Must Calm Down, Crazy World, Angolan Adventure.
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Today, Monday 18th, I learned my eco-endoscopy has been delayed a week, not by the state medical services, which are paying for it, but by the private institution meant to carry it out. It seems there is only one private hospital in Coimbra with access to this equipment, even though it can be easily transported. Last we heard, they had it in Viseu? Anyway, let's just be patient, calm down. As a personal update, I had a terrible Friday and Saturday, and if Rozanne had been home early on Saturday evening, I would have asked her to take me to Emergency that night. She was away picking up our son, Selby, and his wife, Maggie, at the end of one of the legs of their Camino (pilgrimage). They are not religious, just doing it for their well-being, country air and exercise. And lots of blisters!! The worst was over by the time she returned, and in desperation, I asked her for a sleeping pill. Wonders of wonders, I went to sleep and the next morning no pain for the whole day, the first in more than a month, although I started to get twinges in the late evening, so I asked for another, and once again it seemed to help disperse the pain. It's Monday, and another clear day. What will the evening bring? Now this is a non-medical assumption, and perhaps later in the week, I will get a more professional answer when I have a consultation with a gastroenterologist on Thursday, but in looking up how the sleeping pill worked, it is a blocker on the neuroendocrine system, and as on my last few visits to doctors it was suggested my pain may be caused by the surgical impact on my stomach’s nervous system. Maybe this information will help when I see the specialist this week, or perhaps they will discard it as nonsense. It wasn't completely discarded, but sorry to say, the pain returned on Wednesday, undermining my wishful thinking.
There is no excuse for my recent behaviour; I have been becoming more and more grumpy (perhaps short-tempered and sarcastic would be a better description) towards those I love around me as the pain persists, with the cause of the pain unanswered. Even playing a game of cards or Rummikub can end up in me saying something underhanded, trying to niggle or upset someone. Something I do not intend to do, but obviously am doing. As I write this, I vow to try to be more pleasant and control my inner demons, which seem to escape through my mouth. I will add something again later in the week on medical after I see the latest specialist. I will soon have seen as many doctors as the number of different medications I have been given. You cannot say they have been unattentive, just baffled, I think. We've seen the new guy, and he is as baffled as the rest, but he provided me with another four lists of tests. Of interest, Maggie took her cat to the vet at the same time, and her charges were higher than my forty minutes with a medical specialist in a private clinic, which cost me €41.
It is a crazy world we live in. Pet food is gourmet, and the cost reflects it. Pet toys and paraphernalia do not just fill the shelves; they fill the supermarket aisles, and their medical costs are higher than for humans. I have no doubt that in Western Europe, many cats and dogs live at a much greater daily cost than many people I encountered in Africa.
In late 2002, my farming partner and friend, Vernon Nicolle, convinced me to go on an exploratory trip to Southern Angola on the invitation of the Government of that country. The invitation came via Manoo Joshi, the Joshi family being Zimbabwe's equivalent of South Africa's Gupta family. Gupta captured the ANC, the Joshies captured ZANU. The Joshis were a Malawian Asian family, one of whom, Mano's brother, Jayan, lived in the UK and supported the ZANU activists during the liberation war, and, through the use or misuse of the BCCI Bank, helped fund Mugabe and Nkomo at the Lancaster House Conference. Hence, their long-term relationship with ZANU and Mugabe personally, no doubt with their self-benefit always in mind. They ran the ZANU business empire using M & S Syndicate, set up before independence in 1980, and ZIDCO Holdings (of which M & S held 55 per cent of the shares) shortly afterwards. At various points, Zanu PF controlled through these entities interests in FBC Bank, Treger Holdings, Catercraft, Zidlee Enterprises, Ottawa Property Management, Jongwe Printers, National Blankets, Woolworths, SMM Holdings, Lobels Bread, Fibrolite, and multiple farms, including Jongwe and Nyadzonya. Catercraft was run by Mahmood Khalfan, a well-known, friendly face at Borrowdale racecourse and, along with all the duty-free shops in Zimbabwe, an easy means of supplying international diplomats in the country with goodies. The directors of ZIDCO were Emmerson Mnangagwa and Sidney Sekeramayi, and the two Joshi brothers, Jayan and Manoo. Manoo used to come to the Thursday business lunches at Harare Club, although, like me, he was not an investment member but rather a social member. As many of the members of this club were business leaders, it would be an excellent place for him to hear what he would not otherwise hear in his own greyer business circles. He could be an amusing guy, very friendly, a big whisky drinker, and would always join us on trips to international rugby and cricket matches in South Africa, where, even when with our strict currency controls, he would openly flash wads of US$ to impress us all. He surely did; the only others who also openly showed such wealth were the tobacco and arms traders.
"It is not a fallacy that all successful conmen are jolly good fellas."- Peter McSporran
So, back to Angola and the trip: Joshi approached Vernon, knowing he and I had already established a farming entity in Zambia, and requested that we, at the behest of the Angolan Government, visit the south of that country to identify and advise on agricultural opportunities there. I was reluctant because I was already overcommitted, but, as usual, I finally agreed to go. I think we set out with Manoo in late October, along with Kevin O’Toole, Vernon, and a pilot I cannot remember. The first leg was to Ondangwa in Northern Namibia, a country I had been to before but never this far north, and from there, through the border, some twenty-odd kilometres north and a further seventy kilometres on very poor roads, to Ondiva, the administrative centre of that southern part of Angola. Namibia is a stunning country, but in essence, it is nearly all desert or, at best, semi-desert, with Agriculture only along the rivers, many of which disappear and become sub-surface waterways in the dry season. Moving into Angola, we had not gone many miles before the grass turned green and we were in Matabele-type savannah.
The soils changed from sand to deep red and in many places, black cotton, the latter making travel difficult in the wet season. The area receives between 200 and 650 mm of rainfall per annum, but many rivers were observed to be flowing. We were to learn that just north of Ondiva, it used to be the main cattle producing area of Angola, and after the usual meeting in the local Governments brushed nylon carpeted and gaudy furnished office we set off on a tour of the area passing an airstrip where we saw a large amount of people sitting beside the runway and were to learn they were UNITA cadres who had given up their arms. The ceasefire had been back in April, UNITA collapsing after the death of its leader, Savimbi, so why was it taking them so long to hand over their weapons? I have no idea. The trip north culminated some two or maybe three hundred kilometres north when, to our huge surprise, we drove into this huge abattoir in what we considered the middle of nowhere. Of even greater surprise, the entire enterprise was run by expatriate Portuguese who lived, ate, slept, and played in the extensive compound around it, where we had a fantastic beef stew lunch, Portuguese-style. The trip back to Ondiva was uneventful except that the soils were impressive and in this area, nearer Lubango, some 350 kilometres from the southern border, rainfall was between 800 and 900mm per annum, more than enough to grow good arable crops and to our eyes the local small-scale crops looked fairly good, although early in the season. For me, after all my previous groundwork in other countries, I had major concerns:
There were no agricultural facilities, where would we buy our crop chemicals, fertiliser, irrigation equipment, tractors and machinery, let alone source spare parts?
Distance can be overcome provided there is good infrastructure, such as roads or rail; there was none.
How would we get inputs in, let alone market the production, crop or livestock? And if we found a market, how would we get it to the buyer, given the poor state of the roads even before the rains fully set in? There would be little local market opportunity. The beef at Lubango was being exported or sold in Luanda, but the further south we came, the poorer the roads, no electricity and very poor communications.
We had no knowledge of the language or the laws and, from experience, wondered whether the latter would be observed. From Mozambique, I knew laws relating to tax and land were very grey, and I mean very, very grey.
There was no banking system.
Lastly, but certainly not least, while the local politicians welcomed us verbally, I was unsure of their sincerity, and they showed no understanding of what commercial agriculture needed to sustain itself.
It wasn’t for me, but Manoo convinced Vernon and his son Christopher to undertake a second visit. Despite this, Vernon was not convinced and never took it any further. I was never to see Mano again, and I believe he and his brother fled Zimbabwe, no doubt rich men. He has since passed.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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