eBusiness Weekly
Clifford Shambare
I first heard of workmanship when the elders in my home area referred to the durability of German made products in the 1930s extending through to the period after Second World War.
One such an item was the cloth that German textile mills used to spin to make dresses with, among other products, at that time. In my home area it was then referred to as “Jira reJerimani”. However, I remember people expressing some mixed emotions about this dress saying: “Kana ukatengerwa jira reJerimani wototsonda nebwe kuti ribvaruke, ukasadaro hautengerwe imwe hembe.”(If they buy you a dress made of German cloth, you have to pound it with a stone to make holes in it because it does not get worn out that easily, so you can go for years without getting another type of dress).
Then there was the case of strong German made pressing irons which used charcoal. From then on, I began to wonder what it was that made German products durable. However, my interest ended there at that time.
Many years later, when I was already working, I began to read about German craftsmanship in books and magazines. Sometimes I would watch TV documentaries on the subject. One such a documentary showed glass blowing technology in which precision laboratory glassware was being made.
Another documentary showed the latest computer aided design (CAD) technology in the famous German motor industry located in the manufacturing heartland of Baden-Wurttemberg where such motor car models as the Porsche and the BMW are designed and built.
At this juncture, allow me to take you back to the period from 1978 to 1982 when I was employed as a trainee brewer at Rhodesian (now National) Breweries at its Manchester Road brewery in Southerton, Harare.
The major reason that a black university graduate like me was able to get such a job was a political one. At that time, the company was recruiting black people into managerial posts, mainly as a measure to prevent nationalisation which they feared from the expected black government. They were particularly scared of Robert Mugabe, the former and now late president of Zimbabwe, whom they perceived to be a hardcore communist bent on nationalising their industries.
As could be expected, there was resistance to this strategy from white employees, particularly the blue collar workers of whom artisans were the main lot. And being a newly graduated black young man with a rather inflated ego, I immediately fell out with these guys, not because I had done anything particularly wrong; they just didn’t like me a young black man who was at a level they were not sure of, and who was not reporting to them in that position, as white “baases”. Under those circumstances, they could only vent their hostility to me through their attitude (to me) of which body language was one.
However, over time, we both understood that we needed to work together. They on their part, realised that I was not going anywhere any time soon as I was soon joined by a few other black graduates. I on my part, realised that I needed them to fix plant breakdowns whenever they occurred in my section. So in the end, I learned to relate with them in a functional way, so to speak.
Despite my rather antipathetic attitude to these men, I began to respect their trade because I gradually began to appreciate its criticality to the achievement of the company’s production targets on time. It was from then that I began to respect the artisan’s trade — a trade that nevertheless, went all out to keep blacks out (of it).
My love for this trade was enhanced by the introduction (by management) of four new black young artisans in addition to the one I had found there. Most probably because he was the only qualified black artisan in the plant then, I had soon made friends with him on joining the company. I still remember him quite well, his name was Mark Chiremba from Harare Township (now Mbare) — a slim, tall and friendly guy — always smiling. A year or so after joining the company, I had been informed that the bottling manager — an Englishman— had started off as a mere fitter and turner. Even my boss, also an Englishman — a brewing consultant by then — only had O-Levels and a diploma in brewing from the Brewing Institute of London.
Much later on still, when I had left the company, I began to appreciate the criticality of the artisan to the whole economy of the country. In fact, I was later to discover that the majority of the Rhodesians who ran the economy then, had come from the ranks of tradesmen.
Fast forward to the present period when the other day, I bumped into an article in the May 18 — 24, 2019 issue of the Economist, titled, “Immigration in Germany: opening up, a crack”. This article was about the shortage of skilled workers in that country, a situation that is forcing German employers to accept immigrant workers from both EU and non-EU countries despite stringent German qualification requirements in the trades area. According to this article, Germany is one country “with over 330 regulated professions, from book binding to thermometer making ( . . . )” “This is a system that is deeply rooted in German history and is not comparable to anything outside Europe( . . . )”.
This same article rekindled my interest in that country’s engineering prowess. What had attracted my attention to the article in the first place, was the picture on top of it, of an elderly looking bearded German master craftsman, a young German wearing working glasses and what looked to me, like a Middle Eastern man a bit older than the young German.
In this picture the older man is standing behind the younger men, and all three are looking attentively at the item under repair in a rustic workshop clearly showing a bench vice and a contraption holding something on top of it. This sight conjured in me, the image of a typically rustic and humble workshop that I was familiar with in Zimbabwe during my working days.
So having seen this picture, I realised even before I started reading the article, that despite all the high-tech staff that we often hear of, or see in documentaries on engineering these days, the basic stuff is still with us even today!
This scene made me think more about our own workshops, tradesmen and all. Looking back at this country, around the period just before the capital fight that led to the closing of most of our workshops, one finds an interesting but disturbing scenario.
A good number of our artisans, then comprising a sizeable proportion of newly qualified blacks — left the country for “greener pastures” largely because of the economic meltdown that had taken place in the country then.
Sometime in 2017, the Zimbabwe Government raised a small fund to enable “new” commercial farmers to repair equipment that had either broken down or had become worn out, on their farms. I was one of those farmers who had requested Government for this funding since I have always had an interest in that side of things.
During my search for the items that I needed for the job on my farm, I came across an interesting scenario. I visited Farmec, Load Agropower, Hasst, and Bain Farm Equipment factory sites in Harare.
Out of curiosity, I did not only stop in the showrooms but I went right back to the workshops of all of these companies to see for myself, what was going on there.
At Farmec I saw a whole lot of broken down Massey Fergusson and Landini tractors as well as Monosem planters brought in by farmers for repair. What struck me was the shortage of mechanics required for this work in that company. In addition to its repair work, this company imports new tractors and spare parts for same, as well as for other implements — for sale.
At Load Agropower — a firm that operates from the old Zimbabwe Spring Steel workshops in the Southerton Heavy Industrial area — I saw a few workmen working at old but robust lathes that presumably, had been used by the former company. At Bain Farm Equipment, were about ten or so workmen were fabricating rollers from scratch, everything seemed to be working smoothly.
However, at the Hasst Norton plant where I had ordered 20 discs for my rhome disc, things did not look so rosy; the company was struggling to do my order, plus those from other farmers.
When I asked the factory manager, a man of Pakistani extraction in his late fifties, what his challenges were — he readily informed me that they were facing problems in importing the heavy steel sheets that they use to make the discs, from South Africa because they did not have foreign currency for the purpose.
So from this analysis, one can see, to some extent, the dire situation in the engineering industry in the country at the moment. The perplexing thing though, is the fact that some foreign companies such as John Deere and the said Load Agropower and Farmec are importing new ready-made tractors and equipment from their overseas mother factories and charging for them in foreign currency — a rare commodity that most farmers do not have in the country these days.
When considered holistically, the workshop is both a service station and a hospital for vehicles and equipment, and machinery for both the agricultural and manufacturing industries. This means that without it, or with a dysfunctional one, the country cannot manufacture adequate amounts of products of the desired quality.
It also means that our currency related challenges such as inflation, cannot be solved that easily since we cannot manufacture enough goods locally. Moreover, the country cannot produce raw materials, most of which come from the agricultural industry — for these factories. And personally, I know how frustrating it is (for one) to fail to find a workman to carry out even simple repair and/or fabrication work on the farm. And this is now a common feature on most farms in this country.
That said, in order to appreciate why for example, a functional farm workshop with workmen, tools and all — is essential, consider that some spares such as air, fuel and oil filters, need to be serviced and replaced, some of them only a few weeks after a new piece of machinery starts working on the farm. And in a good number of cases, some parts have to be fabricated right on site.
All this means that this country cannot make any meaningful economic progress without fixing this problem first. In this respect, one only needs to consider the current plight of Germany — not only a developed nation, but one that has a history of well built, modern and efficient machinery that is highly sought after, the world over.
Clifford Shambare is an agriculturist cum economist and is reachable on 0774960937.
