Rome...Quid nos scire possumus

October 2017

In Rome. It is a much cleaner place than Napoli, though cigarettes butts are strewn everywhere. But at least one sees some people cleaning the streets, or maybe it's just their small informal contribution in their little area, their doorstep as it were. So it's clearner, but still, like every European city I have been to, it is squeezed. I see two people in running gear attempting to run through those narrow streets competing with cars, buses and tourists and wonder how far they will be able to go.

Here the ancient co-exists with the not so ancient and the new. They have a way of preserving and marking their history - the Roman ruins here - the Colosseum being the most impressive of that era ; then there is something from the Renaissance (though historian record that it left a better dent in Florence), the Holy Roman Empire (when Rome and a large chunk of Europe were benighted by the tyranny of popes using God's name for their own ends, dishing out titles to friends, cousins and illegitimate sons - church corrruption did not start with modern day pastorpreneurs), then to pre-war Italy. Like the minister plenipotentiary at the South African consulate told me, life in Rome is like walking in a living a museum everyday. 

And the oft-cited example of how this country is founded on small and family-owned businesses is as apparent in Rome and it is with the pizzerias and little shoe shops of Naples neighbourhoods. There are few corporates here - there are the banks, of course, then the innovator companies like Parmalat, but no-one seems to have attempted to successfully integrate or amalgate (I surmise) the pizzerias, or it seems, even the pharmacies whose neon green crosses you see frequently (no sense of overtrading and cannibalization as I have warned of in Zimbabwe or Kenya). In the quieter streets, less touristic, I walk past several motor cycle workshops - small and owner-operated, it seems. There is a place selling designer shoes - and in the back there is a workshop with an old man bent over, breathing life into the next pair of heels! 

This explains why the Italian economy is resilient - in the likely event of a global economic shock or downturn slowing demand is what might affect these business and the country; but not mass unemployment as a result of retrenchments or downsizing because quarterly performance is not to the liking of some faceless shareholders. Somehow it seems a smarter model (certainly in the face of ChIndia's bargain basement pricing). But, of course, it comes with the millstone of family traditions...which can be ended by a fickle prodigal. But if taken up by the next generation,  entrepreneurial instincts and experiences are naturally inherited...no need for MBA-type coaching here.

The lesson? 

Invest in policies which support small business, family owned is even better. But for most African governments this is more talk than action. Of course, most of them are beholden to and captured by big business.

Land of the self-flushing toilet

In Japan. The greatest gift that Japan has given to the world, according to my host, is the toilet with instructions. When I first peeped into the loo, I could not understand why there would be a notice with instructions on "How to use this toilet", and there on the side of the seat like a helicopter cockpit were blinking lights!
Until I sat on the seat. It was warm (surely a good sign). And then it almost idles ready to start the business of ablutions. Once you are finished, it flushes itself. Or in the event that you want your under-carriage to the cleaned, it has three setting of jet flow. So I tried it, just to be adventurous, and the water was warm and one felt really clean afterwards.
So of all the Japanese inventions and innovations from National and Panasonic TV, gameboy to Pokemon, the self-flushing toilet (not so well-known in my world) comes tops. It shows you in a sense just how far Maslow's hierarchy of needs this society has gone to have thought about re-inventing this particular wheel.
It got me thinking about inventions and who has given what to the world. There is a racial view of the inventing nations, and the non-inventing nations which is skewed. And I found myself saddened that the only invention that my country is known for (even here in Japan) is of hyper-inflation (more a case study for political, history and economics scholars than an invention, really); and perhaps lately, inventing 8 ways of firing your deputy (more like Paul Simon trying to leave his lover). But really, we have not invented anything despite being so-called "educated". Zimbabwe is just a society which calcified as bones in a gerontocracy. We need younger leaders (which by the way is the reason I am with Alliance for People's Agenda and a worldly wise Nkosana Moyo)
Japan on the other hand has a long list of useful and not so useful inventions, and more lately of being complacent and thus ceding advantage to the South Koreans and the copy-cat Chinese. Today Samsung is now the dominant figure in house-hold appliances, technology,  mobile phones and is deeping itself into pharmaceuticals.
That is a part of my visit; to see how the Japanese can claim ground in the frontier markets of Africa. While the self-flushing toilet would never make it in Africa (needs reliable electricity supply and piped water, both of which are little known), Japan has a lot of offer the world in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and a rich tradition of food innovation. It is also one of the largest consumer markets in the world. If only we had something we could sell to them.

AGO Mutambara...beyond ideation

Last night we went to the launch of AGO Mutambara's book.There was a full house...a great occasion, a great gathering of Zimbabwe's finest minds, if education is the yardstick of measuring fine mines - CEOs, lawyers, engineers, professors and people of title from across Gauteng-land.

Arthur, he is an enigma. I first knew about him in 1988 when he led that seminal demostration against government which marked the break between the students movement and the ZANU-PF government. Until that moment, the students were ZANU acolytes. That October, I was in form 2, and news started filtering that the university had been closed, that student leaders had been dragged in the dead of night and detained. Mutambara was said to have been injured while jumping out of the window of his second floor room. Some presumed him dead, and my mother, brought up his name in nightly prayers. She knew the Mutambara's she said, and there was injustice in what had happened. That was my political awkening, and I was to devour the manifesto that he and Ed Mbwembwe (the SRC president, or was it secretary general) had penned. "Running dogs of imperialism", that was the phrase that struck me in that pinky inky copy of that document which was largely influenced, perhaps even plagiarized from the socialistspeak of Karl Marx, Che Guevera and Franz Fanon. The phrase would have incensed the establishment, and the authors would have known it. In the book he dwells on this phase of the Zimbabwean story - which was to leave an indelible mark on the University of Zimbabwe. Years later, the students' union still pays homage to those protests in the name of one of the bars - October 7, I think it's still called.

He is cocky, Arthur is. And for good reason. He has written a trilogy on his relatively short life - 50 years. The first book is a journey through his formative years, replete with all his academic achievements - book prizes, first prize maths olympiad, Oxford certificates. The point...a village boy from an improverished African village can make it to the great halls of Oxbridge and beyond; to NASA and American academy. To be sure, Arthur had the example of his uncle who became his default father after his father's premature death. That man whom I had the pleasure of meeting was a stri t disciplinarian but he devoted his life to bringing up his brothers children, living a monk's life and marrying only later on in life. The Mutambara family is a chiefly family of high achievers. Arthur's father and uncles were all educated to a level unheard of in colonial Rhodesia. He, a lone brother with all three sisters went on to be all doctors of everything ranging from Engineering, Economics, Medicine and Pharmaceutical Science. These Mutambara children are a gifted brood, and Arthur above them all. Sometimes one thinks he should be out there using his Engineering to make the world a different place. As an academic myself I agree sometimes with that saying that those that can't do teach...but in Arthur's case, he should can do, and teach as well.

I like Mutambara. As you may have worked out by now, and I think he did us a great disfavour by killing his political career by plunging, seemingly without wise counsel, into the MDC factional wars...we have lost him to politics for ever : Zimbabwe is a sad unforgiving place. But that does not mean he can still not contribute to the African story. And at the launch among all the sound bites from him and the equaly able MC, Brian Kagoro, my UZ contemporary, he shared some important nuggets of wisdom:

1. We (Africans as a collective and individually) must tell our own stories - as Brian Kagoro emphasized, if we don't tell our own stories don't comlain when someone else tells it and put the commas in the wrong place;

2.We must aim to use time and talents to achieve what we can, not only for ourselves but for Afurika (as he called her), because our individual achievements are undermined by the under-achievement of where we come from. His "superstardom", he said, waned when people knew he was from poverty stricken-Zimbabwe; for how can you claim to be smart, when you do not use that gift to uplift your own people

3. We must be servants. Each generation, in the words of Franz Fanon must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it. 
4. Globcalization. He made a powerful statement that we should think Africa first (a market of 1,1 billion people) before we think "little Zimbabwe", or "little South Africa". That makes obvious sense. The contradiction, a good friend of his pointed out, might be in the title of his book, for, if indeed Zimbabwe has lessons for Africa, then the elusive dream is not just a Zimbabwean one, but an African one.

So AGO Mutambara, as someone said, remains an intriguing idea; an intellectual giant, political missteps and all. I wish that soon we will see his ideas taking shape in products...because that is where he can make the greatestn difference. From ideas, to elusive dreams to reality, so to say. Perhaps they already have because he has two textbooks to his name, but we need more Professor, and I know you can do it.

Letter for President Khama

Mr President, HE Khama,

I visited your country on the 19th of December 2016 via Martin's Drift border post. Over on the Botswana side the queue was very long and snaking out of the building. It was not moving at all and there was no presence of any apparent government authority moving on the precinct. Batswana citizens and foreign visitors were all in the same line. There were old people, sick people, mothers with babies standing and sitting there. The toilets were dirty and stinky. This does not give a good impression of country that I as an African would like to regard as an African success story. I think simple interventions such as separate lines for citizens and foreign visitors would expedite things. I write to request that you intervene, because, again last year in 2015 I travelled the same route and encountered inordinate and unexplained delays.

I pay tribute to two Batswana men who took it upon themselves to start organizing the queues and getting some order going. When asked if they were government officials, they said no, they were ordinary citizens who just wanted to get home to their families...they did not attempt to jump the queue, but patiently organized all of us. Those were my heroes.

You have a beautiful country and in fact it is those of us who come through this little borderpost, transiting through to Zambia, Zimbabwe and beyond who probably support the small businesses along the way, the small B&Bs on the outskirts of Francistown, the petrol pumps and road side cafes at Nata, the toilet entrepreneurs near Pandamatenga. In return we ask that your country's border posts be more hospitable...that queues be managed so that we travel during safe daylight hours (donkeys are a major hazard for night travel as you appreciate), that toilets (especially women's ablution facilities) be clean and free and available.

Thank you Mr Khama.

Yours sincerely

David R. Katerere, a fellow traveller & African