Online Reporter
When Zimbabweans pull together we are able to achieve some quite astonishing successes, even when we might not really notice how successful we are since everything worked so smoothly.
The latest example of this is how we coped as a nation with the worst drought in living memory last year, with most rural households seeing little or nothing in the way of a harvest, the commercial crop with its supplementary irrigation being very limited, and the reserve stocks built up in the previous season and carried over being quite inadequate to fill all needs although extremely useful.
The Government moved rapidly and in time to work out a rational and workable swathe of solutions to ensure that not only would no one go hungry, but that we would all have to pull together and no one would be able to profiteer. The private sector would thus be able to keep functioning and be part of the solution.
There was some emergency rebudgeting to ensure that the Government had the money to buy the grain needed to supply every rural family that was going to be short of food with a monthly ration of grain, with this scheme widened later to ensure that very vulnerable urban families had a modest monthly allowance to buy commercial mealie meal.
The fiscal discipline of the Second Republic ensured that this could be done, and while there was some very worthwhile response to President Mnangagwa’s international appeal for help, Zimbabwe had to do much of the required financing itself to keep hunger at bay.
The Government made the second major decision when it decided that it would buy the carried-over reserves held by the Grain Marketing Board and buy the very modest surpluses, largely from farmers in exceptionally good areas most of whom also had some supplementary irrigation. That gave it, with the odd adjustments and including wheat reserves, enough grain for the tri-monthly rations to the vulnerable rural households.
The milling companies were told they would be unable to buy maize from the GMB and would have to import, enough warning being given when it became obvious that the harvest was going to be bad so they could set up their supply chains and get together with their bankers to work out the advance financing and the foreign currency that would be required.
There was an obvious danger that while everyone hoped most private sector companies would behave responsibly, there was bound to be someone, based on previous experience, who might try to profiteer through assorted skulduggery.
Import permits could perhaps be accumulated so that everyone else would have to pay a fee to the lucky holder, or someone could try and create an artificial shortage and so drive up prices. There were a host of possibilities.
The Government announced it would be monitoring orders, deliveries and supplies but perhaps the smartest move taken was to make sure that there was no rationing and that any miller seeking an import permit could have one. That led to permits for more than 5 million tonnes of grain, possibly a three-year supply assuming that our farmers grew absolutely nothing over that time.
Obviously nothing like that was going to be imported, since no one had the money to do so and no one would be so irrational, but it did mean that no one could manipulate the markets. Millers, when Zimbabwean harvests are adequate, do buy some of their local grain in advance, but also rely on normal commercial cash flows to buy from the GMB as and when they need grain. At worst you can buy from the GMB on Monday, mill the grain on Tuesday, deliver the bags of mealie meal on Wednesday and start having your money back by Friday, although it is very rarely that extreme.
The imports meant that more payments were needed in advance, to cope with the longer delivery times if nothing else although there was also need to secure supplies. Bankers were thus also monitoring, and wanted to ensure that anybody having to borrow for a shipment was going to pay back, soon. The interest rates would also ensure that borrowers did not want long loans tied up in overstocking, especially as competitors could also arrange their own imports, thanks to the Government refusal to ration licences and might do so more efficiently.
So it worked rather well and more than 1 million tonnes of maize was almost routinely imported by the millers, who kept their factories working well and kept their competitive market supplied, which meant normal business for retailers and normal supplies for customers. You can walk into a supermarket and find several brands on the shelves, which is a sign of competitive normality.
So it has all worked out rather well, and by April we are all hoping to see at least a reasonable harvest starting to come in and probably one with some surpluses that can help rebuild the emergency strategic stockpile so we are ready for the next bad season.
The millers hope for the same and will be eagerly waiting for the go-ahead to return to local buying. It is far simpler and easier to send your trucks round to the nearest GMB depot, or have a contract with a local farmer, than have to work out complex ordering and delivery logistics with imports. So unused licences will remain unused. Those who hoped to make money from a permit through manipulation are already sitting with unusable paper, as the Government saw through the potential schemes from the start and was by simple policies able to block them without any fuss.
When we think about it, we have that remarkable achievement of everyone pulling in the same direction to make sure that as households and as a country we did not run short of food. A set of sensible, and self-correcting, Government policies created the framework for this spectacular success, and then we had that remarkable co-operative set of Government and private sector efforts that made sure we had enough food on our plates wherever we lived.
This is what happens in Zimbabwe when we do pull together. We have done it before; we just need to think about that Covid-19 pandemic to remember what happens when we are all playing on the same team with our Government policies providing a proper framework.
This sort of pulling together, within a given framework that encourages responsible efforts and makes a lot of dubious paper shuffling impossible, should be routine as we overcome our challenges and move forward, individually, as families, as communities, as businesses and as a country.
A serious emergency last year was overcome, and when we reflect on the apparent ease of that success, we need to remember that it was achieved because a lot of people played their parts to perfection and so all those efforts added up to a major success.
