Time and Waiting
I was reflecting at the ripe old age of 71 years what had taken up much of my life. I wondered this as the older I have got, coupled with retirement, I seem to have less time on my hands than ever; I am also achieving much less with all this available time. Am I, in old age, no longer capable of managing my time?
Furthermore, time has sped up somehow without me noticing. I seem to be able to sit in a hospital waiting room for longer periods without a building rage on time wasted there. Is it just the advent of smartphones and iPads as opposed to out of date magazines that relieve the tedium?
I think like most of us sleeping is the constant and is with us from birth to death in different degrees. Most people between 6 to 8 hours a day, myself 4 to 6 hours. School was only for a short period so the next constant, certainly in my case, was work. During our farming days work was at least 10 hours a day, often 7 days a week. Even when we lost the farm and moved to Zambia it was rare to have a working weekday less than 11 hours. Sleep and work for me were a constant. TV is now for about 3 to 4 hours in the evening, this is just in recent retirement years. It dawned on me. After work and sleep, waiting was my most constant pastime. At school waiting for the term to end. Throughout life waiting for some form of transport be it aeroplanes, trains, buses, lifts, ships, a tyre being fixed or some other repair to a car, tractor or farm machine. More importantly, waiting to be served food. Here in Portugal service is very quick, while in Africa an hour wait for a simple meal is common. In the army, it was always, “hurry up and wait.” In the war, we spent most daylight hours in OP’s (Observation points) waiting for a CT (Communist Terrorist AKA Freedom Fighter) to come into view. At night waiting in ambush for the same to walk into your designated killing zone. Endless hours, weeks and days mostly of fruitless waiting. In the army or police even before we started any operation we waited hours for orders and deployment.
At the CFU it was waiting to see a minister or a senior bureaucrat. The worst was to be invited to a meeting or function where the state President was to attend. My worst was for the opening of Osborne Dam in Manicaland where we waited for 8 hours for Mugabe in the blazing sun.To make up numbers for the TV, schoolchildren were compelled to attend, and voice their joy of being there in song. Adults were attracted by the promise of cokes and buns. On grand occasions maybe even a T-shirt was thrown in. In many cases the incentive was just downright threats of violence. How many events did I attend when the cokes and buns failed to appear after the departure of some dignitary?
Other waits included waiting for exam results, or waiting for medical results and we all have had to wait at doctors and dentists. For me, these last few months, this has taken up a fair bit of my days.
Therefore the majority of my life, it can safely be said, has been taken up by work, sleep and waiting. When it is by choice - fine and in many cases unavoidable. In other cases, for no reason other than some senior politico, boss or army officer who cared little about the value of time. A waste. However, in my younger days without mobile phones, there was a semblance of getting there on time. Now, how many times have I waited to receive a call on my mobile, only to be told “sorry I will be 30 minutes late” five minutes before the agreed meeting time. I note this is a common trait in the younger generation. It seems being late is excusable provided you preempt this lateness with a mobile call all is well. It is not.
“Being late, making others wait for you is both rude and disrespectful. A waste of one's precious irreplaceable time. It says to the person you are meeting that I am arrogant, your time is of little value to me or anyone else for that matter as I can have you idly twiddling your thumbs rather than doing other things more fruitful for yourself or others.” Peter McSporran
In reflecting on my life, my biggest regret is the time I have waited at the beck and call of others.
Bloods and yet more Covid-19 Tests
This week I have been preparing for a review of my cancer status by having blood tests taken and a Covid-19 test (negative) to enable entry to the hospital for my heart procedure (stop and restart) next Tuesday. A fair number of waiting hours added up to my life tally.
CFU, Levies and ZTA
I am leaving the land issue aside this week as this section is dedicated to investing in Africa rather than my life story. The reason I have included the CFU days with my business ventures is as stated earlier, I gained the knowledge, expertise and networking to allow me to successfully extricate myself and a few others from Zimbabwe following the land invasions. In previous blogs, I told you about the demise of the parastatal marketing boards. Their demise also brought about a new challenge to the associations of the CFU, the voluntary collection of levies previously collected and reimbursed by the parastatals under a Government Act. I have covered the fact that the Union and Associations had to be accountable to their members. Now the requirement, to ensure funding was the need of the services provided to be of satisfaction to their members. Much more accountability. Hence, the restructuring exercise mentioned in the earlier blog.
There were a couple of exceptions, some commodities were members of the CFU or affiliated that already relied on voluntary levies. I may need to stand corrected here but to my mind such organisations as wildlife, horticulture, pigs, ostriches all fell under this category. The one exception to all this was the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA). Tobacco had always been sold in a free market under auction. Notwithstanding this, the sale of tobacco came under strict rules administered by the Tobacco Marketing Board. My good friend Peter Richards can correct me here. Because of the sophistication of the marketing system, tobacco control by a marketing authority, the limited selling platforms (tobacco auction floors), the ZTA was still able to collect levies at the source. Unlike most of the other commodity associations who now had to rely on the honesty of the farmer to pay this levy. The ZTA did not have this problem. By law, if you were a member of the CFU, you had to pay a levy on your production. Fine, but who would police and enforce this?
The ZTA, which was almost an autonomous Union representing Tobacco Farmers had over the years built up considerable wealth including investment in the auction floors, Tobacco Sales Limited, and other subsidiaries. They were affiliated to the CFU while maintaining their independence in both raising funds, collecting levies and spending this levy money. I am afraid the ZTA and the CFU often took the, “Them and Us'', position. The ZTA however offered its members excellent value for money in the form of assistance in input procurement, financial advice, extension, research in funding the world-leading research station, in the form of Kutsaga, and marketing. It had also set up a tobacco college, the Tobacco Training Institute which became Blackfordby Agricultural College, offering diplomas and certificates in tobacco agronomy and management, along with The Tenant Farming Scheme to replace the rule of the now-defunct Land Bank/Agricultural Finance Corporation. It was my good fortune that Peter Richard’s Presidency of the ZTA coincided with my Presidency at the CFU. We immediately started working closely together to the extent we jointly expanded the tobacco diploma course, at the ZTA’s invitation, into a full agricultural management course including arable, horticulture and livestock. This entailed the purchase of Klein Kopjes Farm which fortunately was close to one of my farms in the district of Concession. With the support of Peter, I later became Chairman of Blackfordby Agricultural College, one of the posts I found most rewarding in my agricultural career. The director during my time there was Dave Baxter, who became a great friend. I admired Dave for his knowledge, his management of the college and his personal courage as he continued working through a bout of serious cancer. Many of the great farmers of the past attended Gwebi College, to a lesser extent Chibero College and post-independence Blackfordby College.
In parallel, there were numerous agricultural skills training short courses for farm supervisors, drivers and workers. You no longer can find the quality of the practical training that was offered, much to the detriment of agriculture in Africa.
“Without trained staff, any agricultural business has almost an insurmountable challenge for success, in all probability doomed to failure.” Peter McSporran
Mombasa, Mtwara, Nacala, home for Christmas. Not.
After Zanzibar, we returned to Mombasa to collect more cargo before setting sail back to the UK. On the way south we stopped at Mtwara, a port set in Southern Tanzania built specifically post-war to cater for a grandeur groundnut scheme. Groundnuts were to be grown and exported ensuring Britain had enough vegetable oil and margarine. Yes, post-WWII Britain wanted its own supply of vegetable oil. To do this it was decided to grow 3,000 acres of groundnuts in Tanzania. A port was built at Mtwara and a dedicated railway line to nowhere was built to collect the yet to be produced groundnuts. No formal surveys were carried out on the soils, climate and suitability of the crop. After losing some £36 million pounds (equivalent to £1 billion in today's money) the scheme was abandoned having never produced more nuts than the seed planted. It is still treated as an example of how not to invest in African Agriculture. Can you imagine converted Sherman tanks being used for land clearing? Just one of the many hair-brained ideas used in this project.
For us it was just a very small port, one ship could get alongside the dock back then. Little cargo, cashew nuts collected, with another game of soccer to entertain us. From Mtwara we headed south to Nacala, a much busier port with a large contingent of Portuguese soldiers, mostly conscripts, residing there as the liberation war in Mozambique was in full swing. The number of Portuguese army personnel in Mozambique rose from 8,000 to some 24,000 at that time, 1967. Needless to say, we had a game of soccer against the army with us being beaten in no uncertain terms by a large margin. The game was followed by cheap wine rather than beer, my first taste of Piri Piri chicken although the sauce contained the chicken feet much to my surprise. A great night of comradery with both parties unable to understand a word the other spoke. At about midnight we found the soldiers had disappeared without paying for the drinks along with the barman informing us we were stuck on his premises for the night as there was a curfew in place. Future visits to that port saw us with a self-imposed reduction in our intake of alcohol coupled with an early return to the ship. Of course, as we sobered up we realised we may be attacked at any time, being completely ignorant of the security situation in that country.
From Nacala we set sail for the UK and home for Christmas. Our first port of call was to be Sunderland. After a very rough passage through the Bay of Biscay, instead, we found ourselves stuck off the coast in the North Sea for Christmas whilst some industrial action on the docks was being resolved. The North Sea was a bleak, stormy, cold place at Christmas. I was amazed by the small fishing vessels that could be seen leaving and arriving in the foulest weather. They looked like tiny cockles floating on the tempestuous seas. I really began to wonder if I wanted to spend my life waiting at the whim of the British docker. I was already in awe of Africa, its possibilities and the seeds for my future life there had now been sown. Not as a sailor, rather as a farmer.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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