Threads, Deforestation and EGIL.
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
"The threads that connect you with friends and family make up the fabric of your life. You have to protect them."- Peter McSporran
All of us ex-Zimbabweans, both black and white, think of the good old days in that country before the ‘land grab’ in 2000. When I arrived in Rhodesia, we used to joke about the ex-Kenyans, many farmers who left that country following independence, as ‘when we’s,’ and now we Zimbabweans have become very much ‘when we’s.’ We are now spread throughout the world from Australasia to the Americas, from the southern tip to the north. I still keep in contact with many by a thread which is really WhatsApp. It is wonderful to talk to them, and strangely, although much older, you remember them as you last saw them unless you use your video camera, which I rarely do. Their voices remain as you knew them and their faces as you last saw them, so it is as if you only talked to them yesterday, providing you keep in regular touch. I admit sometimes I am remiss in not being regular in my contact; it is so important. After all, with age, those threads become vulnerable and are broken, as has happened recently with two good friends, Chris Thorne and Keith Holland, both of whom I was in phone contact with up to their passing.
“As the years go by, the number of intact threads with those from your past reduces annually, sadly now nearly every year. So keep hold of them as long as you can; they are a reminder of your past and, importantly, who you were and still are.” - Peter McSporran
When you go to Zambia, the first big difference you notice as you cross the border is the charcoal. It is to be seen everywhere. In Zimbabwe, I think to the pre-independence conservation rules, charcoal was not a fuel of choice. The same could not be said of Zambia, for as soon as you cross the border, you come across bicycles laden with bags of charcoal, overloaded trucks and pickups buried under immense stacks of charcoal, and every ten or twenty kilometres, charcoal vendors at the side of the road. I could not believe it, especially with the visible deforestation, especially around the towns, cities and villages. In 2000, around the towns, serious deforestation in Zimbabwe had set in; all the conservation rules were being forgotten and certainly not enforced. After all, it is cheaper to cut a cord of wood than buy a sack of coal, although the latter used to be in plentiful supply.
The other practice not found so commonly in Zimbabwe was the ‘chitemene’, that is; a rotation of cutting trees and bushes and burning them as manure for the soil, farming it for a couple of years, and then moving on. It was not as bad as it sounds, as many of the big trees were left and the bush would recover amazingly quickly.
But now, due to a lack of jobs and, therefore, a lack of resources to buy alternative fuel, the cutting of trees for fuel in Zimbabwe is widespread, even compared to when I was there five years ago. I can only imagine how bad it is although on a call to Suzie Heyns today, Monday, she confirmed my worst fears. Electric power outages no doubt further increase demand for timber. But there is another culprit. Up to 2000, most of the tobacco in Zimbabwe was cured using coal from Hwange by commercial farmers, but following the land grab, the tobacco companies turned to the small-scale sector, be it on our stolen land, to grow the crop.
As jobs were scarce and tobacco was a fairly lucrative crop, many became tobacco growers; in fact, thousands and thousands. As it takes on average five cords of wood to cure a 1000 kilograms of tobacco, the present huge annual crop of 355 million kilograms requires about 1.75 million cords of wood, and if it takes two trees to a cord, that is at least 3.5 million trees being cut and burned without any cooking or heating fuel for the households, which requires approximately another 1.5 to 2 cords. How many million households rely on wood, and how many trees is that? It is just not sustainable. Do the tobacco companies, other than suggesting they promote tree lots, take much of the responsibility? I suppose not. So maybe charcoal is a lesser sin; after all, it burns hotter and is cleaner than wood.
Duncan Owen, and a well-known Zambian businessman, Valentine Chitalu, came into my office one day with a fresh idea to allow companies to include local investors to invest in companies to enable these companies to comply with their investment rules, which I may say were not really applied, to ensure Zambian inclusion or opportunity. Unlike South Africa, you were not to be given shares; you would have to buy them. So they suggested an investment company comprising a number of prominent Zambian businessmen, black and white, and a woman as a vehicle to achieve this. In Zambia, whether black or white, you were Zambian, unlike in Zimbabwe or South Africa, where the colour of your skin determines whether you would benefit from any empowerment program. At the time, Duncan was then working for Afgri, a major South African agricultural trading and retail business listed on the stock market. My partner Graham Rae and I were invited to be part of it, partly due to my experience serving on several boards of public companies in Zimbabwe related to agriculture.
As it happened, Duncan always had a number of reasons, not always just self-interest as many have accused him of, as Afgri Zambia had started off very successfully in Zambia in their early years, trading maize only, losing over US$10 million the previous year, which was put down to their lack of knowledge on how business was done outside of South Africa and local agricultural knowledge. So one of the first investments was into Afgri, which was a publicly listed company on the JSE, and I found myself on the board with Valentine as chairman, George Allison, a Zambian, as CEO, and myself and Robin Miller representing EGIL along with my good lawyer friend Mwela Chibeskunda as directors representing the Zambians while the remaining board were Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, with one thing in common, dourness. Needless to say, we got on fairly well, and I had yet another job, as our advice and guidance were often called for.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
So very true Mac, it is more than important to hold on to past friendships