LET'S KEEP IT SIMPLE

PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY NEWS

4/12/11

Matebeleland Agricultural Business Chamber (MABC) meeting

“So many resources are ploughed into stakeholder conferences in fancy hotels every year and problems are identified but there is no follow through. Farmers are getting deeper into poverty,” bemoaned John Mahlangu from Bubi District. Indeed Godonga, a winner says “I must do something” while a looser says “Something must be done.” What do these conferences say?

Another email reads “Masuku, how come you were not part of the agricultural stakeholder meeting two weeks ago? It was comprised of who is who in Agriculture.” You are quite correct to wonder why some of us who make things happen were not invited but only those who let them happen were there.  (Thina oDungandaba besingekho). That is why I took up this seemingly impossible task of single handedly chronicling transgressions in the livestock industry every week, despite the consequences. That has made me extremely unpopular in the livestock circles, especially to those captains of industry, so averse to the truth.

The major problem in Zimbabwe is that people are obsessed with qualifications and positions hence people in positions are assumed to be society’s think tank. People confuse piling up facts and memorizing them at school with wisdom that is necessary to simplify them. The tragedy is that there are so many walking encyclopedias who are living failures.

These educated fellows we are entrusting with our lives are a result of a poor man’s culture, “Stay in school, study hard and get a good job” and they graduate with excellent grades but with a poor person’s financial programming and mindset. “This explains how smart bankers, doctors and accountants who earned excellent grades in school may still struggle financially all of their lives. Our staggering national debt is due to highly educated politicians and government officials making financial decisions with little or no training on the subject of money” said Robert Kiyosaki author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. People spent years in school but learned nothing about money, the result is that people learn to work for money, but never learn to have money work for them, he said.

Ask yourself why very prominent farmers, abattoir owners and retailers are not holders of Masters and PhD degrees. How many times do you see them in conferences or talk shows if we may call them? These qualifications have created an entitlement mentality to positions, conferences, unimaginable laziness and an escape route to supposed ‘financial security’. Just look at what land redistribution did to former commercial farmers, and take another look at them now; they have completely metamorphosised and strategically fit into the status quo and are ahead of us already while we spend zillions complaining about this and that in expensive hotels. Persistence and determination alone are unstoppable; in fact the right attitude is more important than intelligence or degree.

We have put our trust in the school system and believe there lie the panacea to the problems bedeviling our farmers. As a pragmatist, I ask for example; how can farmers be emancipated when they are taxed when they earn, taxed when they spend, taxed when they save and taxed when they die? Until our farmers have the know-how and act as businessmen like our forerunners who have the competence to circumvent these government missiles, we may kiss emancipation good bye. Currently, most black farmers are simple farm workers and as labour, government is ruthless; it takes its share first and offers rhetoric to shut them up. That is the fundamental nature of capitalism that is never taught in schools.

Financial intelligence (not taught in school) is mastering how to make money work for you and not a slave of it; unless and until that is mainstreamed in our educational system we are doomed. The acronym KISS explains it, “Keep It Simple Stupid.” In capitalism, the most important sense is the sixth one, common sense; that is no longer common, comparatively cheap to acquire yet so rewarding. Simplicity in many quarters is regarded as lack of sophistication and skill. School has boxed us in and made it is difficult to think outside of it lest we may not fit the bill and be regarded as a simpleton. Common sense is gained in spite of, not necessarily as a result of, education. An abundance of common sense is called wisdom.

I am inspired by some of these white farmers who have risen from the agrarian revolution, with no education to write home about, to prominence in a very short space of time. As black Zimbabweans we can not withstand the vicissitudes of life, we quickly run away when confronted by failure in many avenues of life, a weak character indeed. Failure is the highway to success. An English proverb says, “A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.”

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