The Polish were racist towards Ramaphosa's delegation, fulstop.

 Let me add my two cents worth on this saga.

I find it shocking that the media including South African media are insinuating that Poland did nothing wrong, but rather incompetence by the South African government was the cause of Ramaphosa's security delegation being held up at Chopin airport.

This was the president of a country, therefore it is very likely that all people travelling on the plane would have had diplomatic passports. The plane itself is likely to have had diplomatic status meaning that everything on the plane would have been diplomatic bag.

Diplomatic bag (it is not a literal bag) refers to goods having diplomatic status. Diplomatic bag is not subject to inspection by any other country and goods inside the diplomatic bag are not inventoried for inspection.

Typically diplomatic bag is used to convey correspondence between embassies and their countries. The status is also given to the goods accompanying or belonging to a diplomatic official.

I should also make it clear that transportation of weapons by diplomatic bag is quite normal. The Americans always do it for the Marines who guard their embassies.

The only incident that I know of when diplomatic bag was violated happened when Zimbabwe opened British diplomatic bag in 2000. An entire six tonnes of it.  Read paragraph three of the BBC news report on the incident here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/672786.stm.

Americans have got marines guarding their embassies the world over. The weapons of those marines are conveyed in diplomatic bag meaning they are never inventoried for inspection by the host country.

Besides inventorying weapons meant to protect a national leader could give away the security plan of the leader and should never be done.

So the claim of "undeclared military weapons" is absolute hogwash. If those weapons are part of diplomatic bag so what? They are not meant to be declared.

Secondly, diplomatic passports are so-called because they give special rights to their holders. One of those rights is you do not have to apply for a visa, wherever you are going.

You go to any country and if that country does not like your presence they issue a diplomatic note giving you 24, 48 or 72 hours to leave. If there were people travelling on national passports the practice is to put them back on the plane they came with, but that does not affect holders of diplomatic passports.

I am not sure what Poland means when it says there were undeclared people on the flight. Maybe they mean that the list of people on board did not correspond to the flight plan. But flight plans are a safety mechanism and have got nothing to do with diplomacy.

If Poland had prevented the delegation from leaving airport premises that would be understandable. But preventing them from even coming down the steps of the aircraft is another level of racism. Clearly, the insinuation is that the Africans were going to contaminate Polish soil and buildings with something sinister. Maybe some horror African disease.

Lastly, on the so-called photocopies, diplomatic correspondence is by means of letters between the ministries of foreign affairs. Meaning that the DIRCO in South Africa would have written letters to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland. Travellers would have been carrying copies of those letters because the originals would have been sent to the Polish ministry.

Poland may not have had the time to respond, but at every international port of entry, there are protocol officers to deal with such diplomatic matters. That means Polish protocol officers at Chopin airport would have taken the letters and verified them with their Ministry of foreign affairs if needed.

Protocol officers are there precisely to prevent incidents like this, where diplomatic travellers are inconvenienced due to misunderstandings. Nobody is explaining why the protocol mechanism did not work at Chopin airport.

Poland did not issue any diplomatic notes during this saga which means they did not find diplomatic fault with the delegation or its luggage.

Instead, reasons that apply to non-diplomatic travellers are being given by Polish officials.

By the way, several Western leaders have travelled to Ukraine via Poland and their delegations are usually more intrusive than Ramaphosa's delegation yet we have not had similar issues. The Americans and the British will not allow anyone to inspect the weaponry and security apparatus, yet both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have travelled to Ukraine without this kind of hullabaloo. Not to mention American secretaries of state who typically have a much bigger security footprint than Ramaphosa had.

There is nothing to blame South Africa for as far as I can see. When travelling with such a large delegation it is impossible to get every nitty-grit detail in perfect order. Which is why protocol mechanisms exist at ports of entry.

The Polish were just being racist. It is sad that the white-owned media in South Africa seem to be siding with their racist brethren by shifting the blame to South Africa. By doing that they can then rant about incompetent blacks in their quest for apartheid apologism.

Kalanga and Karanga: Is there a difference?

Kalanga and Karanga are not tribes. If we are to be puritanical both names refer to a religion that was called the Mwari Cult by Europeans, before they later decided to steal the name Mwari and apply it to their god Jehovah (or Yahweh to use the original Hebrew transcription).

Makaranga or Makalanga (just like the names Christian and Muslim) encompass many groups of different ethnic origins that adopted the culture and way of life.

1. Who instigated the first Chimurenga? According to the history you were taught in school it was a Matabele High Priest or the Mlimo of Matopos who sent an emissary to Mashonaland. The British are at a loss as to why the Matebele would send an emissary to the Shona and most books either skirt around the subject or openly admit that they can't explain. The books also do not talk about what happened to the 'Mlimo'.

The Mlimo was assassinated by Frederick Burnham and Bonar Armstrong when he was leading a ceremony at Matopos. That is what brought a quick end to the war in Matabeleland.

The more important question is who was he? According to writings from the time, he was "High Priest of the Mwari, chief rainmaker (Wosana) of the tribe Makalanka." What this means is that he was not a Ndebele as we are taught in our schools but a 'Makalanka'.

If you listen to Kalanga folklore it gives very high prominence to Tjibelo and Tjibundula as important ancestral families of the Kalanga. Now ask yourself where did the emissary send by the Mwari priest go. He went to Mashayamombe and the surrounding people. Where was the Mashayamombe located and what is the area called today? Chivero. Where is Chivero if I may ask you?

Now go back to 1896 and try to find an explanation for why the Mlimo, who was recorded as a Makalanka at the time, would send an emissary to Chivero area. Does the relationship need to be more obvious? Or by the way, to explain Tjibundula let let me just draw your attention to Paul Matavire's song "KwaChiwundura vakandisungaaa!"

You may be asking yourself how come the people of Matopos are called Kalanga while those of Chivero are Karanga. (For now I don't have the time and space to tackle the misrepresentation that Karanga are only from Masvingo. Karanga are found as far afield as Mozambique's Uteve, Barwe and Tavara people. "Rove ngoma muTavara wee!". And possibly Zambia's Lozi people)

2. To answer your curiosity let me introduce you to the topic of transcription, how to represent spoken sounds in written form. When European missionaries came, they grappled with the problem of how to translate the bible into local languages. Local languages did not have a written form.

At first, different missionaries came up with different approaches. A mission station would try and come up with a written form for the language spoken around its location. However given dialectical differences even among mutually intelligible peoples, this resulted in many different transcription systems. An example of a local writing system now defunct is the original Kalanga which used Tj for the Ch sound in Shona or Tsh in Ndebele. This writing system survived in place names which is why many maps had the name Tjolotjo for Tsholotsho.

Even when writing accounts in English or other European language, explorers and missionaries often struggled with how to render given names of places and people. Thus you may find Nengomasha (who was an army general for Munhumutapa Gatsi Rusere) written as Ningomaxa or Ninkomaxa by different authors.

This happened with tribal names as well. Makalanka, Makalanga, Makaranga, Makalaka.

The many transcription systems made printing the bible, especially in those times when letters for lithography presses had to be carefully handcrafted, a very expensive exercise.

Eventually, missionaries started exploring ways to make printing the bible cheaper. To this end, in 1929 they hired a professor of Bantu Languages from the University of the Witwatersrand, Clement Martyn Doke. He spend a year interviewing natives in Southern Rhodesia before he came up with a recommendation.

The missionaries held a conference at Dadaya where Doke presented his recommendations among them a recommendation for Unified Shona. There was some debate on what name to call the language before Shona was agreed upon. From that point on the name Shona was used by missionaries in Southern Rhodesia.

On the other hand, the South African government did not quite agree with Doke's findings, and they used the name ChiKaranga, which they stopped using around 1955.

Going back to 1930 the missionaries agreed that to make printing the bible as cheap as possible, the country would be divided into only two regions along administrative lines used by the Southern Rhodesian government.

Everyone inside Matebeleland province would be taught to read and write Ndebele using the Nguni alphabet, imported from South Africa. Thus the Venda, Tonga, Kalanga, Nambya, etc were all now forced to learn Ndebele even though they didn't natively speak it.

Everyone else (Victoria, Manicaland, Midlands, and Mashonaland provinces) would be taught to read and write in the new Unified Shona that Clement Doke had recommended. The Shangani were thus forced to learn Shona.

As for Unified Shona itself, it was mainly based on Zezuru, Kaanga, and some Manyika. Why? The main missions driving the process, St Ignatius Chishawasha, Domboshawa, and Waddilove were in Zezuru speaking areas, Mogenster and Dadaya were in Karanga speaking areas, St Augstines Tsambe and Mt Selinda were in Manyika and Ndau areas.

I use the name Karanga with reservation. It was not the name used by missionaries for the dialect. Rather they called several related dialects from Victoria Province the Victoria Circle dialects. It is from this where the name ChiVhitori comes from.

The name Karanga itself was considered for the unified dialect but, after some debate, was discarded in favour of Shona. Some entities continued to use it though, which is why you find some of the earliest Shona textbooks may have titles like Chikaranga Chamandiriri.

Now for the last part. As you know the Nguni alphabet does not have R, while the newly proposed Shona alphabet did not have L (despite the R in Chikorekore sounding close to L).

Thus speakers of the same language were taught two different ways of writing the same or similar words. Those in Matabeleland were taught to write Kalanga while those in the rest of the country were taught to write Karanga. To be more accurate, they were simply taught they were Shona with the name Karanga returning to popular use after independence. Even it was used as a replacement for ChiVhitori which is totally incorrect. It should have been used as a replacement for the name Shona itself.

Now add to this mix some Europeans who could not properly pronounce local names, or who did not know how to render local names they found already written. Being British, these Europeans used British pronunciation for letter combinations. Thus the NG in Kalanga became soft like the English letter combination NG. (instead of being pronounced with a hard sound like in "blank" it was pronounced with a soft sound like in "belonging"). Victims of British mispronunciation even include country names Botswana and Uganda. Not to mention the district Buhera (which is why Uhera has become Bhowera?).

That in a nutshell Cde explains the main source of the difference between the names Kalanga and Karanga.

Most of those taught in Shona, except the Shangani, were fortunate that their native dialects were very close to the Unified Shona thus they could still speak them while writing in the new alphabet. Most of the differences are tonal.

For those in Matabeleland, it was a different story. They were essentially forced to abandon their native languages for the vastly different Ndebele.

Given that the people running the system were racist supremacists, they attached the social narrative that everyone had to speak Ndebele because it was the 'superior' language. They did not elevate to the same level as theirs though. When this narrative filtered down to the villages, it was often presented along the lines that if you were Nguni you were superior to those around you.

This is one of the reasons you find that people from Matabeleland are almost insanely fixated with being Nguni.

For the rest of us, it means nothing, if you are a muBarwe you are a muBarwe, and if the next man is a muHera so what? But in Matabeleland, it's a different story. Everyone wants to be Nguni. This was done to entice people away from their native languages under the perception that if you speak Ndebele you get closer to being Nguni.

Remember the main narrative which affects everyone including the Shona to this day, was that if you spoke English and adopted English mannerisms and culture you became superior to the rest of the natives. That is why kutaura Chirungu, especially with near-perfect accent, is considered a social construct of sophistication by the mentally colonized.

But I digress. Kalanga and Karanga are exactly the same thing (keeping in mind that there are many different marudzi in both groups). The divergence was caused firstly by different  alphabets and then by different colonial socialization of communities

Tanzania did South Africa a very huge favour

 According to Bheki Cele Tanzania "requested" that "prisoners" be transported on a privately chartered plane.

To quote "Minister of Police Bheki Cele told Parliament the request to transport prisoners on a privately charted aircraft came at the behest of the Tanzanian government."

What he could have more accurately told MPs is "I am clueless about international law and diplomatic protocols."

South African sovereignty ends at the South African border line. South African state institutions such as the police, therefore, have no authority whatsoever beyond the borderline. That applies to each and every country in the world.

In short, SAPS cannot effect an arrest on Tanzanian soil. SAPS cannot take custody of any person whether South African or not on foreign soil, e.g. Tanzanian soil. The only places where South African sovereignty is recognized outside of the borders are the premises of accredited embassies, high commissions, and consulates.

However even if Bester and that oh-so-beautiful woman were placed in an embassy and SAPS took custody of them there, they would still need to cross sovereign Tanzanian ground to get out of the country, so that is not practical at all.

Secondly, Bester is not was never a convicted prisoner in Tanzania. So Cele should be made to understand that while in Tanzania Bester was not an escapee. He was just another illegal immigrant.

That gave Tanzanian authorities the right to arrest him and his chick BASED ON TANZANIAN LAW. Tanzanian state institutions were the only ones with the authority to take custody of him on Tanzanian soil.

In short Tanzanian police could effect an arrest. Tanzania had the right to try the duo for any crimes committed in Tanzania before handing them over to South Africa.

However, like most countries, Tanzania chooses to deal with illegal immigrants administratively by just deporting them.

Here is the key thing that Cele needs to understand, deportation from Tanzania is affected by the Tanzanian state using its state personnel, in this case, the Tanzanian Immigration Department. No country in the world uses the personnel of a foreign state for functions such as deportation.

Deportees from Europe come accompanied by immigration officials from the deporting country. Therefore insinuations that Tanzanian officials wanted a free ride to South Africa are nothing but ignorant insults.

That is Tanzanian Immigration Department officials needed to take custody of deportees and hand them over only when they arrive at the receiving country's port of entry.

That procedure is an international standard. It is not Tanzania asking for a free plane ride from South Africa.

In fact, Tanzania did South Africa a very very big favour. The norm is that deportees are sent back to the country they ARRIVED FROM.

Bester and Nandipha were travelling by road. So chances are they entered Tanzania via Malawi at Mbeya or via Zambia at Tunduma. Although they were being assisted by a Mozambican, there is no chance they would have travelled through the violent Cabo Delgado or Nassa provinces which are the Mozambican provinces that border Tanzania.

So if Tanzania had wanted to be technically correct, they would have insisted on handing Nandipha and Bester to Malawi, or Zambia. Then they would then have had to be handed to Mozambique or Zimbabwe before making it back to South Africa.

So Tanzania did South Africa a huge favour by politely asking, instead of invading Tanzania with their police, if they could send a private jet to expedite the deportation. Otherwise, they could have had to buy commercial tickets out of Dar es Salam.

I do not think airlines would have agreed as Bester had no valid documentation. Not to mention the complication of arranging transit visas as there are almost no direct flights between SA and Tanzania. A transit visa for Bester would have been impossible.

Yes, members of a state armed wing entering another country IS AN INVASION. That is why, on borders like between China and India, India and Pakistani, Israel and Lebanon, or Israel and Syria we regularly read of violent clashes, that are caused by police or soldiers from one side straying onto the other, leading to exchanges of live fire.

So Tanzania was simply asking South Africa to follow international law and diplomatic protocols.

I know South Africans like to think they are more special than their African brothers. However when contrasted with how Dubai handled the matter of deporting the Guptas, how Tanzania handled the Thabo Bester should have taught South Africa a very important lesson that a brother is a brother. If Bester had made it out of Sub-Saharan Africa South Africa would never have got him back as easily as they did.

Boksburg Tanker Explosion: The Physics Behind it

LPG (liquid petroleum gas) has a boiling point of -44°C at atmospheric pressure at sea level. That means at room temperature (20°C) it occurs in gaseous form.

However, remember that the boiling point is dependent on pressure. The higher the ambient (surrounding) pressure, the higher the boiling point.

Thus to keep LPG in liquid form it has to be highly pressurized.

At typical room temperature (20°C) LPG needs 836 kilopascals to turn it into liquid form. That is 8 times the atmospheric pressure of 101kPa. Given that Boksburg is 1700m above sea level the actual atmospheric pressure would be less than 101kPa.

In order to keep the LPG liquified, a very strong container is needed to withstand this high pressure.

One may ask why liquify the LPG? To make it easier to transport. Liquid occupies far much less volume than gas. Your 9 kg cooking gas would need a container the size of a pickup truck if it were not liquified.

When a high-pressure vessel containing a liquid is suddenly compromised, the liquid will instantly turn into vapour leading to a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion). The BLEVE is not exothermic (generating heat) but it is forceful and will spread the vapour over a wide area. If the vapour is flammable (such as petroleum gas) it will then mix with air (which contains oxygen) and ignite causing another exothermic explosion within milli-seconds of the BLEVE.

Thus a typical tanker explosion is a 2 stage explosion. First, there is a BLEVE which envelopes a wide area with flammable vapour. If there is a flame in the area that ignites the vapour then there is an exothermic explosion that burns everything that is now enveloped in petroleum vapour.

The likely sequence of events in Boksburg. When the tanker scrapped its top against the bridge, the compromise did not cause an instant complete loss of pressure. There was a continuous escape of gas which caught fire and burnt continuously. It is likely the continuous flame heated a portion of the tanker. Heat weakens metal. At some point about an hour after the initial accident, the casing of the tanker got weak enough to rupture and cause a BLEVE.

Within milliseconds people standing near the tanker would have been enveloped in highly flammable vapour. Because there was a flame already present within milliseconds that vapour ignited burning people. Victims of the secondary explosion are likely to have been burnt all over the body. Victims of a purely exothermic explosion are usually burnt only on the side facing the explosion with the worst injury being caused by the blast wave, not by the heat (broken bodies rather than burnt bodies).

BLEVEs are not uncommon in the LPG industry. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPVEsQaGB0) documents some of the worst BLEVEs. Most of these BLEVEs caused few fatalities. In one involving a railway tanker train, no one died even though a rail tanker was tossed several hundred meters by the explosion.

The reason for the very high number of casualties in Boksburg was the lack of management of the scene. The only person who understood the risk and tried to keep people as far away as possible from the scene was the driver.

State authorities did not appreciate the risk. First, they send out the wrong type of responders, firemen with normal fire tenders. Second, they did nothing to manage the vicinity. An evacuation order should have been issued for several hundred metres around the scene.

BLEVE-initiated explosions can toss very large projectiles for several hundred metres. In this case, it looks like the tanker trailer was not tossed several metres because of the weight of the bridge above it. If that bridge and railway tracks had not been there that tanker could have landed on someone's house.

The media and public sentiment seem to be focusing on the person who made the initial mistake, the driver. Yet the biggest culprits here are the authorities. They clearly lacked the knowledge to appreciate the risk and expertise to manage the scene. Forces should have been sent to evacuate people and keep them several hundred metres away from the scene. Fire tenders capable of throwing fire suppressants several hundred metres should have been sent, not ones that need a man to take a hose close to the fire.

Naledi Pandor is right that it does not help that the politics of Zimbabwe are vindictive, rancorous and full of "if I can't have it, you can't have it too" attitude.

But I do not agree those politics are the reason for the tanking economy.

The reason for the tanking of the economy is corruption, cronyism, overregulation and extortionist mentality by government.

The government has been using regulation to close down economic space and create monopolies controlled by the cronies of politicians. For example, private transport operators have been forced to close or subcontract to ZUPCO (Zimbabwe United Passenger Company) are government owned entity so corrupt that it has only survived through a dripline of handouts, and now the forced redirection of private transport investment for its benefit.

Even the cornerstone of Zimbabwe's household economy, small to medium scale rural agriculture has not been spared. Farmers are forced to deliver produce to government owned entities such as GMB (Grain Marketing Board) who pay in fits and starts or not at all. Yet such entities "loan" the produce delivered to the companies of politicians and their cronies who then engineer ways to get their "loans" and "accounts" written off.

An example of the "writting off" of debt is when foreign currency debt owed to private players such as Miekles Hotel was "taken over" by government which then did not bother to pay despite Miekles hotel winning a court case.

The closing of economic space for small businesses means that the owners and their employees often go to look for ecomic space in neighbouring countries particularly South Africa.

For example before I came to South Africa I was running a transport company in Zimbabwe. I parked and sold the trucks after I was approached by RBZ officials demanding that I reptriate ALL foreign earnings that I had invoiced for. This is despite that transporter brokers deducted supplies such as diesel, tyres and driver allowances before paying the invoice. For example if a broker provided material worth R7000 and I invoices R10000 for the trip that meant that I would only get paid R3000 by the broker. But that government of Zimbabwe wanted all R10000 "repatriated" to Zimbabwe at the penalty of prison. I chose to leave the business than regularly haggle with and bribe RBZ officials.

In the same yard I parked my trucks in Zimbabwe there were people who started off selling diesel stolen by truck drivers around Harare. Soon very high ranking officials (an army colonel and senior intelligence official) started supplying diesel from government "allocations" to those young men. Truckloads of diesel taken straight from NOCZIM (National Oil Company of Zimbabwe) were offloaded into drums and sold on the black market at a time the country was facing severe fuel shortage. Needless to say in the space of a year the sigubhu pushers had more than 10 trucks.

As long as government services are provided at extortionist daylight robbery proportions economic space will remain closed for small and medium enterprises and small business owners and their potential employees will continue flocking to neighbouring countries particularly South Africa, for the economic space they are denied at home.

South Africa needs to tell Munangagwa to stop the corruption and cronyism. Sanctions are an irritation but not an economy killer. Chamisa is largely irrelevant.

If South Africa wants to stop the tide of economy refugees from Zimbabwe, the former needs to be very direct and frank that corruption and overregulation need to end. Particularly the forced surrender of foreign earning to government is a nuclear bomb to the economy. Stop that and Zimbabwe's economy will start to turn around.

South Africa: The Land Question: Restoration of a Viable Social Economy For the African Majority

 The land question is not just a issue of correcting a historical colonial injustice. It is a life and death matter about fixing the social economy of African society that was destroyed by the racist, supremacist  and abusive dispensation over the past century or two.

The land question did not arise out of colonial settlers needing farmland, it arose out of colonial capitalists being very very desperate for cheap labour. The land question is about the violent wrenching of the African people from their agricultural-pastoral social economy to force them into job dependency.

In the late 1800s the mushrooming mining industry of the Witwatersrand was desperate for labour. The African community, then, was living in a social economy revolving around pastoral and arable agriculture. The Africans needed their time to tend their livestock and till their land. They did not have the time to work in the colonialists' mines and factories.

So dire was the labour situation that the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela) was formed in 1902, followed by the Native Recruitment Corporation (NRC) around 1912, to recruit labour from neighbouring countries and the region. The NRC recruited mainly from Lesotho and later Transkei. Wenela recruited from the north and had offices as far as Tanzania but the bulk of the workers came from the Rhodesias (Zimbabwe and Zambia), Nyasaland (Malawi) and Mozambique.

It is a topic for another day but let me briefly point out that these two organizations are the ones that introduced and cemented a culture of labour migration to South Africa throughout the region, not recent events like Mugabe's rule or the end of Afrikaner led apartheid. Apartheid was a mere interruption to the labour migration trend.

By the way these organizations still exist today in the form of TEBA Limited.

The desperation for labour eventually spawned a strategy of denying local blacks self-reliance. That is why the Native Land Act of 1913 banned Africans, not just from owning land, but from renting land in 93% of the country. Thus Africans were squeezed into tiny areas to deny them self-reliance. or forced to become tenant labourers, effectively recreating medieval English society of serfs (commoners) and lords but this time along racial lines.

The strategy of turning Africans into cheap labour has been extremely successful. Who can raise their hand and deny that the majority of today's black South Africans are just a pool of very cheap labour desperately trying to drive away competition from regional labour that was also invited by the same 1900s strategy that made locals landless.

With this knowledge at hand, it should be clear that land reform is not just a matter of grabbing land and giving it to blacks (although that will work in the very long term) but a strategy of fixing the social economy of blacks by returning them to a measure of self-sustenance on the land.

That will not work without some measure and effort to reskill Africans with some basic agricultural skills. Afrikaners only became successful farmers because of heavy subsidies, affirmative action and of course abundant cheap labour during the apartheid era.

Does land reform work? It is working in Zimbabwe. Seventy percent of Zimbabweans live in rural areas growing their own food. They have little need for a cash economy. One of the reasons why Zanu-PF regularly wins elections is that every year it provides free agricultural inputs to rural dwellers.

The Zimbabweans who are in SA are mostly former city dwellers and others who choose to be dependent on the cash economy.

To get cash, unless you have assets, you need a job. But what do you need cash for? To buy food and pay for shelter (rent). If you have access to enough land sufficient to grow your own food, you won't need much cash once you build your home on that same piece of land.

My own mother was living in Harare until 2003 when Mugabe's land reform took place. Then she got 6 hectares and access to a common grazing area on a former white owned farm. She now has 15 head of cattle and chicken runs with capacity for 1000 chickens. I depend on her for food when I am home.

What is keeping Zimbabwe's economy in the doldrums is not land reform but corruption. South Africa has got that too, plenty of corruption. The early signs of the cost of corruption on the economy (shortages and high energy prices (petrol and electricity)) are already showing in South Africa. Another sign is a dysfunctional public service (police, civil servants who are reluctant do their duty to serve you unless you pay tshotsho, or are high-profile individual).

I believe strongly strongly that the land question is not a civil rights issue. It is above all a social economy and social justice issue. Protecting the property rights of those who own too much land based on past racial and colonial abuses will not prevent revolution that is coming.

As long as the social economy is based on impoverished cheap labour, revolution will happen. It is only a matter of time.

Political blame shifting and responsibility dodging will not solve South Africa's electricity crisis.

 After reading Gordhan's response to MPs in parliament about load shedding my heart sank. It seems he and the current Eskom chief executive's belief is that load shedding is caused by poor maintenance. The poor maintenance narrative being clever way of insinuating that incompetent blacks are responsible for load shedding.

I sincerely hope that Gordhan and his team do not actually believe that the mere presence of whites in top management of Eskom is what is required to stabilize Eskom. Because if that is their thinking, it means they are clueless about the problem they are dealing with.

According to the report Gordhan said, "The bottom line, honourable member, is that until we can put a few more thousand megawatts onto the system we cannot be definite. To achieve more output, the utility would have to do better maintenance and operations."

He did not mention more power stations or sources. Yet the simple truth is the power stations South Africa currently has simply cannot generate enough power for a fully served population (not partially served like under apartheid).

Gordhan and his team do not support their claim that load-shedding is caused by poor maintenance with any facts. There should be accurate reliability statistics. Figures like mean time to (MTTF) failure, mean time to repair (MTTR) and the overall availability of units as a percentage of the time the units are operating relative to total time they are expected to be  operating. Detailed reliability figures and root cause analysis are the only way of truthfully telling why units are failing too often and whether the root cause of downtime is lack of maintenance.

The poor maintenance narrative also whitewashes the simple fact that since the dawn of democracy the growth of electricity demand has far outstripped the growth of supply. The number of people supplied with electricity has grown from 14 million people in 1994 (35% of the population then) to over 51million people (85% of the population) now. That is three and a half times demand growth.

Yet electricity generating capacity has grown from 38 gigawatts to 58 gigawatts only. That is a one and half times growth in supply. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure that what is required is a rapid growth in supply.

While it is easy to grow the distribution network (demand side) because it is cheap and quick to add suburbs and factories to the distribution grid, growing supply is difficult. It requires massive lumpsums of money and lengthy construction periods to build power stations. That is why upfront planning must be meticulous for decades into future.

In this case upfront planning FOR THE ENTIRE POPULATION was non-existent under apartheid. When the ANC took over they focused on the easy part, growing the distribution network which can be easily dealt with in municipal budgets. Growing the supply which requires a massive national budget was not adequately funded.

It is my belief that the ANC were not correctly advised on growing the electricity supply capacity. I have mentioned before that the apartheid government had plans to tap into the hydro-capacity of the big rivers to the north.

Matimba-Insukamini 400KV transmission line (in black).

Despite then ongoing hostility with independent African countries, they built the Cabora Basa to Midrand DC transmission line. They also built the Matimba (near Lephalale) to Insukamini (near Bulawayo) high voltage transmission line which was completed in 1995. That was part of a strategy to transmit power from the north down to South Africa.

The question is how come the ANC did not follow through with the strategy? The ANC are politicians, and it would have been up to the energy experts to make the politicians understand. Did the politicians fail to listen? Or did the energy experts not offer their advice knowing that the shortage of electricity would become a political club to bludgeon the ANC with in future. Clearly in the November 2021 election that has just passed the ANC was clobbered to below 50% and load-shedding was one of the reasons cited by its voting base.

My biggest concern is the discussions going on around the electricity issue are just not correct especially since de Ruyter took charge of Eskom. There is a lot of waffling about maintenance. Yet the fact of life is that there is always scheduled and unscheduled maintenance on any power grid.

The conventional wisdom is for electricity supply security your capacity should be about 20% more than your peak demand. At the very least it should be 10% more than your peak demand.

That is where the figure of 6gigawatts more being needed in South Africa is coming from. The country has a capacity of about 58gigwatts and 10% of that is 6gigawatts. That is based on the assumption that since we are experiencing a supply shortfall at 58GW, that must be the peak demand.

Regional power transmission strategy. Power transmission lines
between countries are in red.

The second issue I have is there seems to be no coherent enunciation of where the extra electricity supply is going to come from. Especially given promises to eliminate coal in 15 years made by Ramaphosa in Glasgow.

De Ruyter keeps talking about past and current corruption. All and good, but the absence of corruption is not going to create the extra generating capacity that is lacking. The being no corruption simply means you can use what you have more efficiently.

Unless De Ruyter is a messiah who can feed thousands with two fish and five loaves there is no way he can end load-shedding in the next 2 years or so. Stopping corruption is simply stopping thieves from stealing a fish and loaf from the meagre collection, but even without the thieves, it is still not enough.

What South Africa needs to hear from De Ruyter is the vision and strategy of where the 6gigawatt shortfall in capacity is going to come from. Mind you that figure is based on an assumption that the peak capacity now is the peak demand as well.

Given that there are people who want electricity but are not even connected to the grid, actual peak demand is likely to be higher. I am going to throw bones here because I do not have reliable statistics but my guess is actual peak demand now should be around 70gigawatts.

Going back to the news reports that triggered this blog post, it is clear that Minister Gordhan and the Eskom executive are busy waffling politics. None of what has been reported as coming from them over the past few months comes anywhere close to a coherent energy strategy.

Nearly all of it is political blame-shifting tinged with insinuations that recent black executives of Eskom are incompetent or saboteurs. He is engaging in some rubber-man antics to dodge responsibility for South Africa's electricity woes. Granted he is just another jockey appointed to ride a dead horse (De Ruyter's his own words) he is not clear what his plans to acquire a live horse are. Even a donkey will do as long as it is alive.

Since the dawn of democracy South Africa has needed a strategy to expand electricity availability very rapidly. It does not look like any serious as effort has been in place and load-shedding are the chickens coming home to roost.

References

1. Increase of power transmission capacity in South Africa-Zimbabwe interconnection by means of SVC - ABB Ltd public document.
2. The Southern African Power Pool: Regional Cooperation - a slide by DR Lawrence Musaba
3. De Ruyter: It's a 'myth' that state capture at Eskom is over - News24 report
   
4. There is a plan to end load-shedding, but it will take time: Pravin Gordhan - Timelive report
   

Karanga and Kalanga are one and the same thing

In Zimbabwe there is often debate on whether the Karanga and Kalanga are different peoples. Here is my basis for concluding that they are actually one and the same thing.

Prior to 1929 missionaries were trying to invent writing systems for the regions they operated in. The writing systems were largely based on the 26 letter English alphabet, with different combinations of letters chosen for different syllables.

For example the Mogenster missionaries used bgo resulting in name spellings such as Zvobgo and Dangarembga. In the unified Shona agreed upon after 1930 this became Zvobwo and Dangarembwa but respective families did not change their name spellings.

Similarly Dadaya mission used Tj in names such as Tjolotjo (changed after independence to the Nguni spelling).

In 1929 missionaries hired Clement Martyn Doke, professor of Bantu languages at the University of the Witwatersrand to conduct a study and come up with a unified writing system. This was motivated by the need to try and print one bible version for the whole of Karanga speaking areas Mashonaland, Manicaland and Victoria Province. A version that did not have to take into account the different dialects of Karanga.

After Doke's paper was presented at a conference at Dadaya the missionaries settled upon a unified writing system for different Karanga dialects.

There was a huge debate on what to call the unified writing system, with contention between the names Karanga and Shona. The missionaries eventually settled upon the name Unified Shona. Later in the 1960s through the work of George Fortune the government of Southern Rhodesia modified the writing system slightly and called it Standard Shona.

However in 1930 a crucial decision was made that results in people in Mashonaland and Matabeleland thinking that they are different people when they are actually the very same people.

The missionaries decided that everyone in Matabeleland would be taught to read and write using the Nguni alphabet imported from South Africa (that is how Tjolotjo becomes Tsholotsho) which included groups that did not speak Ndebele at the time such as Venda, Tonga and yes the group now named Kalanga.

Everyone in the rest of the country would be taught using the new Unified Shona alphabet (including the Tsonga/Shangani group).

As you know the Nguni alphabet does not have R and the new unified 'Shona' alphabet did not have L.

Thus the name of an ethnic group was written differently by those Matabeleland in those in the rest of the country.

While those in Matabeleland were taught to write Kalanga, it meant exactly the same thing as Karanga which those in the rest of the country were being taught to write.

Now throw in European mainly British missionaries and officials who did not speak the local languages very well. They pronounced what they saw written down as they would in their own language.

Thus Kalanga instead of sounding "Kalanka" was given a soft G sound from English as in "being", "doing", etc.

Kalanga was not the only victim of such mispronunciation. Another notable example is Buhera which is actually Uhera or Vuhera. The neighbouring Botswana and its capital Gaborone are also examples of victims if Anglicized mispronunciation.

So the bottom line is Kalanga and Karanga are exactly the same thing written differently then pronounced differently due to Anglicization of the pronunciation.

The Israeli-Palestinian Broken Record Needs to End

When the bombing of Gaza by Israel began the aim was to crudely force Palestinians to capitulate into silence. A period of quiet they called it.

Realizing how crude that sounded, the spin has shifted to the bombing being about destroying "Hamas military capabilities"

Israelis of all people should know, from the lessons of history, that the road to removing the fighting capability of people who are already militarily over-whelmed and socially severely oppressed eventually ends at extermination.

Be it Lothar von Trotha against the Herero of Namibia or Hitler and his gas chambers, at some point the oppressor will shift to thinking that instead of just making life unbearable the only way to deal with what they perceive a "problem" is use might to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Despite all the Goebbelsque speak out there, what Israel really wants is to take Palestinian land and homes, build settlements without so much as a whimper of protest from anyone. Certainly none is forthcoming from the cowards in Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and other Arab capitals who have been co-opted into what at its core is a project to take land from Arabs.

The sustained quiet that Israel is seeking the the freedom to undermine the right of Palestinians to a homeland without a fightback of any sort. Israel wants to evict Palestinians from their homes, which is where the current round of violence started, restrict their movement and displace them some more without anyone protesting.

Israelis of all people should realize that, as long as they have breathe in their bodies and no matter how mighty the oppressor is, an oppressed people will fight back be it in Ramallah, Jericho, Gaza or the Warsaw ghetto. For centuries military might has never extinguished the ambers of hankering for freedom.

Peace can never be achieved by oppression and subjugation. All that Benjamin Netanyahu is achieving is ensuring that there will be an aggrieved population living next to Israel for generations to come.

He is playing Russian roulette with history - spin the chamber and hope that at no point in future will the aggrieved population be capable of launching an effective fightback. A man who takes such a gamble does not love his grandchildren, or simply lacks the intelligence to have a proper long term vision of the consequences of his actions.

It is a very simple wisdom to realize that Israel can never achieve peace without achieving dignity and equality for Palestinians. On a personal level, I fervently believe a two state solution is a nonsensical impracticality. Only a single state with equal rights for all human being who live in it is the ultimate solution for the former British Palestinian mandate.

A solution that hankers to the racist colonial mentality that led to the British proposal in the first place, where a superior race lords it over a perceived inferior race of Palestinians, will never ever work in the long term.

Lockdowns are very unlikely to work in Africa

I have noticed that African governments seem to be aping the actions taken in the West to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak rather than doing what they should do. That is doing the hard work of formulating solutions that work for African circumstances. It is wrong to assume that methods that work in the West will work in Kenya, South Africa or Somalia in general. If the government is contemplating lockdowns they must think carefully if that is possible at for the very poor. Most people who live in informal settlements survive on a day by day basis. My effort of today will determine whether I have a meal tomorrow. Most such people do not even have bank accounts let alone savings. There is no way you can expect such people to 'stay at home'. If I live by collecting waste I have to collect my waste daily to make ends meet. Even if you close the dumpsite or recycling plant I still have to find some way of eating and that will not happen while I am sitting inside my shack. Yes, there has been panic buying but that is the middle class who by far are not the majority. The average person in the township let alone an informal settlement cannot afford to buy a whole month's supply of food let alone toilet paper. Any lockdown is therefore likely to very quickly breakdown. Because of corruption and colonialism induced poverty most of Africa's people cannot absorb the economic shock of staying at home for weeks. Only those who have pieces of land for self-sustenance are the only ones who can stay at home. There is also the matter of cultural beliefs. We know very well that many many people would rather listen to the word of the ubiquitous pastors or other traditional healers than proper logic. Many such people would try to reach those they believe can help them by any means necessary. If you can be made to drink petrol or sprayed with insecticide in the name of holiness you are very likely to ignore the official word and be very desperate to get "blessings" from the one you believe has supernatural power. So African governments should not think what is being done in Italy, France or even China will work in Africa. For example, you cannot afford to close shops in the townships because so many people live hand to mouth. If you close shops you are going to have riots and looting in a few days. Already advice on social distancing is being ignored at taxi ranks. In many cases, advice based on European social norms is not even practical. For example, how practical is social distancing for people who use communal toilets and a communal water source? Even if you stay so many metres apart chances are infections are going to contaminate any one of the communal points of interaction. I do not know what can really work in the African context and I do not think anybody does. The only real solution is to try and ramp up treatment capacity. That capacity does not exist because nearly all our politicians waste millions of dollars seeking treatment in foreign countries.

Why is Zimbabwe's economy seemingly unfixable

People struggle to understand what happened when two years ago Zimbabwe had enough money to buy fuel, pay for electricity and provide basic services -issuing notional documents. All of a sudden money seems to be running out for everything. The explanation is simple. The rate of misuse of money by those in power has increased. Money is not always openly misused but can be secretly misused such as the recent case of the former director of state residences facilitating the importation of 81 vehicles duty-free. That is not direct misuse but misuse through denying the state revenue that is due to it. Just imagine how many state officials are facilitating the evasion of statutory payments by friends, family, and small houses. How much revenue us being lost to that kind of activity. Hands up those who think the Buggatis and Lamborghinis that were imported during Mnangagwa's tenure paid full duty? The shortage of money means that those kinds of activities, and direct dipping into state coffers through allocating oneself allowances and the like, has increased to a rate where the economy cannot sustain it anymore. That is all there is to Zimbabwe's economic woes. The notion that 'dialogue' can solve a problem is based on the premise that if Zimbabwean political actors are seen to be reconciled, then particularly Western donors can pour in money at a rate that can cover for the shortfall caused by misuse. Or that they can allow Zimbabwe to borrow money from Breton Woods institutions for further misuse. Anybody who is a little bit versed in international statecraft will know that Western governments have got sophisticated think tanks, researchers and intelligence agencies. Therefore they are very likely to be gathering hard facts for themselves and not just rely on statements made by the government. They are likely to have full information on goings-on including that which politicians think it is secret. For that reason, they are unlikely to put in significant money into a system where they know it is going to be misused the moment it lands in Zimbabwe. Even the Eastern allies of Zimbabwe, China, Malaysia, for example, are keeping their money out of Zimbabwe unless there is an immediate return. Neighbours as well have become reluctant to subsidize the profligate misuse of money by Zimbabwe politicians. South Africa and Mozambique basically stopped supplying energy (electricity) to Zimbabwe on credit.
The regional political tone towards Zimbabwe has become muted, even hostile, since Mugabe's departure. Mugabe who possessed oratory skills light years ahead of Mnangagwa was famously admired for his pan-African rhetoric in a way that was able to withstand an onslaught of demonizing Western propaganda. Mnangangwa not only lacks similar oratory skills but clearly does not possess the same ideological and philosophical depth as his predecessor. He also seems so desperate to get funding that he quickly rushes announcements without seriously considering the implications on his support base. For all its warts and pimples Zanu-PF was a born an African Nationalist movement that primarily first sought liberation of Africans from colonial talons followed by their economic emancipation. That solid ideological base needs protection and Mnangagwa simply appears out of his depth when it comes to ideology. Perhaps he should consider the fate of the MDC. Despite huge amounts of funding and populist rhetoric has not managed to progress to anything beyond a personality cult, because it lacks a solid ideological foundation. Therefore Mnangagwa should stop thinking that abandoning Zanu-PF's nationalistic stance will yield immediate economic utopia. It is likely to lead to a long term political death. The real solution to Zimbabwe's economic problems lies in tackling the rampant abuse of state authority. And this is not just in the form of criminally prosecutable corruption. The perks and allowances to officials are scandalous. People buy brand new cars in order to be laid off in possession of cars. The leeway which managers are given to abuse state resources in the name of status is obscene. People are running their farms using diesel abusively obtained from departments they are running. Many departments are running without meaningful audit trails or with abuse blatantly passed off as official perks. To fix Zimbabwe's economy, Mnangagwa needs to tackle that ecosystem of abuse. As long it remains in place, money added to the Zimbabwe economy will be like trying to farm fish in a dam full of crocodiles. The pun is entirely accidental. Kufudzira mbudzi musango rine mapere chaiko.

Aid should never be made a political tool

The recent hullabaloo over American 'aid' deliveries to Venezuala need to be put in proper context.

The crass and blatant use of aid as a political tool is least damaging to Venezualans who live in a relatively stable state. It is much more damaging to all legitimate recipients around the world whose governments and other non-state actors may stop trusting aid organisations.

This attempt is similar to past American use of a fake vaccination program to gather intelligence on Osama bin Laden's family. As a direct result of that, also crass, action real aid workers were murdered by fundamentalist militants and terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

USAID has been doing sterling work in many countries all over the world. The current actions in Venezuala will undermine its work among communities that badly need the support. On top of that the reduced trust of aid workers, American and other nationalities, will create problems of trust and endanger lives.

Governments will, rightly, become suspicious that aid and USAID may be used by The USA in coercive or some other endesired action against them. My worry is not those governments and the Americans, but the people who need and sometimes depend on the aid in life and death situations.

They will become victims of a clumsy foreign policy that lanks in finese and diplomatic skill. I am not a fan of Maduro. His populist policies are very much similar to those I have witnessed destroy my country's economy. Bur right now Venezualans are being asked to choose between a viper and a rattlesnake, both venomous snakes.

I do not think American policies will help Venezualans. I think they are more likely to cause the state to impplode followed by a period of chaos as we have witnessed in Iraq and Libya. It is possible that is what the Americans want. Their actions look like the classical divide and rule script.

South Africa's Electricity Shortage: The Plan That Was

One thing that people seem to be overlooking is that Eskom's electricity supply problems originate or could be solved in Zimbabwe, DRC and Mozambique.

How so? Twenty years ago around 1997 I was working with the forecasting engineer for ZESA, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.

Most people seem to be unaware but there is a body called the Southern African Power Pool. The electricity transmission grid of the region is linked from Tanzania to Cape Town. That means power generated in say Inga Dam in the DRC can be utilised in Port Elizabeth through the common transmission system.

Those familiar with power system economics may know that the cheapest form of electrical power is hydroelectricity. You build a dam and gravity does the work for you for decades. Coal power stations are expensive and difficult to operate.

With a hydro-plant you just open your sluice gates and within minutes you are ready to synchronise your unit to the grid system.

With a coal plant it is like lighting a braai fire. You have to get the fire right before you put the meat on. And that is a very small fire which does not require precision or very high temperatures.

With a coal boiler it takes several hours to a day to get the boiler temperature right and steam generation going. So say if an alternator has a problem and you fix it 30 minutes you may spend the rest of the day just getting the boilers going again.

While I was working with the ZESA forecaster we discussed the electricity needs of the region, by 2007. Then that was ten years in the future. Expert opinion was that demand in South Africa was going to grow strongly due to increased domestic demand as the black population was brought online. The natural growth of industry and commerce was also expected to increase at above average rates due to the fact that the black population would now be participating more in those activities without racist restrictions of the past.

I remember going through Mr Ikhupileni Dube's spreadsheets which indicated that by 2007 South Africa was unlikely to meet it's own demand. What SAPP experts considered to be the most optimum option then was that Zimbabwe and Zambia would build Batoka Gorge, a long talked about additional power station on the Zambezi upstream of Kariba, DRC would increase capacity at Inca Dam and Mozambique would increase capacity at Carbora Basa and those countries would supply South Africa with cheap hydro-electricity.

That was in 1997 and thinking was that governments would provide funding and definitely by 2007 and latest by 2010 more hydro-capacity would be available in the SAPP. The Matimba-Insukamini transmission line was build around the time as part of the strategy to increase transmission capacity to South Africa.

The longest DC transmission lines in Africa, Inca - Kolwezi build in 1979, and Carbora Basa - Apollo Substation (in Midrand) build in 1982 were built as party of the strategy for South Africa to tap into the cheap hyro-power potential of large rivers to the north.

That is what experts thought.

I find irony in that infrastructure to that end was built by the apartheid government despite countries being hostile to it, while the post-apartheid government seems to have the opposite intentions. We will build everything on our own, is their thinking.

Zimbabwe descended into economic chaos, DRC into war and in Mozambique nothing significant happened. In Zimbabwe the mismanagement is so bad that the country is now having to scrounge for electricity from South Africa despite its much smaller population and the massive hydro-potential of the Zambezi.

It looks like South Africa decided to go it alone and rely on its coal reserves, which are expensive . You have to mine the coal and transport it constantly. It is also  less reliable. You are working with high temperatures thus your MTTF (mean time to failure) is bound to be short compared to hydro.

South Africa scrambled to build Medupi and Majuba power stations. I think it was part necessity and part isolationist thinking.

However building very large coal power stations has its own drawbacks. A failure can knock out your grid by removing significant capacity. Recovering from the failure will take long if boilers need to be restarted. Recently I observed another problem, the high demand for labour in mining and transportation increases the possibility of labour issues halting power generation. It also exposes your system more significantly to workmanship issues. A driver strike almost caused the shutdown of several power stations in Mpumalanga.

I am no longer involved deeply in energy scenarios and I am not sure what the experts think is the best long term strategy now. But the politicians do not seem to be thinking about the hydro-potential up north because I have not heard anyone mention it.

Whose government is it?

Yesterday I got one of the usual snide remarks about "your government" being corrupt based on the fact that I am black, and the recent revelations about the activities of Bosasa.

"It's Gavin Watson's government." was my immediate retort.

The person jerked his head back a little and gave me a very surprised look.

"Of course your side of the border is bad too."

Apparently he had now remembered that I am a Zimbabwean citizen. Maybe he thought I was basing my reply on that, but I knew what his point was and I was replying to that exact point. I could not be bothered by the artificial lines drawn by his ancestors down the middle of our Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Sotho, Khoi, Karanga and Namaqua communities.

Oh by the way do people know there are Xhosa people in Gwanda district of Zimbabwe who were there before colonialists came?

"And Angelo Agrizzi's government too." so I added.

Then the topic became about Agrizzi being a turn coat and a backstabber, but I had made my point. Corruption is not the sole fault of blacks.

When blacks steal big, it is often at the behest of someone else who knows the system and makes off with most of the loot.

Look at the case of the Mozambican minister. He facilitated the theft of US$2 billion of which he was given only 50 million.

Look at the Guptas, they made billions while in the end Zuma had to borrow from other thieves (VBS) just to be able to pay less than 10 million he was eventually asked to pay back over Nkandla.

Look at the Bosasa saga. The company and Watson made over $2billion while those who facilitated the theft were given amounts in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands if they were lucky.

Look at my Zimbabwean government? They don't know where US$15 billion worth of diamonds went. The politicians stole mere millions and they think they made a killing. The rest was bilked out of the country.

That kind of, for lack of a better word, idiotic thinking by our politicians is what we need to get rid of.

You go and buy a buffalo for millions. The person selling you the buffalo found it walking in the bush, on land he took from your forefathers.

In any case the buffalo is of no use to you for that much money. The meat is not much more than that of an average cow. You cannot use it for many other things that you can use a cow for such as drawing a plough or scotch-cart.

The buffalo will be expensive to look after because you have to keep it away from people with expensive fences. It is a dangerous animal after all, that can even kill a lion. What more mere humans in the village.

Yet our politicians somehow think they are doing something extra-ordinarily clever when they get bamboozled by marketing sweet-talk, hype and propaganda into making such senseless 'investments'.

Why not invest on a better school or vocational training centre in your village and out of that you can get brick-layers, carpenters, metal-workers and other skilled people who will be of use to your businesses and the wider community, not buffaloes.

Matric is basic education, so that you can read, write and do the simpler sums. Beyond Matric you need a skill.

Why not teach our young people that skills are not just for finding jobs, but also that can eliminate costs by doing basic chores around their homes and communities.

Despite all the things that I list on my CV, I find that the skills that I use most frequently for my own benefit, not for an employer's benefit, are carpentry, metal-work and brick-laying.

The house that I live in now, I extended a couple of rooms over a few weekends, doing all the measuring, plumbing, brick-laying and roofing myself.

Recently my welding machine got stolen but I want to buy another one. What with all the handiwork I do. From fixing trailers to building structures for various uses around the home. I recently made a gantry to take out engines from cars. Professional mechanics are even hiring it from me.

Back to my main point, our leaders get used to steal from us, and they are not even the main beneficiaries of the theft. They do not even seem to see anything wrong when those for whom they steal, shift the blame back, not just to them but to the entire black community, including the real victims of the theft.

Victims today who have been victims of colonial and racist theft before.

Subject Matter vs Programming Tools

I am an old school developer. And I have been struggling to land interviews in the modern world. However once I got into the job my performance on the job usually exceeds expectations.

I have tried to think about the issue. My conclusion is that I am a victim of a world where people look for knowledge of specific tools rather than knowledge of a specific subject matter.

Often people are looking for a Delphi Developer, a C Sharp developer or a Python developer. It seems the assumption is if you know a specific tool inside out then you can handle any subject.

I find it rather strange. Suddenly you do not need to know what the Newton-Raphson method is or entails, all you need to know is C-sharp and wallah you should be able to solve a power system stability problem. You do not need to know what a Voronooi polygon is but you should be able to model a mine's ore body because you are a C++ developer.

I tend to approach things from the other side. You need to know the subject matter thoroughly and then know, not just one, but maybe one or two tools that you can use to solve problems in that subject matter. In fact in my world you do not need to know a specific tool, but the available tool's manual and documentation should contain enough information for you to solve the problem with that tool.

In many subject matters there is a lot more than number crunching involved. Every subject matter has a set of theories, concepts and assumptions you make before you arrive at the number crunching. Very often your number crunching choices depend on what you want to optimally solve based on the concepts and theory of the subject at hand.

I think the industry has suffered a lot from this focus on tooling. I have worked on many projects where it was patently obvious that the developer doing the calculations had no idea why they were doing it but had just been told add these numbers.

I have also worked on projects where people think I am genius but the truth is simply that I understand the concepts more than the average developer.

Unfortunately the job market of today people are looking simply for knowledge of a specific tool. I have been to many interviews where if I ask what nature of problems we are going to be solving, people simply can not answer. People will simply be looking for a developer who knows a specific language.

Very often the questions asked to test such knowledge are classroom questions. That is where I have a problem. Classroom questions are usually asked of someone who has been following a specific syllabus and using specific textbooks for the past couple or so of years. The syllabus and textbooks would have prepared them for question worded in a specific way. In some cases the expected answers would have been provided several times. They often determine how well you have crammed or memorized the contents of your course.

Then there is the question of concepts and theories that may be implemented differently by tools. You guessed right. I am talking about object oriented programming. Object oriented programming does not just fall out of thin air, but it follows from object oriented system analysis. Your system must be constituted of objects intended to solve a specific problem optimally.

The objects may even change depending on what what the problem you are solving is. If you are building a house, then you need to have objects called foundation, walls, roof and fittings. If you are decorating a house, then it is much better to have objects called lounge, bedroom, kitchen, study and bathroom. Your objects should simplify how you solve your problem. They do not need to demonstrate how well you know object oriented programming theory.

If your SYSTEM objects are properly designed, you can PROGRAM your system in any language and STILL be able to follow object oriented programming concepts.

I have this one word of advice for industry. Knowledge of languages specifically designed or restricted to object oriented programming, does not equate to knowledge of object oriented system design. In fact application of OOP to an improperly designed system, can actually worsen the original problem that OOP is trying to solve. That is the problem of simplifying system maintenance.

I have worked on systems where every line of code is in an object as per the language specification, but the system has not been upgraded for decades because the objects are spaghetti. I will admit on some of the systems it was because of deliberate obfuscation by coders (a technique which some people use for intellectual property or job security purposes). However in most the problem was that the system was not correctly designed in the first place.

There are concepts that have to do with system design, and that have an important impact on your system objects, but have nothing to do with object oriented programming per se. I will mention system modularization and component standardization. A system module may form an object, a standard component may form a base class. Such concepts do not apply to programming only. For example in construction a roof or a foundation may be system module and a brick may a standard component. In a properly designed house if you change your bricks from say commons to blocks, you do not need to change your roof in any way.

You may not know anything about firing bricks because you have used cement blocks all your life, but that does not mean you do not know how to build a house.

Back to the subject of programming, I maintain that knowledge of of a subject matter is more important than knowledge of a tool. I have implemented algorithms like Newton-Raphson in several languages (Pascal, C, C++, Modula 2) and I have implemented asymmetric key cryptography in the above languages and PHP, but today I probably can't find a job in scientific or cryptographic programming because they will be looking for a C sharp developer. Never mind that such a developer has absolutely no clue what Gauss-Seidel decomposition is.

Never mind that I actually have knowledge of the mathematical formulas behind the stochasticity of the various encryption algorithms.

If they want a Delphi programmer they will probably ask me class-room questions without even bothering to test my knowledge concerning the subject matter of what they want me to do.

This creates a vicious cycle. The hired person will struggle because they don't have enough knowledge of the subject matter. The superiors will most likely conclude that it is because his knowledge of the programming tool is not up to standard. Then they will set out to look for someone with "more" knowledge of the programming tool.

Why now: The rising tide against Mnangagwa

For years people of Zimbabwe have been called all sorts of names simply because they would not rise against Mugabe.

Suddenly, when it is least expected, they are strongly rising against Mnangagwa.

In the years leading to and soon after independence Robert Mugabe was hugely respected by the black population of Zimbabwe. He was especially respected for the role he played in freeing Zimbabwe from the clutches of racist colonial rule.

Not only was he respected in Zimbabwe, but throughout Africa. His Pan-Africanist and nationalist rhetoric struck a resonant chord with many who had been victims of colonialism. His stance, though very unpopular in the West where the beneficiaries of colonialism reside, had a lot of sympathy in those countries who had been victims.

On the other hand Mnangagwa simply does not have the same gravitas as Mugabe. He does not have the same causality to command respect.

Many Zimbabweans also believed Mugabe had made a good effort for the country but a lot of it had come to nought because he was surrounded by bad people. Emerson Mnangagwa was counted among those on the bad side of Mugabe's coterie.

It is therefore simple logic to understand that Mnangagwa does not have as much leeway among Zimbabweans as Mugabe had. Unfortunately ED himself does not seem to understand that. He seems to think he is a perfect fit for Mugabe's shoes.

The way things are going it should be clear he is not. Zimbabweans are simply not prepared to show as much resilience under him as they did under his former boss.

If Mnangagwa does not start listening to those who have proper economic policies and knowledge, and continues to be misled by the rabble of Mugabe hangers-on that he inherited, he is going to find the going very tough. The hoi polloi are only interested in lining their pockets. They use access to power to skim from the fiscus, not to protect the centre of power.

Mnangagwa should be aware that those close to him are pushing him in a direction that makes them rich, but exposes him to failure. They are racing their truck while they know the engine is about to knock. They don't care about the engine, they just want to get as much kilometrage out of the truck as they can.

I hope The Crocodile has enough presence of mind to realize that what he needs to do now is focus inside Zimbabwe not on globe-trotting.

Zimbabwe's Economic Causal Nexus

I have been listening to the Zimbabwe economic discourse for some time. The entire conversation is nearly always about what others can do for us.

If the Chinese give us mega deals then we will be okay. If the British put us in the Commonwealth then our economy will grow. If the Americans do this. If the Japanese do that.

The solution to Zimbabwe's problems lies with us. When the Munhumutapa empire was among the richest on earth there was no commonwealth. There were no Chinese. Native Americans did not know there is a continent called Africa. Europeans were diseased beggars fleeing from the Black Death and poverty.

So why is it that now Europe, America and China are needed for us to become prosperous? Will they bring anything here?

What is it that is making us poor now? I say it is our mentally colonised minds.

For example why do people the world over want gold and diamonds? It is because those materials are inert. They do not rot or rust. They last forever and they maintain their value forever.

But here in Zimbabwe what do we do? If we dig up gold and diamonds in excess of what we need, we give them away. Then we go and buy huge quantities of things that rust, rot, or, we just end up excreting in the toilet after a few hours. Cars, fancy clothes, expensive beer and food.

If a typical Zimbabwean finds gold or diamonds worth ten million dollars, they will go and sell all of it, and buy ten supercars. A car is mostly iron and plastic so you can be sure it will rust and degrade and have almost no value in about ten years time.

The people we are selling the gold and diamonds to, what are they doing? Most are locking it up in safes. They know even after 20 years those substances will have much higher, or at least, the same value. In those twenty years, gold and diamonds do not need a service, they do not need mechanics, they do not need replacement parts and they do not consume fuel to be useful. They do not depreciate. It is called investment.

Yes a car is useful for transportation but for that you only need one or two good cars, not ten very expensive ones.

In Zimbabwe we take investable materials and exchange them with consumables. Consumables get consumed. If you buy food worth $100 in one sitting (because it is a 'high class' restaurant) once it served on the plate in front of you that is it. It has lost its value. Even if you do not want to eat it you cannot sell it to the next customer, but your $100 is gone for good.

We also have another very serious problem. The belief that government has the right to take money from people and use it for what it deems 'higher' priorities.

I am not going to take the risk of driving on Chiweta mountain at night, trying to earn foreign currency, just to hand the money over to someone else through the government. I am not doing it so that the government can take what Tanzanians have paid me, and hand it over to a minister who is sleeping in his Chisipite house while I risk being murdered by robbers on remote stretches of road.

That practice of taking people's money and handing it over to others, is what has killed Zimbabwe's economy. It removes the incentive for people to go out and earn more. Rather than go and negotiate the risky Kapiringozi at night, I would rather stay in the safety of my house.

If I am a foreigner with a lot of money, I am not going to let it sit in a Zimbabwean account. I will only bringing in what is absolutely necessary. Why take the risk that the Zimbabwe government will take my foreign currency, and give me something that I can't use.

As long as the practice of foreign currency 'allocations' continues, whether by committee, whether by command allocation, the Zimbabwe economy will not recover. The bottom line is people will not have confidence and trust in the Zimbabwean monetary system. It will be seen as a high risk area and it is natural for people to avoid risks.

So my advise to Mthuli Ncube is disband your committee. Let the banks deal with their customers without government interference. Money is a substitute for property and should be treated like any other property.

Mthuli, I cannot come and take your suit and allocate to my father, because I deem my sister's marriage ceremony to be more important than your business meeting. Chances are if I do it again and again you won't bother buy suits anymore.

But that is exactly what our government is doing with foreign currency. They will take a miner's foreign currency and allocate it to a minister because they deem the ministers trip to China to be more important than the miner importing spare parts for their bulldozers and other machinery.

That practice also has knock on effects. Where the miner were planning to mine a hundred tonnes of ore, now they can only mine maybe forty because they have to spend a too much time just sitting and waiting for an allocation.

Yes. The foreign currency allocation practice is actually reducing Zimbabwe's capacity to earn more foreign currency. It is a serious bottleneck for producers.

It creates a vicious cycle. We allocate scarce foreign currency to non-producers. We earn less because of that. We introduce more stringent allocation rules because there is less to go round, and we end up earning lesser foreign currency, worsening the problem.

Therefore end the allocation sytem. If ministers or the president cannot find forex for trips ngavagare kumba vadye sadza. Let them stay at home, there is plenty sadza they won't starve to death. Money should never ever be taken from producers for that purpose.

Blacks Do Need Land

In a recent debate between Andile Mngxitama and Dawie Roodt the following things were said and I quote

Roodt‚ however‚ said according to research‚ fewer than 5% of black people in SA considered land to be the most important issue. “The most important issue is unemployment - we want jobs‚ we want to grow the economy in order to alleviate poverty in SA‚” said Roodt. 

Roodt said farms were not the place where wealth creation happened in a modern economy. “People do not want farms. People want to stay in cities‚ where they can have proper and decent jobs. We are not going to break agricultural land into millions of small pieces and settle millions of small farmers in SA‚” he said.

This narrative conveniently omits the full context of the land situation and how it was deliberately and nefariously designed to be that way by colonial minds.

 At the turn of the last century the mining industry was just emerging, and it was faced with a serious problem -- labour shortage. Natives were unwilling to work in the mines.

What was the reason? It was because they had access to economically viable land. Economically viable does not mean land to become a millionaire but land to feed your family and shelter them. They preferred to work their own land.

Organisations, such as The Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA commonly known as Wenela) and the Native Recruitment Corporation (NRC) were formed to recruit labour. WNLA had offices as far afield as Tanzania.

In the vast territory of Central and Southern Africa natives were not looking for jobs and didn't want jobs.

A look at the timelines is informative. In 1894 the chamber of mines wrote a report on the serious shortage of labour on the mines. Around 1900 WNLA and NRC were formed to recruit native labour as far and wide as possible.

About a decade later, in 1913, the Native Lands Act was passed. This act banned natives from owning land, or renting land from whites. It should be clear as a baboon's behind that the main objective of this act and other practices to stop natives from sustaining themselves or profiting from the land. It was a tool to turn the natives into cheap labour by denying them access to land.

Over the years, the law has been a huge success. Today most of the natives have got no other choice but to look for a job because they have got no economically viable pieces of land which could be an alternative to a job.

When economists like Roodt brazenly boast that black people do not want land but jobs, they are correct but the carefully skirt around the deeper reasons for that. People are now forced to think no further than their immediate basic needs - food and shelter for the very near future. Generations who have grown without access to land find it hard to envision how access to land will solve these basic problem.

They think the solution to food and shelter is a supermarket and money for rent.

It has taken generations to adjust natives to that mentality. Give them access to land and time to adjust they will soon learn that another solution is tilling the land and building houses with materials you find on your own or a neighbour's land.

I do not know whether is is out of ignorance or by design that Roodt omits the background of the iniquitous designs of colonialists that made sure that for the generations natives knew of no other alternative but to find a job.

If you give them the choice and opportunity it is quite possible for the natives to soon learn that land will not only provide an alternative means of sustenance, but enable you to be the master of your own time.

When you live on the land you work you cut your cost of living drastically. You no longer need transport every day. You also have extra time for other activities by cutting down on commuting time.

Land reform is absolutely necessary, not as a way of getting back at racist whites for past wrongs, but as a way of rebuilding a fair and equitable society from the wreck of past racist designs. Only a fair and equitable society can ensure future social stability for everyone.

Despite all it their might, past racist governments failed to enforce inequitable living standards forever. Today people should not think a black government can sustain the inequities where past racist governments failed.

Social imbalance will always lead to revolution. Ask the French, the Bolsheviks or the English. The Magna Carta was born out of bloody struggles over unfair land distribution.

Labour serfdom is not an alternative for South Africa today just as it was not an alternative for Britain those many centuries ago.

The Reason For Many Foreign Trips by Zimbabwe Politicians

https://www.herald.co.zw/ed-courts-africas-vote-on-sanctions/

If you would believe the Herald ED went to Guinea to ask for the removal of sanctions. I didn't know ED's spin doctors have such a low opinion of our intelligence. They would have us believe that ED's visit to Guinea is very important since it has something to do with the removal of Western sanctions.

The truth is quite different. Over the past few years successive ministers have lamented that the government wage bill was taking 90% of Zimbabwe's budget. The latest information filtering into the public domain is that 40% of this figure goes towards, not basic salaries, but allowances for top executives.

A substantial portion of these allowances are travel related. The reason why Zimbabwe's top leadership is always on the road with huge entourages is to give cronies and other posterior clingons the opportunity to milk state coffers dry through exorbitant travel allowances.

When they embark on these travels, they cannot use worthless Zimbabwe currency such as bond notes. That is the reason why they take foreign currency from anyone who brings it into Zimbabwe. They then quietly give their travel allowances priority when allocating that foreign currency to the extend of sometimes leaving the state without enough to import basic necessities such as fuel.

Travel is one of the main avenues through which the political elite have systematically skimmed state coffers of money. The reason why Zimbabwean presidents travel so often is they are under pressure from their patronees.

Mugabe stayed in power through carefully cultivating a patronage system. If you within his circle, you eat all you want. It looks like Munangagwa is well on his way down the same road.

To me the adoption of the same frequent travel routine as his predecessor is a sign the The System is running Munangagwa. It is not him running the system.

There are other ways the elite rob the state such as using their authority to evade statutory payments such as duty and tax for their businesses. They normally raise 'capital' for those ventures through travelling and coming back with allowances.

A large portion of the money is wasted on social consumption - parties, bling, expensive cars and other stupid things such as pouring expensive wines on expensive watches.

What is Central Karanga In This Book

This is the cover of a book published in 1931 by the Witwatersrand University Press.

This was one year after a conference at Dadaya at which missionaries decided upon a "standard" language for the various dialects spoken in Southern Rhodesia. They decided to call that "standard" Unified Shona.

It is from that decision that the name Shona became popular. Previously it had not been commonly used.

The title of the book is "A Grammar of Central Karanga as at Present Spoken in Central Mashonaland Southern Rhodesia".

I know most people have already made subconscious and uncritical assumptions on what this Central Karanga dialect is.

What is the geographic area where this Central Karanga was spoken and what is it most likely called today? Fortunately the title of the book gives us a geographic locale. Central Mashonaland.

Now let us take a look at the provinces of Southern Rhodesia. We had Victoria Province and it is not referred to in the title of the book.

We also had Midlands province which at the time included Hartley District and Charter District. Hartley is now called Chegutu and the district Mhondoro.

Charter district is now called Chikomba with the main town being Chivhu, then called Enkeldoorn.

In short Central Mashonaland referred to Seke and Zvimba districts going northwards. The dialect being referred to as Central Karanga in this book is most likely what today we call Zezuru and may include Korekore.

However given that at the time students of Bantu languages would have been based in urban centres with little access to remote areas my guess is that this was the work of someone who did their studies from Salisbury.