Political risk continues to remain elevated in Zimbabwe. The introduction of a government of national unity (GNU) saw a decrease in violence and human rights abuses but little else. Differences between Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF) and the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are glaring and threaten the future of the government.
A key source of political risk arises from the upcoming election. Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states have reaffirmed their position that no election can take place until all conditions of the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) are fulfilled.
A key condition of the GPA is the formulation of a new constitution. A draft constitution has now been completed and submitted to the GNU for comment and suggestions for amendment. The two factions of MDC have supported the draft constitution and are ready to put it to a referendum.
President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 32 years, is adamant there should be an election this year, but reality is that it may not be before 2013. It is likely the next election will be close. ZANU-PF will be reluctant to relinquish power to the MDC, which it accuses of being sponsored by the West. The voters themselves are eager for change following years of economic stagnation.
The European Union (EU) said it was considering easing decade-long sanctions if the country implements a new constitution; a move that could encourage a free and fair poll.
Politics will undoubtedly trump any economic policy considerations. As such, Zimbabwe is unlikely to see any significant economic reforms to revive the economy of what was once Africa’s bread basket. The indigenization drive will take center stage economically especially as the election draws closer. The indigenization legislation aims to ensure that 51% of foreign-owned companies are owned by indigenous, black Zimbabweans.
The indigenization program, which is in full swing is led by indigenization minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, who is seen as a die-hard ZANU-PF loyalist. One of the thorny issues for the program is the fate of the lucrative mining industry. The government is locked in a dispute with the country’s largest foreign investor, South Africa’s Impala Platinum (Implats). The miner has complied with the law by divesting the required share of the company to indigenous, black Zimbabweans. The government is to get 31% of Implats. The miner has requested that the government pay market prices for the stake. The cash-strapped government has refused to pay. The dispute still rumbles on.
From the resources sector the zealous Kasukuwere has turned his attention to the financial sector. The target is the four foreign-owned banks. Indicative of a rift within ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono, has warned of the implications of indigenizing the banking sector, the backbone of any modern economy. The minister of finance, Tendai Biti, also added his voice of concern to such a move. ZANU-PF is likely to disregard these voices of reason and power ahead with the indigenization campaign until the elections. Indigenization is likely to be a vote winner for ZANU-PF. Therefore, investors will remain wary of the country’s investment climate.
Zimbabwe’s political environment will weigh heavily on an already injured economy. The minister of finance in July downwardly revised growth for 2012 from 9.4% to 5.6%. The revision is on the back of a poor harvest, inadequate donor funding and incoherent policies. Zimbabwe grew 9.3% in 2011.
Political uncertainty will surely remain in place until elections are held. Until then, the economic policy will remain incoherent, which will in turn be detrimental to the economy. Zimbabwe’s economy will only show signs of sustained recovery with a democratically elected government.

A Free Vote Could Be The Best Medicine

Adam Molai is a tobacco entrepreneur. The Zimbabwean born-and-bred entrepreneur is the co-owner and executive chairman of Savanna Tobacco who has enjoyed a life that has rarely been dull. He studied in Canada and Britain; he did his articles in accounting, owned and operated garages, a stationery and copy shop, as well as a chicken farm. It was a friend who introduced this non-smoker to the tobacco industry.
As the land reform program of President Robert Mugabe forced out large-scale white commercial farmers, in favor of black workers, Molai realized that it would be a gamble going into business with his white friend when he founded the Zimbabwe Tobacco Growing Company. Now he is the director along with his wife. In 2002, he acquired a tobacco threshing plant with some partners. It did not make sense to Molai and his partners that the plant was being grown in Zimbabwe, shipped overseas and the finished product imported into the country. He decided to do something about it.
Savanna Tobacco launched its first brand of cigarettes in 2004. Two years later, it had brought in high-speed manufacturing equipment and won both bronze and silver at an international brand competition. By 2008/2009, the company had grabbed the largest share of the Zimbabwean market and was importing new and specialized equipment. This was at a time when Zimbabwe could not import paper from Germany to print its money.
<div id="attachment_1107" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1107" class="size-large wp-image-1107" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Cigarette-Packer1st-of-its-kind-in-Africa-1024x678.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="314" />Cigarette Packer,1st of its kind in Africa</div>
“We felt proud to be heads and shoulders with the big multi-nationals,” boasts Molai.
The company introduced the contract system to the country as a way to help boost the tobacco industry. It worked like this: there is an agreement between the contractor and the grower; the contractor supplies the grower with all the inputs and the grower grows, reaps, cures and delivers the crop. The grower receives preferential interest rates and the contractor is guaranteed a crop. This system got around the problem of finding finance to buy tobacco inputs in US dollars. Although the contract system is still operational, alongside the auctions, Savanna pulled out when they felt the financial system was capable of providing finance. This year a commercial bank in Zimbabwe—MBCA Bank Limited—made available $65 million worth of lines of credit to support the industry.
Zimbabwe is the largest producer of tobacco in Africa. It exports to China, South Africa, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and Germany and imports some tobacco from Malawi and South Africa.
China is the biggest producer of cigarettes and has the largest tobacco company in the world. It started using the Zimbabwean leaf in the 1980s and in 2005 Tian Ze Tobacco Company was established in Zimbabwe. Chinese companies came in and financed small-scale farmers under the contract system. Their presence has since increased the price of tobacco per kilogram. This year, the average price increased to $3.67.
Molai feels that China has played its role in the growth of the industry but that the relationship with China needs to be symbiotic and not perpetuate the mere exportation of raw tobacco and jobs.
“China protects their market more than anything else. We’re running with people that are already at the half-way line&#8230; You’ll never win, you have no chance,” he says.
Around 100 countries produce tobacco; the major producers are China, India, Brazil, the United States, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.
Zimbabwe has some domestic issues that were raised at the National Tobacco Workshop held last year. These included the poor conditions of amenities and accommodation at the auction floors, constant power cuts, deforestation, the limited credit and poor infrastructure.
The industry however does not have to worry about tight regulation in the marketing of cigarettes. The global legislation on tobacco has decreased global consumption over the years. The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—which is “the international health treaty that guides national efforts to counter the tobacco epidemic…”—now has 168 signatories. Zimbabwe is not one of them.
“I make no apologies for it,” says Molai, “we are strong marketers.”

The Golden Leaf

<h4> Cricket</h4>
The gentle Jamaican drawl is one of the lesser-heard accents in Harare. But, in the first week of December, it could be heard in conversation with English inflections, South African slang and Australian twangs.
The source of the Caribbean crooning was the world’s most expensive and sought after twenty-over cricketer, Chris Gayle; the other voices belonged to the many internationals who had signed up to compete in the Stanbic Bank 20 Series, a domestic cricket competition in Zimbabwe.
In a massive coup, Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) managed to lure Gayle and 19 other internationals to play in the tournament, all of them for minimal amounts. ZC achieved it through shrewd planning—the event would only last 10 days compared to others like it which go on for weeks—and careful spending of their steadily growing resources. The tournament underlined ZC’s success as the best thing to happen to sport in the country in the last decade.
<div id="attachment_1066" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1066" class="size-large wp-image-1066" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par7042135-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="356" />Zimbabwe&#8217;s Dynamos FC Partson Jaure (L) vies Esperance de Tunis forward Karim Awadhi (R) during their African Champions League football match at Rades Olympic stadium near Tunis on April 28, 2012. AFP PHOTO / SALAH HABIBI</div>
Like other sectors of Zimbabwean life, such as industry and agriculture, cricket has stuttered through post-independence plights and been crippled by them. Unlike those things, it has found a way to stand up again and thrive. Interest from sponsors has sparked, the national team are the sweethearts of the world stage after they made their return to the elite form of the game—Test cricket—last August; and administration, while not perfect, is functioning.
Ten years ago that was not the case. ZC groped through its darkest period in the early 2000s as it tried to change the image of the sport from a colonial, white man’s game, to a game for the people. They introduced a program of aggressive transformation and were met with supreme resistance that culminated in a walkout by 13 white players in 2004, leaving the cricketing core stripped of experience.
As a solution, promising, young black players were flung onto the international stage and managed to steal the occasional win. Eventually, the mountain of losses was too big and Zimbabwe voluntarily withdrew from Test cricket. They were also forced to cancel all domestic competition as hyperinflation dried up their coffers. By 2008, cricket in Zimbabwe—like almost everything else—was dead.
It took a small collection of determined men to breathe some life back into it. Ozias Bvute, the managing director of ZC, who was blamed for the collapse of the game, played a leading role in its regeneration. He secured sponsors, Stanbic Bank, Croco Motors and Delta Beverages, and pushed for a franchise system with five teams spread across the country. Bvute argued that this would professionalize domestic cricket and allow for greater development. Slowly, funds dripped in and within two years, the system was declared fruitful.
<div id="attachment_1067" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1067" class="size-large wp-image-1067" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/TL_820893-1-1024x738.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="342" />KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; OCTOBER 10, Shingarai Masakadza of Zimbabwe celebrates the wicket of David Miller of South Africa fro 25 runs during the 2nd Pro20 International match between South Africa and Zimbabwe at De Beers Diamond Oval on October 10, 2010 in Kimberley, South Africa Photo by Duif du Toit / Gallo Images</div>
The real roots of its success came from the behind-the-scenes work. Many of the players who had walked away were persuaded back into the fold. Former opening batsmen, Grant Flower, returned as batting coach to the national team, former captains Heath Streak and Alistair Campbell joined as bowling coach and chairman on the cricket committee respectively. Players who had left, such as Gavin Ewing, came home to play in the new franchise system.
Zimbabwe also secured foreign assistance. Englishman, Alan Butcher, was named head coach; former Australian fast-bowler, Jason Gillespie, signed on to coach one of the franchises; the Mid-West Rhinos, New Zealand all-rounder Chris Harris, was put in charge of the under-19s and stints from South Africa’s Allan Donald and Lance Klusener also added to the knowledge base. Talent emerged from regions that were previously unexplored such as, Masvingo, where left-arm fast bowler Brian Vitori was found.
Bvute and his staff also invited Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to send their A teams to play a series in Zimbabwe in a bid to ready them for a Test return. All of them agreed and although Zimbabwe did not win many matches, they competed. The practice games also allowed them to compile a squad of their best players, led by Brendan Taylor, the only white player who had not joined the rebels. Taylor, who was 17 at the time, did not want to let politics influence his sporting choices. His decision earned him the respect of his peers and countrymen, who rallied behind him as they made their Test comeback in August against Bangladesh.
In the seven months since then, Zimbabwe has hosted three incoming tours: Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand and won the first one. They also visited New Zealand. Despite heavy defeats, their potential was evident and they have hope of growing as money and interest flow in. Interest from influential people like Chris Gayle has helped.
“You can see Zimbabwe have improved, they are more competitive, and their development programs are coming together,” he said, in that same drawl that, for one week in December, was the most popular voice in Harare.
&nbsp;
Football
One word sums up the beautiful game in Zimbabwe over the last five years and it’s not a very complimentary one—Asiagate. The saga has just about come full circle after it first emerged that matches played by a parks team masquerading as the Zimbabwean national team between 2007 and 2009, were fixed in favor of gamblers in Asian countries, which included Thailand and Malaysia. Eighty players have since been suspended for their role in colluding with Asian betting syndicates and Henrietta Rushwaya, former Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) chief executive, has been arrested on allegations of bribery and match fixing.
The stains of this scandal will taint the game for years to come. Although ZIFA has undergone a stringent clean-up, it still faces a FIFA investigation, which could see the suspended players and administrators banned for life and would leave the game grappling for relevance as it enters qualifying events for the World Cup and the African Nations’ Cup (AFCON). The country’s sports minister, David Coltart, has described football as being “riddled with corruption,” and admitted that the “structure of the professional game has declined.”
One of the reasons for the downward trend was that Zimbabwe football was highly politicized. President Robert Mugabe’s nephew, Leo, presided over ZIFA for three terms and is thought to be responsible for its deterioration. He is said to have removed administrations which were aligned with the opposition—the Movement for Democratic Change—and replaced them with officials sympathetic to the Mugabe regime, with little or no experience of running a national sport.
Under him, most local clubs were running losses and at national level funds had been exhausted. ZIFA currently operates out of a small, rundown house on Livingstone Street in Harare, where the curtains droop from the windows and the equipment inside is rundown. Zimbabwe is likely one of the few African countries where football is not the most popular sport. In a place as impoverished looking as this, it’s easy to see how players and administrators could be lured into corruption and may agree to be co-opted, even if it will worsen the image of the sport and the nation.
The country’s premier league is not televised by the national broadcaster because it is too expensive for them to do so. Cricket has overtaken it, in financial terms, with corporates preferring to put their money into a sport that gets wider exposure. Even smaller disciplines like hockey attract greater publicity than events on the football pitch.
In September, Zimbabwe hosted the African hockey championships in a newly renovated stadium in Bulawayo to public acclaim. A month earlier, their national football team played a friendly match against current Africa Cup of Nations Champions, Zambia. The event was so low key that the visiting team did not even have proper arrangements for their pre-match training session. ZIFA’s offices had a total of two employees manning the front desk the day before the match and neither had information about where Zambia could train; whether tickets were still available and at what price and where the new chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, who had agreed to have an interview with an international media organization, was to be found.
The lack of activity around the match served as an indication of the dwindling interest in football in the country, from all spheres. While public interest is not especially high, player participation is also starting to dwindle and Shingirai Masakadza is an example of that. A tall, athletic young man who could make his name in almost any sport, Masakadza was part of the generation of black school-going kids that cricket left behind. Unlike his brother, Hamilton, he was not offered a scholarship to a prestigious, formerly white school and instead made his name kicking a football in a high-density area.
Masakadza was contracted as a professional footballer with one of the country’s “two big” clubs: Dynamos and Highlanders of Bulawayo, but struggled to hold down his place. In that time, he was contacted by a former school coach, who offered him the chance to join one of Zimbabwe’s cricket franchises. Masakadza was told that if he just ran in a little quicker and hit the deck a little harder, he could develop into a genuine fast bowler and may represent the country.
He duly swapped his football for a cricket ball and has no regrets about his decision. “Cricket offered me better opportunities than football. Right now I am in a position that most people would only dream of,” he said, after he was picked for the 2011 Cricket World Cup squad. Masakadza is living proof that cricket— not football—is being seen as the path to success in Zimbabwe. For a country that was on the verge of FIFA World Cup qualification in 1993, that is sad.

A Tale Of Two Sports

It is one of those crisp winter days that Zimbabwe is famous for. There is not a cloud in the sky, the ground is hard and the grass brown under the thunder of hockey boots. On the touchline, Trish Davies is knee deep in the sport she loves. Here, at Watershed College—a private school in Marondera, 60 kilometers from Harare—Davies barks instructions to her team, Chisipite Girls, as her charges battle to draw.
It has been more than 30 African winters since Davies and her teammates tasted sweet triumph against the odds in Moscow in one of the world’s great sporting stories. They called them the Golden Girls—the team that won glory for their fledgling country and partied in the Kremlin afterwards.
As the slick London Olympics unfolded on television, 55-year-old Davies watched with warm and fond memories of another Olympics in a far off world.
It was May 1980; Zimbabwe was just weeks old and the Russians were in Harare looking for a favor. Most of the country’s hockey players laughed when they heard Russia wanted to fly them to take part in the Olympics—surely not?
For the Russians it was no joke. Their Olympics in Moscow was in disarray. Most of the world boycotted the Games in protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians had toured the world, looking for replacements and wanted Zimbabwe to send a team to make up the numbers in the first ever women’s field hockey event.
“Like any other sport, politics interferes. Whoever is in power is there because he deserves to be there,” says Davies.
“Russia was a top side, England didn’t come, there were quite a few countries that didn’t come, even the USA, that’s their tough luck.”
In a matter of weeks, Zimbabwe trained a 15-strong team to travel to take on hockey teams which had been training for years. In the context of the time, it was even more remarkable; on April 18, just weeks before, Bob Marley sang at Rufaro Stadium in Harare of revolutionaries and Africans liberating Zimbabwe, to a sea of clenched fists, as the union flag came down on colonial rule. Now, here was an all-white team, playing a game with colonial roots as deep as an oak tree, representing the new nation.
On July 8, less than two weeks before the Olympics, the team boarded a World War II Dakota cargo plane at Manyame Air Force base in Harare. The plane stank because it had been used to transport meat.
“We boarded a cargo aircraft together with four members of the Zimbabwe under-23 soccer team who had been invited to the Games. Team spirit started at the airport, where we shared everything we had, including drinking water from the same bottle. The football players including, Shepherd Murape, turned out to be our best supporters,” player-coach, Anthea Stewart remembers.
“It was the first time I had boarded a Dakota, we sat opposite each other,” Davies laughs.
The plane touched down in Zambia where a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane flew the team to a sunny Olympics in Moscow.
“It was quite frightening, all the cabin crew were dressed in khaki and no-one smiled,” says Brenda Howden, who played right half.
Once there, the Zimbabweans heard they were to play on a new surface called astroturf.
“When we left we didn’t know how to play on astroturf. We were just honored to be there playing for the country&#8230;For a start, it was the first time hockey had ever been played at the Olympics, two, Zimbabwe was in it. Everyone of our sportsmen came to see us… it was such an amazing feeling,” says Davies.
The team had to rush out to buy new boots, for a new surface, before the first game against Poland in the round robin tournament.
“That first match was very nerve-wracking because we had not played on that kind of turf, we didn’t know how the opposition was going to play. We had a different style of hockey to the overseas teams. We had very much possession style of hockey. They were a lot quicker than us. With us playing that kind of hockey, that’s how we eventually managed to win gold,” says Davies.
Zimbabwe thrashed Poland 4-0 and in the next game was held 2-2 by Czechoslovakia; then, the hosts, Russia, one of the favorites for the gold. Zimbabwe won 2-0.
“We beat Russia, that was the biggest thing because they had been training for four years and we had been training for just three months,” says Davies
There was a draw against India, then the last game against one of the strongest teams in the tournament. Back home, in Zimbabwe, people took radios to work so they could listen to the game.
“We played Austria in the final match; we had to win to get gold. If we had drawn, we would have silver. By half time we were up 3-0, we sort of knew then that it was ours. During the second half we were smiling a lot, but playing a bit of defensive hockey. We weren’t gonna let them come near us,” she says.
Pat McKillop, who later became a golfer for Matabeleland, scored twice in the final. Overall, the housewife from Bulawayo, who had just turned 24, scored half of Zimbabwe’s 12 goals.
“Pat was a short corner specialist and used to ram them into the back of the net. She had such composure on the field and was a huge role model for me,” says Howden.
The final whistle went and Zimbabwe had won 4-1. The team danced around the pitch with tears streaming down their faces as supporters and fellow Olympians in the stands chanted: “Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe!”
“It was amazing, absolutely amazing, you couldn’t believe it,” says Davies.
Even more amazing was that the referee sprinted off the pitch, after blowing the final whistle, and returned with a bottle of champagne that she popped and passed around the winning team. You could imagine the Olympic committee would take a very dim view of this in 2012.
News agencies reported that some of the members from the victorious team, between gulps of champagne, shouted: “Pamberi ne Jongwe.” It means ‘forward the cockerel’—the symbol of the ruling party, ZANU PF—in ChiShona which is the majority language in Zimbabwe. This report drew a ripple of laughter when Parliament, back in Harare, paused to announce the victory over Austria. This was indeed another world.
The fairy tale was complete as the captain Ann Grant, the 25-year-old bookkeeper from Harare, led her team to the podium to collect the gold medal. Before they left Moscow, the team rubbed shoulders with fellow gold medallists, including Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson, at a party at the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin.
They flew home to a crowd of family and friends at Harare Airport. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who had been in charge of Zimbabwe for less than two months, saw the surprise win as fillip for the spirit of his new nation.
“We went to his house, it was an afternoon event, he [Mugabe] put on a lovely show for us. It was an honor for the country, we weren’t expecting anything, nothing, none of us were professionals, and we had done it for the country. Sportsmen, that’s how they see it.”
A cheerful Davies, who works in accounts in Harare, says she was thin when she played in Moscow and claims anyone who saw her then wouldn’t recognise her now. Davies is one of a handful of the team of 1980 to remain in Zimbabwe—the rest are scattered from Durban to Dubai.
“Tell you what; I am just coming back to hockey now. I’m not a professional, I have been doing bowling of late,” she says.
“I’m quite happy to come back, it was quite pleasing to come back and help people to play the game.”
As Zimbabwe went into economic meltdown all sports suffered, including hockey. The country is now rebuilding its showcase, Khumalo Hockey Stadium, in Bulawayo, in the hope of staging more tournaments.
“It is getting better now. Hockey is getting back. There was a stage where it had gone right down, especially in the schools, from the schools I think it can now grow,” says Davies.
The Olympic event itself has grown out of proportion. Davies and her team played purely for the love of the game; athletes these days play for money as well as glory. While there was a United States boycott in 1980 over Afghanistan—there has been no such talk in 2012, despite the US, Britain and a dozen other countries which still have troops in the country. It is funny how times change.

You Couldn’t Believe It

If it weren’t true, it would sound too far-fetched to make up. The life of Penny Streeter, chief executive of healthcare staffing conglomerate A24 Group, is the archetypal rags-to-riches story of a woman who was left with nothing, didn’t give up, started small and made it big. She revolutionized the recruitment sector by turning it from a 9-to-5 business into a round-the-clock operation that dispatches temporary health professionals at as little as an hour’s notice.
Born in Zimbabwe to British parents and educated in South Africa, Streeter, who dropped out of school at the age of 16, ended up in recruitment by chance. After moving to London as a young adult, she trained as a beauty therapist but was soon looking for something more fulfilling.
“I decided this wasn’t going anywhere. I walked into an employment agency and told them I was looking for a job. They said, ‘Fantastic, we got one for you here’. That’s how I got into recruitment,” she says.
A go-getter by nature, Streeter was quickly promoted to branch manager. When the firm opened a second outlet, she hired her mother, Marion, to run it.
“We used to compete with each other about bringing in the most sales,” Streeter remembers. But one day, both mother and daughter were fired—they cost the firm too much in commission. They had worked themselves out of a job.
Irked by the limits of being an employee, Streeter decided to go it alone. She got a £30,000 ($46,611) bank loan. Her mother borrowed another £10,000 ($15,537). But their timing was bad. Within months of opening office recruitment company Elite Personnel in 1989, the United Kingdom (UK) went into a major recession. Demand for her services dried up almost overnight.
“It was a complete and utter disaster. The one day it was going well, the next day we had queues of people looking for jobs. We carried on and on, borrowing money, trying to dig ourselves out of this hole and eventually went bust,” she says.
By 1992, Streeter had lost every penny and was spiraling into debt. The furniture and cars belonging to her luxury offices in a posh part of London had been repossessed. But it wasn’t only bad timing that caused the firm’s failure. It was also “total lack of business experience”, Streeter admits. She had gone in, guns blazing and overspent.
To make matters worse, Streeter’s personal life suffered a tremendous setback. She went through a divorce which left her with nothing and—pregnant with her third child—was forced to move into a homeless shelter in a part of London her brother thought too dangerous to park his car. She had hit rock bottom.
Out of worry for the welfare of her children—“I thought, ‘How the hell do I ever bring up my kids in this environment? They are going to be drug dealers!’”—Streeter decided to give the recruitment industry another try in 1995, this time with only one asset: her determination. A value, she says, her parents instilled in her.
“At home, there was no such thing as can’t. I am lucky to be a confident person, so I had a strong belief that I could do it on my own. I knew I had to,” she says.
She started another venture, Ambition 24hours. This time, she took a different approach. Instead of getting a loan to kit out opulent offices, she rented a rickety desk in a corner of the office of a car parts dealership.
“I learnt everything from what happened [with Elite Personnel]. We didn’t buy anything. Every penny we earned we put back into the business,” she explains.
Streeter and her mother took turns working and minding the children. On weekends, they organized children’s discos to make cash.
“That’s how we raised income. We would literally earn some money to pay for a newspaper advert to recruit staff to our books and pay our phone bill. We knew we had to make instant money,” she remembers.
Ambition 24hours first recruited for the financial services industry, but Streeter’s big break came when she spotted a market gap in 24/7 medical staffing services.
“All the established agencies opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m., including all weekend. But healthcare requires shifts around the clock, and you don’t know in advance that someone is going to fall sick,” she says.
Even though entering a market saturated by successful recruiters was a risk, her groundbreaking model took off fast, supplying round-the-clock services across England.
It was the business that within a few years would turn her into one of the most influential entrepreneurs of our time. Today, it has expanded into an umbrella group, the A24 Group, which houses a range of independently run staffing agencies, makes a turnover of £70 million ($109 million) and is said to have generated £5.5 million ($8.5 million) in 2011 alone. Streeter, who doesn’t like to discuss her net worth, and her mother Marion, are A24’s only shareholders.
Whoever imagines Streeter as a tough, aloof businesswoman in a tailor-made suit couldn’t be more wrong. The passion and love for life that drove the 45-year-old, back in the 1990s, radiates from her as she sits, dressed in a casual cotton top, a plastic pink watch studded with fake diamonds on her wrist, in her office in Cape Town, South Africa, where her business is now headquartered.
“It doesn’t feel any different, really I never set out to make millions and millions of pounds. I just wanted to provide for my family, run my business and do it successfully,” she says.
Despite making more profit in a year than most firms do in a lifetime, Streeter has stuck to her hard-earned motto of keeping it basic. A24’s offices are simple: functional carpets, plain beige walls, plywood tables and worn-out chairs. As pop music blasts through wall-mounted speakers, customer service staff outside Streeter’s unpretentious cubicle wear headphones in front of computer screens in an unadorned open-plan office, focused on attracting new business.
“I still live in the mindset of that first business. What happened then, could happen again. We’re going through a global downturn again. The same principles of don’t borrow, have crappy furniture, are still true in my business. We still have no borrowings at all,” she says laughing, “and we still have crappy furniture.”
Simplicity has become her philosophy.
“Think big, start small and keep things very, very plain,” is Streeter’s advice to young entrepreneurs. An original idea, a good business plan and hard work are far more important than large amounts of finance to get a business started. After all, she points out: “The majority of very successful entrepreneurs have started with virtually no money. The biggest driver has got to be you. People always look for others to motivate them. But at the end of the day, when you’re in business, you’ve got to be able to motivate yourself. And that’s hard.”
Needless to say, Streeter—who was named Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003 and received Britain’s highest decoration, an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for ‘services to enterprise’ three years later—drives the A24 Group with a keen eye for cost control.
“I have to make sure we’re not waking up tomorrow, the market has changed and we’re all out of work. It’s not just me now, it’s everyone I employ,” she says.
She likes to hold the reins tightly, so she’s set up a flat management structure, with herself as chief executive, a finance director and the management of the group’s agencies straight below.
“Flat management makes it easy to get to the heart of the business, without having to go through masses of chains of people. I want to be able to communicate directly with the person who can make the maximum impact and change on that business immediately,” she explains.
One of her most important decisions, she says, was to move the company’s headquarters to South Africa in 2004. With an £11 million ($17.1 million) investment plan, she set up sales and back-office resources on the tip of the African continent to supplement her UK facilities.
“My finance manager thought I had lost my marbles,” she laughs. But the move was much more than a romantic whim after a beautiful holiday to the country Streeter spent her teens in.
Although A24 was extremely successful in the UK—it was Britain’s fastest-growing private enterprise in 2002—the group had been suffering major staffing problems. Numerous employees had started to break away to set up their own agencies or join the competition, taking clients and databases with them.
“We were taking them to court to get injunctions. It was a very negative point for us. It cost hundreds of thousands of pounds,” says Streeter.
At the same time, Streeter struggled to find well-trained consultants, the group’s key asset.
“I realized that by moving operations to South Africa, I could protect the business from theft and regain with South African staff what I needed in terms of service. If we had remained in the UK, it would have been slowly eating away at us,” she believes.
Initially, it didn’t look like the smartest move. The business took a dip and two years to recover. But then, Streeter made her next move and acquired Nursing Services of South Africa, the country’s largest temporary staffing firm, adding another star to her shiny belt of agencies.
“When we came to South Africa, it was like going back in time. We found existing nursing agencies were arrogant, not flexible enough and had no service orientation,” Streeter recalls. Twenty-four-hour staffing also took off in South Africa.
Today, A24 is run from three centralized recruitment hubs in South Africa and the UK, plus smaller branches throughout both countries with 450 permanent employees and about 13,500 temporary personnel on its books.
But even someone as successful as Streeter makes a wrong call from time to time.
“I’m not immune to making wrong decisions. As CEO, you have to be able to make decisions really fast, right or wrong, and then you have to live with them,” she says, admitting that failing remains her biggest fear.
“If I’m wrong, I correct decisions quickly and hold my hands up to them. It’s better to make a wrong decision than no decision at all.”
That’s what happened in 2006, when Streeter decided to expand into recruiting services to the oil, gas, construction and engineering sectors, having set her eye on major emerging markets like the Arab Emirates. For almost two years, A24 invested heavily to prepare the launch of this new business arm. But when the 2008 global economic crisis began to unfold, Streeter knew she had to cut her losses: “We pulled out of the market immediately. Places like Dubai were starting to collapse. We could see we were going to run into huge payment issues. It was about knowing to get out at the right time.”
It was a hard decision to make, she says, but one that was once again based on the lessons she learnt from the failure of her first company in 1989, when she kept pouring money into a venture that had no chance of succeeding.
“You’re giving up business that is still there, which in a lot of ways seems ridiculous, but it’s about weighing the risks,” she says. She also shelved plans to expand operations into the United States.
Instead, Streeter decided to expand again on home ground. In 2010, she bought another competitor, the British Nursing Association, at one point the giant of the UK nursing industry, and its associated nursing agency brands Grosvenor Nursing and Mayfair Nurses, owned by Pinnacle Staffing, for a mere £2.75 million ($4.15 million).
“We’ve got that sick giant now, and hopefully we’ll get it back to where it was,” she says, without illusions about the complexity of rebuilding a struggling business.
“When you grow your own business, it’s your baby, you know it inside out. When you adopt other people’s children, they don’t do things the same way. It’s quite a learning curve and completely draining.”
Streeter clearly thrives on challenges, with acquisitions being her core expansion strategy. That’s not a new business strategy, but Streeter adds a twist: instead of fully merging the new acquisitions into her existing operations, she runs them in competition to each other. Each A24 agency operates independently, has different business strategies, different pricing structures and service models.
“I like starting new businesses and understanding their dynamics. I wanted to make sure we’re a bit like the soap powders in the supermarket: you have all those different brands but you end up buying the same one. I wanted the same effect for our agencies. The choice would always be one of our brands,” she explains. “I’m effectively trying to dominate and drive out competition.”
It’s also a way of keeping herself on her toes. Although she calls herself risk-averse, Streeter has a keen eye for new market trends and isn’t afraid of branching out. When she heard IT experts talk about the advent of another global tech bubble, she decided to invest in information and communication technology (ICT). She set up an IT development department to design tailor-made software for the group, giving it an advantage in speed and accuracy in the registration, management and booking of temporary staff.
Then, she took it a step further. A24 is developing management services software, which will be launched next year as a stand-alone operation within the group.
“In everyone’s business, technology is the driver now. If your technology isn’t right at the cutting edge you’ll be dead and buried,” Streeter believes. “Business is a real thing where what worked yesterday isn’t necessarily working tomorrow. I continually have to keep reinventing.”
Unsurprisingly, she has no intention of resting or retiring. Her business is like her fifth child, says Streeter, who has re-married and now has four children.
“The children see the business as their other sibling. When I told one of my daughters I was thinking about selling Ambition, she laughed at me and said, ‘You would sell me first’.”

No More Penny-Pinching  For Penny

It is tempting to see the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) as a country in the making. But reality falls short of this—at least for now.
The project is so breathtaking in both its scope and ambition that it does inspire dreams of a different tomorrow for a region that is still suffering the miseries inflicted by one of the most brutal wars in recent history. After nearly four decades, the anti-colonial conflict that turned into civil war and at stages involved South Africans, Namibians, Angolans, Cubans and, in surreptitious ways, even the Russians and Americans, came to an end 10 years ago when Angola’s Unita strongman Jonas Savimbi died in a hail of bullets.
<div id="attachment_621" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-621" class="wp-image-621 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_2009-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Dr Victor Siamudaala program manager</div>
Part of the wonder of the project is that the vision for turning the area into a “peace park” started taking shape immediately after the Angolan civil war ended.
“KAZA” stands for the Kavango and Zambezi rivers, with the territory including adjoining sections of Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its map is practically a state in its own right.
The binding factor is the region’s exceptional natural beauty, including the Victoria Falls, the Okavango Delta and the vast elephant herds traversing its plains and swamps. The area’s relatively sparse communities are so distant from the heartland of their respective states that most of them probably associate more closely with each other than with their countrymen.
Of course, Zimbabwe and Zambia would not dream of ceding those spectacular falls thundering between them. Neither would Botswana consider letting go of the Okavango and the Chobe National Park. These are their countries’ signature natural wonders, and they are the geese laying those golden tourist eggs.
But it is to the credit of the five governments that they have agreed to join these adjacent portions of land in a transboundary scheme that comes to a mammoth 444,000 square kilometer chunk of Africa, with conservation at its heart and tourism as the economic objective for the 2.5 million people living there.
At last year’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Luanda, the countries’ leaders issued a declaration when they signed the KAZA TFCA treaty, which came close to conferring a kind of satellite, if not colonial, status on their shared holding.
It said: “The KAZA TFCA shall become an international organization with a legal persona, capable of entering into contracts, and acquiring and disposing of property. Institutions established through the treaty to govern the TFCA, particularly its secretariat, will be empowered to ensure that the objectives of the treaty are realized and corresponding strategic plans and protocols implemented.”
The project includes a range of national parks, game and forest reserves and conservancies. Although these are in varying states of repair, many can be linked across boundaries and through corridors to become mutually supportive within a broader framework that will have nature-based tourism as its main industry. There is even talk of a “KAZA visa” to ease cross-border traffic within the territory.
The scheme has the backing of the German and Netherlands governments, the Swiss Agency of Development and Cooperation, the Peace Parks Foundation and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. Victor Siamudaala, the program manager, is a veterinarian from Zambia. His secretariat is based in Kasane, the charming north-eastern Botswana town where it is not unusual to see elephants wander through, or pedestrians casually step around warthogs scuffling on the sidewalk.
The secretariat is at the center of an intricate bureaucratic web that gives practical effect to the scheme.
As explained by Werner Myburgh, chief executive of the Peace Parks Foundation, each country made a development plan for its particular part of the greater territory with the help of various government departments, the private sector and affected communities. The five plans were then aligned under the umbrella plan for the scheme as a whole. The result is a detailed plan showing how the boundaries run, which areas are earmarked for conservation and which for development, and what the infrastructural requirements are.
Each country has a coordinator who, together with the central secretariat, reports to a committee of senior officials, which is in turn overseen by a steering committee of five ministers from the respective governments.
The wide range of factors that need to be taken into account, including security, customs, veterinary, agricultural and conservation matters, require the involvement of several government departments in each country. Generally, decisions are taken by consensus, which makes the process even more complex.
It explains why the central secretariat, which drives the program’s implementation, prefers to abide by the governments’ jointly approved statements.
But the transfrontier project has caught on since its initiation in 2006. The official launch function was held on March 15, 2012 in the Caprivi town of Katima Mulilo where, under the magnificent trees along the bank of the Zambezi, the South African Defense Force had its forward base more than two decades ago.
The occasion was attended by more than 700 people, including the environmental and tourism ministers of the five governments, SADC’s executive secretary, Dr Tomaz Salamão, and traditional leaders from the five countries.
Myburgh says the sense of ownership of the joint project was tangible. He quotes Botswana’s minister of the environment, wildlife and tourism, Kitso Mokaila: “… (We) have emphasized in the KAZA Treaty… that we will own and lead the planning and development process of the TFCA. We take cognisance of the fact that our land and other natural resources are a valuable heritage of the five partner countries.”
Dr Salamão spoke of the project as a commendable achievement and “a true symbol of regional integration”, which is one of SADC’s goals. He saw it as “a door to further milestones that have the potential to change the lives of communities who live in the KAZA TFCA area for the better”.
The project is not without challenges. Land mines left by the war are scattered around Angola’s Cuando Cubango province that adjoins the Caprivi in the south and southern Zambia to the east. The mines were planted despite the Geneva Convention’s requirement that such areas be mapped, which makes them hard to locate. But, according to Myburgh, clearing has been going on for some time and remains a high priority.
The area includes the Luiana Partial Reserve, which, like rest of the area, was left stripped of game by the fighting armies. But already the vast elephant herds of Botswana have started migrating across Namibia’s Caprivi strip through Zambia, back to the vast woodlands where their ancestors once roamed without fear of soldiers and their explosives.

At The (Trans)frontier Of Conservation And Tourism

Nyasha Matonhodze was born on July 31, 1994, in Zimbabwe. Her mother was just 18 years old, so she was looked after by her grandmother and grew up bathing outside in the sun and falling asleep in the sand in the rural areas around the capital, Harare.
At the age of eight, she went to join her mother in England, who was working in the small midland town of Northampton. It was here where Nyasha became aware of herself and her dreams.
“I was never a girly girl, but I did really like make up and watching America’s Next Top Model,” she once told Fashion TV.
It was the show that drew her interest in modeling. She decided at 14 that it was something she’d try out. Her parents took her to an open call at Elite, after which she won the Elite Model Look competition in the United Kingdom. Two years later, at the tender age of 16, she walked her first runway. “It really teaches you how to present yourself; what elegant, sexy, fierce is really about,” she says about her job.
It’s extremely hard to pin her down for a chat because of the breakneck speed of her new life.  She went from shooting in London to castings for New York Fashion Week and was later on her way to Milan. You could almost say that the model is elusive and there are very few interviews with her in existence.
Nyasha—whose name means mercy in her mother tongue—is now at the mercy of a tough business while she is still a teenager. Modeling is not for the fainthearted. The rewards may be high, but the risks are great. You have to miss sleep for months on end shuttling from one capital to the next. Your face can fall and your fortunes can fall with it. Often, your name can be on everyone’s lips one minute; the next, you are in obscurity.
Despite Nyasha’s tender years, she appears to have her head screwed on with a healthy grasp of the misfortunes that can haunt her chosen career.
“You never know what’s next. One minute you’re good and the next is a bit of a… I’m just making the most of the time that I’ve got,” she smiles.
For now, she is most definitely a rising star. She has walked in more than 90 shows since her debut, with more than 80 in the last year. She has been on the cover of two magazines and is represented by Elite Model Management in London, Milan and Paris, and the by Marilyn Agency in New York.
Her career highlight must be her earning a spot in the Louis Vuitton advertising campaign. It’s made sure that anyone who hadn’t heard of Nyasha Matonhodze won’t forget her anytime soon.
After the announcement, she told the Daily Telegraph in London that tears had welled up in her eyes.
“I thought ‘Lord you are lucky!’ It didn’t actually hit me until I was in a Rolls Royce sitting eye-to-eye with (renowned fashion photographer, Steven) Meisel.”
She’s also done advertising for Topshop.
She has a pleasing disposition, carries herself with elegance and still maintains that childlike sparkle in her eyes and playfulness.
The cut-throat world of beauty leaves most to think that there’s little room for friends, with plenty of young hopefuls being discovered—and vying for the same jobs. Matonhodze’s warmth has allowed her to find a best friend in Ajak Deng—who is number eight on our list.
“I love what I do,” she says.
The question which remains is how long will this dream run last? In the meantime, you can be sure this potential future-Iman or Naomi Campbell—who has traveled a long journey from the Zimbabwean bush to the heights of sophistication—will enjoy every last minute of it. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-465" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/nyashamatonhodze_327439_original_resp.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="995" />

Elegant, Sexy And Fierce

Trevor Ncube, 49, a Zimbabwean publisher, looks a hard nut to crack. Perhaps he is tough as nails after navigating the murky waters of Zimbabwean politics to set up private papers that have clashed with President Robert Mugabe and given an alternative voice to state-owned media.
It has made Ncube rich, with an estimated fortune running into millions of rand. He prefers to keep this figure under lock and key, the legacy of humble beginnings.
Ncube was born into a poor household in colonial Zimbabwe in the 1960s, when there were few opportunities for black men. His father was an amazing cook, in his words, and his mother, Alima, a domestic servant, later an entrepreneur, who sold clothes to send six children to school.
“Our upbringing was tough&#8230; we struggled quite a lot. There were times when I didn’t have shoes, walked to school barefoot; there are times when I didn’t have a uniform, and friends would borrow me shirts. We would run out of things like Vaseline to oil our body and used margarine instead, so we would look good,” says Ncube.
To raise school fees, Ncube often worked as a gardener at the home of a white family, the Johnsons, where his parents worked, in the suburbs of the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
“It is this background that has made me humble,” Ncube said.
His mother gave Ncube a taste for making money, his background the motivation.
“I never wanted to live the kind of life we lived, I wanted my life to be different. The life of lack, the type of hand-to-mouth existence I endured, not because of my parents’ fault or anything. It is a life I said I didn’t want to endure. It’s fear of being poor, the fear of the hand-to-mouth existence,” he said.
Achieving this hasn’t been easy in the rough-and-tumble of Zimbabwean politics. Ncube has been in and out of police cells, starting with his student leader days at the University of Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Once, while detained at a police station in Harare, the former head of intelligence threw a pistol in Ncube’s face in anger over a student demonstration.
When he became a journalist, the cells awaited Ncube yet again, as his newspaper, The Financial Gazette, the country’s business weekly, trod on a few powerful toes.
“The discomfort of being in a room with 14 other suspects, with a toilet close by—the stench was awful. Sending us to prison was a way of showing us they could do anything they wished, that they were in charge. It was uncomfortable, it makes you very angry and think of a way to treat these people in kind for what they are doing to you. It was very frightening. I had never been in prison and I didn’t know what would happen next, given the unexplained disappearances of others in similar circumstances by the state,” says Ncube.
These days, Ncube is merely disappointed with Zimbabwe’s leaders whom, he says, had plenty of opportunities to turn things around since independence, but have little to show for it.
Beneath Ncube’s often acid look, as he narrates a painful past, is, in his own words, “a loving and caring man who fears God”.
Ncube also needed guts to set up a company now running three papers in Zimbabwe: a daily, financial weekly and Sunday paper. This, in addition to publishing South Africa’s second most popular paper, The Mail&amp;Guardian, selling just over 51,000 copies every week. He holds 76% equity in the Mail&amp;Guardian.
“Nothing happens at the M&amp;G when I don’t want it to,” he says.
A climb down from chairperson to deputy chair of the M&amp;G group raised whispers that he was being bought out.
“I’m not a CEO. I provide strategic support, wisdom, oversight. I’m not a manager, I’m terrible at management. I’m a leader, I’m not an entrepreneur. There are much smarter, better managers out there. I thought, ‘Well, let me stick to what I know best… I love making babies, I don’t like taking care of babies, so, well, I like conceiving ideas and projects, and letting them happen’.”
Ncube won the German Africa Award, from the German Africa Foundation, for press freedom, human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, a journalistic milestone on the road to riches.
Says Andy Moyse, a journalist who heads Zimbabwe Mass Media Monitoring Project, which scrutinizes news in the country for fair and professional coverage of events: “He (Ncube) is an astute businessman. He has created one of the biggest print media businesses the country has ever witnessed. He has brought his business acumen into the media environment. To be fair, he has created a very dominant single media house. We need this to deal with the repressive media climate.”
Ncube’s career has been eventful and often rocky, to say the least. It all began with a job as assistant editor of The Financial Gazette in 1991. He got fired by the publisher years later for not toeing the editorial line.
“It was a tough time. If you have never been fired, then you have no business being in business. Being fired is a university in itself. It toughens you, it makes you realise how life is like.”
Ncube got fired with a mortgage hanging over him and a family to take care of, despite the fact that he was once nominated Zimbabwe Editor of the Year.
Within months, Ncube had scouted for a financier to set up a private paper, The Zimbabwe Independent. Clive Murphy, a serial entrepreneur, got wind of that; a meeting was set up, and the rest is history. He was initially offered a 2% stake, but increased it to 5%. He paid it off when the business returns looked good.
“I’m scared of debt. When the first dividend of equity came, that was it, I became a capitalist. I never looked back,” Ncube said. After almost a decade, he took over the controlling shareholding of The Zimbabwe Independent.
From The Zimbabwe Independent are two off-shoots: a weekly, The Standard, and a daily, NewsDay, part of a media empire called Alpha Media Holdings.
Ncube smiles at the memory of the next step. When he lost The Financial Gazette job, Ncube applied for a job at South Africa’s Sunday Times and Mail&amp;Guardian. He was turned down by both. The rich irony is that he now owns Mail&amp;Guardian.
This is how it happened: During a trip to Cape Town, Govan Reddy, the previous owner, approached him, having caught wind that Ncube wanted to expand his media business portfolio into the region.
“They wanted someone with a pedigree, who would withstand political pressure but who is also even-handed to both government and opposition,” Ncube said.
Negotiating the deal wasn’t easy. Ncube had to shrug off the challenge from big-hitting potential suitors like Zwelake Sisulu and Anthony Harper. After acquiring it, Ncube says the challenge was to turn it around. The M&amp;G, at the time, was making over R15 million ($1.95 million) in losses every year. “For me, it was the biggest test being in a foreign environment where the players are complete strangers,” he says.
Ncube applied for a New York-based foundation funding loan for media development. It provides seed capital, is run professionally, and they charge interest.
“We have since repaid the loan,” he said.
It’s not an easy job. At the time, the establishment was accusing the M&amp;G of pandering to white interests.
“Naturally, we are bound to irritate the political establishment. That doesn’t worry us, it doesn’t concern us, it happens here in Zimbabwe. That is the nature of the beast. We would worry if the politicians weren’t complaining.”
What bothers the publisher is the politics of South Africa.
“The situation in South Africa is now beginning to approximate what happened here 20 years ago. That’s where South Africa is after 16 years of a new political dispensation—the intolerance around the media, this new secrecy bill. For me, watching South Africa play out is watching Zimbabwe play all over again. I know a lot of South Africans get irritated when you say that. South Africa is Zimbabwe again in slow motion in certain instances,”
says Ncube.
It could be tricky for Ncube, when it comes to speaking out about politics. He is known as a journalist who speaks his mind and has an analytical insight into the political machinations of Zimbabwe and South Africa. On the other hand, he is a man with media interests—which can often be vulnerable—both sides of the Limpopo River. This year, he is likely to field a flurry of questions, about the politics of the land of his birth, as Zimbabwe is expected to hold elections.
Referring to Zimbabwean politics, he says: “It is going to be turbulent. I don’t think the Movement for Democratic Change (under Morgan Tsvangirai) has a clue about governance. But (should it win an election) it will only provide that environment necessary for stability.”
A journalist at Alpha Media Holdings, who declined to be named, said: “His (Ncube’s) commitment to democracy and media freedom in particular is not driven by corporate or business interest. It is an ingrained conviction for him. He has this deep-seated belief that people must be free… his downside is his failure to create a balance between the workers’ interests and enlightened self-interest. He would do well if he became more sensitive to our remunerations; otherwise, he is a great guy.”
<h3>New Randela Notes 
Cause A Stir</h3>
With South Africa’s rand under pressure, word on Friday afternoon that there would be an announcement of national importance on the following day, February 11, caused consternation in the markets.
The rand lost 2.5% of its value as traders got the jitters ahead of the mysterious announcement in Pretoria. The invitation said the South African President, Jacob Zuma, Reserve Bank Governor, Gill Marcus and Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan were all going to be there—something highly important, surely? Journalists stayed glued to their phones and laptops—maybe exchange controls were about to be abolished. Imagine?
In the end, it was merely an announcement that former President Nelson Mandela was to replace the big five game animals—lion, buffalo, rhino, elephant and leopard—on the front of South Africa’s bank notes.  “It’s the Randela!” joked one journalist.
The announcement was to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the release of Mandela from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town, on February 11, 1990. The notes have improved security marks and  features to help the blind. They will be put into circulation before the end of the year and the  existing notes will remain legal tender.
Marcus apologised for the confusion around the announcement and quipped: “It shows how little we look to good news.”
As for the losses to the rand during the confusion? The CNBC Africa markets team assures FORBES AFRICA that most of the 2.5% loss to the value of the rand was largely down to the economic woes of Greece, rather than the PR clumsiness of the government officials behind the new face on the notes.
<div id="attachment_445" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-445" class="size-large wp-image-445" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0000155868-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />LVDbank05.jpg</div>

How Fear Can Make You Rich

The city of Mutare, set in a hollow on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, is sweltering under another blue sky. In this border town hemmed in by dramatic mountains, a small scene is being played out in the historic stage play that is Zimbabwe’s indigenization policy.
The lead actor is 52-year-old Charles Tawazadza—a man who has gone from manager to boss at this busy dry dock almost overnight, thanks to the country’s attempt to give black Zimbabweans a larger slice of the economy.
<div id="attachment_143" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-143" class="size-large wp-image-143" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dryport_4-801x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="606" />Mutare Dry Port, Charles Tawazadza</div>
“When you talk about this wealth, you are talking about the wellbeing of generations. We did not borrow this land or economy from our ancestors. We borrowed it for the future generations to come. If we don’t acquire it and make good use of it, future generations will be spitting on our graves instead of praising us,” he says.
The company, through which Tawazadza now strolls confidently in his corporate uniform, is one of thousands of foreign-owned outfits across Zimbabwe that appear destined to be taken over by people born and bred in the country. They range from mines to banks and safari companies. The Empowerment Ministry has threatened to revoke or suspend operating licences for more than 500 foreign owned companies, which haven’t yet fallen in line. That is a lot of valuable equity up for grabs and the word is the well connected are hovering.
Tawazadza has taken over Mutare Dry Port, a shipping cargo company with a $3 million asset value. It used to be called GMS Cornelder and had been owned by Mozambican investors since 2000. When pressure came to hand over 51% of the equity, the Mozambicans put forward Tawazadza, who had worked in management at the company for many years, to take control and settled for being minority shareholders.
Even Tawazadza’s name fitted—in Shona it means “to fill up”. Mutare Dry Port has rail sidings with a holding capacity of 24 wagons, a general and bonded warehouse, plus container handling equipment. It has global networks through partnerships operating under specialized air and ocean freights, road and rail transportation, and warehousing and container handling. It means everything from second-hand cars from Japan, to fruit from South America, arrives at Mutare Dry Port to fill up the rolling stock. Many of the goods arrive at docks in Beira in Mozambique and are shipped by rail to Mutare.
Rail runs into Tawazadza’s huge transit shed and container yard, which handles 180,000 tons of shipments every month. There’s even a runway—a legacy of the British Royal Air Force, which used the site as a base during World War II. Tawazadza compares the indigenization laws to the 2000 seizure of farms by liberation war veterans. He says they too are part of an “economic emancipation” program to empower black people.
Against the allegations that these deals are merely for political cronies, Tawazadza says: “I have never met Mugabe. The laws are not anything to enrich Mugabe. He was our leader during the liberation struggle, and he is our leader today in this struggle for economic emancipation. “If you look at the noise which is coming out of the indigenization and economic empowerment, it will come to pass,” Tawazadza says.
The whites in Zimbabwe, Tawazadza says, are “calledRhodesians because Cecil John Rhodes was here to create wealth for them. And this is what President Mugabe is doing for us.” President Mugabe’s jumbled commercial farm seizures have reduced agricultural production, leaving unexploited farms, after driving out over 4,000 former white farmers in the name of an agrarian revolution. Independent economist John Robertson claims farm production is 60% down compared to 1998, although government figures refute this. “Over 4,000 white farmers have been replaced by over 400,000 black owners. All these blacks represent Mugabe’s vision,” Tawazadza said. “People are negotiating and cutting deals without government intervention. I acquired this company on my own.
No one from government came to negotiate on my behalf,” Tawazadza said. But the laws could prove a Pyrrhic victory for a country desperate to emerge from a long recession. Capital could dry up, and the capacity of Zimbabweans to borrow and increase production may be limited. Investors say the laws could scare foreign companies with concerns about property rights, leaving Zimbabwe as a hard sell.
Ray William Black, of Investec Securities, said at a recent investor conference in Harare: “The economy of Zimbabwe has been improving over the last years, but to attract investment, foreign investors have a choice to make. If one country has more onerous conditions than another, then investment will stay away.
<div id="attachment_144" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-144" class="size-large wp-image-144" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Dryport_5-1024x655.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="303" />Mutare Dry Port, Charles Tawazadza</div>
“No country should make it too difficult for investors if they want to attract money. In Zimbabwe, companies that have been operating are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are already under immense pressures, and facing major changes.”
Back in Mutare, Tawazadza has plans to expand and turn his company into a $10 million asset. For a man in the cargo business, with a name that means filling up, there is no turning back or thought of unloading his new business.

Tag: Zimbabwe

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