pleasant to me. Therefore, six years after my brachytherapy I am back with a problem that had appeared to have been dealt with. A luta continua.
“The cures for cancer are no longer rare, although remission is more common. Remission has no time limit from my personal experience. Living in remission is not so bad, it helps you appreciate each day better.” - Peter McSporran
As is usual with such things, it is family that takes the stress. After more than six years of living with and fighting cancer, I have learned to take each day at a time. Over the next few months, my concern is that some of my medical appointment days may clash with my few planned fishing trips, family and friends visits including my trip in May to Holland to see friends and my only surviving cousin on my mother's side. All her siblings and my mother and sister along with her parents have all succumbed to the disease. I, therefore, surmise the cancer is from the maternal side as my father’s family had no cancer problems, only heart problems. For myself, I feel fine, just on occasion I have a wobbly day but that has been the case since my stomach cancer and heart problems, therefore, I have learned to manage them and live a normal life with a drastically reduced alcohol intake. I try not to let my health issues interfere with my life’s routine, naturally, much more easily done with Rozanne and my family’s support. Rozanne is not only married to an old man but an unhealthy one. Shit luck! How she copes, I do not know. I have found the hours waiting to see doctors is worse than the treatment itself, so not really looking forward to that. Thank goodness for Kindle and the internet.
“In old age providing your affairs are in order, you do not have to worry about the future, rather concentrate on enjoying each day.” - Peter McSporran
Makorokoza and Mashurugwi.
I presume, like me, many of you have been watching the Al Jazeera expose on the illegal gold exports from Zimbabwe. I was amused to hear on the program to a man that those involved said it was totally legal. This is an example of how much the law has been eroded in Zimbabwe where the smugglers, with the help of politicians and government bureaucrats, can freely exit and enter with huge quantities of cash or contraband gold.
“The fact the smugglers can go through the border with immunity does not make it legal, rather it confirms the regime and authorities are totally crooked.”- Peter McSporran
Imagine how many diamonds go the same way, luckily for them not too heavy. We were all aware it was going on I think, but what is surprising is the volumes which are beyond my cognition. There is no doubt that it is done with the collusion or even under the auspices of the Government hierarchy in Zimbabwe for their benefit. How I remember the diligence of the customs officials at the airport in the ‘good olde days’ searching for the few dollars you wanted to sneak out for your holiday. A few extra dollars in the child’s nappies would have you sweating. Openly carrying a suitcase full of gold, then returning with millions of dollars in cash within twenty-four hours is beyond my comprehension. The sponsors of this and the other corruption are the Government, the very people we are being asked to trust in honouring the redemption of their bonds in exchange for our title deeds. Oh yeah!
“There is a difference between naivety and stupidity. You can only be naive in your trust once, to give it to a known thief is stupidity.” - Peter McSporran
What this has brought back into my daily reflections (this, I do mainly when I am weeding the garden) is the fact that most of this illegal bounty is bought, or stolen from artisan miners, the makorokoza. Poor people in search of a living even more desperate than us in our search for compensation. They live a life of hardship, exploitation and danger for the benefit of those that sit in the front of the aeroplanes wherever they go. This has been going on for years in Africa and is well documented, although on the streets of London or any other Western capital, the wealthy liberals are probably more aware of the dangers of eating meat than where their gold bangle or necklace came from. Not just gold, but in the diamond killing fields not just in Liberia but also at home. Do not forget the mining of chrome on the Great Dyke or the precious stones and now the new wonder mineral Lithium. Sandawana Mining boasts of having large reserves already earmarked for exploitation by the makorokoza. Why the makorokoza? Because everyone can exploit them. They may be provided with rudimentary hand tools or even pumps by the buyers and traders ensuring their debt loyalty. No safety equipment, let alone protective clothing, often, they are harassed by the police and mining officials alike for bribes. No rules on hours worked per day or age restrictions. No underground supports, no checks for gas, no rescue teams, they follow the elusive seams into the rock or deep under the surface, they pursue the gold rich gravel under the alluvial soil as they track along now buried river beds in their desperate search of its gold.
When I was the President of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) my old friend Ian Millar from Dawmill Farm took me out to see what was going on on his farm. Shocking. A moonscape of holes and piles of earth, not a blade of grass to be seen. He informed me death was very common, not just from collapsing tunnels into the gravel deep below ground but also by rival gangs and thieves, the mashurugwi. Their weapon of choice, the panga (machete). The victims easily buried in the readily available abandoned pits and shafts. Why kill with a panga when you can achieve both death and burial by blocking the entrance, no more a hole the size of a man's body in the ground? Even on my own farm, Rydal near Stapleford, we had licensed and unlicensed smallholder miners working for some unscrupulous sponsor in the city. All using the pretext of one prospecting licence to mine in numerous places on the farm. No matter how often we called out the Mining Department in regard to noncompliance of documentation, health and safety or pollution, it was never stopped. Other sites I visited while President of CFU was in the Turk mine area with Cedric Wilde more recently while investing in Mozambique, Manica Province where Malcolm Clyde-Wiggens farmed bananas. There it was more like what I witnessed in Bindura. Mine down until you reach the old river bed and follow it, with tonnes of unstable unsupported soil above.
Of course, much is mined in existing rivers which brings me the other cost. That is to the environment in the form of a scarred landscape, shafts and mine tailings, ruined agricultural land, polluted rivers, not just with silt but also from chemicals such as cyanide and mercury both used in attracting the gold from the soil. It is not just rivers that are polluted and silted, downstream lakes and dams are also affected along with domestic water supplies. Killing fish, illness in humans if drunk and damaging crops if used for irrigation. Rivers become so silted, irrigation systems clog and become inoperable. In Africa, many still rely on water from the river for both their domestic use and irrigation. Farmers never liked miners, a fair bit of time at the CFU was spent trying to reconcile the differences between them.
“The miners are not the problem, it is illegal or even legal purchasers of their minerals without consideration to the damage that has occurred in procuring it . As we do not eat gold or lithium, few snowflakes query its provenance, unlike the food on their plate.” - Peter McSporran
All this danger and hardship just to receive a pittance either from your master or an unscrupulous trader to accumulate into vast hordes awaiting its transport to a foreign land and where banks make it difficult to transfer five thousand dollars legally, but no problem to handle illegal billions. All the gold in circulation must at some time contain some of this ill-gotten gold in its blend making it legal. The lithium for our electrical vehicles will have the same pain engrained in it. Conscience about carbon emissions but no thought for the miner or environment who placed the gold on their wrists, diamonds on their fingers or batteries in their cell phone or EMV.
“When we look at an illegal bar of gold, we should not look at its value to the criminal carrying it, rather think of the human and environmental cost in its recovery from the earth. The same when you pull off in your electric car. ” - Peter McSporran
1986
1986 turned out to be a very good year for me. In the early half of the year, my friend Sean O’Dovovan said that one of his neighbours at the head of the Mazowe Valley had a farm that could be suitable for my needs. That was to remove the seed crops and grains to a red soil irrigated farm as they were now by their expansion adversely impinging on our tobacco crop affecting both yield and quality. Sure enough, the farm known as Rydal on the Marodzi River near Stapleford fitted my criteria. That is, it had to be able to support sixty hectares of irrigated seed maize, sixty hectares of seed irrigated winter wheat and soya. It also had to be within an hour's drive from my home farm. It was seven hundred and twenty hectares with some two hundred and fifty hectares of cleared arable. There was an internal dam on the Banda River which ran through the middle of the farm capable of irrigating a further eighty hectares at any one time. There were only eighty hectares commanded by irrigation at the time of purchase but much of the rest of the arable land was close to the dam and therefore offered expansion of the irrigation. How things differed then. After agreeing to a price with the seller, Sean Whyte, I headed off to the bank to borrow some money for its purchase. A quick conversation with Mr Wilkinson, banks had hands-on managers then, agreed I could go ahead using the title deed as security for the loan of the purchase price. It was a five-year loan which in fact we cleared nearly in the first year with the combined income from the other farms. He did not even visit the farm until after the purchase taking my word on its suitability. Those were the days as I say.
Oh, I had to get a certificate of no interest from the Government, as they had the first refusal on all land. That took a couple of weeks. As a result, Sean Whyte went ranching in the midlands with the cash.
That year, 1986, I was also awarded the Groundnut Grower of the Year Trophy. Robbie McManus became the chairman of the Commercial Oilseeds Producers Association (COPA) and he asked me to be his Vice Chairman. I agreed. Robbie farmed in the Enterprise area and I knew him from the time I worked for the Edwards in that district. Robbie was a human dynamo, who set out in both promoting the growing of oilseeds in the country and improving its marketing. He was very supportive of the ART Farm initiative and like his predecessor, Warwick Hale was a huge advocate of its existence and expansion. He was very inclusive and demanded a lot more of my time at COPA, more than I expected as Vice Chair. He was a good mentor, dedicated to his constituents of the soya, groundnut and sunflower growers of Zimbabwe. Pam, his wife looked after the farm in his frequent absences. Unfortunately, Rob is no longer with us.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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