Floods Following the Storm, Collaboration and Move to Big Brother House.
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Following the hurricane-force winds of Kirstin last week, this past weekend, Tempest Marta hit us, with winds not as strong but much more rain, resulting in more flooding, landslides, and road damage caused by three weeks of continuous rain, making it one of, if not the wettest winter on record.
“We had storm Leonardo in between two female named storms, Kirstin and Marta. The female rage in both instances proved to be much greater than the rather feeble in comparison male rage. A bit like scorned women flexing their muscles.” - Peter McSporran
My heart goes out to those who have lost much of their belongings and household furnishings, not just their roofs. Whole towns are now surrounded by water, with voters this past weekend being ferried to polling stations rather than driving. Before the last storm, Marta, the damage to the country following storm Kirstin was €5 billion; goodness knows how much more from the recent flooding and sadly, more is forecast to come. Firewood is not going to be short over the next five years, as while the more commercial-sized forests will supply the pulping mills, a huge industry in Portugal, many will not be able to do so for lack of equipment and being too small for the large contractors to consider in this time of plenty.
Getting back to the voting over the weekend, it was for a new President, and while I could vote if I wished, I have not registered to do so as I have little understanding of Portuguese politics, other than saying our village is right-wing. This was pointed out to us by a socialist politician a couple of years ago, while canvassing in our area saying he was wasting his time in our village. I have no reason to believe this leaning will have changed. Anyway, the result of the weekend election is that we have a socialist president while we have a centre-right legislature. The president has little power, and from what I gather, at best can delay signing legislation that does not suit him but will have to eventually comply with the wishes of the elected government in regard to legislation.
Talking about politics, I was further shocked to see a farmer on a Zimbabwe news station openly supporting the ZANU(PF) candidate in a by-election in his area, Chivhu. When I was president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), my path crossed with his father, Keith Campbell, on several occasions. A huge landowner and rancher in that area and at that time a respected member of the community, although I have since been told he collaborated with the enemy during the liberation war. I suppose foe or enemy is defined by what side you are on, even us whites were not 100% of common allegiance. Those who were sympathetic to the freedom cause were normally disillusioned liberals, not wealthy landowners. I should say my knowledge of his traitorous actions at that time are based on strong humour rather than fact.
But now his son Craig is openly promoting ZANU(PF) in an election. Perhaps his father believed in majority rule, but if he was anything like his son, it seems personal gain and secure land tenure were the more motivating reasons. Surely any sane farmer or businessman in Zimbabwe cannot ignore what ZANU(PF) has done to the country, its economy, its infrastructure, its services, its people and especially white farmers and not question one's own integrity. I presume he has none, so is more than happy to promote ZANU(PF) on the news as a collaborator for self-interest. As a member of the MacDonald clan, I could have told them never to trust a Campbell.
Getting back to 2002, despite events at home, I was fully focused on our embryonic farming enterprise in Zambia and getting people to join our resettlement scheme, for lack of a better word. Unlike the underfunded schemes for smallholders and even for chefs (political landholders) in Zimbabwe, our main focus was to provide sufficient support and funding for displaced farmers to successfully move to Zambia. We had been using Graham Rae’s house on Penyonse farm, one of the properties he, Vernon Nicolle, and I were leasing as an informal headquarters, but with Chris Thorne joining me, we actively looked for an alternate base in Lusaka, finally settling on a large house in the Jesomodine township. It was big enough for ourselves to live and have our offices along with a couple of staff and offer temporary lodgings to prospective candidates for the scheme. Little wonder this house became known as ‘The Big Brother House.’ It hosted all sorts of transients, mostly for a night or two, but also some who overstayed their welcome and probably only wanted to use our knowledge, not our services. Despite having a more permanent base in Zambia, most Friday nights I would head back to Zimbabwe, to catch up on the winding down of the farm and meet some of the prospective farmers. This meant driving at night following arrival at the Chirundu border post before last light. Zimbabwean roads, there since Rhodesian days, were still in good repair, while the Zambian side was a nightmare with potholes. On one of these trips, attending a promotion meeting for our scheme, I learned that our main sponsors, Universal Leaf Tobacco (ULT) were planning to set up a scheme in the Chimoio district of Mozambique. I was shocked for two reasons, one, they did not inform us they would promote a scheme that would be in competition with ours, and secondly, more importantly, why Mozambique, which not only had a different language but had extremely complicated laws, especially in land tenure and taxation. Like Zambia, all land belonged to the state, but unlike Zambia, leased properties were not freely transferable between lessees; they reverted to the state upon a lessee's failure or desire to exit, along with all improvements. Strangely, you could transfer or sell the improvements, not the land. Try selling a house or building on someone else’s land. If that was not a crazy law what is? The banks had no interest in lending money to farmers because of the lack of security: the land and its improvements were deemed of no value to them.
I had done in excess of ten exploratory trips since 1998 to Mozambique, looking at opportunities there. Much at the instigation of my old friend, John Meikle, who farmed and had and still has a bauxite mine there. I had done soil samples, looked at the infrastructure, including roads, the availability of utilities, service support industries, and, of course, the climate. Other than the soils, I found it wanting and certainly, in my view, too warm and humid to achieve economical yields in flue-cured (Virginia) tobacco. It would have been much more suitable for air-cured (Burley) tobacco. At that time, Rusty Markham was ULA’s senior agricultural specialist, and I often wondered why he agreed to the scheme there. I was further surprised that it was going to be a low-cost scheme. The scheme members would need little cash but they were going to have to make bricks to build conventional barns cheaply, build their houses and sheds, clear the land and start almost like pioneers, although their previous farming life had been far from pioneering. Pioneering most of all takes patience and perseverance, two attributes the tobacco companies lacked. Things had to work from the off and fast, otherwise it could well be scrapped in the next financial year, hence the complicated agreements in my scheme to try to safeguard against this. They are like any corporation; expediency and success come before empathy in any business arrangement with third parties. It seems they would instead try to undermine our scheme from the off by enticing the unwary into what they claimed was an easier entry.
“In farming, nothing is easy. Farming is a skilled occupation that requires continuous effort, patience, as it is bound to the seasons of the year and perseverance to survive through the inevitable hard years. There is no quick fix or quick rewards in farming.” - Peter McSporran
When Rusty showed me the map of where they had taken soil samples, they were all in areas I had visited along the main roads from Catandica, through Vanduzi, around Chimoio down to Susendenga. I not so jokingly said I noticed none had been taken more than a hundred metres from the road. He did not tell me who had taken them. I did not take pride in telling them that it would fail, I remember pointing this out to Rusty when he showed his soil sample map to me at our Indambo farm, another of our leased properties. I had the gut feeling all was not that well with him and the ULA leadership by that time, perhaps he can inform us on the lead-up and decision-making process of launching that scheme. Finally, the criteria we insisted on for our scheme were lowered for the Mozambican scheme, it seemed anyone willing to go would get a place. At our promotion meeting, where one of the farmers was considering this he said we were too expensive, without the $30,000 he could go and start in Mozambique.
“That is the trouble when offers of assistance are cheap to access, they rarely live up to the dreams, I can hardly say expectations, of the participants or receiver. The Mozambican Tobacco was a case in point.” - Peter McSporran
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.