Thanks, Agril Africa Universal Leaf Africa (ULA), Chicanery Nature Comes to Light.

Sunny days and balmy evenings this week

Well, I was really overwhelmed by the number of you who contacted me to wish me a speedy recovery. Thank you. A number of you have had this illness, Pancreatitis, and have offered advice. It was good to hear their story; one in particular, from Selby Black, was very helpful. His experience sounded worse than mine. There are a number of readers who seem not to miss a post, which gives me an incentive to keep writing every week. After a very tough Thursday and Friday last week, I now hope the medication is working. At least for the last few days, the pain has subsided. Once again, I see my doctor, my GP, Dr Cardoso, a very approachable man, towards the end of this week, and we can discuss my next steps further. Hopefully, my pain will still be gone, and in that event, I will definitely feel I am on the mend.

Bob Fernandez

Back in 2002, a name well known in Zimbabwean agriculture came into my office: Bob Fernandes. He was a land agent and valuer who had fled newly independent Kenya to take up residence in Zimbabwe and ply his trade there. Sadly, in 2023. Bob passed away. in At that time, he was looking for business in valuation land and sales. Since we were only doing rentals for a scheme, we weren't much use to him. He had been one of the instigators of VALCON, who were a group of agricultural property valuers who had carried out the valuations of our farms, their improvements and our equipment to ensure we knew what we had when they took our farms from us, to use in both the court in the event the Government did not meet its obligations on compensation or in the event of the Government paying compensation, something substantive in regard value to argue our case. Meanwhile, he mentioned that some farmers wanted to sue the Government for compensation for their farms and he and Matthew Coleman, an international land lawyer, along with Duncan Owens, who was at CDC at the time. I knew Duncan from the time; a loose consortium put together by Clive and Vernon Nicolle to look at investing in Mpogwe Estate in the Copperbelt, which was owned by CDC. Probably the largest irrigation crop farm in Southern Africa at that time. CDC was selling off all its agricultural investments in Africa, including Mpongwe, which it had sunk US$80 million into and had yet to show a profit. They had employed an external management company based in the UK and a contract cropping contractor to prepare the land, plant and harvest crops. In farming, management with no skin in the game is a recipe for disaster; they did not need profit; they just needed expensive fees. Meanwhile, Bob said that in the event of a court case on land coming up, it would need to be under international law, as there was no longer justice in Zimbabwe. The judges had to carry out the wishes of the state, or at least ZANU-PF, which by then was the same thing, to keep their jobs. He said he and Duncan wanted to set up an organisation with Matthew Coleman to help advise and fund those farmers who went to court. He asked if I was interested in joining them, and since it would be self-funded, I told him I had little financial resources. To be honest, I was completely cash broke by then. However, he brought together a group of 10 experts and, later that year, returned and offered me a share. I agreed to two and a half percent; it was all I could afford, as did Graham Rae, with an option for another two and a half percent each which we never took up. We did eventually help fund a group of Dutch farmers, setting a precedent in law and valuation procedures. The only people to really benefit from this precedent to date were those farmers whose place of birth or citizenship was in a country with a Preferential Investment Agreement (PIA) with Zimbabwe. That raises two questions: why was a PIA never built into the Lancaster House Agreement before Independence? And secondly, why did our politicians at that time not insist on it? It was discussed at the time but never acted upon. Perhaps the British, in their eagerness for the agreement, did so to appease those across the table from the Rhodesians.

Mathethew Coleman successfully acted as senior counsel for the 13 Dutch farmers at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and later did the same for Bernard von Pezold, both protected by the PIA. So far, they are the exception to obtaining fair compensation.

Back on the farm. I was unhappy that ULA, which had virtually forced my partners and me to join the scheme, did so because there was no other organisation with an appetite to fund us. After all, who else would lend an unsecured farming company already heavily in debt another million or so US$? My partners reluctance stemmed from neither of them having been tobacco farmers. But the nature of my partners was always to go big, just as they did at home back in Zimbabwe. With hindsight, despite how much we had to learn about the growing seasons, climate and soils in Zambia. 

Meanwhile, at Agricultural Advisers International (AAI), we began developing the farming resettlement scheme with ULA, which had compelled my partners and me to join. One of the first people through our door was Graham Douse, who had lost his farm in the Marondera area and had, for a number of years, been looking for funding to open a farming block in the Mbala district of northern Zambia, with the aim of gaining access to both the Zambian and Tanzanian markets. I thought it was very ambitious given its distance from Lusaka and the fact that it would be a totally ‘greenfield’ project without a guaranteed market, no infrastructure, and no service providers, the nearest being some thousand kilometres south in Lusaka. I admired his perseverance, but now he had decided to consider joining our scheme and identified an excellent farm west of Lusaka, down the Chongwe River. It already had some irrigation, and some of the arable land had been cleared as part of a dairy project sponsored by a donor post-independence. Like the vast majority of such projects, it had done a wheels-up. Graham was a meticulous planner, so he had spent a lot of time researching the farm, with various reports now on ULA management's desks. No sooner had he finally become happy enough and started talking to the owner about the term of its lease, Phil Rusch, the general manager of ZLT, and ULA’s representative in Zambia, ZLT being their local subsidiary, walked into the office and said we could not allocate Graham that farm. He was loath to give a reason and named another perspective scheme member who was to have it. Graham was furious. Both Chris Thorne and I pushed back, saying we were unhappy with this and that it was unacceptable. Phil left only to return a few days later to say we had to do it, or ULA would not agree to fund any other prospective scheme member, including Graham, on that farm, only one of their choice. When your main sponsor is now unwilling to fund you, Graham had little choice but to start looking for another farm. We were soon to learn that the benefactor who gained access to the scheme was a very close family friend or maybe a relation of Mark Neves, who was at that time the deputy regional general manager of ULA. When we met at our next scheme meeting, his smirk said it all: first compelling us at Cropmasters to join, and now being selective by favouring a family friend. We then knew he lacked integrity. I will not name the benefactor farmer, as it was not he who instigated it, but rather Neves, who upon reading our reports, highlighted how suitable the farm was, he wanted it for his friend. Despite this, we had no choice but to continue working with them.

As for Graham Douse, after trying a couple more tobacco-friendly farms, he gave up and became a successful sugarcane farmer in Mazabuka.

“Partnerships in business are about  trust, rather than the written agreement, and when that is lost, it makes it extremely difficult to make it work despite the legalities.” - Peter McSporran

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