Painful Week, Farm Winding Down, and Progress in Zambia.

Typical farmer. After complaining about too much. rain after a dry month, wanting it again. It is promised next week.

Unfortunately for me, my stomach pain has returned with two nights of extreme discomfort this week. Following the second one, in discussion, Rozanne and I have decided that if it returns badly this week, I will go to the emergency department at CHUC. If nothing else, at the CHUC, all required tests will be performed immediately to identify the problem and the required treatment. My pancreas seems to be functioning OK now; my blood sugars are back to normal, and the blood tests indicated they were fine, although I am told one of my medications may be interfering with that result. I am still waiting for my ultrasound and colonoscopy, both to be carried out by private clinics. Although I attend the state doctor, he referred me to private facilities to expedite the tests, which is more and more normal now. So next week I have my ultrasound, and two weeks after that my colonoscopy. Even private medical services are very busy now, no doubt in supporting the state health system. Hopefully, I do not have to go to the emergency department; they must be sick of my face there, although they are always most helpful. 

I remember clearly as a child, perhaps when I was only six, my father told me at the time of my mother falling ill with her terminal cancer, perhaps treatable these days, that all the money in the world will not buy you health. I did not understand the cancer bit, but that she was very ill. So often have I heard that since then, but it must have had a huge impact, as I can clearly remember the time and place it was said to my sister Morag and me in the farm van. He himself had to give up farming due to poor health, losing the life he loved and Morag, as did her mum, also died of cancer.

The cherry trees at our entrance

In 2002, the last tobacco crop had been harvested on the farms in Darwendale, and in the shed, all that remained was to grade and sell it. In a normal year, easy enough, but now our labour force could see the writing on the wall, with the cattle and pigs being sold and equipment being moved off the farm at rock-bottom prices. I remember one evening arriving on the farm with them, demanding a personal meeting, which I decided best done on my own when things got really heated with them, more so the women threatening to kill me there and then. People I had worked with and known, and their families, for many years, demanding something I could not give them. A job. Luckily, I talked my way out of this, and I hoped that they would still see me as the boss and not threaten my managers, but they also were having a tough time with two of them being abducted. 

Getting back to the cattle. Who would buy cattle if their farm was also likely to be taken? All my mature cattle, including my pedigree herd of Droughtmasters, were sent to slaughter, along with their genetics, while the youngstock were bought by feedlots to be reared for slaughter. A really sad tale, especially affecting my cattle manager, Lady Daphne Powell. She treated the droughtmasters as her babies, and they brought her much happiness. I spoke to her only this week and, as always, tells me her days with us on Mede Farm were the happiest of her life. She could no longer stay on the farm, as at night the war vets would come and ‘jambanja’ her Mede cottage, threatening her with rape and or death. Awful. No law and order, no one to come and protect you. 

“It is a very lonely and scary experience when your life and property are threatened with the knowledge that, due to it being state-instigated, the police either would not intervene, and in many cases joined the thugs. They would, however, happily arrest anyone who came to your aid.” - Peter McSporran

Just this week, I listened to a very moving interview with Deon Theron, a dairy farmer from Beatrice, about the violent takeover of his farms. He recalled the day he dropped off his trusted farm foreman, whom the police had requested to interview after an incident when Deon himself was nearly killed. Reassuring his foreman, he would be OK, after all, it was a police station, only to be called later the same day to collect his battered body. Beaten to death in a police station, his only crime was being seen too close to a white farmer and giving Deon a warning that they were coming to kill him. This had probably saved Deon's life earlier.

We also, at any one time, would have up to two thousand pigs to get rid of. This we did by stopping breeding the sows and selling those fattened when ready so by then we had reduced their numbers significantly, but at the end many were sold underweight just to get them off the farm. All my endeavours were destroyed. I tried not to think about it by focusing on my Zambian interests. Funnily enough, every time I returned to Zimbabwe, I would receive calls from so-called politicos with connections offering to have my problems gone. These were chancers just looking to fleece us, but I could not help but wonder how they knew I was in the country, as they would stop once I left again. I was also having hassles smuggling money through the border, as the searches there were becoming more and more efficient as they learned the methods used by those fleeing with foreign currency. Some of it was a loan from a commodity company to grow a crop for them. Unfortunately, it was in very small denominations and although in value not a lot, ensuring many notes were hidden in my Land Rover. I will not mention the commodity company, as they still operate in Zimbabwe.

I was still coming back to Zimbabwe every two weeks while the running down of the farm was left in Ian Lindsay's more than capable hands, assisted by Dave Craft and Wayne Marias, my remaining managers. Joey Marias kept the accounts up to date and paid wages to the labourers and prepared to pay the debilitating SI6, a punitive charge of a new retrenchment/pension to our staff on our separation, or rather their forced retirement as there certainly was no work on farms available and the cities were already teeming with those that fled the violence in the countryside. This was to ensure that what little money we had could not be kept; it was taken from us with the use of this instrument. In the city, warehouses and empty lots began to fill with farm machinery, perhaps in the hope of selling it later; needless to say, with no buyers, it remained, fast deteriorating, many years later. Further that, stored in the warehouses cost the owners unwanted and pointless costs, finally offering it to those who would just take them away.

Our orchids flag spring is here

Meanwhile, back in Zambia, we were busy land-clearing and dam-building, money going out the door very quickly. We used to think theft was very bad on the farms in Zimbabwe, but with the advent of independence, we were surprised at the proficiency and expertise of the Zambians in this trade. Theft becomes more prevalent in times of unemployment and poverty. Remember in most African countries, there is no such thing as social security. If you do not work, you have no money to look after your family. The Zambian economy had been in the doldrums so they had had many years of practice in their fight for survival. The fact that the police would shoot on occasion did not seem to deter them. The easiest thing to steal on our farm, with a readily available demand, was fuel, and as we had a large number of bulldozers and tractors clearing the land and building the dam, we were very vulnerable. Every day, one of us would personally supervise the filling and monitor diesel consumption on each machine to detect anomalies. The drivers knew their skills were in short supply in Zambia, yet they would still exceed the limit of our patience, and firing them was the only option, despite our need for their skills. We resigned ourselves to the fact that the next one would be as big a thief. Even fuel deliveries had to be monitored. Mostly, we spotted short deliveries, a favourite by drivers who tampered with the so-called un-tamperable metres on their vehicles. So we took to dipping the tanker on arrival and completion of filling, which would show by dipstick what he had delivered. The one delivery driver said he had delivered what showed on the metre, despite our reckoning it was several hundred litres and yet the tanker showed empty on our dipstick. We finally got to the bottom of the problem by looking inside his tanker with a torch, no easy task in a newly emptied fuel tanker, and there it was, foam mattresses stuffed into the tanker to stop fuel from being delivered and recovered by pressing the mattresses out later. As I say, Zambia showed us the extent of its ingenuity when it came to theft.

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