Italy, June 2024

 So I am glad I went. And we celebrated the life of my good friend and mentor, Alberto Ritieni. And his legacy. A broad and eclectic mix of scientific achievements and collaborators from agriculture, nutrition, mycotoxins, clinical research and, of course, functional foods. He has planted the seeds for a younger generation to carry this legacy forward (as it should be). The lesson to learn is to be gentle and generous...not to take ourselves too seriously.

Then I headed for Bologna to meet Enecta, a company I was introduced to by Alberto. They grow and supply seeds and have also set up a B2C selling CBD products online from their selected lines. Bologna with its cloistered tenements a small city. It's claim to fame is the oldest university in the world with a rich tradition of medical and health research and training. It was set up by the church. Napoli, meanwhile, claims to have the oldest public university in the world, Federico II which turns 800 years this year. It was set up by the emperor. Bologna was built by traders and pharmacists and lawyers. There is a farmacia at every corner and a studio legale in every other building. But their most famous export is spaghetti bolognaise, which actually does not exist in Bologna...it's tagliatelle NOT spaghetti.

I find out that Italy was also big on tobacco spending the afternoon with one of the world's foremost tobacco agronomist, Luca. In his retirement, he has now turned his sights in hemp bringing his expertise to this sunrise industry. So, we discuss the seeds (enecterol and enectiliana) and him coming to South Africa to work with us. We discuss Kutsaga Research and the opportunities for fibre, building material, oils and biochar. One door closing and others opening. And it all started with one man inviting me to Napoli in 2008.

 To New York. 6 October 2023

Jimm Meloy is welcoming, avuncular and full of useful #advice. Before meeting him, he has handy tips about moving around #New York; which station would be better (perhaps leave your wheelies at my apartment, he suggests, but my packing makes it impossible), how to get to #Long Island (where I will be staying with Prof Lois Moylan and Tommy, her husband), and what restaurants in #Manhattan we should go to (I settle for #Greek but in the end we don't go because I had sprained my left ankle).

In person he is tall with a friendly smile. He loves New York (you can bump into anyone from the CEO of IBM to a cleaner at the local university, all useful connections in their different ways, at any one of the 23 650 eateries in the city...where else in the world can that happen, he asks. By this he means that New York is an almost classless community where people mix pretty much everywhere. In other cities, the rich may drive, in New York public #transportation is just that much simpler to use...convenient, cheaper and time saving).

So, we meet at Grand Hyatt lobby just outside Grand Central Station. My niece Vongai Shava is with me, educating me on the #actors and #writers #strike (did you know that most actors and writers make very little while the #studio execs vacation in #obnoxious yachts in the #Med?) Once it's just the two of us, Jimm tells me about being an early materials #engineer, studying at University of Strathclyde in the 1970's and then leaving in his early 20's to see the world; working in the Middle East, up and down various states until settling in New York. His time at Autodesk held many lessons. He detests the word '#training' (Something he shares with my host, Prof Lois Moylan, who informed that #training is not used in academic circles in the US...it's "#educating" or ''#teaching" as they imply transfer of both theory, practice and professional attributes rather than rote pedestrian #vocational stuff. I like the word though). In Jimm's case, his experience in #corporate taught that #managers think that training is a #waste of #money, and #employees think it's a waste of #time; so, promoting learning for #personal/professional #development and the firm's improved #performance is the way to go. I show him my Niselo Nutritica pitch to the #mines and he tweaks it to emphasize improved #worker performance and mine #output (It makes new sense). He talked about using #process thinking (not so much #design thinking) and #reverse or backward planning (I was too embarrassed to take my trusted jotter for notes). He tells me about the early years of #pioneering e-learning and tricks of pitching to #management to gain approval for spinning off his unit to move from #chaos to #nirvana (that was sadly upended by the downturn of 2008).

Today Jimm #mentors start-ups from across the world. I was privileged to sit at his feet for 2 hours and #imbibe from the #calabash of his experiences, #passion and wisdom.

I told him the story of #Niselo and possible opportunities in the #US, about use of #cannabis in #symptomatic relief of #cancer and #arthritis and the #trials we are planning. We talked about #SouthVation and using the A, B and C planning model. Start with the B's, he said. And David Moinina Sengeh is an A! Then he put me on the train to #Connecticut (pronounced ConNETIcut, Lois kept telling me which I only manage to do if I don't spell it in my head!). To Bob Creighton MBE who has been a steadying influence from afar. We will finalize meet and break bread.

Good bye Memo...

 Before she was Cashlips to the social media world, she was Memory Hazvinei to my father who named her. Remember (Memory), it does not matter (Hazvinei), because she was loved, she was a gift, he said.

With piercing eyes and a naughty but shy smile, Memo, was my muzikuru (niece). Stubborn, self-assured, elegant in style, never letting the veneer of her insecurities and struggles show. (Who does not have those?) She lived in the glare of social media in latter years but grew up grounded by her grandmother (Mbuya), her mother, aunts and uncles. But really, she was Mbuya's child, relegating me as the youngest child to another position. With mbuya, they fought and made up in ways that only those that know unconditional love do. She crossed valleys for her grandmother, showering her with all manner of gifts, acknowledging her role to the world.

She grew up under my watch. Looking to me as a big brother. Sitting on 2 continents, we saw each other occasionally. I was a distant spectator, saying hello once in a while, somewhat thinking she would go on into our old age. I was not a Cashlips follower, giving her breadth and freedom to be that persona unencumbered by my conservative streak. 

Then she died. Just like that - in a dramatic, traumatic way. I received a photo of her in ICU, in the morning, an hour later a call. She will not wake make it, my sister said, unless there is a miracle. Miracles are rare in modern times. By the end of the day, she was off life support and gone. In as dramatic a way as she had regaled her followers on facebook. Gone.

rest easy, hazvinei hazvo...

 

Nordic escapade II – 50 back on the Road

I am on the train to Helsinki. We leave Kuopio on a Sunday morning. It’s carpeted by a light layer of snow – which delights my travelling companion to no end. Like the first time I saw snow too. It seems Christmas is closer than we think, and a long winter here in the Nordics.

I love trains. What would be an escapade without a train journey? We zip through the forested countryside broken now and again by fields and rivers and lakes at 180 km/h.

On our last night in Kuopio we went to see the rapper 50 cent in concert. 21 years later and a millionaire a few times over, he seems to have come out of unannounced retirement (is it alimony costs or the tax man? or he is just bored with sitting at home? we were all wondering) to become a minor star working the washed out star circuit of minor venues; perhaps like the O’jays and Bonnie Tyler and the has – beens that the music world churns out in the viral manner of new stars born.

In his heyday, 50cent would fill up whole stadia of screaming fans (somebody screeeaam!), now he is down to small venues in small countries. But he still respects his audience and works hard to entertain with pyrotechnics which include video montages of his younger self. But the live semi-nude twerking stripper-type models further cheapen his rapping. But then this genre of music is built on that and there is no shortage here of pimply young buys (getting their groove) and bottle blondes and brunettes screaming into their phones as the excitedly take selfies and video for posting on the myriad of social media portals and hashtagging how cool/real/woke/awesome the show is.

They pay tribute to some fallen friends including Coolio and at the end of the show 50cent, through those clenched jaws is all somber as he says, “see you again, maybe”. I suggest a change to gospel Mr Nordic escapade II – 50 back on the Road

I am on the train to Helsinki. We leave Kuopio on a Sunday morning. It’s carpeted by a light layer of snow – which delights my travelling companion to no end. Like the first time I saw snow too. It seems Christmas is closer than we think, and a long winter here in the Nordics.

I love trains. What would be an escapade without a train journey? We zip through the forested country side broken now and again by fields and rivers and lakes at 180 km/h.

On our last night in Kuopio we went to see the rapper 50 cent in concert. 21 years later and a millionaire a few times over, he seems to have come out of unannounced retirement (is it alimony costs or the tax man? or he is just bored with sitting at home? we were all wondering) to become a minor star working the washed out star circuit of minor venues; perhaps like the O’jays and Bonnie Tyler and the has – beens that the music world churns out in the viral manner of new stars born.

In his heyday, 50cent would fill up whole stadia of screaming fans (somebody screeeaam!), now he is down to small venues in small countries. But he still respects his audience and works hard to entertain with pyrotechnics which include video montages of his younger self. But the live semi-nude twerking stripper-type models further cheapen his rapping. But then this genre of music is built on that and there is no shortage here of pimply young buys (getting their groove) and bottle blondes and brunettes screaming into their phones as the excitedly take selfies and video for posting on the myriad of social media portals and hashtagging how cool/real/woke/awesome the show is.

They pay tribute to some fallen friends including Coolio and at the end of the show 50cent, through those clenched jaws is all somber as he says, “see you again, maybe”. I suggest a change to gospel Mr Curtis James Jackson III (to you the name your momma gave you) or Jazz…it just lasts much longer and suits the mid-life stage we are all in.

 

Nordic escapades, part 3 - Hidden History

 

Hidden History

We meet with Antti at the Zara opposite Stockman’s. He is easy to recognize except he doesn’t have his bowler hat…it’s too cold for that. We met for the first time just over 4 weeks ago at the SANbio meeting when he was visiting South Africa. He liked Niselo he said, and I brought some for him but forgot it in the hotel. We end up giving it to the helpful lady at the airport check-in and she is so grateful (as Africans we find it difficult to through anything away).

Antti is generous with his time. At short notice he has put together an interesting tour of inner city Helsinki. This, it turns out is city built by the Russian emperor in the 100 years that Finland was under Russian rule. So, the statues in the main square and some of the roads are of Russian royals. Nothing here of the Swedish crown which had ruled the Finns for the 700 years prior, because the capital was then at Turku. The Russians are loathed but the Swedes are liked (maybe not loved); Antti says that it’s a complicated history but Swedish is an official language of business and education. Independence came to Finland just over 100 years ago when they took advantage of the chaos in Moscow when the Bolsheviks were overthrowing the Tsar, and they declared independence. Then there was a civil war.

We tour the University of Helsinki, at least the campus close to us which has the main administrative building overlooking the square, opposite the administrative wing of government, the Lutheran cathedral and on the fourth side the business end of the city…a quartet of the main pillars of society. Antti tells us that at degree defence, doctoral students are presented with the “Doctor’s hat” a kind of top hat and a sword! And there is a solemn ceremony followed by an alcohol fueled party where all the professors “get wasted”. It seems a good ceremony to adopt.

The university has about 40,000 students and like all universities here, is on an internationalization drive. Programmes at Bachelor's which are historically in Finnish and Swedish are increasingly anglicizing. We visit the “Think Corner” a place where researchers come to share their research with students and the public and innovation is fostered; then onto the library to take in an aerial view of the city – no skyscrapers here; the cityscape is largely unchanged in 100 years. The university owns much of downtown and has fifth stream income from commercial rentals.

Then onto the museum opposite the church. It’s mostly about the sauna, I remark. Our host then tells how the sauna is at the centre of life in Finland and that he has one in his house and his children are taken into it weekly from the age of 6 months, just as he was taken in. The sauna is a sterilized environment and historically women would give birth there, couples would honeymoon there, the sick would be taken into the sauna to be treated and the dead would be cleaned and prepared for burial there. Every major institution in Finland has a sauna – hospitals, schools, parliament – and major decisions are made there (to the chagrin of women who would be excluded because saunas are strictly binary). Which, Antii surmises might now work in women's favour since the new government is dominated by some strong women leaders.  On the waterfront just off Alexander street, there is a public municipal sauna. While, like in many /all cultures around the world, men “don’t cry”, the one place they are allowed to whinge and cry is the sauna (to fellow men, about their domestic and other situations); and as the tears and sweat commingle, they can literally wash away their trouble, get advice and go home de-stressed. A lot like my golf gang.

Then to the fish market which is now more commercial than in its previous incarnation. Then Antti tells us about the hidden history and like with any other country, it ain’t pretty. That the Finns were part of the failed colonial project of Sweden, since they were still under the Swedish crown. Did you know that Sweden was the first country in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the traded it off (possibly) with Denmark who then passed it on the British.  That Lapland has gold which of interest to foreign interests. This hidden history was fascinating to hear. Would we all have turned to be happier and gentler with the Finns as our overloads? Would they have been better or worse than the British or French or (don't mention the Congo), the Belgians? On the issue of indigenous peoples, the Austratlians and Canadians have fared no better, perhaps worse.

We end our afternoon on a high note, at the Fazer Café surrounded by the best of Finland…good food and chocolate. We discuss possible projects via UNIPID and SANBio and how there could be intra-Africa collaborations, leaving the ghosts of the past and focussing on how we can better work together, to build a better world.  We head back to the hotel with a laundry list of things to do.

  

Nordic escapades, part 1 – November 2022

It’s Saturday. And I am finished. In Finland. You would be too, if you had spent a week of intense, highly stimulating conversations with various academics and researchers.

 The flight from South Africa was 3 hours longer than we had planned, there having been a serious medical incident in-flight which meant that we had to turn back to Johannesburg for the patient to be evacuated and to refuel. We barely caught our connection to Helsinki at that chaotic carousel called Charles De Gaulle in Paris. The staff are surly and unhelpful so when we land in Helsinki, we are relieved. The airport is clean, modern and the people are polite and helpful. As we discover all through our time, the Finns are a gentle and kind people, warm and receptive. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t have the naked and brutal ambition to colonize anyone?

We land in Kuopio in the early evening and it is already dark. We have lost our luggage but that doesn’t dampen my spirits. I am here on a study tour with my boss, being hosted by the School of Pharmacy at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio – to learn about their teaching and learning (of which I enjoy though I now do less of it) and their research (of which I now spend most of my time doing). Jarkko (double K as I call him) and Roseanna (Sisi to me) are at hand to welcome us at the hotel. They are patient and empathetic and helpful. They are good friends. I first met them in Pretoria in 2016. Double K and I talk golf most of the time, and with Roseanna we have a mutual love of Kenya and indigenous foods (which is the area of our collaborations over the years through GlobalFoodNet, SANBio

and UI-Southvation).

We are at the Lapland Hotel, a 5 hour drive will take us to Santa’s real grotto. This is just about the time when he is finishing up all the toys needing to be sent to Amazon to deliver to all the kids in the world (how things have changed – Rudolf and his crowd have been downsized and put out to pasture and some culled for the pot). And they are tasty, akin to eland and springbok as we discovered at the Lapland Hotel.

The food in this part of the world is surprisingly eclectic and homely.  And tasty. Over the 5 days we ate different dishes ranging from reindeer stews and roasts to white fish, pickled fish, vendace (a bit bigger than kapenta / nile perch) and Viking steak and pork and lots and lots of berries; berries as sauce, as juice, as jams. So, I jettison intermittent fasting to enjoy the food of Suomi (The Finnish name for Finland).

The meetings are excellent. We have a tight schedule, and every day is a revelation. We meet with colleagues in Clinical Nutritional, Public Health Nutrition (there is a difference), Pharmacology and Toxicology (yes, toxicology is and should be an integral part of pharmacy and pharmaceutical science) and with the Dean we discuss diabetes and diabetes management and industrial pharmacy. We talk about joint projects, global virtual lectures, student and staff exchange, we tour labs and meet students, we give guest lectures and plan future engagements. And we go out to lunch and dinners and talk like old friends reunited – though we are meeting with most people for the first time. We even get VIP passes for their national game – ice hockey and we are there shouting and egging the team. The home fans who are play drums and sing. Wish my vuvuzela was by my side!

The Finnish score high on most global indices – human development, SDGs, education, happiness. I understand now. To be happy you have to be gentle and kind, and maybe speak a bit of Finnish. Kiitos!

Herbal tea - building the African herbal tea industry

Slush

Slush. The snow and rain are not quite as mushy or persistent as one would expect. This geek festival was named after that mixture which makes it extra cold and miserable in the Nordics this time of the year. Thank God, this year, there is a sprinkling of rain on the opening morning and as I make my way out to the train station on day 2, there is a half-hearted snow fall which I quickly brush off my hat and face.
Inside the slush hall, it is deliberately dark with neon lights and signs blinking everywhere - Meeting Place, WC (toilets), Evergreen stage, Microsoft, Danske Bank, Google start-up...an innumerable number of names and brands - the familiar and the not so familiar. Apple is conspicuous by its absence (or maybe I just missed it).
Here in these halls much dealmaking will be done; and one is reminded of smoky gambling halls. Every conversation is a pitch, for one never knows when the person you are talking to is your next investor, or an angel, or advisor. Everyone here can share a nugget that might ignite your business.
People from 132 countries we are told, 20,000 of us are gathered here to talk and hear about the current and next wave of innovations, about unicorns, and interestingly,also, about stewardship of the earth.
The Finnish are nice people, kind people, and surprisingly very Americanized - they play a lot of soul and R n B -the event starts with a duo of two black rappers; they have very American bravado in speech...no Dutch or German accents here. Everyone here we encountered is generally young and speaks English. Perhaps the proximity to Russia is what pushed them into the hands of the Americans (Finland is a young country and owes its independence to the Bolsheviks in 1917). This American link is alive at Slush; many of the innovators have spent time in Silicon Valley, and paid their dues to the gods of technology and innovation in California's ethereal streets.
But, if they were Americans, they would be nicer Americans. They retain the Nordic traits of care for the earth and human solidarity (by way of example, Finland scores first in the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). During Slush 2018, the UN launched it's first technology station in Europe in Helsinki (UN Technology Innovation Lab), and various sessions alluded to the SDGs.
I heard about Slush for the first time, only last year. So I am privileged to have attended it; to have met interesting people and links that might come to future fruition. And here, then is the lesson for Africa, that, as Africans, there is a better use of our time than wall-to-wall religious events. While we are at fasting or at night prayers asking for miracles, some are getting together to innovate and solve problems here on earth. No miracles there.

Fragile state

In Finland. We visited Finnpartnership, one of the agencies which work in developing countries creating business networks. Finland has no colonial past, you see, so they are generally welcomed in places the British and French are reviled.
Here we were a cohort of young Southern Africans - black and white. One of the first slides they showed us was of the countries of the world. We zoomed in on Africa, naturally. Low income countries, most of us with only South Africa orange coloured as being Low Middle Income. Zimbabwe was a different country from any of her neighbours...similar only to South Sudan and Somalia...and the key to their pale green colour "fragile states". That label really shook me.
What is a fragile state? It cannot be the country of my beginning. But it turns out that there is a matrix which grade countries into this category. The matrix includes Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, Uneven Economic Development, Human Flight and Brain Drain, State Legitimacy, among other indicators. Zimbabwe has all of these and more; and it's neighbours, countries which were far behind Zimbabwe a mere 10 years ago, have moved ahead to be islands of stability and economic progress.
Fragile state...the country of my becoming teeters closer and closer to implosion.

thief on the cross

We were hijacked on Sunday night on our way from the airport in Cura. It had been a most successful business and social trip to Zimbabwe.

I suppose were followed from the airport...still trying to process it - and it happened so fast. The driver was keying in the code to open the gate and then next there is a guy in balaclava shouting at him and threatening him; then my door opens and one man with a bandana pulled over his face casually takes my laptop bag from between my feet. And then they ask for our money and phones. In a flash, property expropriation without compensation is complete!

 Everyone is fine (my colleague and the shuttle driver) - they were not violent and we gave up our money, valuables without resisting - these things will be replaced 10 fold. I am just very angry with myself (I am usually more careful), with the driver (he should have been checking behind him more), but that's how it is.

It got me thinking about the thief on the cross whom Jesus forgives. And about these guys who held us up; smirks behind their covered faces, cursing us and threatening to "just shoot" - the driver had a gun pointed at him; the one who came to my door was probably not armed. They just felt entitled to our money - hey, give us all of it - and to our property. My phone and laptop are probably not worth much; I was meaning to replace them anyway, and the bag they took was heavy with Mazoe rather than anything of value to them (but we could have been killed for that). Then there are the intangible things one loses - a diary with contacts and thoughts and research ideas; the half-finished documents and exam scripts; and then that inner peace, the ability to feel joyful. Everyone else seems to be going on about their lives...and you just feel, uncertain, unsure.

And so, how do you forgive that thief on the cross? Should he be forgiven?

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.