Mosia oa Tunya

There is a new bird in the skies..it's red, and it's pretty good inside. Looking out onto the wingspan, though it seems it needs a good wash. Do they wash planes? If they don't it could be a good line of township business to go into because the car wash market is definitely over traded.
So, here I am in flyafrica.com heading for Victoria Falls to the annual pharmacy shindig. Apparently they launched in July and pride themselves in being cheap because they do not pass on fuel surchages (this is what  the Professor who is the CEO says in the magazine), and also they want "customers to clean out the rubbish and ensure that the seatbelts are crossed before leaving the plane so that we have a quick turn around and continue to give you cheap tickets". OK, enough already! I pride myself in being a cheapskate (Warren Buffett would not be the richest guy if he was splashing out on the latest Merc and designer gear now), but to be constantly reminded that you are in the cheap seats cannot be right.
Oh, and professor CEO, please get your announcers to practise reading their instructions to passengers. Reading like Mr Jacob Zuma stopping and stuttering his way through a state of the nation address is rather amateurish and reflects badly on Zimbabwe's much vaunted literacy rates. The cabin crew is pleasant enough and I like the announcer's voice, but using canned voice over sounds a lot more professional I think, and gives consistent messages. Get my good friend Themba Hove with his silky drawl and you will up the game.
So we land in Victoria Falls. The airport is under construction...it will be great when it's finished. Later, I find out that it has been under construction for sometime now, like most things in my country. The town is a quaint little place, a step back in the colonial boom of the 1960's and in the horizon there is always a blue haze hanging...the mighty Zambezi which gives this town a marine beach resort feel. This is the Cape Town of Zimbabwe.
The conference goes beautifully. It is partly reunion and partly meeting new people, seeing faces of names I have heard of before. There is a cohesiveness in the 300-odd delegates which I love and I often don't see in my adopted country. And a never-die-always-hope spirit. In the early 2000s, this group of professionals suffered the same fate which many other professional societies experienced...there was a mass exodus as the "brains" headed for the exit door...migrating to England, the US and elsewhere. So what you see are the old pharmacists (who had established themselves and would have lost it all had they left) and then the young ones (who were still in high school) with a yawning gap in the middle of those who graduated in the mid-1990s and were just setting themselves up when the politico-economic crisis hit like a tsunami.
One of the bittereinders is Skhu, "my SG (Secretary General) for life". He never tires of reminding me about the adventures of our youth - how we (5 of us, I think) jumped on a bus at short notice to go to Potchefstroom in South Africa in 1995 to a meeting of pharmacy students; We got lost in Joburg, nearly got robbed, arrested briefly and then eventually when we got to Potchefstroom we were caught in the residual tensions of apartheid (that conference marking the first time that black and white students had held a joint national conference) and how we navigated our way around all those and had a great and memorable time. SG talks animatedly about that time. He was always mature beyond his years, and I ask him, how is surviving in a climate which is inimical to business..."Hope, mufowethu, yabona!" he says philosophically, "that's what keeps us going...because without that flame of hope, you will not get out of bed"
And Zimbabweans, in and outside the country, need dollops of this hope. Because it's going to be a long long night.
Meantime, let us work during the day and when night time comes let us dance to the tunes of our youth. And that is what we did.
Thank you PSZ...keep going.

Lessons from Thailand

Lessons from Thailand, September 2014

I am at the airport and in slightly less than an hour I take off from Thailand, lay over in Hong Kong, then home in the morning, I hope. But I am thinking I have been so blessed, so fortunate to be able to travel from time to time, as have many of you…and so what are the five lessons from Thailand? This is not scientific, it’s just the thoughts which have crossed my mind in the short time I have been here and seen and interacted with the people. If I stay long enough reality will hit and then I will probably be less biased, but maybe the lessons will not be too useful then…

Here we go.

1. Be gentle with the world. There is a discipline I see here in the people, their patience with others on the train, even with their junta which staged a coup back in May, their apparent tolerance with those that are different (Apart from a taxi driver–cum–pimp harassing me about taking me to a place where I can have a body to body massage, I felt very safe). Yes, the politics is not right and there is now the “green” party (read military junta). But still people seem at peace. So I am told that young men have to spend a year in a buddhist monastery after finishing secondary school. This is their coming of age ritual; it is not mutilating penile organs or sending them off to behead hapless journalists and “Westerners”, it is training them in the ways of the founder of their religion. Imagine if we could do this with our young people, encourage them to enter the service of others when they are most receptive.

2. Play to your strengths. Thailand has an amazing history, great exotic foods and it’s the tailor to the world. In 24 hours I ordered and had three suits made, and the stuff looks great. They have created the support systems for business to thrive – infrastructure for tours; spas, hotels…but they have not pretended to be something they are not…they have marketed their culture. While Cape Town maybe a great place, it pretends too much; tries too much to suit it’s tastes to the European palate. In Thailand, Thai food is everywhere and remains authentically Thai (even Ronald MacDonald strikes the Buddha pose!); they have been creative, making juices, ice creams and crisps from everything from watermelon, dragon fruit to banana and jackfruit. In Africa we have all these things but we just have not packaged them to give them to the world. When I go to Venda, I always look at all the fruit going to waste and wonder how it can contribute to economic development of villagers….I may have stumbled on the solution.

3. Be happy. There are no angry young people here. Perhaps the Buddha mentality again helps…in essence, this is what it says (or ta least how I understood it all those years ago when my extra Maths teacher tried to explain it to me) – “this is all there is folks; no after-life to enjoy after the misery of the present”...so be happy. That seems in general to be the essence of Eastern religions. Thailand’s national campaign is called “smile Thailand”; there is a sense that people are pursuing happiness…(Note to self, I am going to try to be happy by hanging out with happy people!).

4. Show up and things will happen. This is my own learning. I was invited to Thailand to give a talk because I had not turned down a request to give another talk earlier in the year when the original speaker was double-booked. I was approached and I said, I would do it. At that meeting I met Jenny and when she was looking for a speaker for the Thailand conference (again the local speaker was not available), and I was volunteered she immediately accepted because she had seen me. So here I am far away from home and having made new networks and friends. I have been invited back and also to Germany and the project which started off as conversation in Pretoria 6 months ago is about to start-up. So, that is my lesson, say yes, and you never know where it leads. This is contrarian to what you read a lot about, “learn how to say no”, well if it’s borrowing money, definitely!

5. Samsung rules the world but they don’t trumpet it like Apple does. Is there a Samsung product launch with all the starry-eyed geeks and all? (if there is then the newspapers are not doing a good job of publicising it). Here in Asia, it’s not just the smartphones, or the other well known gadgets, they are also getting into the insurance business, at least from one billboard I happened upon. In the trains and the airports, everyone is tapping away, swiping and wiping away on a smartphone device of some sort, most of which are made by one company in not too far away South Korea. How did that happen? And who is the smart brain behind Samsung? So, unlike the Western model of having an in-your-face founder who is identified with a brand (think Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Strive Masiyiwa), these people hide in anonymity and just get on with it. And they have quietly and decisively taken over the world. It is an Orwelliann truth that he / she who controls information channels rules the world. But anonymity also guarantees that companies do not suffer from founder’s syndrome and wilt once Mr Founder dies.  So whether the guy dies or resigns, the company lives on

Time to step up...

7 May 2014. South Africa is deciding it's future. The election campaign has been robust and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) -  red-bereted and with a lot of populist bluster and township (ekasi) swag -  is the cat among the pigeons. They are talking a radical departure from the market friendly policies which came from the negotiated settlement of 1994. The robustness of the debates, the ruling party's willingness to  engage with opposition parties an the general public on radio and television, and the high interest of the public in this election have been interesting to watch. This is true democracy at play, and those that grandfathered this country should be proud of what they built.
 Even, Paida, 10 years old has had her opinions. I heard her talking to her friends about what party she would be voting for, while little brother, Zhizha, 5, wants to vote for IEC...the Independent Electoral Commission (!), perhaps testimony to the extremely effective advertising which the institution has done.
But I am feeling left out. On an afternoon walk earlier we went past a school which is a voting centre. I fought the urge to walk in there and join the queues, putting my cross in the place of my choice. But I cannot. I am like the foster child, the orphaned child, who is left to watch the cooking fires, while the blood family members retreat to the main house to discuss intimate issues or offer libations to their ancestors. He is part of the family in many ways, but he will always be an outsider when it comes to internal family matters...as I, a bona fide, tax paying naturalized "South African" am an outsider when it comes to all things for the citizenry.
The last time I voted was in 1996, in Cranborne, Zimbabwe. I miss having a say in the affairs of the country of my birth or the country of my residence. So I am going to make the tough choices in the next few years...it cannot be enough to just see what is wrong and talk about it abstract academic terms within my circles. Increasing we as young Africans who have been gifted with voices our fathers could only dream of, will have to step up and initiate the changes that are required.