Medical Update, Farmers Busy Building their New Curing Sheds in Zambia and the Chinese.

Moody skies but no rain

Well, I have been waiting for an echo-endoscopy, which I finally had yesterday, and they could not identify anything that may be causing my pain and now nausea. No sign of cancer either, but maybe the nausea is due to the strong antibiotics I am taking for a urinary infection and stomach parasites. It is a ten-day course; therefore, I will only know in another four days if this is the case. My arrhythmia has returned, but that was expected; they will leave my heart to get on with it.

Meanwhile, back in 2003, most of the farmers who had joined our scheme were moving. In total, including our scheme, other schemes, and individuals who found their own means, reading from my notes, some 150 farmers moved from Zimbabwe to Zambia in that period. There are probably many more now. We sold our first crop and were disappointed that, grade for grade, we were offered lower prices than we had achieved the previous year in Zimbabwe. Although the tobacco went onto the auction floor, nearly, if not all, the crop was contracted to one of the tobacco buying companies, the main ones being Zambia Leaf Tobacco (a subsidiary of Universal Leaf Africa), Tombwe, a local Zambian company, and Alliance One, a merger of a number of companies which in Zimbabwe, we knew as Dimon. Other Zimbabwean companies considered moving, but at that time, they did not. Tombwe had the only tobacco processing plant, which was considered unacceptable to our sponsor, Universal Leaf Africa (ULA). They informed the powers that be that they would eventually build a new processing plant in Zambia, but initially, they would process their purchases in Zimbabwe. This promise, which never materialised, has long been forgotten, but they were issued a buying licence anyway.  

“Corporate managers are like politicians; what they say and what they actually do can be at great variance.” - Peter McSporran

With all the tobacco companies working on the grading system, which was conducted by the Zambia Tobacco Marketing Board, the idea of a free and fair auction just did not apply. Yes, there were buyers, but as each producer held a contract, they were forced to sell to the contractor or sponsor one and the same. I have little doubt the price per grade was fixed informally between them before the season. 

“When the price is fixed by the buyers, just as many agricultural products in the UK are by the supermarkets, then the producer becomes a price taker, not a price maker.” - Peter McSporran

The Shanatsi Tobacco Curing Tunnel being built under the supervision of Campbel Dunlop.

This week, I contacted Dave Bradshaw to try to remind me of the events around that time. He does sort of recall, in line with my recollections, that is, he started recruiting for his Tenant Farming Scheme in November 2002 after thrashing out numbers with Tony Butler, the ULA numbers man. When he arrived in Zambia, I took him north to Mkushi and, after seeing moss growing in Gordon Chance’s maize fields, decided it was too wet and went off to secure land around the Choma/Kaloma areas in Southern Province. Sensibly, as surprisingly, they are on the same parallel as Karoi in Zimbabwe, with Zambia generally being north of Zimbabwe. It also had the same climate and altitude as Karoi. When he told me the target's yield and prices in hindsight, they were impossible. Like our scheme, the tobacco companies never raised their buying price in any real terms for four years and with most of our inputs coming from South Africa, where the Rand strengthened substantially against the $US it was going to prove very hard to survive. Dave had this to say in his communication this week:

“As you will recall, the presumed achievable targets were not possible within the ZAMLEAF ULA constraints on financing and selling tobacco in their warehouse without any form of arbitration or comeback.” - Dave Bradshaw 

The target yield for both schemes was 2,500 kilograms per hectare. As we found in many areas of Zambia, despite the altitude being the same as in Zimbabwe, the tobacco ripened much faster, so to achieve these yields, you needed irrigation. As it would prove, with prices frozen, the profitable yield was closer to 3,000 kilograms per hectare. Luckily, the installation of irrigation allowed for winter crops and supplementary irrigated high-value crops such as seed maize to be grown, which was to be the saviour of many of these farming exiles.

One of our early seed maize crops in Zambia

At the same time, I was also spending time in our Lusaka offices, that is, the Agricultural Advisors International (AAI) offices, where Chris Thorne and Craig McMillan were running operations, with the assistance of Marc, Chris's son. My day started shortly after four am, and many a night I would only get home after eight, although from time to time we would stop at O’Hagens at Manda Hill for a beer on the way home. Then one fateful day, three gentlemen and a lady came to our offices and laid out a business plan for a timber project in Western Province. They were led by Jones Akapelwa, a Lozi from Zambia's Western Province and a former director of Forestry in Zambia. A really nice gentleman who became a good friend of mine along with a lady Mary Dimbo, a Zambian lady who had been the past State President Kenneth Kuanda’s private secretary, a very nice lady along with an ex-senior manager of BCCI Bank, an Indian gentleman, whose name I cannot recall and finally a Chinese man, John Chang, who was also a very nice gentleman but unbeknown to me, was not his own master. 

“In doing business with the Chinese, nearly in every instance the people you meet are not the ones pulling the strings.” - Peter McSporran

I resisted their approaches for many months, then one day they came into the office with Colin Kelly, a timber man from Mutare and with that I agreed to at least visit the site in Sesheke where they planned to set up a sawmill to harvest Rhodesian teak. This was my second-biggest mistake in Zambia, but, in retrospect, a wonderful experience that involved travel, time in the forests, intrigue, deceit, and, finally, numerous court cases, with myself as the defendant in both criminal and civil cases. I should have been more wary, as I knew the Chinese by reputation, and the Indian gentleman whose name I can no longer remember having been with BCCI, the vehicle used by the Joshi brothers to finance ZANU-PF to the Lancaster House talks and who had led to the downfall of my good friends the Rossiers’ farming enterprise back in Darwendale when Francis borrowed money from them at the expense of disposing the services of his old reputable bank. 

“If money is too easy to access, that is, to borrow, it is generally much harder to repay. Easy loans always come with complicated small print.” - Peter McSporran

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