Too Much of Nothing is Hurting The Cause

Picture this: the first time I picked up a guitar, I proved a natural. Indeed, my folks, when they heard me strum away with such ease came up with some surprising theories. One of which was that my father—the block I have yet to see fifty-three years later—had been a musician. The stuff some girls fall for! Music hardly bought a piece of stale bread in the fifties… But there I was weaving through every conceivable musical chord.

The problem, though, was that my amateur tutor showed me every chord in the book: A-minor, D-flat, G, F you name it. He even showed me how to tune a guitar. To this day I have the knack to leave even the most seasoned musician with a moist eye or two when I pick up the guitar and pitch it up to levels many a professional just cannot. However, my tutor forgot to show me how to string out and play songs or music! You know why? It is because when I listen to most songs they are but one chord done over and over. That—the simple and monotonous part: rusty chords and harmonies—is what he did not teach me. In other words, I can play chords but can’t play music! Damn!

Do you know someone else like that? I do: African economists and PhDs generally. They know every chord but cannot play music! Somewhere I wrote ‘even Margaret Thatcher, with all her liberalist theories and practice—including banging up the post-colonial British economy into something with a semblance of respectability—would be hard put just cranking up this [an African caricature] economy into action again…’ All chords but no simple music! In other words, Thatcher had the know-how to manage a more sophisticated British system but would struggle managing a simple ‘hand-to-mouth’ African economy. And her problem would have had nothing to do with Khadafy and his motorcade traveling though African with their noses covered up against the ‘African stench’ only to have his own people cover up against his rotting cadaver!

And this is no exaggeration the bulk of our educated Africans have internalized Thatcherite levels of management sophistication—musical chords dexterity—that they hardly understand that African economic systems require but simple and monotonous strum approaches to transformation.

I arrived at this conclusion the other day when I was preparing for a blog on the Leontief Model. It is such a simple thing to understand. It makes you want to look down at all those ‘experts’ filling Malawi’s airwaves and TV screens with their ‘value-chain’ and ‘beneficiation’ talk-talk. They appear to have very little to offer than state the obvious and usually such ‘obviousity’, to an uninformed and/ or hungry man standing in a fuel queue for days on end, is exactly that: aimless chatter by an overfed someone. Too many chords…

But worried that I could be talking out of turn and get caught up by those chordful ‘talking faces’, I dug deeper into Leontief only to discover he had been a Russian-American economist called Wassily and he had had followers/ doctoral students called Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and Vernon L. Smith. These guys were notable for research into how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on other sectors and they got Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences for that. But I also learned that their work has branched off into fields and/ or economic analysis areas such as ‘gross output’, ‘net output’, ‘computable general equilibrium’, ‘economic base analysis’, ‘IPO Model’, ‘Industrial Organization’, ‘EOICLA’, ‘Shift-share Analysis’ etc [en. Wikipedia /Wassily Leontief]. Naturally, we have our own Malawian economist who imbibed these four guys’ intelligence it oozes out of their ears.  One just doesn’t enter their territory and not expect some esoteric backlash.

Though Wassily was around during the post-First World War depression—and Kamuzu [either leaving the USA or already in London] had some inkling about input-output modeling, he appeared not to notice this sense. Indeed, it was only in the late 70s—when Kamuzu had already installed the bulk of his ISI ignominy—that the Input-Output Model became popular. Leontief’s Nobel Prize in 1973 the year of the Yom Kippur War and its implications on sources and supply of global oil. It is thus the year so called 'success story' African economies, including the Malawian economic bubble, went into a tailspin. Yet, poor Kamuzu ignored or did not understand Leontief’s input-output tables and thier implications on Malawi's prefered model of economic development and national accumulation.
Briefly, the Leontief tables analyze the process by which inputs from one industry produce outputs for consumption or for inputs for another industry. One mine filled term I must clear here is 'consumption'. This is not as we, poor you and me, understand it. 'Consumption' is actually more related to 'processing or manufacturing etc'. 
Presented in a diagram, the tables are thus:

In other words, the 'inputs' from one part of Malawi must be used [that is consumed] to 'process' semi- or finished goods that become 'outputs' in a form that markets and/ or consumers want. Implied is an interconnected system with return loops. In that situation, you cannot afford to create national compartments—rural Malawi and urban Malawi where the poor are denied the right to produce certain cash crops and a 'spearhead' middle class tasked to boss it over the poor. This is where Kamuzu's ISI model simply went flat against the Leontief Model. His ‘take off’ industrialization—premised on imported raw materials—all the time unaware of the cyclical impacts of one action on another, soon died on him and finally in 2011 the Kamuzu chickens-of-folly have come to roost!

But despite poor Ngozo’s failures, how does one explain away the rising tribe of modern day talking-faces—armed with so much Leontief hindsight—yet so myopic? Where are they coming from. With so much geniuses why do we continue to live in this fuel-less jungle? Why do they spend so much time talking their heads off about nothing? Why aren't they seriously doing something about the things Leontief dealt with—'gross', 'net', 'base analysis' and/ or 'shift-share analysis'? Isn't this where should arise answers as to where our next gallon of fuel will materialize and in a sustainable manner too?
Chords, chords and chords that is how we were all trained under Kamuzu—that 'One-eyed Philosopher King among the blind'. We were not supposed to know the sources of the Holy Grail and his vision is coming to pass! Noises aside—no one is actually put these chords together to produce the requisite fuel-begetting monotony.

The reality though is clear: this place no longer need chord masters. It needs seasoned musicians. The problem—in this world where economists are increasingly trained into econometrics, ‘unreal’ economics and how to play the 'stock market'—seasoned musicians have gone scarce. Instead, today’s economists play 'Monopoly Economics'. They are more and more involved in share trading. It's monopoly. It's money making rubbish, alright. It is the murky stuff that has since sunk the West into its worst economic quagmire: a dead-end game. Hence, someone recently asked of the muted Euro bail out plans: ‘if it requires so many trillions of Euros to bail out Euro Economies who exactly are these people—in an input-output situation—who are collecting the trillions coming out on the other end?’

The answer is simple: these are Monopoly Trillions. They are exactly that: Monopoly Paper. If you have ever played the Monopoly game you will know what I am talking about. At the end of the game you gather the money-like paper and stash it back into the box; so that you can play the game another day! It is the psychological satisfaction—just like taking your hard-earned MK50,000 into Zambia and change it into millions of Zambian Kwacha. You get to be  a millionaire for an hour! In a  monopoly game no one collects anything!

Unfortunately, the so called ‘smartest economists’ in Malawi today are into that psycho and sometimes deadly cheating against the unsuspecting poor. The saddest part of this story is that everyone is busy pursuing these 'economist': to explain what they don’t know or can’t even explain. They cannot, read my lips, supply us with simple monotonous ways of transforming this economy that Kamuzu condemned into ‘importing luxuries while not exporting luxuries to sustain those luxuries’.

Mouthful you think? Then try this: for the Leontief model to tick Malawi must be taught the monotonous song of exporting something valuable so that it can be able import the luxuries her ‘unreal economists’ were pampered upon as they grew up! Because they don’t dish out paper-made lunches at monopoly tables and once the monopoly games have been played, people need to break off for real meals, bought with real money in the national kitchen, someone must generate that real money! Aunt Tiwo and Chimbalanga kapena?

This requires that the ‘talking faces’ and our ‘unreal economics brothers’ sufficiently explain what goes into a down-to-earth Malawian value chain and where exactly and when this 'beneficiation' mumble jumble they make is going to happen. They really must enunciate what is involved in Leontief areas of ‘economic base analysis’, ‘IPO [input-processor-output] Modeling’, ‘Industrial Organization Modeling’ and 'Structuring Modeling'. That is the stuff Ngozo did not sufficiently understand and out here, in Ngozo's Platonian caves—where the eternal fires are fast cooling down—we are still in the dark and freezing in the scorching African sun. Can our economist explain Shift-share Analysis’ [SSA]—what goes into it and how this is causing fuel queues? How can SSA enables Malawi to get out of the erroneous belief that somehow those companies in Kanengo and Makata—holding foreign licenses for the ever disappearing soft drinks—actually possess veritable answers to our national exporting woes?

Now you know: music [or is it economic development] is not perfection in chord strumming. It is the monotonous and dirty harmonies; fleshed and sweated out into a soulful tune for a transforming and successful Malawi.

Author can also be contacted at zivaiclaude@gmail.com

The Difference Between White Elephants and Black Elephants in African Politics

The first time I saw a real elephant was at Kasungu Game Reserve and I must say—after the folklore stories I had heard before that—I was the least amazed at the rather lack of comparable bulk and height of the beast. Until then, I had walked around with a Jurassic Park imagine of an elephant. The untowering beast was hardly a wonder story. Hence, it took the white man, in my company [he was the first to see it], some doing just to isolate the animal from the shrubbery background and convince my incredulous eyesight that amidst the bushes lurked a breathing entity.

And when I did ocularize; the elephant’s appearance defied folklore. It was neither black nor white. It was greyer than I had imagined; probably because the beast had—for improved ventilation—stopped and wallowed at some mud pool! So are elephants off-black [because of dried loom mud] or off-white [because of physical discoloration]?

It is such language vexations that extend to political nomenclature and neo-colonial tongue-in-cheek deliberations of African economic failure. Are African leaders—besides Idi Amin who had fridge loads of human livers—gallery players turned on by ‘white elephants’?

By definition a political ‘white elephant’ is a project involving one form of construction or the other. African Presidents are known for ceremoniously emerging from their Stately Palaces to inaugurate and/ or commission this brand of elephants. African leaders will plaque their names to major highways, bridges, buildings etc. In themselves such constructions are not the point of the usual derogative ‘white elephant’ references. Rather it is the fact that, in more cases, the physical construction itself is either irrelevant and / or an expensive project whose economic value is likely to have passed long before the project was commissioned. Generally painted white and huge against the surrounding backdrop [shrubbery] these projects have been labeled ‘white elephants’.

So, in turn, what are ‘black elephants’? These must either be real or live elephants because some of those beasts can really be pot black! But it is quite rare to find a truly black elephant because—for reasons of Darwinian adaptation—they need to merge with the surrounding environment. Besides pitch darkness [which happens after daylight], black elephants would be real targets of sightful ‘poachers’; in the Game Parks. At worst, they will be targets for real predators within the natural survival hierarchy. So elephants have adapted—created the illusion or camouflage—through mud-smearing techniques in order to merge with the environment and freely forage without undue interference.

In political talk, black elephants are the illusion created by the people who stand behind the African politician. When you live in the private sector where managers’ power is nearly absolute it is easy to assume that the State President has the power to ‘command’ anything. But, anecdote increasingly has it otherwise. The truth is civil servants, including those around the State President, are so powerful that they decide everything that he does. Civil servants may subserviently bend an ear towards their politicians but it is just that. For public consumption. The civil service in any African country is a runaway bus; hell bound down a ravine of its choice; driver or no driver! The man who wrote the British TV series ‘Yes Minister’ had the grasp of the issues involved here.

Civil servants are the real black elephants. However, to fulfill their Darwinian supremacy—they need the shrubbery [the ‘illusory’ element]—behind which they can then freely operate. Therein is the twist. How does an animal serve both as the black elephant as well as the illusion?

I have yet to fully grasp Nicolo Machiavelli’s arguments. However, one lesson I have grasped from him is that in all his writings he fancied himself a ‘king maker’—never showing or seeking to become king himself.

There are vast rewards—once you have joined the ‘king maker tribe' [civil servants]—in capturing the elephant's and not ‘illusion's’ station in the scheme of things. The ability to see one’s vision translated into reality and the moral satisfaction that one can actually influence the pace and direction of history are some of the reasons why civil servants readily and sub-optimally exist in a low pay, low perk national job system.

Now, am I confusing you? Yes, the politician, not the king-maker tribe, is the illusion; The politician is the shrubbery behind which the elephant enjoys succor. Generally, ‘white elephants’ framed against forlorn backgrounds [at a cursory glance mud smeared elephants look more white than black] would be easy targets for poachers. Hence, they have in politics been points of study and derision! The poor state house fellow—seeking to have his name plaqued into historical obscurity—ends up being blamed for the ‘white elephants’ that dot the political landscape of his reign.

For instance, in Malawi we live under the illusion that Kamuzu created and/or introduced the Import Substitution Industrialization [ISI] model—with all its indefensible and dead-end consumerist practices. Granted Kamuzu mouthed these things and ISI and its related infrastructure became the negatively resilient reality we exist in today. But who actually had wished ISI onto Malawians?

The illusion is that this was Kamuzu’s baby through-and-through. It was him who had watched aspects of ‘catch up’ models tried out in the post-war Europe he lived until 1958. He became sold to these and when western ‘experts’ appeared at his State House, purveying ‘take off’ alternatives, he was an ‘already sold’ adherent. The rest—the white elephants [the Capital City at Lilongwe, the Import-driven Industrial sites at Makata and Kanengo etc] as they say—is history!

But how true is this? Twice Chipembere and friends had to ‘hunt’ across England for a reluctant Kamuzu. They nearly started a crisis at Chileka Airport, in early 1958, when Kamuzu performed a ‘disappearing act’: sorting out some marital mix ups in England. Malawian masses gathered at the airport threatened to storm the BOAC plane supposedly carrying Kamuzu; only to learn that Chipembere et al had misread Kamuzu’s promise to return home. Instead, Kamuzu had somehow unilaterally melted into the London under-system; deciding not to board the plane at the agreed date. Urged by these king-makers Kamuzu eventually showed up in July 1958!
The Chipemberes needed Kamuzu—to come and play the white elephant role—while they fulfilled their 'black elephant objectives. Yatuta Chisiza went into the bush because Kamuzu—the supposed 'white elephant'—suddenly showed un-scripted signs of a 'black elephant'.

Earlier, it was the same king makers that had agitated for the end of the Federation and political independence. In that order you can include John Chilembwe as one of the king makers. The story line is the same. At no point did any of these people find anything repugnant about the ‘import substitution’ system that colonialism had, since 1898, put in place. Indeed when, in 1955, Roy Welensky proposed an export-oriented alternative—the Bangula Dam and a fully fledged Federation—that would liberate rural Malawi [at least the Lower Shire would have been the richest part of Malawi today] the king makers rejected it. The Nyasaland African Congress wrote urging Kamuzu to do the same; and onto soap boxes in Trafalgar Square soap Kamuzu spent hours: denouncing the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. Once back home, to Kanjedza and Gweru Prisons they all eagerly went in rejection of the genuine liberation of Malawians. Am I defencing colonialism here? No! The facts though are making my case.
Colonialism, Federation and post-independence Malawi have one common thread. None wanted anything to do with a model that would genuinely empower the Malawian poor. Since colonialism—save for a white district commissioner located in a rural part of the colonial extraction enclave practicing 'thangata' as a weekend sport—the development model in Malawi has pointedly ignored rural Malawi from its accumulation value chain.

If you doubt my argument think through this: what was the main gist of the fight for political independence in Malawi? Simple... It was about the African majority earning the ‘right to shop at Kandodo’: through the front door. Rub shoulders with the whites! The African majority were resisting being asked to shopping through a side window. Yet, how many of these ‘we-want-to-shop–at-Kandodo’ Africans were truly from the countryside? Who in rural Malawi had the economic means to seek out a packet of Rhodesian sausages from the paraffin fridge in Kandodo’s Butchery section let alone push out a trolley-ful of monthly groceries?

It was the rich African middle class—including the upward mobile youth in Zomba; on the day Kamuzu dared to jump—butt naked into the ‘whites only’ swimming pool at Bishop Mackenzie in Zomba. It was the young turks and ambitious men of Zomba who stood across the stream, at now Lwangwa Parish, and cheered as Kamuzu's black Humber arrived from his Limbe Surgery! Of course, Kamuzu had no legs to show off in public—he didn't jump into the 'whites only' pool. These were mere shenanigans aimed at ‘capturing’ the colonial value chain. Meanwhile, there never was intent to replace this value chain with anything that would involve such unpalatable alternatives as allowing dirty villagers to also butt dive into Bishop Mackenzie swimming pool. Ye-c-h-h-h!

Typically, Kamuzu—the 'white elephant'—was allowed and went about putting his name on all plaques thrown at him—Kamuzu Highway, Kamuzu Procession Road, Kamuzu Stadium, Kamuzu Bridge, Kamuzu International Airport, Kamuzu this, Kamuzu that! 'Zonse Zimene!' They coined the song and he lapped it! Meantime, beneath him, we [the black elephants] got our ISI model. We had achieved our free foraging rights!

In his personal biography [circa 1997] Chipembere is emphatic we egged Kamuzu into the ogre he became. As long as we convinced ourselves Kamuzu was ‘too foreign’ to understand our personal agendas we connived to use his over-bearing physical presence to deliver what we had failed to wrest from the Nyasaland Legislature and the Federation Assembly in Salisbury. And whenever the illusion would 'wash off' we would rush back to the mud pools for another mud bath or is it 'whitewash'. So when Kamuzu threatened to leave [the mud threatening to wash off] unless we guaranteed him free reign, we made him ‘life President’—a 'white elephant in perpetuity' while ensuring we did not lose sight of our objective.
Keep the rural poor subjugated!

When, for selfish reasons, Asians sought to liberate rural Malawi through provision of cheap and easy access to goods and services, the civil servants moved in to stop such a 'nefarious' intent. It would release ‘captive’ rural Malawi from our king maker clutch. We made it possible—Kamuzu only stood up to announce the policy—to relocate Asians into urban Malawi where we would keenly spy on their ‘unbridled economic tendencies' on the back of poor Malawians.
Am I twisting history here? No—facts speak for themselves. Who among the rural poor and/or us, the so called 'urban rich' [the other day someone finally told me that it is foolhardy to think rural or want to retire to the countryside] , had the means or know-wish to run even a basic ’Tea Room’ in those premises left behind by the Asians? None. But, we cheated Kamuzu that we would do it. Way back in 1978, Mlia [Urban Geography of Malawi] was already talking of a new phenomenon  called ‘ghost towns’. Are they gone yet? Those were [and still are] black elephant creations—Kamuzu merely white elephanted them.

But why? The answer lies in how—years after Kamuzu’s demise—our blood tends to curdle everytime the possibility of Asian returning into Songani, Malosa, Thyolo No. 1 and/or Lilongwe New City Center is mentioned. As average Malawians—fully aware that we will never make Tengani, in Nsanje, the vibrate towns it was during the aMwenye time—we simply cannot countenance that thought. Not because of the 'Asian' factor [Those are gone. There are very few 'shop attendant' Asians left to want to do that kind of thing].
It is us. We are ready to ensure those places remain bushes—our rural brothers and sisters remain in oblivion in order to safeguard the one precious thing in our lives. To develop rural Malawi would amount to liberating the rural kindred. Unfortunately, in so doing, it would also remove the one precious reference point in our success story. You see in Malawi we measure wealth—'richness'—through comparisons: I am rich because he is poor or if he is poor it is because I am better than him; therefore I am rich. Thus, if the poor were to be removed or uplifted from their current poverty stations, then our wealth comparison would be hard to apply!

It has become instinctive. It influences every decision black elephants make. Indeed, long before Bingu came onto the scene, we had designed 'Operation Dongosolo'. We merely waited for the right moment to attach the ‘negative white elephant’ bit to his name. As part of the usual 'externalization' process that goes with such actions—the white mud on the elephant may never become part of the black elephant—word is sent out: 'to oppose Operational Dongosolo is to oppose Bingu'! Surprisingly, it is the blood temperature of the Malawian ‘middle class’ that rose in decibels when mention of vendors returning to the streets was recently made. Clearly, it is not State House that doesn’t want those vendors on the streets. It‘s us, the black elephants, who hate the sight of the poor achieving something for themselves right before our eyes. Such an eventuality would rub off the dividing sheen between their 'poverty' and our 'richness'!
Meantime—and here is the unexplainable double standard—we secretly 'shop goods and services' from the same poor whenever they appear outside our office windows [too rushed to go to the crowded markets where we have 'crowded' them]! We travel into the countryside to collect food parcels etc from our poor kinsmen because it is the most natural and convenient thing to do; all the time lying aloud about how when we were at Chancellor College we internalized Schumpeter's—‘small is beautiful’ [nothing succeeds best than small]. In this Import Substitution economy—responsible for the disappearing forex and fuel shortages and foreign direct investment taking forever coming—who ought to be our small and beautiful? Isn't it the vendor that we are persecuting day in day out? Granted, once there was some unwarranted thieving and harrassment on our street pavements, but was that good reason for resourceful people to throw out the baby with the water?

Here is another example of black elephant role in messing up and the reasons why we cannot lock up the vendor genie in the countryside. It was the king makers—not Kamuzu—who studied German rural growth models. King makers are currently ill studying Japanese and Chinese alternative models to Capitalism. These await the next 'white elephant' to inaugurate. But, back to rural growth centers—king makers developed the rural growth concept [wrongly too] before inviting Kamuzu out of Sanjika to put a name to a plaque. Thereafter, we ‘shoveled’ him right back into his Stately ‘prison’! The short of it [because the black elephant knows best] is that it is the elephant that picks and choose the camouflage it needs to sustain its own Darwinist agendas.

Because this is an analysis of African politics let me add an internationalist example. For all the arguments posited, it is increasingly clear that 'micro-managing' Robert Mugabe has never been in control in Zimbabw. All his political [white elephant] antics are actually the makings of the king-makers around him. The other white elephants around him have known all along. Hence, the bitter political tears that were shed when the mulilated and burned body of General Solomon Mujuru [Rex Nhongo]—a king maker—turned coat against fellow king makers—was found. White elephants are always aware of the dangerous machinations of the black elephants around them. Ticks and mud on the body of an elephant know when to flake off to safety. Meantime, these too are involved in the fight for juicy positions on the ['white' or 'black'?] elephant’s body. Yet, another confusing illusion we must contend with.

I wonder if Machiavelli understood who actually decides that a pretender politician—threatening the agenda of reigning king makers—should be hanged. Who decides—just to warn others [white or black?]—that the slain politicians body should be dragged into the center of town and left there as food for dogs and buzzards?

The author can also be contacted on zivaiclaude@gmail.com

When It does Not Pay To Chop Up Things

Some time back—1995 to be specific: while enjoying the exile days into which some of Kamuzu’s boys had conveniently dispatched me—a South African transport company head-hunted me as Project Manager for their “‘seamless’ services” project between Cape Town and Johannesburg, later extended to Durban and then briefly to Franscistown and Bulawayo [just to get the 56 Humber cars some genius in Lusaka had imported]. This is not the space to argue the ulterior motive of the South African rail management for taking on a black man at that specific time of South African economic-politics.

Briefly though, what happened is that on 15 January 1995 [doubters check Spoornet records] I reported for duties and the Afrikanner Executive Manager and his Rail Services Managers [mouthful titles that didn’t fit on an average business card!] took me through the paces. These were a sort of my verbal terms of reference. Thereafter, they booked me on an afternoon flight to Cape Town:

‘Just go and have a look and see…’ was their specific words. Judging by their tone, it was clear they had not bought into what the employment agency had told them: that I was a qualified and seasoned business-process re-engineering consultant. That would be impossible! But more importantly, as judging by the camaraderie manner they put a hand over shoulders, I understood why, back in 1965, someone in Zambia had coined the term ‘window dressing’.

Indeed, I flew to Cape Town [I wont tell you what the white air hostess did with my lunch]. But my job had started in earnest. And, of course, as is my nature, I just didn’t ‘have a look and see’. I am a consultant—derogatively called ‘business undertakers’ in the trade. Thus, I can smell a ‘dead’ business concern from miles away! Soon—using a mental business analysis methodology—I discovered why the ‘seamless’ service was progressively failing. At that point, even the stop gap solution, in the form of the ‘Wits Blitz’ [white bullet] train [for reasons soon to become obvious], had proved unworkable.

A few strategically placed questions during rare tea with business managers in Cape Town and City Deep revealed why the South African rail system needed redevelopment. I established where I could actually twig the system and get the whole thing working again! Needless to say that did very little to enamor me with my ‘new’ boss—the Rail Services Manager—on the eleventh floor of Mdjadji House.

As complicated as it appeared, it was a simple problem really. It goes like this: ‘When you force theory on practice sooner or later problems will invariably crop up in the least expected places’. I don’t know who coined that sense, so don’t ask me. But we have had that problem, here in Malawi, since 1964. Medical-doctors-turned-politicians dismally endevoring to perform economic surgeries on whole nations!

You see, in the years leading to 1994—when South Africa eventually attained political independence—most Apartheid state companies were quickly ‘restructured’. The argument was that they should become ‘new-political-dispensation’ friendly. Thus, most were ‘privatized’ altogether. Of course, post 1995, African and a few white apologists/ analysts would provide fuller explanation as to why it had to be done this way. They argued while opting for ‘commercialization’ instead: ‘privatization’ had been an Afrikanner ruse to ring-fence profitable state corporations so that the incoming African leadership and its potential ‘thieving’ cronies would not reach them! That is: what would have become ‘private’ and operating ‘profitably’ would not, as per ANC manifesto-requirements, be ‘nationalized’.

Naturally, hours were spent training managers—mostly Afrikanner—on how to efficiently run such ‘private’ organizations. The trick concept/terminology of the day was ‘Strategic Business Unit [SBU]. Like an aroma-ful coffee, SBUs and ‘decentralization’ concepts filled the ‘mainly white’ corporate air of South Africa. And just like trade winds, concepts, terms and fads have a tendency to waft towards other unaffected regions. That is why, years later, decentralization would be the catch-all term in democratically-minded Malawians. As its aroma fades, decentralization has also become good reason for inaction among a few civil servants in Malawi!

Back then in RSA, management consultants were doing roaring business: chopping up big state companies, introducing ‘corporatist management systems’, the whole shebang! But, even a streetkid economist could see through it. How do you—given Apartheid had finally collapsed because it had spent itself to the ground: fighting the ‘revolutionary wars’ around it—decentralize, that is blow up the size and management costs of your system, when your ‘revenues’ are going down? It is best described as an economic monostrocity of thought! But as usual politics has the knack to find some economic sense to explain the opposite and true reality on the ground! But it always does not go according to plan. Sometimes the humus gets to hit the fan!

Hence, ‘Seamless Service’ was an act of desperation: a product of a ‘decentralization’ policy gone awry. Naturally, where the rationalization [undertaker’] type of consultants had made a killing chopping up state organizations, it became our turn—the developmentalist [‘the exhumers’]—to try and put back the organization ethos within the dismembered units! Even black blocks like me were suddenly in kutapa kutaya demand. But, remember life is a mess. That is how people made money out of the man-made ‘Millenium bug’ story!

Prior to 1990, the Afrikaneer South African Transport Services [SATS] had been an ‘efficient logistics system’. This is because, as a centralized and unitary transportation system, it had efficiently and effectively operated along the logical national value chain. It had been involved in extraction of raw materials, processing them and putting them into the global markets. In return for production inputs—to ensure the looped system functioned like clockwork—it had brought in goods and services. Through SATS Apartheid had survived and thrived! Then, the value chain had had no ‘seams’ and/ or artificial breaks.

But in 1990 [the anti-Apartheid writing was on the wall] Transnet—the replacement system to SATS—became necessary; premised on the SBU approach. This now meant seams everywhere. Back in the days when Malawian youth read novels James Hardley Chase wrote: ‘safety is in numbers’. The Afrikanners reintepreted this as: ‘confusion is in numbers’ [in decentralization]. They created separate Extraction logistics—mine conveyor systems and pipelines—Viamax. A Roadnet was also created separately from rail system—Spoornet. Irrespective that the rail rain into Ports—Portnet was weaned away. The national shipping line—Safmarine—conveniently gravitated into the Lloyds shipping fraternity. There even came a time, when ‘business excellency’ madness reaches its worst diagnozed levels, that each unit was ordered to compete and cannibalize traffics from the other!

Thus—just as daylight must follow darkness—SBU managers soon religiously implemented what they had been taught: ‘make sure systems within one’s ‘silo’ were robust and securely protected against ‘competition’ outside one’s operational territory’. After all their salaries now relied on how effectively each SBU reported performance results within such a ‘privatized’ ethos.

The best example was in the Spoornet system where I was eventually thrust; with specific intentions that I fail. Here the SBU concept allocated a specific number of shunter trains to each SBU manager. He was expected—at the end of the month—to explain how efficiently he had used each shunter horse. Otherwise he would forfeit his shunters and rolling stock to better keyed SBU Managers!

So, on the Cape Town-Johannesburg corridor—once a single business unit—ten SBUs suddenly surfaced; spoils were shared. Thus, a train from Cape Town—operated by the Cape Town SBU—would dump its cargo at De Aar; some 100 or so kilometers up the corridor to Johannesburg. Job well done and on time! The De Aar SBU would pick up this cargo and dump it up the corridor, through Bloomfontein and onwards until it reached Kazerne and/ or City Deep in Johannesburg! Soon—because this is a relay actions and that’s probably why I have never been excited with ‘Relay Races’ in trackfield contest—a train that had taken 56 hours to operate, end to end, now took 144 hours! Do your sums: a whole 88 hours had been inefficiently built into the system! The English cliché is: time is money, therefore imagine the cost implications. When the Wits Blitz was introduced into this fray the SBU managers conspired—a matter of a child you taught witchcraft rebelling against your authority—by cutting up the train and hiding the ‘white’ locomotives and rolling stock up disused rail sidings while Wits Blitz electrical units and consummables mysteriously disappeared! In Durban even junior managers promoted themselves into SBU managers, started their own thing and pushed trains into Kings marshalling Yard that were not on the computerized manifests. So the problem back-roomed into the port itself. If trains are not leaving the marshalling yard then fresh ones can’t enter and therefore ships can’t be loaded and/ or off loaded. Not to be undone, the Durban City Council launched a new tourist attraction: ‘Come spot tens of aimlessly ships floating in our harbor!’

Meantime, every SBU reported in improved performance results—and these tended to get better the longer the cargo stayed in line. Overtime, extra shifts etc [signs of a growing economy] became the order of the day. Real money [not accounting or monopoly money as we consultants call the silly accounting systems in many public organization] exchanged hands at these ends of the system!

But, the real victim in this revised value chain was the cargo-shipping customers. And they reacted accordingly. Soon more road trains were operating between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. The South Africa train across the Limpopo was an early victim and so Malawian containers at Dabuka in Zimbabwe were all in ‘overstay’ category. The trucking industry in Malawi was suddenly in high demand taking high value cargo by road to Durban. Of course, they needed ‘tip’ money in order to promptly off load once in ‘bottleneck’ Durban. In fact, it is in these circumstance that one of Transnet’s own SBU—a road freight corporation—became an instant success story. An unfortunate vicious circle of success had been born!

It is in this environment that I made it my task to destroy this vicious circle—fight decentralization. Naturally it did not enamor me with a few people in both camps—the white SBU Managers and the ‘xenophobic’ African Managers who could not believe that ‘someone from Africa’ [according to them South Africans is part of Europe that happened to be accidently attached to the southern tip of Africa] could achieve such a feat! For causing such embarassment I am back ‘in Africa’, ain’t I?

But the South Africa account is not the moral of this story. I use it merely to demonstrate something that we, here in Africa, could be doing wrongly and for all the good reasons. For example, ‘decentralization’—and mark me I don’t hate genuine decentralization—is the raging development concept in Malawi today. Indeed, city governments are currently at a standstill because every officer in there argues: ‘decentralization has flopped’ and ‘without local councilors it is difficult for them to make any decisions’. There I have told you why our cities are on a backward winding spiral to decay.

Of course, a recent Nigeria delegation to Malawi left us with three pieces of gem-like advice. One: you seem to be on the right track in terms of approaches to town planning and urbanization. Which raises questions as to what kind of mess Abuja is in? Two: whatever you do, don’t discover oil until Malawi has become politically mature. Ugh? Three: we have lived under so many military regimes and as civil servants we realized waiting for genuine local councilors could be long coming. So we have conscientiously gone ahead and introduced change; convinced the councilors—when they do arrive—would retrospectively ratify those decisions. After all isn’t that what councilors do [retrospectively ratify prior or subsequent decisions made by technicians]; whether they are physically or democractically around or not?

Indeed, the government-NGO impasse in Malawi today includes a demand that local government elections have been repeatedly postponed. And the NGOs are right. Structural Adjustment, Multiparty democracy and Millenium Development Goals are all about pro-poor development objectives. Expectedly, the three are predicated on the successful implementation of a decentralized decision making system. Centralization, less confusion equals less attention to the needs of the greater majority: the poor. Briefly stop here though and chew through that: who really are the greater majority in decentralization? The poor or the beneficiaries of decentralization who may not be poor after all? Meantime—if you follow the standard logic to its conclusion—a government that resists decentralization must surely be against the poor and thus anti-democratic!

So much for the idealism but note the double talk in the NGO recent demands for change. They also want more forex and an end to fuel shortages. In other words, NGOs are no more different from the Apartheid leadership of the 1990s—faced with a sinking ship—picked on an economic concept to explain away the impossible. Decentralization is a chimera [a fad really] of the highest proportion. Of course,  everyone would love it if this was possible and there are experts somewhere who will argue so—that democracy and wealth can be possibly achieved at the same time.

But it requires a magician’s portion to explain how they would work the formula below:

P = R-C [P is equals R minus C]

Where:

’P’       is profit

‘R’       is revenue

‘C’       cost

Profit—and thus overall shareholder happiness—is possible when your revenue is going up and/ or your costs are coming down. The reverse is true; especially when your costs are outrunning your revenue. Generally democracy [shareholder happiness and freedom] are highest as revenues are rising. Naturally, to achieve this you need strict control on costs [centralization]; especially if your revenue is not ‘tracking’ properly.

There are several things you can do; particularly if your export-capability is next to negligible. Get the donors in to supplant your revenues. Generally get them in to fund the discretionary cost elements. Governments have tended to include ‘pro-poor’ projects within the ‘discretionary’ category: a thing NGOs don’t particularly like. In fact, it is just such kind of government behavior or carelessness to their elected duties that eventually made NGOs a reality. The collorary is: if government were to pay more attention to ‘pro-poor’ activities then NGOs would become redundant. The corporate observation goes like this: ‘A people-sensitive manager keeps the Unions away!’

There you are: NGOs are unions doing their rightful thing. By the way: do you know that Tsvangirayi is a product of the fake unionism that Mugabe created in 1980 just to head off genuine unions in Zimbabwe? In Chichewa the Tsvangirayi-Mugabe saga is called ‘kulumidwa ndichokumba’ [bitten by what one was digging out for lunch!]. Of course, every corporate board member will tell you a ‘crowd-pleasing’ manager reports low shareholder value. Naturally, if the board doesn’t get him, sooner or later the shareholders or the poor [democratic happiness] will get him!

On the other hand, if you are an ‘economist’ you are likely to see decentralization [local government elections included] as adding up operating costs; never mind the wasteful laxity that comes with councilors’ salaries and perks for jobs not done! One cannot see any profit—shareholder happiness—at the end of that silver lining. This is especially when donors are prapared to enthusiatically meet initial democratic costs and not the recurrent costs related to such endeavors. That’s the problem with these internationalist civil servants—the UN included—starting up costs, causing others to ‘run’ their petty projects only to dump the baby on the doorstep of poor African governments! They have a funny way of counting what they give you. It’s like that saga where private sector auditors found billions missing at a state institution but when government auditors went in they actually found that the staff had been putting in their own money to help the institution survive from ‘hand to mouth’. That’s your donors telling everyone what they give you when they actually are taking out!

Unbeknown to these internationalists and their unionist cronies—critics of the Washington Consensus agree—these people are actually busy chopping up things that would be better managed as unitary systems; at least at the present stages of economic development. You do not decentralize at a point when every scarce national development resource is required to put a shoulder to processes of ‘national economic take off’. It does not make sense, does it?, to take forex intended for critical raw material inputs to buy fuel just so politicians and NGOs can run around the country celebrating democracy on and for the empty stomachs of the poor out there! Every serious mother will tell you it is not ‘cake time’ when the ufa pantry is running low! You don’t chop up the household budget at such trying times. But not your average donor. They appear to reason that we need to occasionally ‘let down our hair’—burp out some of the hunger gases welling up in our bellies! And don’t tempt their ‘long memories’ calling them ‘Neocolonialists’!

Anyway, a closer look at the ISI diagram above—I also discussed it in an earlier blog: ‘Pictures and Words in Practical Economics’—will show you where the ‘seams’ have been deliberately introduced into our national system. If we are not democratically decentralized then we have been economically and policy decentralized since 1964. Can you imagine the astronomical cost such ‘seam’ impose on making and managing economic process in Malawi?

How much more do we pay when we indulge in such policy ‘relay races’ every time we seek to make a decision and/or scream that someone is ‘trampling onto our decision territory’. Meanwhile, monopoly money is being counted everyday. People are being patted on the back and promoted for good decisions made within wrong decision making frameworks. Real money exchanges hands too! And as my boss—sometime back when I worked in Malawi’s private sector—would say: zazungu sakangana nazo [what a white man designed is not for a black man to contest]. It’s all confusing; while the real people, down there, suffer!

By the way what was I saying?

The author can also be contacted on zivaiclaude@gmail.com

National Algorithms Make Chaos-Thriving Leadership possible

Picture this: in 2007—very much unemployed and, I might add, reasonably hungry—I eventually got invited into an office of a very powerful national citizen. Whereupon—because I am a ‘diagrams man’—I pulled out a colorful diagram showing the following terms or clichés [choose what you like]: ‘backfill economics’, ‘national algorithm’, ‘national informatics’ etc. This suggests I am also a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ or verbiage buff; good at combining words just to confuse those that ought not to be confused; especially at their most ‘successful idle times’ [There! I have done it again!]

At that moment—hardly deigning to touch the diagram placed before him—the big Kahuna perceptively picked on ‘backfill’ and said:

‘You mean all the success stories around us are about filling up holes previously dug by others?’

Having not thought along those specific terms—and probably desperate for a job from such daunting office surroundings—I agreed to his assessment. Whence, I have, ever since, applied exactly his observation sense; repeatedly asking whoever cares to listen:

‘”What else”—the holes are now fully buried?’

But, I also noticed how he astutely skirted around ‘informatics’—one of my favorites. I am originally a private sector manager; specifically a Business Process Re-engineer [a foreign fad I picked up while in enforced exile]. It doesn't work in this country where there are ‘life’ CEOs and thought on performance, industrial competence and national transformation are not part of an average CEO’s job description. Nevertheless, BRP taught me to insist on systems that generate at least some weekly ‘information’ that then enables one to make conscise business decisions. Typically, the big Kahuna in this amorphously decentralized anachronisms [did I just do it again?] conveniently ignored this part of the diagram.

When we got to ‘Algorithms’ he promptly called the meeting to an end! He had another appointment. He would, however, ‘come back to me’. Yet, this was the key factor—the tool that has made for successful and/or failed nation state systems; especially in Africa. He really should have taken time out to hear me.

So, belatedly—this is now 2011 and the NGOs are out on vigils—let me ask you: what is National Algorithm?

D.C. Dennett said: it is the critical ingredient in defining the purposive developmental hustle and bustle that moves a nation state through successive and successful stages of social and economic development; leading to its ultimate survival and/or strategic independence [please take some of these mouthfuls as ‘felt’ because I shall be dealing with them in later blogs].
Yet a National Algorithm [if you get to the point of being interested in it] tends to be a highly illusive animal capable of being perceived only through its factual and demonstrable shifts over time and space. Given two systems—one with a National Algorithm and another without [but this latter one having even better developmental artifacts]—chances are the former may somehow transform in much better ways than the other. Hence my observation elsewhere that future progress in Africa will be about ‘brainpower’, not 'brutepower' and definitely not as a result of ‘extractable accidents of geography’. So what is this intangible thing and why has many in political power—especially in Africa and most especially in this new ten-year window ‘democratic Africa'—ignored or failed to install it into their political processes?

By elimination, ‘national’ is a simple derivative term from 'nation state'. On the other hand, an ‘algorithm’ is a logical process used to yield results whenever it is ‘run’ [like a computer program]. Algorithms have been in use since 835 AD. They derive their name from the work of an Arab fellow called Muusa al-Khowarizm [see how the English are good at plagiarizing concepts from local geniuses?!] Back then Muusa ‘published’ certain arithmetic procedures for general application. Over time algorithms have become simple, foolproof and mechanical procedures such as long divisions or balancing one’s bank account [D.C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Penguin, London, 1995, p.48].

Therefore—and I wish that ‘perceptive’ Kahuna had listened to this favor—National Algorithms are about ‘long or short arithmetical divisions of balancing a nation’s bank accounts’! Basically, algorithms have three features or principles.
The first principle is that of ‘substrate neutrality’; that is the content of a subject does not matter very much to the functionality of an algorithm. The second principle is that of the underlying mindlessness of the algorithm itself; that is each constituent step of an algorithmic procedure and/or transition between steps must be utterly simple even though the overall procedure is brilliant. Brilliant politicians—I am definitely not one of those!—talk in simple language! In other words, procedures should be dead simple; enough to be performed by an idiot or a mechanical device. The third principle is that algorithms have guaranteed results.

There is no better way to describe a National Algorithm than the amazing motivation that makes an ant colony tick. When do ants sleep? When do they eat? Indeed, why do they bother to work so hard? Yet, at first sight, an ant colony seems sophisticatedly complicated. But, experts have broken it all down to four basic “iffy” algorithmic commands that guide the ants’ search for food and thus the unending continuity of their species.

These are—built into the genetic framework of each ant—first: if you find food take it to the nest; while marking the trail with pheromones. Second: if you cross two trails—one with and another with no food—follow the trail leading to food. Third: if you return to the nest, deposit food and wander back up the food trail. Fourth: if above does not apply wander at random until you find food! Of course, I have watched ants do their thing and I find this algorithm has a few missing bits. For instance, why do ants march on the wrong side of the trail and why do they bump into each other like that? A bit of order could have really had us soiled over in anthills!

It is easy, though, to instinctively denounce the denigrating simplicity contained in the above ant algorithm. But, if critically analyzed it soon emerges that it is actually more sophisticated than the jumbled or missing message currently informing the so called endeavor at African economic independence. The short prognosis is that African development is based on stupid laziness i.e. missing national algorithms!

On the other hand, the rule in the ant colony is quite robust and fits in nicely with the needs for African competitiveness. It embodies the belief that a system should become self-regenerative in terms of ability to continually refocus itself on the primary goal of its existence. Are we doing that right now?

Indeed, doesn’t the ant colony principle above remind you of the typical behavior of a certain ‘Superpower’; with its bands of lone sheriffs instilling national discipline [self-regeneration in the physical sense] across the system? Ants do that too. Once I watched a band of soldier ants hunt an renegade ant that had ‘mistakenly’ picked food from a chemically-treated food source. The soldiers took ‘him’ in for a court marshal, dismembered him and each soldier took each body part out of the nest and—just so he would never reassemble again and bring future adulterated food into the nest—they dumped his body parts in the four directions of the compass. What justice! But unsaid here is the self-discipline, self-management role of each ant—being able to individually judge and decide what is best of the greater good of the whole species. That ‘mistaken’ ant had failed in its duty and paid the ultimate ‘disassemblement’ price.

More critically, doesn’t it worry you that our nation state—probably ‘”Too” Warm the heart of Africa’’—lacks the knack to internalize such basics? Doesn’t it worry you that once upon a time—when Mugabe [using his own confused definition of national algorithm] got busy chasing away white tobacco farmers—a Malawian leader of the day—instead of grabbing the tobacco market that Mugabe was freely ‘offering’—actually went across to pat Mugabe on the back? For a job well done: 'getting rid of these white settlers'. Back then we called Mugabe's coup de grace ‘uMunthu/ chiMalawi’. But today we are stuck with tobacco that is not selling as well as it should. Of course, what we did not realize then—because we lacked a well developed national algorithm to smell out mischef against us—was, in his hunger for power and despite his Malawian origins, Mugabe had actually unleashed his brutal Shona military commanders onto the three-million odd Zimbabwe-Malawians living in that country. The bulk of these were the white farm-based laborers and had been ‘busy voting for Tsvangirayi and his white stoogies’! But imagine the alternatives with such a labor force, white capital and global tobacco markets. Would Malawi have not been whistling all the way to the bank! The Mozambicans saw what we our underdeveloped national algorithm ignored! They took in the ‘persecuted’ white farmers and the surplus machona labor. As they say 'the rest is history!'

We lost on several algorithmic counts. First, it was the unity of the Malawian nest that got decimated. Ants fight to the last man to protect their own! Second, we lost on the cohesiveness of an algorithm that could have made Malawi economically stronger. The failure to provide machona Malawians with an alternative, prosperous and secure destination is a price [some call it lost opportunity] we are going to pay eternally. The American Algorithm is very resolute on this count. It protects its own human stock wherever it is throughout the world.
So how can Malawi fashion a cross-border and/ or global national algorithm? And if we are to become the genuine ‘exporter nation’ we are so desirous of, we need it. The billion kwacha question is: do national algorithms just happen or they have to be developed and instilled into the psyche of a people? I say it is the responsibility of a genuine national 'trend-bending', 'trend-bursting', 'chaos-thriving' leadership to develop a National Algorithm. It is such a leadership’s task to horn a national algorithm to such sophistication that it becomes the impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless national genetic machinery responsible for the ultimate basis of all forms of [national] industry and/ or agency, national meaning and consciousness… [D.C. Dennett: 1995: 203]. Anything else—skin deep endeavors at creating mass support and even hysteria—is bound to fail.

Kamuzu tried and failed in his 'national algorithm experiment'. He confused his meaningless slogans—Unity, Loyalty, Obedience and Discipline [ULOD]—for a National Algorithm or the makings of one. Granted he had the foursome rhythm correct but—using the ant-colony choreograph—how does ‘unity’ dovetail into ‘loyalty’ or ‘obedience’ into ‘discipline’? Is 'unity' an automatic requirement to 'discipline'? Ever heard of disorderly 'discipline' or 'organized chaos'?
By the way it’s not a rule of thumb that a National Algorithm should always be a four-part system. But it makes great sense to mimic nature that brings in the hindsight of millions of years to narrow down workable processes!

Critically, Kamuzu’s ULOD failed because it was a set of draconic commands; not ‘impersonalized sub-molecular’ calls to national self-application and preservation. For example, spying on your neighbor is more of social division [disunity] and less of mechanistic impersonalization towards 'speciation'. Besides, as the local saying goes: 'munthu ndianthu', 'loyalty and discipline' must go to the species; not the leader of the species. Kamuzu's demand for 'obedience' without encouraging greater internalization of the primary logic of the national industry he sought led to confusion of purpose and less national cohesion; especially when some of his decisions went against the grain of the leap of faith he sought.
All the more reason that as ULOD wore thin Kamuzu increasingly turned to using, first, wallet power, then bottom power and later brute force to sustain his unrealistic ‘Import Substitution-cum-self-sufficiency’ model that ultimately revealed itself as his ‘life-pension-guaranteeing' strategy.

Is it my job to reveal the personal approach to a National Algorithm? I supposed I must when my time comes. The proviso for anyone, though—especially in these ticking-off democratic times—is for one to start early and inculcate his own version onto his supporters and then roll it out to the rest of the nation. It is a process; not an event. Yet, it is clear that national algorithms have a shelf life; especially if they are not properly defined, marketed and embraced. Petty algorithms and/ or one-off agendas tend to be ephemeral and likely to boomerang as time goes on.

The resilience and beauty of the American algorithm—looking and sounding very much like that of the ant colony—is that it addresses itself to the primordial spirit of any human being. No wonder many will beg, steal, borrow or even kill for a Green Card! The question to answer in developing a national algorithm is: what guaranteed results does the algorithm promise its users and beneficiaries?

That is a starting point for anyone wanting to go down this political route and desires that, one day, his face is put back onto the Malawian national currency as a true hero!

The author can also be contacted on zivaiclaude@gmail.com

Confusing Hand Of Liberalization

Here at home the Cotton Season has just come and gone; leaving not even one particularly keen on another season! It has been tears everywhere. Tears of anger and, of course, crocodile tears among Traditional Speciation Wisdom [TSW] keepers: those ‘we-told-you-so’ villagers that are somehow always right even with the benefit of hindsight!

Whatever is happening in the wider economy—disappearing forex and fuel shortage—in our villages we know that unless something is done quickly—because the rains are fast approaching—this season could spell yet another doom year for the simple maize harvest and worst for the vaunted "White Gold" Revolution in Malawi. And what with the tobacco ‘gold’ firmly in the dustbins of our national hope.

So what went wrong last season?

First no one took the official responsibility—ahead of the cotton planting season—to announce the government and/ or official per-kilo price. In this new age of "compartmentalized ‘perfect market’ operations" one learns to trust rumors, conjecture and anything with a pointing finger, we instead watched the sudden and feverish activities of urban sharks. They arrived in our villages in cars that rocked to booming sound in their car boots. Noise intrusion everywhere in our usually 'quiet' villages. They "bought out" hectares of communal land. Chiefs made a killing; snatching pieces of land—even future graveyard sites!—and selling them to these urbanites.

They were here “to grow cotton”—word went round. Not to be outdone, village sojourns brought back reports that they had seen a cotton ginnery along the Zalewa Road! As smallholder producers, we realized, somewhere-somehow, a good price was in the offing. How else could cotton urban sharks—men with manicured fingernails—suddenly enter into such a sweaty agricultural business?

In turn, unprecedented havoc followed everywhere. First to suffer was the communal maize growing season. Our usual field labor did a Houdini. They would never work for us, they announced; showing crispy MK500 from their new urbanite bosses. With that also rocketed farm wages. Even a kachasu-drunkard now had to nerve to tell you off.

Similarly—‘smelling’ the contents of the elephantiac, wallet-filled buttocks of those urbanites—chiefs offered and sold off our very own ‘fertilizer coupons’! Word had it: the ‘townies’ would perform a miracle. They would apply fertilizer to cotton. It had never been heard of until now! Indeed, silly and wanting-to-get-rich-quick the  urbanites took the coupons. Of course—in a round-about manner [a TSW will sell you anything in demand]—we eventually 'bought back' the unused fertilizer at “kam’phwanti” prices.

But, the crazies were still coming. Some clever urbanites—"to drive down labor cost to zero"—arrived armed with plastic bottles of technologically advanced "weed eradication" chemicals. Of course—where they eventually applied these 'weed killers'—the grass didn't die! It was because they had forgotten to bring along bottled water.

To save additional travel costs, they ordered: "Just use borehole water!'

But, our boreholes—dug during the ‘Multiparty Rule’—are shallow pits that are taking in more toilet waste than supplying safe drinking water. They are as salty as hell. We no longer need iodized salt around here. Indeed, nowadays, the quickest way to recognize your own clans-people and siblings is to check if they have developed two yellowed front teeth and/or are wearing a ring-wormed 'toga' on their heads!

The worst part, of course, was when the weed poison entered the food chain. A few of us died in the name of urban technology. The TSW quickly brought up the matter of ‘disappearing’ future graveyard sites while we dug graves for our prematurely departed.

Meanwhile certain cotton marketing sharks—mum as ever about the forward cotton price—charged an arm and a leg for their seed, spraying agents and kits. We received bills, bills, bills for their imported cotton seed that looked like "roasted maize".

"It's high quality! From Zimbabwe!" the urbanite seed sellers had boasted! Much of it did not even germinate. Eventually, we had to improvise—use raw cotton ginnery seed. Thus—with the first rains and bad seed—disaster was written all over the place.

Then, the good news arrived—albeit in a roundabout manner—the firmed price of cotton would be MK40:00 per kilo. "Bingu Himself had finally said so!". And so—to those of us born under Kamuzu's rule—this was a Presidential directive. It would never be contradicted by a living soul! Alas how backward we still are.

In the dark of the night cotton sharks produced handwritten notices: announcing the buying season. It would be a mere MK32:00 per kilogram. Daylight robbery!

Promptly, growers and TSW leaderships gathered. They decried the new offer—insisting to defy this and even go to 'see Bingu'. But signs were already everywhere. The presumed bumper maize season was not to be for everyone. The TSW blamed the 'weed killer' for 'chasing' insects and weavils into our maize fields.

Besides, whatever we had harvested still needed processing together with some protein-enriched relish to go with it. Naturally mind games became the norm. Decrying the "thieving" sharks by day, we sneaked a child—and a head load of cotton—to the nearest cotton buyer by twilight.

"Just ten kilos", we rationalized. "Yakuchigayo— Yandiwo!”

The net effect: this buying season has been a resounding failure. The urban sharks have been noticeable by their disappearing act: probably gone back to town to lick their wounds too!

At MK22:00 per kilo—last season—we sold our cotton in one lot. It wasn't much—but we had proudly pointed at some results of our sweat: a few iron sheet houses on the village horizon. But, this year: things are turning out to be kuthongo'lelana basi—dribs and drabs. And the money simply fritters away. The cement-floor jobs—in last year's iron sheet houses—are quickly being shelved.

Of course, there were some noticeable changes. For all his sweat, the man at the corner now has a red and white cell phone umbrella and table. In fact—for the umbrella man—it took some doing. Not that the public phone he got ever works: around here you need to climb a hill or tree to use the cell phone!

In the dark of the night—thanks to operating problems at the bus company in town—he traveled to a buyer—100 kilometers away—rumored to be taking the ‘gold’ at MK39:00 per kilo. Triumphantly and promptly, he returned the next day—[an overnight bus is always late in the evening but bang on time in the mornings]. He announced he had actually sold at MK42:00 per kilo! The "invisible hand of economics"! The stampede in that direction commenced and the late-running bus service made an unfair ‘killing’. But what is all this: daylight theft or stupidity of liberalization?

Meantime, we must find money for this year’s maize seed and fertilizer; because someone is already spreading the word around here that there will be even fewer ‘fertilizer coupons’ this year and the urban ‘thieves’ may just return to scoop them all!

E-e-i-sh! This cotton liberalization is a nightmare. It requires some surgical action. First it's creating havoc with communal land ownership. For a quick buck, village leaders are parceling away our land to absentee land owners. Signs are there: Hacienda Wars will soon be coming into our area. This is because the urbanites—even if they don’t return this year, they will still be hoping for another cotton price bonanza. Meantime, this will cause large chunks of land to lie furrow this year and not many TSWs are prepared to idly watch such waste of our traditional heritage.

Second is the need for an urgent return to ADMARC-ways. Give us a firm future-price before the rains and take the harvest off us in one-go.

"Bring back ADMARC" even the cynical TSW leadership argues. "Izi zothongo'leledwa chimanga chokhala chako zithe.”

Set up a Cotton Export Development Corporation [CEDC] in the next few weeks and you may, after all, just have the replacement of the doggone international tobacco trade!

While we feverishly work to sort out the "comments' problem, please feel free to contact the author at zivaiclaude@gmail.com