Blog 31 by Tan: The Great Zimbabwe Ruins and The Ruins of a Great Zimbabwe

We found Doug and Tempe’s place in Chimanimani without a problem and settled in for another night of interesting conversation. Doug has a near complete collection of all the Zimbabwean currency released (minus two notes) and gave us a highly entertaining, chronological wrap-up of the currency crisis. Doug was highly knowledgeable in this area and I think he gets a kick out of the shocked and stupefied expressions on the faces of the foreigners he gives his talk to.

Enjoying great views of the mountains

Tempe runs a wonderful guesthouse in Chimanimani called The Farmhouse which we recommend highly. It is peaceful, comfortable and affordable.

Doug and Tempe have explored every nook and cranny of the mountains so will be able to help you out with advice for hiking

It is on a beautiful dairy plot and while you are there be sure to order some milk fresh from the cow.

The currency crisis basically started as the Zimbabwean government was simply printing money to fund their costly and unsuccessful war with the Democratic Republic of Congo, when Mugabe was trying to get his grubby little hands on DRC’s diamonds. In Mugabe’s defense, I admit that once I also truly believed that printing more money was the way to eradicate poverty. I was of course 10 years old and the time. When payments to the IMF were due, he printed more money. When cash in circulation reduced, he printed more money. Basically his answer to all fiscal issues was to print more money, much like my response would have been, when I was a child of 10.

Hyper-inflation became so pronounced that the Central Bank of Zimbabwe redenominated the currency (i.e. took a bunch of zeros off the end) on three separate occasions. In the beginning they were trying hard to avoid the embarrassment of having to print a one million dollar note, so in August 2006, the Central Bank slashed three zeros from the currency. They were released as “Bearer’s Cheques” with an expiry date as there was an expectation that inflation could be brought under control and proper legal tender re-released, but little did they know what was to come… Hyperinflation accelerated to the point that businesses were struggling to get together enough cash for everyday transactions, so in July 2008 they printed new “agro-cheques” (short for agriculture) this time with 10 zeros removed. Z$10 billion was therefore redenominated to be Z$1.

Mick looking suitably stupefied by what he was hearing

The problem was so extreme however that money simply could not be printed fast enough to keep up with inflation. By the time new notes were distributed they were essentially worthless. So in February 2009 a third redenomination occurred which dropped another 12 zeros off the currency. This was done by taking money that was stored as reserve currency in Zimbabwe’s central bank, and releasing it, but now with a new value. So money which was already printed and stored in the Reserve Bank, was released into circulation but with a value of 1000000000000 times more! That little factoid made Mick’s head spin to the point he just kept saying “hang on… what? They did what!?”

Its one thing to redenominate a currency by printing new money, but to redenominate money that is already printed and stored as reserve currency to underpin the value of the worthless currency in circulation that needs redenomination? And empty the currency reserve in the process? Whoever came up with that idea, to just say “oh, yeah I know its worthless reserve currency but just whip 12 zeros off the end and she’ll be apples”, I’m going to go out on a limb here but I don’t think they were acting in the best interests of the nation. Seriously, that would have to be one of the most inflationary fiscal actions in history, and all done in the aim of combating inflation!

So to recap some of these utterly bewildering figures, the total value of the 3 redenominations alone was thus worth 10 trillion trillion original dollars, as together they reduced the value of an original dollar by 10³ × 10¹⁰ × 10¹² = 10²⁵. Seriously, try get your head around that!

Who wants to be a Quadrillionaire?

In another pre-school attempt at inflation control, the government introduced price ceilings on staple goods. The maximum prices for these goods were far below the cost of production, leaving vendors with 2 real options; operate illegally and sell the goods at market prices, or simply not stock these goods at all. Many went for option 2, shops emptied and food supply evaporated. Some tried option 1, and suffered the consequences. Government goon squads/police would find these stores, arrest the shop owner, drop the prices of goods to the regulated amount, buy it all and then immediately sell it on the black market for an enormous profit. An example might be a loaf of bread, which might be officially priced Z$550 million, but it was typically only available on the black market for a cost Z$10 billion.

Business simply couldn’t operate anymore, not legally anyway. Shops completely emptied of goods and closed. People camped out for days at petrol stations to buy fuel. Bartering became the norm and people increasingly dealt in USD despite the risks. In Zimbabwe the highest monthly inflation rate reached 79,600,000,000% in November 2008. Toilet paper became rare and expensive and Zimbabwean notes were soon used as a cost effective and rather symbolic alternative.

Government officials made millions of real dollars (not Zim dollars, proper ones) by rorting the various foreign exchange rates. Because there was a lack of physical cash, there was a cash exchange rate, a bank exchange rate, and then of course the black market. The cash rate was very low as banks couldn’t actually produce enough Zim money if someone was silly enough to buy some. The bank rate was a more realistic reflection of the Zim dollar value, however it didn’t mean much in real terms as banking laws meant it was basically impossible to withdraw your cash. You might have had quadrillions of dollars in the bank but you couldn’t access it. And then there was the black market which was somewhere in the middle. Connected and corrupt government types would then takes some Zim dollars, buy US currency on the blackmarket, deposit it into the bank at the significantly higher bank rate, then use their connections to withdraw the money (illegally) and take it back to the blackmarket, turn it back to USD and then do it all over again.   They would just transact round and round and round making money out of thin air. Funnily enough, the Zim dollar soon collapsed…

The big fella – 100 Trillion dollars the largest note printed – bear in mind it had already had 15 zeros taken off by this point. When this note was released on January 16, 2009, the fx rate to the USD was about a trillion to one, so this note was worth about USD100. By the start of February, less than 3 weeks later, the fx rate was 300 trillion to 1. The note was now worth about US 33c.

The affect of the currency crisis on the lives of everyday Zimbabweans was immense. People started paying wages in diesel and food, we heard stories of people paying for school fees with a cow, all because the money was worthless and people didn’t want it. However, trading in other currencies was illegal and employers like Doug were legally required to pay (at least occasionally) their employees in Zimbabwean currency, which they didn’t want, which was hard to get in significant amounts, hard to carry, and very swiftly became worthless. Doug would have to arrange permission from the government to withdraw such an enormous sum of money, pre-book with the bank so they had time to organize it, then take his pick up truck so he had the load carrying capacity to transport the piles and piles of money to pay his workers.

With the economy imploded, Doug and Tempe, like many others, were forced to become more self-sufficient than ever before as supermarket shelves were empty. They would go shopping for staples, like flour, sugar and salt etc, twice a year in South Africa towing a trailer. They got dairy cows and chickens, grew their own fruit and vegetables, baked bread, learned to make cheese and butcher and smoke their own pigs. People made do as best as they could and some even came out ahead in the game. Doug told us that there were exceedingly poor Zimbabweans with an innate ability to understand and navigate the constantly shifting sands of the currency game that went on to become rich as a result of the money madness. But obviously…. for the most part, everyone suffered.

Mick shocked…Doug amused. The calamity ended when a new finance minister legalised the use of foreign currencies. The blackmarket instantly became legal, overwhelmingly the USD, the Rand and to a lesser extent a few others like the Botswanan Pula, the British Pound and even the Chinese Yuan became the commonly transacted currencies and inflation stopped. The damage was done though, the economy was destroyed.

Saying goodbye to our excellent hosts

We went to bed with our minds swimming and in utter disbelief that the architect of such destruction is still in charge. Fair warning to anyone travelling to Zimbabwe: it is a great place, there is some fantastic riding to be had, the people are extremely friendly and so badly need your tourist dollars… but thoughts of politics is unavoidable. You will look around and see a place that looks to have everything going for it, fertile productive land, good (though aging) infrastructure, a generally cohesive and well educated populace but limited commercial activity of any consequence anywhere, no growth or activity, no nothing. It is like going on safari and coming across an elephant dressed in a bikini. You will not be able to stop thinking ‘wow, that is so out of the ordinary, it makes no sense for it to be this way, who is responsible for this?’

Regular maintenance time

Mick noticed his fork seals were leaking

So used the Seal Mate fork seal tool

Removed a lot of grit… see how it goes… but may be due for a rebuild

Doug and Tempe’s lovely house lady, Judy who looked out for us

We had some bike jobs and admin to take care of and Doug and Tempe kindly offered their place to us while they went on their annual week-long houseboat cruise on Lake Kariba with friends. It was just some general bike maintenance that needed doing. Worn rear tyres were changed out, chains and sprockets cleaned and we dealt with a regularly deflating tyre (fibres from the tyre goop stuck in the valve was the culprit) as well as cleaning out Mick’s leaking fork seals.

Hiking ‘Corner’

Some non-bike physical activity

Fun bit of rock scrambling… Mick twisted the camera a little for extra dramatic effect, it was steep but not this steep

Views into Mozambique

The compulsory swim that stopped our progress. It looked easy to get into , but difficult to get back with a bung shoulder. Looked cold too, which made the decision easier!

We had the place to ourselves

We thought a bit of non-biking physical activity was in order so we went for a hike to a part of the Chinmanimani mountains known as ‘Corner’. Following some directions from Doug, we found the place easy enough but struggled to find the start of the trail which was quite overgrown. From there we headed downstream in search of a waterfall in Mozambique, and it was an hour or so of hiking and scrambling over rocks until the GPS told us we had arrived at the border. It was pretty cool to visit a new country without having to go through the usual formalities. Another half hour or so we reached a section of the trail were it was necessary to swim though a steep sided ravine, which looked like fun but too much work for my still injured shoulder to attempt to scramble up on the return. So we turned around there and walked back to find the national park guy awaiting payment. Bummer. There was a $US10 fee per person to fork out but the young guy was really friendly and officious and seemed excited to have something to do. He said we were the first people there in two months.

Nice mountain roads back to town

The ride out was pretty rocky and I binned it, breaking my right hand mirror yet again. My shoulder was seriously deficient in strength at that time so I couldn’t maneuver the bike well on such rocky terrain. I was worried about hurting my shoulder attempting to keep the bike upright so it was more of a self-preservation drop than a proper binning. Nevertheless our shopping list now included a wing mirror. After working up a hunger on the hike we went to the local chicken and sadza (the local Shona name for millet pap) lady for a good and cost effective feed. For $1USD you get a piece of fried chicken, fresh vegies cut straight from the garden (ie she gets her scissors and goes and cuts it after you order, that’s how fresh), a huge helping of millet pap and a tomato relish type sauce. We lived on these meals through Zimbabwe.

Just by chance we found the best chicken and sadza lady in town.

We were told that she ran the place on her own, got up with the sun to buy and slaughter the chickens, worked all day and into the evening and maybe cleared $3 to $5 profit a day.

We lived on this food in Zimbabwe.

Cheap, plentiful and tasty

Our chicken and sadza lady appreciated our bikes and repeat business

Her lovely daughter

It was soon time to move on to our next destination, the Great Zimbabwe Ruins. Before leaving we had the chance to meet Doug and Tempe’s son Peter who is an engineer working in Tanzania and a fellow bike nut. We were very fortunate to find that Peter just so happened to have an old right hand wing mirror for a Suzuki that fitted perfectly. We discussed our plans to exit Zimbabwe and enter Mozambique by a very obscure border post that required us to travel through the Gonarezhou National Park. Peter wisely recommended that we should confirm with the National Parks authority that we would be able to ride through the park as it would be an awful way to go to be turned away at the gate. We tried to do this but no one could give us a straight answer. There was nothing left to do but go there and try our luck.

Decent quality roads like this were generally empty but for us

Mick admiring the views

Lunch at High Town Butchery T-Away. Beef and Sadza, USD1 per plate.

These guys told us you could buy a bottle of local millet beer for $1. I told him we’d settle with a coke.

Shooting the breeze with the boys. He convinced Mick to try out the local beer, which apparently didn’t smell to good and tasted pretty rough

So we headed off. When we informed people of where we were going they would joke that if we wanted to see the Great Zimbabwe Ruins we just needed to look around… we were in it. It was sadly amusing. The real Great Zimbabwe Ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage site located near the town of Masvingo. We managed to chart a route including some entertaining back roads. When we arrived we parked the bikes under a tree and rather stupidly opted to stay in our motorbike boots and pants for the tour of the ruins. It was hot and uncomfortable trudging up hillsides in Goretex motorbike apparel and motocross boots but probably made for some worthwhile beneficial exercise. The tour was interesting but rather unexpectedly came back to politics. We had been told previously that the Great Zimbabwe Ruins were built by Arab slave traders and knowing nothing of the history and being too naïve to understand the implications of the assertion, we took that to be the case. However on the tour of the ruins we were informed that they were constructed between 1100 and 1450AD by ancestors of the local Shona people. We were confused. So we looked into the reasons for the completely conflicting reports. We opened the can… and there were a great deal of worms.

Granite, granite everywhere. There is one of the many many massive batholiths in the background

The Great Zimbabwe Ruins

Once the capital of a major trading empire in the gold rich plateau of southern Africa

At its height (from 1300 to 1450AD) it was home to 10,000 to 18,000 people. This image was the one chosen by Zanu PF as their symbol, A tower of strength in the middle with 2 supporting trees. Something symbolising violence, incompetence and theft would be far more fitting.

It seems the controversy stemmed from incorrect assumptions of the origin based the young nature of the construction and the tendency for archaeologist of the day to relate things back to the known world. However, it also seems that the interpretation of the site was influenced by prejudice on the part of some European explorers and governments. Many simply could not believe the locals were capable of such workmanship and instead attributed it to foreign powers. What has followed has been more than a century of misinformation of the site where many explorers and archaeologists ignored, misinterpreted and in some cases intentionally destroyed evidence of Great Zimbabwe’s indigenous origin.

The opinions of some early explorers and archaeologists with decidedly racist attitudes seemed to prevail for a very long time. One such fellow was Carl Peters, a rather enthusiastic colonizer and the creator of German Tanganyika (present day Rwanda, Burundi and mainland Tanzania). Peters once described the people of Tanganyika as ‘sickly and useless rubbish’ and thought that they should be used by white settlers as slave labour or exterminated. It is not hard to believe that his attitude may have influenced his opinion as to who built the ruins. And despite never having visited the site, his idea that the local population could not have been responsible, gained traction.

In 1902 the Rhodesian government rather curiously appointed a journalist named Richard Nicklin Hall to oversee the Great Zimbabwe Ruins. Hall spent two years excavating and publishing his findings. He believed that Arabs were the people responsible for the site. To support this, Hall removed anything that he thought might link the site with an African heritage and destroyed countless artifacts in the process. Eventually he was sacked but his ideas had taken hold by that point. I suppose there was no reason to doubt him at the time.

There was considerable craftsmanship at play

With lots of narrow passages

Views up to the penthouse suite where the king lived

Weirdly, the popularity of the external Semitic Arab origin theory got a massive boost by the publishing of Henry Rider Haggard’s action-adventure novel King Solomon’s Mines in 1895. In fact it quickly became the most popular explanation for the ruins, despite the fact it was a fictional adventure novel.   In 1930, the German ethnologist Leo Viktor Frobenius presented the ruins as many thousands of years old and believed the builders to have been Sumerians from near the Caspian Sea. This became another popular theory. Incidentally Frobenius also claimed that the lost city of Atlantis could be found in Southern Africa. He also used to pillage antiquities like it was going out of style, justifying the theft with the following statement ‘I was moved to melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of so much loveliness’.

Where the mere mortal lived back in the day. Now it was a cultural village where people dance for you while you feel slightly uncomfortable

But they sure had rhythm

Further excavations by actual archaeologists who actually excavated the site were conducted and nearly nothing but African artifacts were unearthed. Heated arguments as to the origins of Great Zimbabwe continued for many more years and despite corroboration from yet more archaeologists, it did nothing to silence the proponents of the external origins theory. It wasn’t always a case of people having an agenda to push, however, sometimes it is simply difficult for many to abandon established ideas.

As African states were achieving independence, views on the indigenous origin of Great Zimbabwe Ruins brought people into direct conflict with the colonial administration. Archaeologists were coming under increasing pressure by the Rhodesian Government to deny its construction by a native African population. Information was censored, records changed and dissenting archaeologists removed from their posts. The debate became heavily politically charged as it seemed a point of legitimacy for white rule, to assert that Africans could not be able to build such a monument. So too for the leaders of those opposing colonial rule, who saw the grandeur of the ruins as proof of the ability of the native population to govern themselves.

It is no surprise that Mugabe’s Zanu PF took their symbol from the Great Zimbabwe Ruins as it was made into (and still remains) a potent symbol of African pride. The name Zimbabwe is actually derived from the Shona name for the ruins meaning ‘large houses of stone.’ The great irony of the whole thing is that Mugabe and ZANU-PF have gone on to politicise the Great Zimbabwe Ruins much like the leaders before them and this has undermined efforts to further understand the place. Many questions still remain as to the full economic and technical purpose and functioning of Great Zimbabwe. It is funny (and depressing) to think that were further excavations to reveal a greater external influence to the founding and functioning of Great Zimbabwe, that the current government would likely go to similar lengths as the previous one to undermine that knowledge. Politicians, hey… as useless as tits on a bull. We just wanted to see some historical ruins and we find ourselves in this shit…

Climbing up a hill in my bike gear…one of my more silly decisions

Up top in the King’s residence

They are not exactly sure what led the place to be abandoned but some suggests were famine, lack or water, exhaustion of the nearby gold mines and the rise of more important economic centres elsewhere

One thing we did know for sure was the way in which the ruins were constructed. Rocks don’t lie afterall. The ride to the ruins took us over and around huge granite batholiths (a fancy geologist word for a great, big hunk of igneous rock). It is these rocks that make up the bricks of the ruins. As people may recall from the geology tidbits mentioned in the Namibia blogs, granite has the tendency to break when it experiences large variations in temperature. The builders of Great Zimbabwe used this knowledge to their advantage and mined the granite by heating the surface of the rock with fire and then inducing thermal shock by pouring water over the surface to break the rocks apart. Clever and effective.

All in all, the visit to the ruins was interesting and worth the ride. We camped in the campground next to the ruins and settled in for our last night in Zim. The next morning we found a supermarket so were able to stock up on food. There were things to buy but I was the only one buying. I was taken aback when I got to the counter and saw a wall of glossy foreign gossip magazines for sale. Who on Earth in this tiny town in Zimbabwe is buying a magazine with one of the lesser known Kardashian sisters on it? We barely saw anyone buy food in that country. For the money we were spending on food for the two of us for a day you could by a magazine detailing just how it is some C-grade American reality tv non-entity got her baby body back. Unreal. After fuelling up we continued our way south toward Gonarezhou National Park. We were keen to do some dirt riding and, as ever, avoid the busy border posts so we had decided to try ride south through the National Park to what looked on the map to be a remote crossing at Sango/Chiqualaquala.

At the start of the road through Gonarezhou. That is an elephant skull in the background

It was hot and dusty riding in an area that I don’t think gets a lot of visitors. As we got closer to the Gonarezhou Park gates we became quite convinced we would be turned away. The road was empty and we were following a railway line, it made sense the border post was used for clearing trains and not much else. We didn’t much fancy having to turn around as our backup plan was to ride the 100 plus km of dirt back to the main highway and to enter South Africa again on our way to Mozambique. We were so close to the gates that we thought we might as well give it a shot. When we got to the gates, they were open so we rode through and hung around a few huts for a couple minutes until someone showed up. The guy seemed pretty surprised to see us and when we asked if we could go though he was like..yeah..sure..whatever. He didn’t really care. We were on our way!

What the road like most of the way. Simple, relaxing and fun.

We had heard that the animals in that area, particularly the elephants, were rather traumatised by years of veracious poaching and were therefore instantly aggressive at the sight of people. This information was a little unnerving. All the more so when I noticed about 1km from the gate that I had a bloody flat tyre. Mick did the honours this time while I acted as a lookout. Thankfully we didn’t see any angry, vengeance seeking wildlife. Soon enough we were on the road again, ripping up the dirt tracks and trying to cool off. We didn’t see much in terms of animals (we did spot a couple buck) but had a great run nonetheless. Before we knew it we were at the Sango border post and at the end of our time in Zimbabwe. We had enjoyed our time in Zim and long to return one day. Hopefully, when we do, we will witness a country fulfilling its potential and rewarding the patience and tenacity of its people.

But for now it was time to see what Mozambique has in store for us!

Blog 30 by Tan: Breadbasket to Basketcase

The crossing into Zimbabwe was relatively efficient and mostly painless. As per our usual method, we opted to use a lesser used border post to the avoid delays and bad attitudes that seem to fester at the principal border posts. Crossing at Kariba Dam gave us the added bonus of allowing us to see the lake and the dam wall which, by all accounts, is very much structurally unsound. A plethora of engineers are united in the opinion that without urgent repairs the dam will fail within three years, the fall out of which would be a level of destruction unseen outside a B-grade Hollywood disaster film. The World Bank reports that a catastrophic dam wall failure would cause billions of dollars worth of damage, the loss of 40% of southern Africa’s electricity capacity and put millions of lives at risk.

The damned dam – We didn’t take this photo as photos are forbidden, we whipped it off the net instead. We have heard they have been even more strict with this as a way to stop photos of the cracks in the dam wall getting out into the public. The cracks from the view point were pretty spectacular.

What’s going wrong – once again, not our diagram, this we shamelessly stole from the inter webs. Nerdy engineering types might find their plan of attack interesting. They will be blasting to expand the size of the plunge pool in order to dissipate more energy and turbulence from the spillway discharge.

You see the dam is at risk on two different fronts. The biggest problem is that water from the spillways has eroded 10 times past the original design specification (to 90m!) and is beginning to undercut the 128m high wall. And if that isn’t sufficiently terrifying, a slow chemical reaction is causing concrete swelling, affecting the operation of the spillway gates some of which are completely jammed and can’t be opened or closed. Fortunately the world is sufficiently informed as to the priorities of the Mugabe government and are therefore not waiting for him to do anything about it. The European Union, World Bank, African Development Bank and the ever-generous Swedish government have come to the rescue and repair efforts are underway. Thank goodness.

A good start to our time in Zimbabwe. Who’s ever seen a full rainbow in a perfect sunny blue sky before?

Us and Willem

Thankfully the visa, insurance and road tax in Zimbabwe were nowhere near as expensive as Zambia so things were already looking up. With the formalities complete we headed towards the town of Kiroi. Doug from Sable farms in Zambia had recommended that we catch up with his friend Willem who ran an artisanal gold processing plant. Being mining types we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see what sounded like an interesting little operation. Willem had no problem accepting some total strangers into his house with little notice and put on a fantastic braai for us with his friends and family.

They were an interesting crowd for sure and we couldn’t get enough of their stories of Zimbabwe’s former glory days and the present trials and tribulations. Willem is 5^th generation Zimbabwean originating from the first Afrikaaners that made the long trek north. They told us incredible stories of the life o’ plenty, fun and freedom growing up on commercial Zimbabwean farms. Farmers made money hand over fist; everyone had cars and boats and often planes and helicopters and houses and holidays and domestic staff like you would not believe. However things changed dramatically for them with the rise of Mugabe and they, like many others, lost their farms and their livelihoods in the process.

Mugabe’s land “reform” policies led to the economy imploding in the most swift and spectacular of fashions. The utter calamity of the land seizures demonstrates the perils of disregarding property rights and the rule of law. Kicking white farmers off land to which they had legal ownership led to the loss of investor trust, land equity, expertise and effectively kissed goodbye any chance of economic growth. In fact, growth became a distant memory as the country slipped rapidly into the economic oblivion. It is pretty simple; if you destroy the thing that is responsible for 60% of your GDP, as agriculture was to Zimbabwe, you are toast. Pretty soon after hyper-inflation caused the currency to become worthless, joblessness sky rocketed and life expectancy went from 57 years in 1994 to 34 years in 2007. Goodbye Zimbabwe.

Tobacco leaves freshly harvested and ready for drying

The final product – all dried and nicotine-rich, just looking for some lungs to riddle with disease

Fortunately Willem’s family saw the writing on the wall ahead of time and made some clever decisions, which included investing in houses and the gold processing operation that Willem now runs. They considered immigrating to England/Australia/New Zealand etc like many Zimbo’s did, but ever the optimists they wanted to stick it out because “it had to get better eventually”; Mugabe can’t live forever. I had so much respect for them admitting that the dramatic change in circumstances was probably good for them. Willem said that the family, like most commercial farmers, had had it too good, they lived like kings for so long, they were flying too high and they needed to be bought down to Earth. They said it had bought them closer to each other and to God and they were thankful… however they thought the lesson has been well and truly learned and it was high time things got better again.

It was clear they were dying to get back to living on the land. Their properties, like all of them, were confiscated and “redistributed” to army veterans and political cronies who lacked the farming and logistical skills to operate a large commercial farm. Riding down the highway you can see formerly productive land as far as the eye can see left to grasslands, not even pasture for cattle, just grass for…. grasshoppers I assume? But with the economy laying dead on its back with legs in the air, they now have the opportunity to lease back the land they once owned as their old highly successful farms are now completely derelict, and their new owners need some sort of income. Some of these guys are begging Willem’s family to come and work the land, saying they will take any deal they name – such is the desperation on their side.

Tiaan showing us some of the good stuff

Tobacco leaves sorted and awaiting packing

Fellas doing the pressing

Ladies doing the sorting

We visited Willem’s brother Tiaan’s tobacco farm where he was leasing some land back that the family used to own. When arriving on the farm we drove past a farmhouse which we assumed was abandoned until we saw a tiny maize crop off maybe 200m² in the back garden, which was for years the sole agricultural output of a 400 hectare commercial farm, until Tiaan recently leased some land back. Sadly this story is exceedingly common country wide – hugely productive farms, which employed hundreds and even thousands of people are now reduced to a tiny subsistence plot of the new ‘army veteran’ owner, and a lot of grasshoppers.

Due to the selectivity of harvesting and sorting by hand, the tobacco of Zimbabwe, like Zambia, is high quality and much sought after. The vast majority of tobacco farmed in Zimbabwe is exported and quickly finds its way into the long-suffering lungs of the Chinese tobacco consumer. It was great watching the sorting process where the leaves are graded one-by-one by a small army of women. All the leaves looked the same to me but apparently varied quite a lot in terms of colour and thickness and ummm other attributes I don’t recall. It looked like detailed, tedious, time-consuming work but the workers on the farm were grateful to have a job unlike 80% of their fellow countrymen.

We then went and checked out Willem’s gold processing operation. Willem was getting frustrated by what he saw as the gambling nature of mining, and he longed for the familiarity and comparative predictability of farming. We were impressed by his operation and quite intrigued by its possibilities, and came up with a variety of suggestions which could help alleviate a couple issues he is experiencing. Sure it was a simple operation but it had enormous potential and indeed had been highly lucrative in the past. What Willem was struggling with now was decreasing grade predictability.

Mick getting the lay of the land

Under his arrangement, local artisanal miners bring loads of gold ore for processing, usually in 5t units. The miners pay a fixed rate (actually slightly less then cost) to mill the ore; they keep whatever gold they can recover from a small gravity circuit and panning, and Willem keeps the tails (the waste rock after processing). As not all gold is recovered by gravity separation, Willem gets his payday when the tails are placed in a cyanide leaching circuit. Lately he has been getting a lot of coarse gold ore to process, which responds excellently to gravity separation (which is great for the miner) but leaves little gold to leach; so Willem is not only absorbing some of the processing costs, he is receiving little in terms of gold in tails. In addition to this, some miners are so desperate for a payday they will mine anything and get it milled in the hope that something comes out. This works for them as Willem, by processing for less than cost, is assuming more than his fair share of the economic risk. Mining, it is an interesting game.

Ancient technology, but it works. These mills are 15 years old even though that look ten times that. A battery mill is the only suitable set up for batch processing on this small scale.

The cams that drives the battering rams

Regrinding some tailings before leaching

For us it seemed clear that he could benefit from a greater understanding of the different lithologies and mineralisation styles he was dealing with. In mining, it all comes down to understanding the rocks, and ensuring predictability is the most effective way to minimise risk and make money. In particular he needed to differentiate the fine gold ore that was more advantageous for him, and the coarse gold ore that are more advantageous to the miners, and of course the rocks which were barren and no good to anyone. With this information he could then incentivise the miners providing him with high-grade fine gold material, where he makes his money, by reducing their processing costs, and discourage those with low-grade and/or coarse gold material by increasing their processing costs.

The assay machine in action

Willem was worried that if he increased the costs of some of his miners, who a generally very poor (and often owe him money), they will suffer and then go to one of his competitor’s processing plants and he’d lose the throughput. We argued that it is better to not process than process at a loss, or even break-even. And it would be all the better to stop subsidising low-grade and/or coarse gold miners and have them take their loss-making material to competitors’ mills. Ideally, once everyone was familiar with his strategy, miners would bring their good ore to him and receive favourable rates, and take their bad ore to competitors to avoid unfavourable rates.

Mick with a 5t batch awaiting processing. Mick’s succinct thoughts on this particular pile? “Looks like shit”

We were rather disappointed we couldn’t spare the time to spend a couple of weeks there to characterise the rock and ore types… or even go mapping, and put in place some good strategies. It was an excellent little operation that’s potential could be maximized with some additional technical input. However Willem’s heart was obviously in farming and the high risk nature of mining has worn him out. Mining – she is indeed a fickle mistress but there is a science to learning her ways. We loved the visit and found it excellent brain food for us. We would have loved to have sunk our teeth into the place and had a lot of respect for the family’s business nous in acquiring and running the show. It had sustained them during the lowest points of the economic crisis and took guts to pull off. Impressive stuff.

Willem’s cash cow, the leach ponds

Mick assuming the classic mine manager stance and not even knowing it

That night we went for dinner at Willem’s parents house and had a great night eating, drinking and hearing some crazy stories about Zimbabwe. Seriously it was utterly fascinating, mind bending and overall better than TV. The experiences of the Zimbabweans during the economic apocalypse of the late 1990’s and 2000’s was nearly unimaginable to those from countries with an even mildly competent government. They told us that in 1980 when the Zim dollar floated it was 1 to 1 with the USD. In 2009 when it finally collapsed it was 1 to 1×10^57. That’s one billion trillion trillion trillion trillion, or numerically, 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000. So friends take solace in the fact that you have never stuffed up anything in your entire life as badly Mugube has stuffed up the running of his country.

They told us how once the currency was worthless and stopped circulating, and there was no work to do, the army and police let locals mine gold and diamonds illegally to avoid massive civil unrest, and that it was possible to buy diamonds for next to nothing. They said if you went to the diamond mining districts you could buy a bucket full (literally a 10 litre bucket full) of uncut diamonds for $US10,000. People in those areas were buying a coca-cola with a rough diamond. Willem and his friend Ben thought about selling a car for as much US currency as they could get, and just going and buying diamonds, but the country was so crazy at the time they didn’t go through with it. It was probably a wise move. Indeed bad things were going on in those diamond mining districts including mass murders by the military who were assuming the role of diamond magnates.

Boozing it up in the impressive family bar

Willem’s brother Tiaan was trying to operate their family butchery in the last days of the money crisis and was doubling the price of everything twice a day. He ended up spending a night in prison for trading in USD, which was illegal at the time. They paid their workers in food as the money was worthless. So what the family had to do when any Zim dollars came in was to spend it IMMEDIATELY. The best things to buy were non-perishable goods. And that is how we found ourselves drinking all night from the very well stocked bar in Willem’s parents house. We were drinking booze that they had stockpiled during the final days of the Zim dollar 7 years previous.

Expert storytelling and fun company

After a highly insightful and entertaining visit we said our goodbyes, serviced the bikes and hit the road on our way to Marondera where we had another contact to visit. We took the ring road around Harare and were pretty delighted to have avoided the chaos of yet another capital city. After an exciting ride along a rabbit warren of unmarked farming back roads following about 40km worth of directions including “at the hut turn left” and “go over the exposed bed rock and veer right” and “turn left at the fragrant flowering trees” we rolled into Helen’s place in the dark (rural types are generally very good at giving directions) and were greeted with friendly smiles and served a fantastic dinner in Helen’s huge colonial era farm house. We spent the night discussing life since the collapse of the economy and how that has affected those who made the decision to stay. It was another case of being endlessly impressed by the resilience of the Zimbabweans.

Helen’s farm was wonderfully productive farming land and we were surprised that she hadn’t been kicked off her land yet. She informed us that they had once been evicted but no one moved in so eventually they just moved back in again themselves. And that was that. Yet she very calmly acknowledged that at any point it could happen all over again. They were just taking it one day at a time.

Before we came to Zimbabwe we were not aware that farmers are still getting violently kicked off their farms. We rather naively assumed that the link between taking skilled commercial farmers off the farms and having them replaced with political cronies led to… well… no agricultural production and no economy. Zimbabwe, formerly Africa’s bread basket, was the second biggest economy on the continent exporting vast amounts of agricultural produce, yet now can’t even produce enough to feed itself. Maize, the continents staple, is imported in bulk from Zambia at huge cost.

That night we met some people who just a few months ago had been forcibly evicted from their farm and watched it be given to a 23 yr old political crony with no farming knowledge; he was the current leader of the youth chapter of Zanu PF, essentially the “Mugabe Youth”. To this day the farm seizures generally happen like this… a couple bus loads of disenfranchised local people are intimidated and whipped into a frenzy by a political cadre. They brandish and threaten with simple weapons like machetes and drums are beaten as a form of intimidation. In this particular case the farmer was home and told that he had a day to leave the farm. Fortunately for him, he had a truck so filled it with anything of value. He was told that he could return the next day to get the remainder of his farm equipment and belongings but sure enough when he returned the place had been stripped bare.

We found the complete lack of commercial activity really shocking. Like many from outside I guess we thought things would have improved since the difficult times of the late 1990’s and 2000’s. The failure of the land redistribution policy was blatantly obvious as we rode through the country. We saw countless commercial farms and other agricultural infrastructure like enormous silo’s and train loading systems completely derelict and overgrown. It was the weirdest thing to be traveling along old, yet still good quality roads that were constructed 40 years ago by the English, yet on either side it looked like what you would have expected to have seen 100 years ago. Prime, fertile, bountiful agricultural land completely given over to nature and entirely unutilised. It was surreal, like the scene from one of those post-apocalypse movies. In fact that was our most lasting impression of Zimbabwe; wasted opportunity.

Because of this you could not help but get involved in the politics of the place; the effect of it was everywhere to see, or “not see” in this case. Mugube and his kletpocracy have truly bled the place dry, like mutant, soulless, economic vampires. But fortunately what remains are a well-educated (the schooling system left by the British is regarded as the best on the continent), kind and resilient population patiently waiting for an opportunity to make something of the place again. Everyone has the sense to not even try until there is someone else in charge; its just a waiting game. All we could offer in sympathy was to tell people that ‘umm…he can’t live forever’. To which many emphatically replied, ‘but he IS, he IS living forever’. Mugabe is 91 and his grip on power is iron clad.

Anyways next blog will be last one so politically charged… promise…

The next day we were spoilt for choice of what to do with ourselves. On one side we could hang out with Helen on her beautiful farm or take another friend up on the opportunity to stay in their century old, hand built cottage in the Bvumba, an area of mountainous jungle on the border with Mozambique. We would have loved to have stayed longer in Marondera but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stay in a century old cottage in the mountains.

Views of the Bvumba

We actually took these photos on the way out and managed to offload some luggage for the trip. But the view was the same on the way up…

On the way to the Bvumba we were stopped many times at police checkpoints. In fact the police stops had been extremely frequent since the moment we entered the country. We had heard many a story of outrageous corruption aimed at foreigners so each time we were stopped we put on smiles yet braced ourselves for make believe traffic infractions, yet they never came. This time however, after riding 25000km in Africa, we met our first cop who seemed to be trying to get some coin from us. We’d been stopped a dozen or so times in Zimbabwe and the police had always been kind, professional and more often than not they just wanted to talk about our bikes, where we were going, and the Cricket World Cup when they learned we were Australians.

Nice mountain tracks

This fella was setting us up from a bribe from the moment he waved us off the road. We were carrying spare tyres on the bikes and he looked at them gravely, telling us a number of times it looked very unsafe and we couldn’t go on like this. We kept our cool and politely told him it was very secure and demonstrated the strength of the straps and waited for the “fine” to be issued. But it never came. It was odd. He laid all the groundwork but then never followed through, and soon enough there were other police around us and they got curious about the bikes and then Mick got them talking about the cricket so all thoughts of unsafe tyre carrying were abandoned. After 5 minutes of back and forth discussion about the straps and the load, and then a couple minutes of distracting chat about cricket, he waved us on. We were relieved but more confused to be honest. So that was the closest we’ve come to any corruption. 10000km on from this and that is still the case.

Sundowners

The plains in the distance are Mozambique

I’ll drink to that

Views of the Zimbabwe Mozambique border

We had some fabulous riding to arrive at the Doug and Tempe’s cottage in the Bvumba. The Bvumba/Vumba mountains lie on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border and are known as the mountains of the mist. They are vast and spectacular and fantastic to explore on a motorbike. We were so impressed by Doug and Tempe’s family cottage that was about 100 years old. It was very rugged with no electricity and was slightly dilapidated in parts, which made it all the more attractive. The place had so much character and family history and I must say we were jealous not to have such a place ourselves. We had a braai and spent the evening sharing stories by the fireplace.

The family cottage

Doug manning the braai while some coals burn down

Now I thought we Aussies were tough but we have nothing on the Zimbos. Doug and Tempe told us jaw dropping tales of their annual canoe trip down the hippo and crocodile infested Zambezi River….. like it is a normal thing! Every year they do a week-long canoe safari and they have had some insanely hairy encounters. They have avoided large crocs (one of which they suspected ate a Canadian tourist out of her canoe), and had violent hippo strikes where two people were thrown up in the air, landing in the water but near enough to the bank to escape. After plugging the hole where the hippo tooth penetrated the canoe, they continued on their merry way. Another trip saw them being hounded by elephants for days who for some reason had it in for them. Bugger that!

Clear skies

Me knocking back Amarula like a crazy woman

It was time to leave the Bvumba, and we took Doug and Tempe upon their offer to return with them to Chinmanimani where they lived, a place known to be incredibly scenic. We were advised to go to Tony’s Coffee Shop on the way to try his famous chocolate whisky cake. It was a big decision to spend $11 USD (yeah, big decision…) on a single slice of cake but Tony’s Café is a bit of a local institution, so we went for it. My Lord, was that cake extraordinary. I am quite the accomplished connoisseur of cakely goods but I was completely bested by this one. Between us, Mick and I only got two-thirds of the way through it before going into some kind of sugar-cocao catatonic state. It was basically pure dark chocolate. When you spend a good portion of your daily food budget on a single piece of cake you don’t waste a crumb, which was probably our error. We pushed way past our comfort zone and I was shaking on the inside for the next 2 hours. But on the plus side it made us sufficiently energised for the following ride along the scenic, winding roads to the small town of Chimanimani in Zimbabwe’s famed Eastern Highlands.

THE Chocolate whisky cake

Bested by the thing

Shortcuts… our favourite.

Rolling green hills of the Eastern highlands as far as the eye could see. Very scenic and great riding.