It is Monday afternoon once again as I commence this blog after spending the morning at the Coimbra University Hospital (CHUC), mostly waiting to see my urologist regarding the results of my latest prostate cancer tests. Good news: There is still no movement in my PSA numbers. What a surprise all round as following my surgery, the biopsy showed cancer had got into my seminal vesicles, which was bad news. A poor prognosis, my surgeon told me. So, to both his and our surprise, to date, it has not progressed. I say ours, as despite the hassle of finding parking, I had requested Rozanne to come in with me. She better understands what the medicos say to me. I have spoken about this before, but sitting in the waiting room of what is known as external consultancy, which means pre or post-surgery or a treatment consultancy carried out by your lead surgeon or specialist. As always, due to delays, one has time to study people’s faces as they head off to learn of their fate. Their thoughts, I presume, include, “Is what I have been diagnosed with treatable? “Has the treatment been successful?” or “If not, what does that mean?” and the worst, “How long have I left?”
“The waiting rooms of the external consultancy in a hospital are places of apprehension and hope. On arrival, both are unknown and, unfortunately, only revealed after the long statutory wait. It is the one place where a few spoken words are guaranteed to change your life.” - Peter McSporran.
The surgeon was happy enough to now consider trying to address my bladder incontinence, so I am back in three weeks to have a ureteroscopy to see if it is fixable despite the radiation, surgery and cauterisation damage. In between this, next week, I have my stomach cancer tests, followed by another consultation with that gastrosurgeon in mid-November to discuss the results. It surprises me how much attention they are giving a seventy-five-year-old foreigner.
“I do love the Portuguese, not just for their fantastic food, laid back attitude to life but most importantly their caring nature.” - Peter McSporran
I got a few replies on whether to give less detail in my blog or not, most saying leave as is. The worst reply was from Roger Manley, who was one of the Gwebi crowd when I first came to Rhodesia. He suggested that if it was going to take longer than my estimated remaining life span, then I should do two a week. Two a week! It is hard enough having the discipline to write once a week. As I said, the main hurdle is getting started each week. Once I start writing, I get prose diarrhoea, a close relation of verbal diarrhoea. Hopefully, this one will be shorter as we have Dutch friends in the form of Erik and Tineke Wiersma arriving tomorrow. Erik was my understudy as Director of Agriculture at AgDevCo and took my place on my retirement. Erik and Tineke have become close friends; much of my admiration of him is not only his obvious ability but his straight-talking. Like many Dutch, he will quickly let you know where you stand in his eyes, and the same is true for the project you are promoting. It is so much more effective than the British way of skirting around the required difficult decisions.
Well, what a surprise. It is now Thursday evening, and I thought I had put this blog to bed when Erik returned from Lisbon on, I now know, a pretence mission with a surprise package. He brought back a mutual friend and ex-work colleague from my AgDevCo days Yasser Toor. What a surprise for me. Yasser, during most of my time at AgDevCo, was our lead in West Africa, a role Erik now has along with the Agricultural portfolio. Yasser, Erik, and I have spent many long nights in the backwaters of Ghana trying to find a solution to the world's woes. He and Erik came to Zambia and Mozambique, Yasser even on a fishing trip to Inhassoro with us. The last time I saw him was at my seventieth birthday party in the Algarve five years ago, almost to the day. What a wonderful surprise; how Rozanne, Erik and Tineke kept it as a surprise, I do not know. Whatever, it is such a joy to have such caring and loyal friends.
A couple of people have remarked on my good memory; for those that may have missed it, I can refer to my bound copies of the Farmer magazine from my time at the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). Just flipping through the early April edition, I came across a letter written to the magazine by Ann Hein. She and her late husband, Clive, farmed Dopton Farm on the Shurugwi road near Gweru. Ann has never been scared to air her views, someone to be feared if crossed, but also very generous and has been and remains a good friend of mine. Clive, Anne, and I had many good times, not just at the Gweru Show but at Dopton, where they hosted me on several occasions. The particular letter was about the need for recognition of the work farmers' wives did and the fact that they needed to raise their visibility by attending more congresses, field days and other events with their husbands. She also said they should be paid for their time helping run the farm. She finished the letter with this:
“And if the wife is not paid, then the farmer should change his accountant, it’s such an ideal way of diluting taxable profits.” - Ann Hein published in the Farmer Magazine in April 1995
I have spoken about how our wives contributed to our farm businesses, referring to them only a few weeks ago. What struck a chord here was the reference to diluting the tax burden. I have always admired the wives' contributions to the farm but have rarely talked about their farm business models. Some of which I considered the most profitable you could find while admittedly adding little or nothing to the taxman’s coffers. These businesses included the farm store. A simple model, you think? These were run as any other retail business. You buy stock and sell stock, hopefully making a profit provided you could keep the storekeeper's fingers out the till. However, being on a farm, the stock purchased in the city or nearest town must be transported to the farm. That is no problem. The farm truck will pick it up. This task normally had greater priority over all other collections on the said day if peace had to remain on the homefront. Then, as both a marketing ploy and a way to reduce the cash required, credit would be given to the farm workers. Credit is easy to provide, hard to collect. That is unless you get the ‘the boss’ to collect on payday with the farm clerk tasked with the amount to be collected, which is recorded next to the workers' name. Disputes over pay were more often than not related to farm store credit collection. The bane of many a farmer’s life. The madams were rarely to be found on those days or at least once only all the money had been collected. Woe betide you if the amount was incorrect. Funny how the female psyche caters for great concern over one's own money but little concern for others. The farm store was also a handy place to buy household goods at wholesale prices, including children’s clothes and farm clothes. Why do you think farmers had uniforms in Zimbabwe? Our clothes mostly came from the same wholesalers. When household funds got short, food would be sourced from the store, ignoring complaints such as “Not Red Star pilchards again.”
Two other farm wife businesses that come to mind are related to livestock: chickens and sheep. These worked under much simpler models. Here, the labour, stockfeed, and veterinary costs went down to the farm while the income somehow never appeared on the farm books. So Ann, yes, we could learn from you about tax, but you women also had some cracking business models.
In April 1995, despite the marketing of crops and livestock being liberalised, the maize industry was still dominated by the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which by then, like all agricultural marketing boards, was in chronic debt brought about by poor management, political interference and corruption. Perhaps we should include corrupt political interference as a stand-alone. Anyway, with the freeing of the markets, the marketing boards were meant to offer floor prices, that is, buyers of last resort when the prices were low in an oversupply situation but sell at the going market price. In theory fine, but in practice, with political interference a disaster. At the time, Tok Arnold was the chairman of the Commercial Grain Producers Association (CGPA) and, in early April, came back to the CFU building from the Ministry of Agriculture fuming over the maize selling price. Yes, the buying price offered by the GMB (government-controlled) was a floor price but more importantly, the selling price was also a ridiculously low price therefore impacting negatively on the market. In that year, the GMB was sitting on considerable maize stocks, mostly from the previous year but also still some imports in the wake of the droughts, and now just at the beginning of the buying season, was offering maize at a ridiculously low subsidised price for the benefit of the consumers, the voters. The buying price was set at ZWD950 (US$115), which was exceedingly low and negatively impacted on the poorest farmers, the smallholders, while the selling price was only ZWD1070 (US$129) allowing millers and processors to buy cheap maize just before harvest of the new crop. In real terms, a difference of US$14 between buying and selling was nowhere near enough to cover the interest costs, let alone the storage, handling and wastage costs without even considering the now huge overheads in running these organisations. Remember, in April, the maize they were selling was all carried over from the previous year, with their annual wastage rising from the old less than 2% per annum from Rhodesia days to the then over 5%, which alone would require a price increase of US$6 coupled with the twenty per cent being a further US$24. These two costs alone were double their mark up! This also indicated the Government had no intention of dealing with the huge debt within its parastatals, which they were adding to despite their utterances on the contrary.
Of course, the millers were delighted. The GMB still had the large carry-over stocks, and due to most of the maize production being from communal farmers, the maize price made the crop unviable and this would set the trend for future harvests. The foundation of human made droughts. Later, they would wonder why there was a maize shortage, and being them, put it down to the proverbial droughts. To say that Tok was having an easy time in office would be far from the truth. I went to the press and attacked the Government on the matter, but then the minister, Kangai, told me personally his hands were tied. No doubt the state house was involved. Once again, keep the urban dwellers happy at the expense of the rural. Ballot boxes in the rural areas are much more easily tampered with.
Towards the end of April, Mugabe sprung a pleasant surprise on us with the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture being split into two ministries. Kangai would take over Lands and Water Development while Denis Norman, after an absence of some ten years, returned as Minister of Agriculture. Seemingly, according to the State President, it was to reassure commercial farmers that we were still needed. Very confusing. However, it made my life for the rest of my term as president of the CFU much more pleasant, having two Ministers I knew well and could easily approach, both accessible by telephone if necessary.
Unfortunately, Denis would only remain for a year after my term finished, when Mugabe gave into the War Veterans demands for huge cash rewards, and he was one of the sensible ones dropped from cabinet. Sadly also in April, Bernard Chidzero stood down as Minister of Finance, seemingly due to ill health but more likely the antics of the Government and its lack of financial responsibility and ever-increasing corruption. Who knows, as he and many of the more sensible politicians we had in Zimbabwe are now dead.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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