A Zimbabwean War Veteran on Civil War, Hyperinflation, and Building a Food Company

Lawrence Mattock [00:00:00] Yeah, but also, also remember, remember, you know, that they have, they had weapons and the weapons always had ammunition, you know, and the, a big thing in, in a lot, in a lot of, a lot of these countries where there's an uprising if you like, there'll be a lot of weapons, but there won't be a lot of ammunition.

Vance Crowe [00:00:17] Oh, I didn't know this well,

Lawrence Mattock [00:00:19] That the ammunition's far more difficult to acquire than the weapon is.

Vance Crowe [00:00:22] Yeah. You only need one weapon. You need as many rounds as you need to do the fighting.

Lawrence Mattock [00:00:27] Absolutely. So if you don't have, if you don't have ammunition, you've got a club that's really all you've got is a big stick. This is the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:40] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Each week I sit down with an expert to chat with them about their expertise. How did they gain the knowledge that they have, and what are they doing and putting out into the world that the rest of us might be interested in learning about. This week, my interview was a little bit slower paced than the last few weeks have been, but it is no less spell binding or intellectually stimulating. I sat down with a man named Lawrence Maddick, who was born and lived in Rodia, which later became Zimbabwe. Lawrence and I sit down and have a wide ranging conversation about what it was like to be born in a country that was in the midst of a civil war. And what happens if after you become an adult and you've been putting on years and years of work, suddenly your currency becomes devalued and the inflation rate goes through the roof to astronomical proportions. What is that like? How does your country respond? One of the things that you will notice in this interview is while Lawrence is talking about really traumatic things for a country or any individual within a country to experience, you'll notice he has phrases like there's always a silver lining. And I think that that is one of the most compelling parts about Lawrence. He has an upbeat and positive outlook on the world that I didn't expect from somebody that had experienced so much in a part of the world that has really gone through a lot of tumult. So, I'm going to let this interview ride, because I think you will find it fascinating.

Vance Crowe [00:02:11] One of the things that he's going to talk about in the end is a company that he has started, and we end up calling by a bunch of different names. It is a very interesting product, and I can tell you as a person that lived in Sub-Saharan Africa for a short time, what Lawrence has created is nothing short of astounding. And as soon as he explained it, I was like, oh my gosh, why didn't somebody else think of this years and years and years ago? So I hope you stick around all the way through to the end of the interview because what Lawrence is putting together, I think has the potential to really be a big positive impact on Sub-Saharan Africa. So buckle in and enjoy the interview. Lawrence Mattock,

Lawrence Mattock [00:02:52] Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Vance. Good to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:56] So you are the first real deep accent that I've had on the podcast. Sure. Everybody else has been hardcore Midwesterners and one dairy farmer from the West coast. You're clearly not from St. Louis, where are you from? Where are you coming in from?

Lawrence Mattock [00:03:11] Born and raised in a southern African country called Zimbabwe, which was called Isha, up until April, 1980 when Zimbabwe gained the independence and it became Zimbabwe. So I'm a Zimbabwean, as with my family, my family and I, all from Zimbabwe.

Vance Crowe [00:03:31] And as total candor, your son just proposed to one of my closest friends, Valerie Bayes

Lawrence Mattock [00:03:38] Indeed.

Vance Crowe [00:03:38] And she said you were in town just for a couple more days. Yep.

Lawrence Mattock [00:03:41] And

Vance Crowe [00:03:42] That you and I could have a fantastic conversation if we found time to do it, which is why I invited you here on the podcast. Cool.

Lawrence Mattock [00:03:49] Absolutely. Yep. Very fortunate. My son's found a wonderful young woman to, to marry and yeah. Wonderful. Great. And

Vance Crowe [00:03:55] I don't know if you know this, but her father has actually been on the podcast. He was, he's a detective here in St. Louis. Yes,

Lawrence Mattock [00:04:01] Indeed. I I had heard that. Yeah. He must have had some very interesting things to say.

Vance Crowe [00:04:05] Yeah, it was, it was shocking actually. That was the first time when I was like, I am going to be doing some things that are a little uncomfortable here. Yeah. 'cause he talked about crazy stories. So Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:04:15] I'm, I'm sure, I'm

Vance Crowe [00:04:16] Sure you are in for a, a wonderful family. And I'm, I'm glad you two are coming together.

Lawrence Mattock [00:04:20] Yeah, absolutely. I hope we see, I hope we see some, some of each other, because it's a long way away, obviously.

Vance Crowe [00:04:25] So you, what do you do in South Africa? In, in Zimbabwe,

Lawrence Mattock [00:04:31] I have a ho hospitality background. So I spent city odd years in hotels, right from low end one star hotels all the way up to top end to leading hotels of the world, and relat Chateau, small, small leading hotels.

Vance Crowe [00:04:49] And these are people going on safari, or they're for Africans or, well,

Lawrence Mattock [00:04:53] Both. Both in terms of the Safari experience and also for businesses and city hotels where it's mainly a, a business type of clientele. But yeah, so fairly, fairly well, well-rounded in term in terms of tourism and in terms of business travel from the hospitality side. So,

Vance Crowe [00:05:11] And were you born in Africa?

Lawrence Mattock [00:05:13] I was born in Zimbabwe.

Vance Crowe [00:05:14] Okay.

Lawrence Mattock [00:05:14] Yeah. So I've, I've known Zimbabwe all my life. School schooling after schooling, military, military for a a three year period. And then hospitality.

Vance Crowe [00:05:25] What brought your family to Zimbabwe? Of all places?

Lawrence Mattock [00:05:29] My mother was, is South African, and her, her grandfather came to South Africa in, in the 18 hundreds from Scotland. So they settled in, in Natal and from Natal then moved up through the country of South Africa. My mother then moved to Isha, which was then Isha to be with her sister and her mother in her early cities. And met my father who had come to Tanzania from the, from the Second World War. He was, he was in Lancaster Bombers. He then, in the Air Force, he then moved to Tanzania on the coffee projects. And then from the, from Tanzania, he then moved, or Tanika, which then became Tanzania. He then moved on to Ian and met my mother, and then they got married, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [00:06:19] And what kind of work were they doing?

Lawrence Mattock [00:06:21] My mother was in secretarial work, and my father was fitter Turner.

Vance Crowe [00:06:26] So when I heard that you were available to do the podcast and that you had been in the military in Zimbabwe, I went to look this up and I actually, this is one of those experiences where I'm a little bit embarrassed of my knowledge of history, because I had literally no idea at all about how the Cold War had played out in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, and, and, and really like, just how much of a changeover or a flip that

Lawrence Mattock [00:06:55] Happened in that area.

Vance Crowe [00:06:56] So, but you were in the military as much of this was going on, is that correct?

Lawrence Mattock [00:07:01] Yeah, radi ish, which is what it was when we, when we were fighting the fighting the war, there were obviously various sides involved in the war, but I, I was a Ian who was raised, born and raised in Rhodesia. And as a result, you would get your call up papers. You were,

Vance Crowe [00:07:20] Is that a draft? Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:07:21] You were drafted when you were 18, so, so, so doing your national service. So being drafted was compulsory, but it was also something that most, most people were very happy to do because whether, whether you were on the right side or the wrong side, whatever your political beliefs were, you had a, you had a fair, fairly large number of people that supported what you were doing. So when, when I was seven 17, I didn't get my draft papers or my caller papers. I then volunteered and joined, joined the Army and did, did a period period in the Army, which was actually incredibly interesting. I was in, in the Army until Independence, which was in April, 1980. And we then,

Vance Crowe [00:08:12] What were you doing in the Army?

Lawrence Mattock [00:08:15] I was a paratrooper. I was in a, a battalion called Ian Light Infant Infantry. And we did, we did para work. We did, we did call outs and we would go, do call outs. And,

Vance Crowe [00:08:30] And when you got your draft papers, or No, when you volunteered actually yes. Then were, were you already in, was was Zimbabwe or Rhodesia at the time in an active conflict, or was it just, Hey, we're getting ready. So we have a strong standing army.

Lawrence Mattock [00:08:44] Okay. No, that's a good question. So Ian Smith, who is the, the Prime Minister during UDI, which is called the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, that was done in on the 11th of November, 1965 when Isha declared that they were being, becoming independent from England, the colonizers. Oh. So England obviously was not too happy with this state of affairs. And they, it

Vance Crowe [00:09:12] Was abrupt. Was it a

Lawrence Mattock [00:09:13] It was a declaration. So Ridha declared that they were now no longer gonna be under the power of Britain.

Vance Crowe [00:09:20] How would you have been a high school kid at this time?

Lawrence Mattock [00:09:22] No, I was four years old.

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] Oh, really? Okay. So, so pretty young. Yeah. And so you've pretty much only known life as a independent nation from Great

Lawrence Mattock [00:09:33] Britain, from England? Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:09:34] Okay.

Lawrence Mattock [00:09:34] Indeed, my father, how he, however, is English or was English, he's passed now. And he, he wasn't, wasn't too convinced by the whole unilateral declaration side of things. And in fact, when a couple of years later, he then went back to England, I stayed behind with my mother who had his, had South African heritage, and I stayed behind with her. And, and he went back to the uk. So we grew up under, under Rhodesian rule, the 1967, I think the first, the first attacks were made against Rhodesians by the insurgents, by the people coming in wanting who, who opposed Ian Smith

Vance Crowe [00:10:22] From inside the country?

Lawrence Mattock [00:10:23] Well, they were, they were had based themselves outside, outside and inside the country. So their, their training, et cetera, was done outside the country, in, in, in neighboring countries, Zambia, Mozambique, et cetera. But they would then come in and they would then strike targets with, within the country and then flee back to the countries that they were based in.

Vance Crowe [00:10:45] Would this have been like terrorist attacks like you see on TV now

Lawrence Mattock [00:10:50] Or, yeah, we, we have to be, we have to be careful about in terms of politics, in terms of what we call them, whether they're terrorist attacks or freedom fighters or

Vance Crowe [00:10:59] Interesting. I guess I just meant the tactic. It, it was one of

Lawrence Mattock [00:11:02] Surprise was it was through terror. Yeah. That would, that would be correct. So it was, it was terror in that sense of the word. So that they would come and note that they would, they would largely attack farms, farm houses, homesteads and drive, drive people out of, out of their home, out of their homesteads. Oh, on farms.

Vance Crowe [00:11:21] So taking over land then, or, or, well,

Lawrence Mattock [00:11:23] That, that, yeah, that the idea wasn't, wasn't to take over the land at that stage, it was more to, to inflict terror so people would leave. But yes, obviously the ultimate goal was to attain land, attain the country, et cetera, et cetera, from, from there. But,

Vance Crowe [00:11:39] And this is how you, the world was, as you were growing up, you're going to grade school and into high school and you're hearing about these things go on.

Lawrence Mattock [00:11:46] Oh, sure. But, and 70, 80 kilometers from where you live. So it, it wasn't far away. So 80 kilometers, sorry, just to put that in, kind of imperial me measurements 45, 50 miles Wow. From where you lived. Yeah. So yes,

Vance Crowe [00:12:02] You, you grew

Lawrence Mattock [00:12:02] Up with it. The, the Rhodesians did a, did an incredible job with, with keeping the war separate from civilian life. They were, they were very clever with that. Remember, remember in those days you didn't have internet and, and smartphones and computers and, and, and the rest of it. So, you know, un unlike today, where, where news would get around so much faster, you know, people relied on listening to it on the radio or for a broadcast to come up on television after five o'clock in the afternoon, because that's when our television came on in the, in the, in the late sixties and seventies. Television would start at five o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, wow. So you would, you would wait until that news came, came by, unless of course you had someone who was directly involved or had been shot or had, had been affected in, in the particular contact in way. And then obviously you'd know a lot earlier. But other, otherwise they, the, the, the Rhodesian propaganda machine, if you like, for, for, you know, for want of a better description, was incredibly effective in keeping the population relatively calm through what was, through what was going on. And you know, cer certainly as you got older and as you were then personally involved, you saw a lot more of it because you were involved in it. But you, your family and friends at, at home in, in the city never really kind of assimilated what was, what was happening outside of the city or, or

Vance Crowe [00:13:40] In,

Lawrence Mattock [00:13:40] In the country. So

Vance Crowe [00:13:41] This actually explains, when I was doing a little research on this, I watched some BBC reports on the day after Mugabe was voted into power.

Lawrence Mattock [00:13:51] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:13:52] And there were people in the city that they were interviewing to say, what do you think of this? And I was shocked because on the one hand you were describing a whole lot of conflict and war, and then in the city people were just walking

Lawrence Mattock [00:14:04] Around like

Vance Crowe [00:14:05] They

Lawrence Mattock [00:14:05] Were going

Vance Crowe [00:14:05] To work. And so I I, I actually wondered about that. Like how serious could the fighting have been if these people were like this? But you're saying it was, there were groups of people saying, let's actively try and make it so people live normal lives away from the conflict. Yeah,

Lawrence Mattock [00:14:20] Absolutely. You know, that what, what one, one has to, has to think about through this, and it, and unless you're directly involved, it's very difficult to kind of get, get a bearing on, on what was going on. So you had a situation for 16 years where Rhodesia was under sanctions, worldwide sanctions. Okay. And that, that's, that's, that's fairly, fairly difficult. You know, we seeing it now in, in countries like Iran, for example, in the Middle East where they're suffering from sanctions and, and watching their country's economy literally fall apart because of sanctions.

Vance Crowe [00:14:53] Was it on that level, like in Iran

Lawrence Mattock [00:14:54] Or, oh no, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:14:55] Oh really?

Lawrence Mattock [00:14:56] Oh, no, we, we had worldwide sanctions. So

Vance Crowe [00:14:58] Who, who prompted the sanctions? The British

Lawrence Mattock [00:15:00] Did.

Vance Crowe [00:15:00] Because you left because

Lawrence Mattock [00:15:02] Of u because we declared UDI

Vance Crowe [00:15:04] Absolutely. Oh,

Lawrence Mattock [00:15:05] So be because we declared UDI England obviously then went to the United Nations and, and stated their case and that that Che had gone out on a limb on their own and had, you know, basically had said to, to the UK that they wanted nothing more to do with them in terms of a governance scenario. So yes, the, the United Nations then supported the UK obviously. 'cause the UK was a extremely large player in the world as it still is. Right. And obviously supported Britain and, and declared sanctions on, on Ridha on this little country called Ridha. So, so then we, what, what, what happened and, and getting back to the point of, of people around leading a normal life in town, et cetera. We then had to come up with ways of manufacturing everything and, and getting things smuggled into the country by a friendly, by friendly players that were involved as, as well. And, and obviously we would pay top dollar for them, but we'd be able to get them. So we, we would make, talk about biodegradable fuel, we would make a good percentage of our fuel from sugar cane. So it was all biofuel from sugar cane.

Vance Crowe [00:16:21] Really?

Lawrence Mattock [00:16:22] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:16:22] For, for gasoline cars. Yeah. Okay.

Lawrence Mattock [00:16:25] So you'd, you'd make all the, all the petrol would be a blend. So you'd, you'd get a small amount of, of fuel being imported into the country from South Africa generally, and you'd then blend it with the ethanol that was produced from the sugar cane, and you had this blended fuel and you ran, literally ran the country's fuel needs from, from Cain

Vance Crowe [00:16:50] Having this level of joint sacrifice or trying to figure it out, had to have a galvanizing effect on, on

Lawrence Mattock [00:16:55] The population. Yeah. Yeah. So the people you find that, and I'm not, I'm not talking about a specific color now, I'm talking about the people of the country. Yes. There were, there were definitely people who were more, more decided to move, move the country to majority rural and for, you know, for all of that to happen, including 90% of the whites. But it was, it was the timing that was the majority of the discussion was how long it, how long the timing should take. And it's like any, it's like any of us, when we decide we want something, we don't want to wait for it to happen. We want it to happen now. And I think that's, that's pretty much a human condition. I I don't think that's unique to Right. Specific people. And so yes, you had, you had black political activists who obviously wanted control of their country sooner rather than later. And then you had the white government who said no late later is better than sooner. And it's really, it's really, that's, that's the, the area that the disagreement was on. And obviously because UDI was declared Britain was, was a lot more, had a lot softer ear for the black political activists

Vance Crowe [00:18:17] Because the, the people that were in power were the ones that had

Lawrence Mattock [00:18:20] Declared that they wanted

Vance Crowe [00:18:20] Independence. A hundred percent. Wow. That is more complicated than I thought. And then you have, not only do you have Rhodesia versus the world, then you have portions of Rhodesia against other portions of Rhodesia pe people trying to vie for power

Lawrence Mattock [00:18:37] There. Yes. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:38] Wow. And that's when you came of age?

Lawrence Mattock [00:18:40] Well that's, yeah, towards the late seventies is when, when I came of age. So I was, I was only involved in the, in the war scenario from 1978 until 1980, because that's, that's the age that, that I was at.

Vance Crowe [00:18:54] Were they they were under sanctions for 15 years. 16 years. Yeah. 16 years. That must have just been a, a really desolate place to live.

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:04] Not at all. Not at all. Really. Not at all. Because what, what what the, what the radiations ended is they then made and copied everything that you could buy outside of the country. So, you know, that's, let's just talk about groceries because that's, that's always, always the one that affects everybody immediately.

Vance Crowe [00:19:22] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:23] You know, we, we grew wheat and we grew maize, you know, we, we grew soybeans, we grew everything. So

Vance Crowe [00:19:30] You had good agriculture already there?

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:32] No, at one stage we, we were known as the bread, the bread basket of Africa.

Vance Crowe [00:19:35] I had no idea.

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:37] Absolutely. Huge, huge supply in, into Africa from our agricultural side. But so, so we had, we had the agriculture in terms of producing the raw material, and then we set up factories to do things like milling

Vance Crowe [00:19:53] And

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:54] Absolutely

Vance Crowe [00:19:54] Processing

Lawrence Mattock [00:19:56] Anything to do with, anything to do with grains, milling the grains and turning them into what, whatever product, whether it's cereals or whether it's, you know, sub any, any form of sub substance that, that the, that the country live off. We, the, the large majority of the population in, in, in Zimbabwe as, as with Southern Africa, live off a, a maze meal or corn meal porridge, like a, a thick porridge that they eat with eat with hands that we call it sza in South Africa they call it pup.

Vance Crowe [00:20:24] I think they call it ugali in Kenya.

Lawrence Mattock [00:20:26] There we go. Ugali. In fact, that's exactly right. And they, they, they, that maize meal they then have with a relish. And that relish, that relish depends or varies on, on the area of the, of the country that they live in or the area of the continent they live in. So in, in, we would produce all of that. We'd produce our own clothing because we'd grow, we grew cotton, so we'd set up our own mills, we'd produce our own shoes. We produced, the, the thing we didn't produce was, was cars, but we then set up an assembly plant for cars where we would have friendlier nations who, who kind of sanctions bust, if you like. They, they would send, send in kit kits of cars through South Africa, through through Mozambique. And then we would, we would assemble them. So we, we became self-sufficient.

Vance Crowe [00:21:21] Wow. So

Lawrence Mattock [00:21:22] With, with the only thing that, that, that you, that sanctions really did was got everyone motivated to do it themselves instead of, instead of waiting for

Vance Crowe [00:21:32] Someone to do it for, which would've been a good, a good thing for a developing country.

Lawrence Mattock [00:21:35] And, and it was, I mean, ridha under war, under wartime, let's put the financial side to financial site out of this for now. But in terms of the war being on us and sanctions being honest on us, it only promoted us to, or prompted us to do all of these things ourselves. So when, when rid was handed over in 1980

Vance Crowe [00:22:01] To the winners

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:02] Of, of this conflict, Redia was, Zimbabwe was a self-sufficient country. It had an infrastructure and schooling hospitals through the country, second to none in Africa,

Vance Crowe [00:22:16] Really,

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:16] Second to none.

Vance Crowe [00:22:18] And electrification was ubiquitous.

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:21] Absolutely. Because we, we put up a, a huge hydroelectric power plant called Kariba, which is on the northern side of the country. So that, that was, that was what the, one of the biggest steps wasn't, it wasn't planned to be the only step was one of the biggest steps in terms of supplying power to the whole nation and still having enough power to export.

Vance Crowe [00:22:41] When I was living in Kenya, there were huge sections of the country that still had no access to power, or if they did have, it was not regular, it was very irregular, which

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:49] Is what it is in Zimbabwe now.

Vance Crowe [00:22:51] Wow. Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:52] Now, now power is off 18 hours a day,

Vance Crowe [00:22:55] 18 hours a day,

Lawrence Mattock [00:22:56] Every day.

Vance Crowe [00:22:58] So people are running, when is the power on those six hours?

Lawrence Mattock [00:23:01] Normally from midnight until early hours of the morning.

Vance Crowe [00:23:03] Well, when there's very low demand. Hmm. Yeah. Wow.

Lawrence Mattock [00:23:07] But in, in those days, it, it was never such a thing as a, as a power cut.

Vance Crowe [00:23:11] So you're in this country that is working to become self-sufficient, and

Lawrence Mattock [00:23:16] Yet

Vance Crowe [00:23:16] There is internal conflict and you join the military. Yes. And what are you, after you're done training to become a paratrooper, what are you doing day in and day out?

Lawrence Mattock [00:23:28] You mean, while whilst in the force?

Vance Crowe [00:23:29] Yes, that's right. Well, we,

Lawrence Mattock [00:23:32] We operated a thing called fire force. And so what what would happen is we would be at a, at a, a joint operational command, which was joint being Air force and Army. And we would get a, one of the other units would, would have a, an observation point on a, on a hill in, in the middle of the bush somewhere. And they would be looking at activity, normal activity of our villages. And when they saw the activity change, they would then monitor the change and why the change of activity had taken place. And if it was seen to be the opposition or the enemy's activity, they would then radio fire force. And we'd come in by helicopters, we'd circle them and we'd sweep, sweep through the lines that we, we had seen them.

Vance Crowe [00:24:21] So you are in real electric, live situations. Oh, sure. Wow. And and for how many years did you do that?

Lawrence Mattock [00:24:31] About just over two years.

Vance Crowe [00:24:33] And how did it come to conclusion? What, what was the end? When did you stop the war end?

Lawrence Mattock [00:24:38] And so

Vance Crowe [00:24:38] I guess maybe the better question is how did the war build up? And

Lawrence Mattock [00:24:43] So what, what

Vance Crowe [00:24:43] Reach your climax, what

Lawrence Mattock [00:24:45] What happened was obvious, obviously a solution to the Rhodesian situation was top of many government's agenda. And the reason being is because obviously there were a lot of British citizens who still lived in Rhodesia. So Britain as much as they, as much as they might have had a, had an issue with the government, they still had a lot of their citizens living within the country.

Vance Crowe [00:25:07] You see a parallel with Hong Kong

Lawrence Mattock [00:25:09] Then

Vance Crowe [00:25:09] Right now.

Lawrence Mattock [00:25:10] Absolutely. Absolutely. So be because of that, Bri Britain obviously continued to try and broker a deal between the parties that were involved.

Vance Crowe [00:25:18] And this ended up becoming a bit of a proxy war for in, in the Cold War, correct?

Lawrence Mattock [00:25:24] Well, the, the cold, the cold War from, from another, another slant to the whole thing was the Americans because, because the Americans scenario with, with the USSR and, and the Cold War and, and communism and all the rest of it, they saw Africa or they, they certainly saw ca the cape the point in terms of going, going around the base, the base of Africa as being strategically important

Vance Crowe [00:25:49] For shipping. For

Lawrence Mattock [00:25:50] Shipping. Yeah. And, and therefore didn't want to see the, didn't wanna see the Chinese and the Russians spreading their influence and their, and their power through

Vance Crowe [00:26:00] To

Lawrence Mattock [00:26:01] The whole of Africa. Redia was, was in a war anyway because of independence. And during that Cold War period, the American government would, would certainly, they certainly influenced movement of equipment and funds, et cetera, through South Africa, into Redia, not always at, at the, at the South African government's pleasure. The South African government obviously had their, had their own, their hands full with their own issues. But, but certainly, certainly Ridi Ridha took advantage of, of everything they possibly could in terms of whatever they could acquire through a border. They would take it because like, like anyone going through, through a war, war costs, it costs a lot of money. And so yes, they, they would, they would accept South Africa's kindness, inverted commas, whether it originally came from America or came from South Africa themselves or wherever would take a, take the kindness at a, at a, with open hands because it, it was so important.

Vance Crowe [00:27:09] And so, but we, we, I guess I don't have a great way to ask the question of, you were describing for me before about how the forces of the Cold War kind of impacted this, this area.

Lawrence Mattock [00:27:22] Well, just, just in, in, in term, in terms of the, the war, the war happening and the war continuing, it, it can only continue as, as long as there's money. And so when, when the cold, when the Cold War finished, basically the, the tap that was supplying the money was turned off. And, you know, whether that was a, a America's instruction or South Africa's instruction or a combination of the two, whatever, whatever the, whatever the case may be, we'll probably never know.

Vance Crowe [00:27:51] Interesting.

Lawrence Mattock [00:27:51] We'll probably never know the, the true details of, of what transpired, because I think there were, they were fairly complex and I think there were many, there were many governments had to be, what's the word I'm looking for? Had to be appeased in the, in the, in the whole situation. So I, I think it was a, was a fairly, fairly difficult thing, you know, that they went through the Rhodesian government, went through many peace talks in inadvertent, some initiated by themselves. Some were, were initiated by the, by the English. Some were initiated by the South Africans.

Vance Crowe [00:28:29] And who were they brokering peace between,

Lawrence Mattock [00:28:32] Between the, between the three factions. So you had Zapu who were based in Zamber, that was, they were basically under Kenneth Kaunda. And I'm, I'm being very basic and I'm taking kind of towards a Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:28:44] 'cause I know none of this. So

Lawrence Mattock [00:28:45] Then there was Zla or, or Zanu who were initially being led by gentleman by the name of in and then later on by Robin Mugabe. So they were, they were based themselves in Mozambique towards the second half of the war. And Joshua and Como and his, his and his zipper were based in Zambia. So we, we were getting, we were getting tackled from both, both of those instance from the north and from the east. Wow. There were far less coming in from the West, which is where Botswana is, and very few coming in from South Africa. So if they wanted to come through the bottom, the bottom half of, of Mozambique through, through it, that the eastern side of South Africa, then through into the, the southeastern border of, of Rhodesia, of Zimbabwe, then they'd have to come through South,

Vance Crowe [00:29:40] South Africa, excuse me.

Lawrence Mattock [00:29:43] But mainly, mainly they would come in from south, from Mozambique, straight into Rhodesia.

Vance Crowe [00:29:48] And are these different groups, are they coordinating, are they working together or they have their own agenda and they're fighting each other as well?

Lawrence Mattock [00:29:54] Fundamentally, they had their own agenda, but when, when, when one, when one would identify themselves to another one, that they wouldn't be infighting from there. So now and again, you'd, you'd come across a scenario where you had zla freedom fighters and zipper freedom, freedom fighters.

Vance Crowe [00:30:09] And they'd be joint forces.

Lawrence Mattock [00:30:11] They'd be joint,

Vance Crowe [00:30:12] Joint

Lawrence Mattock [00:30:12] Against Ian forces. And

Vance Crowe [00:30:13] Do they have political parties that would be recognizable today or No, their platforms were totally different.

Lawrence Mattock [00:30:19] No, the, the, what happened was they, they at independence, they joined forces and they all came under, under the zny pf banner. The zny pf banner is still, is still the banner of the ruling party today.

Vance Crowe [00:30:32] And that's a communist group or a socialist? Or would you describe it that way?

Lawrence Mattock [00:30:37] I think, I think it initially started, it started off as socialist. I'm not sure with, with the whole of socialism going through the transitions, it's done worldwide. You know, how how much their socialist agenda is still in place. I wouldn't imagine particularly, I think at this stage, at the, at the moment, I think it's more of a survival platform that they're on. Oh really? Yeah, absolutely. In, in terms of, in terms of governance of their country. So I I I would imagine, you know, whether they call themselves capitalists or socialists at the moment, I think would be, would be quite a, a tall order to be able to, to be able to quantify on, on either side.

Vance Crowe [00:31:13] Oh, very interesting. Yeah, to be honest. So what, what did end up making the violent stop? Why did people come to a daytime and then sign some accords?

Lawrence Mattock [00:31:23] Well, they, they, they came up with a, they had a, a lan, what they called the Lan Lancaster House talks. So this was obviously at some buildings called Lancaster House. And it, this was in, in the end of 1979, the beginning of 1980. And all the parties came forward. So the Australians, Australians were represented, a represented it through, through the whole thing of colonization and being a former colony themselves, et cetera. Obviously the British government were there. The, the, the three different faction leaders were there. So Ian Smith was there from the, from the Ian side. He was the prime minister of Robert Mugabe was there as the head of, of Zla. And, and, and Joshua and Coma was there as the head of zipper. So the, the three of their them came with their, with their, with their delegates, with their entourage. And it was basically set then for, for elections. So an election, election date was

Vance Crowe [00:32:31] There. So the decision that they came to was, let's just run another, let's run an

Lawrence Mattock [00:32:36] Election. One man, one man one vote.

Vance Crowe [00:32:38] Okay, so tell me what, what, why that seems like all votes. Is that not

Lawrence Mattock [00:32:42] Correct? Okay, so in the, in the normal world, everyone who's a citizen of the country gets to, gets to cast a vote. So in, in colonized Africa, you found that, that, that the black man, rightly or wrongly, was not entitled to a vote. Okay. So it, it was, it was very much a, a very biased election, if you like, because whites, whites, and when I say whites and being, obviously being broad in terms of continentals and, you know, any, anyone non-black would get to vote and the blacks would not get to vote. So was that right or wrong? Well, cer certainly on the, on the surface of things, it was very wrong. And I'm certainly not in a position to,

Vance Crowe [00:33:28] You know, to say

Lawrence Mattock [00:33:29] Whether, you know, my, my belief was it was, was was it right or wrong as a child? But we, we just, we just, we

Vance Crowe [00:33:37] What, what would've been the case that somebody would've made on the other side of that, that that the ruling of just white people voting would be the right way to go.

Lawrence Mattock [00:33:46] I th I think the, I think that the thinking behind it was that, and, and you see it in, in, you see it in countries where there's a large peasant population where if you don't believe that the, that the people have the ability to think of who they would like as a leader because their, their livelihood just doesn't revolve around leadership or, or who should be in a leadership position. Then one kind of comprehends the whole scenarios scenario of let the, let the educated and inverted comm the educated people vote, because they'll, they'll make the right choice rather than people who actually don't have a clue about who should be in

Vance Crowe [00:34:26] Power and who

Lawrence Mattock [00:34:26] Shouldn't be in power and what, what they'll bring with them if they do get in power. And I think that that was, I think that was, that was the underlying

Vance Crowe [00:34:35] Reason

Lawrence Mattock [00:34:35] For it. You, you still, you still see in, in a lot of, a lot of countries where there's a

Vance Crowe [00:34:42] Huge

Lawrence Mattock [00:34:42] Peasant population, China, for example, where, where there's a, a lot where, where the rules are slightly different to the rules that we would know in a, in an educated, in an educated country where we, where we make the assumption that everyone who is 18 or 17, whatever the, the legal voting age is that they are educated enough to make a, a fairly educated choice in terms of who

Vance Crowe [00:35:08] Leads

Lawrence Mattock [00:35:08] Them.

Vance Crowe [00:35:09] Well, I guess that, that that's probably the reasoning behind mandatory public education in the United States. Yes. Thinking that if you don't have an educated population, then they, they can't participate in the government process. Or if they do and they're uneducated, then they may be a danger to themselves. Indeed.

Lawrence Mattock [00:35:25] Okay. So I, I think, I think it was a, along those lines, you know, I think we would, we would, you may have someone else sitting here that says, no, it was just totally racist. I honestly couldn't say yes it was, or no, it wasn't. You know, I was, I was growing up at the, at the end of the war, I was 19.

Vance Crowe [00:35:44] And the tensions between people that weren't in

Lawrence Mattock [00:35:47] Military

Vance Crowe [00:35:48] Organizations, people living in cities, did, did they get along when, when the

Lawrence Mattock [00:35:54] War was

Vance Crowe [00:35:54] Going on?

Lawrence Mattock [00:35:55] Absolutely. I mean, I think it's like, like, like every population, the majority of people get on really well, but you then have, you then have the small percentage of people who will either create issues for the, for the sake of creating them or seeing something from another perspective that they then are trying to get other people to buy into. And that they would then saying, I think if I said cause trouble would be wrong, but certainly want to want, want their voices to be heard. What, what you, what what certainly what I've found in, in my travels through Africa is that the Zimbabwean, the, the ethnic Zimbabwean person is the most wonderful, absolutely wonderful person there is on the planet. They are hospitable, friendly, wanna help you wherever they can, not afraid of work. They're great people. So was was there a sense of unity within the country and in terms of the different races? Ab Absolutely there was, but I'm talking about normal, normal people of all ethnic backgrounds.

Vance Crowe [00:37:04] Yeah. That weren't in the struggle to say we either we want change or we Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. Okay, interesting. Yeah. And so once the accords are signed and then they decide one person, one vote, then they have a vote. Was that a surprising outcome that Robert Mugabe, who's now a pretty infamous figure in the western

Lawrence Mattock [00:37:23] World? Absolutely. Was

Vance Crowe [00:37:24] It surprising that he came to power?

Lawrence Mattock [00:37:26] Well, no, I don't, I don't think it was, I think, I think the surprise was that we were all, people within the cities were all reassured that things would carry on as normal. So when Mugabe came in, there was ob obviously there was panic. And when I say panic, there wasn't, you know, everyone fleeing for the border, you know, that the same day. But, but certainly there was a, there was an exodus of white or skilled personnel because not too long before, in 1972, I think, if my memory's correct, when Smic Michel gained power in Mozambique, when he got rid of the Mozambicans, he, he was a lot, a lot more harsh on the Portuguese nationals in terms of acquiring possessions, acquiring land, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that the whites in, in Rhodesia to become Zimbabwe we're wondering if the same fate would be, would be coming their way, looking, looking across the border at Mozambique. So that, that was a worry. And yes, there were a lot of people that, that, that then did leave the country. And when I say people, I mean people of, of all sorts of, all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, you know, not, not just whites fleeing, because they were, they were wondering now what this new black president or prime minister was gonna do. But just worried, just worried about the unknown.

Vance Crowe [00:38:58] And once he did come to Power Mugabe, you know, I know of this name because it's spoken with, you know, he's probably put in the same category as somebody from North Korea or the s Shah of Iran or something like that. But

Lawrence Mattock [00:39:14] I,

Vance Crowe [00:39:14] I know very, very little about him. What did he do once he came to power? Well,

Lawrence Mattock [00:39:17] Mugabi and, and in truth, and this, this must must never be questioned. Mugabi himself was an incredibly intelligent person, but he had also signed, he had also signed over a, a constitution at Lancaster House that, that protected the infrastructure for the first 20 years. So every, everything that was in place remained in place for 20 years. So what, what what happened was, and, and correctly, and this, and this was certainly a feather in, in everyone's cap prior to, prior to independence, the Ian dollar was not, didn't have any value in the world market because of sanctions. Okay. So as soon as sanctions was and was declared against Ian, as soon as Ridi had its own currency, 'cause it could no longer have the pound, the Ian currency was declared worthless on the international market. So when, when, when independence was, was achieved, the currency was still worthless on the international market. 'cause it could, couldn't just suddenly appear on the international market and not be, have

Vance Crowe [00:40:24] Value. Right? Correct.

Lawrence Mattock [00:40:25] And not have value. So we went through a, a process called Economic, the Economic Structural Adjustment program, which was a program set in place to float the Zimbabwean dollar and see where it, where it would float. So it was, it was getting, getting the, the Zimbabwean economy and the GDP and everything to such a state as to when we did release the Zimbabwean dollar onto the international market, it would have some, some value attached to it.

Vance Crowe [00:40:54] And the money that you had in your bank account when you were a soldier, it had some amount of value, right. It could go by goods and services Oh,

Lawrence Mattock [00:41:04] Sure. And locally. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:41:06] And so then the concern was, okay, once we put you back into the international world, will your money be worth monopoly money or will it be worth something? I mean, de having too high of an inflation would be really tough. Right? Yeah. So what, what ended up happening?

Lawrence Mattock [00:41:22] So the, the the economic structural adjustment program that, that was a tough part be because it was, it was about, it was about a self, a self rectifying mechanism where, where the, the production from the, from the country, what the, what the company was producing and exporting and importing where, where those balances were. And when, when it actually, when we did float the, the Zimbabwe dollar, it ended up as four Zimbabwean dollars to one US dollar, which wasn't, wasn't bad at all considering, considering what we had come from. And so that, that was, that was in incredibly positive. So the people who had left the country in, in terms of this whole scenario of mugabi coming into power and, and them leaving and say, we are not gonna, not gonna live under a black president or black prime minister. What, whatever he was at that stage, I think he was a prime minister. They were now looking back and saying, you know, did we make the wrong decision? You know, should we have left or should we have stayed? And so for, for a, a decade after that process had been put into place, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe thrived, the farmers thrived. The mining, the mining, both mining and, and agriculture was, was right up there. People coming in. Tourism was was at a, at a, at an all time high. It, it was, it was a very, very good time. Although very short was a very good time for Zimbabwe.

Vance Crowe [00:42:50] This is almost a surreal experience for me because I, you know, it's like waking up and finding out that all these people in this country had all of these experiences and wherever you're going with this story, I have no idea. I I have no concept for what's about to happen next

Lawrence Mattock [00:43:07] Where we end up.

Vance Crowe [00:43:07] Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:43:08] So what what sadly, what what then happened was in, in September 19th, 1997, the war veterans who in, who were involved in Zen and zipper against the radiations, they wanted their pensions because they were still waiting for their pensions from 1980. And this sadly is where, is now where the country falls apart. So the, the decision by the, by the Zimbabwean government was then, well, we'll just print more money. Oh, okay. So they printed more money

Vance Crowe [00:43:39] To be able to pay the pensions

Lawrence Mattock [00:43:40] To pay, to pay the, the veterans pensions.

Vance Crowe [00:43:42] And was it a lot, were there a lot of

Lawrence Mattock [00:43:44] Veterans? It was 20, 20 billion. It was 20 billion Ian dollars.

Vance Crowe [00:43:47] That's how far behind they were on their liabilities. And so they said, we'll, just print it,

Lawrence Mattock [00:43:52] Print the money and pay them. Whoa. Okay. So you saw an immediate devaluation of the, of the Zimbabwean dollar,

Vance Crowe [00:43:59] The moment they announced it or, or how, how quickly does this shock through

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:03] Through the

Vance Crowe [00:44:03] System?

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:03] Well, literally, literally the, the next day it certainly, there was a devaluation of the, of the Zimbabwean dollar.

Vance Crowe [00:44:09] They must have known that. Right? Didn't everybody know that?

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:12] No. Cer certainly, certainly we didn't, we, I, I remember I was doing some work in the Victoria Falls at the time, and we suddenly got this news and your dollar had gone from, your Zimbabwean dollar had gone from four to one to eight to one in one night.

Vance Crowe [00:44:28] Whoa.

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:29] You know, so this, this trend continued. So every, every time there was something to pay, it was a case of print more money, print more money, print more money.

Vance Crowe [00:44:36] I was about to say, when you were talking earlier that, that when you had gone to four to one and your currency to the US dollar, that during wartime, it must have been incredibly tempting to have printed a whole bunch of, even even for currency. Even

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:50] Even for the, for the local model.

Vance Crowe [00:44:52] Right. And and they, and they ended up having some level of restraint.

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:56] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:44:56] And then to give into that temptation

Lawrence Mattock [00:44:59] We see. But you see completely different players so that the players, the players that were in place during the war, and I'm talking about the government players were completely different people to the, the people that the, that were in power that were came into government from 1980. So all of, all of those positions, even though even though you might have had the old minister or deputy minister or secretary in place for a short period after independence, they would all have been working their way out.

Vance Crowe [00:45:28] So do you, do you remember where you were when you heard

Lawrence Mattock [00:45:31] That your

Vance Crowe [00:45:32] Currency had been devalued? Is it, was it that pivotal of a moment?

Lawrence Mattock [00:45:35] Well, that, that first, that first, that first evaluation, I know exactly where I was, I was at at the MacArthur son of Victoria Falls. What

Vance Crowe [00:45:42] Were you, how you listened to it on the radio? Or how did you hear about it?

Lawrence Mattock [00:45:45] I heard it on the radio

Vance Crowe [00:45:46] Because I, as I'm thinking about you describing that, that would be finding out your net worth and your future earning potential had just been cut in half.

Lawrence Mattock [00:45:56] But it didn't stop there. So by the end of the year, it was 32, 2, 1. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:46:01] God,

Lawrence Mattock [00:46:03] Over, over the next 10 years, over the next 10 years of, of this scenario carrying on, it got to a stage at the beginning of, at, when it finally crashed, where, where the, the exchange rate was one quintillion to one. So that's one with 12 norths behind it to one US dollar.

Vance Crowe [00:46:25] How, how did anyone survive? You couldn't buy anything virtually.

Lawrence Mattock [00:46:28] You couldn't my, my salary then I was in a, in a group group operation, group group operations director's position for three, five star hotels. My salary was worth 200 US dollars a month.

Vance Crowe [00:46:40] Oh my God.

Lawrence Mattock [00:46:42] And that was in, in that position, which should have been, you know, it should have been considerably more than

Vance Crowe [00:46:46] That. Yeah. Thousands. Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:46:47] But, but that's what it was. And I'd have to, the B-B-B-C-B-B-C launched a, released a figure the other day, a little while ago when, when they were talking about the, the height that they were comparing Monon G'S rule and Mugabe's rule. Monon GWA is a, is a current president. And they were saying it at the highest of this before the crash, inflation was running it over 1000000000% a month. A month. That's what, that's what it was.

Vance Crowe [00:47:18] You'd never catch up with that. It's, it's once one month of that is, it's over. Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:23] Impossible. So then the Zimbabwean dollar crashed and they then adopted the US dollar in, in 2008. They adopted the US dollar as, as a

Vance Crowe [00:47:32] Currency.

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:33] And that was basically used, used as a currency for the next decade.

Vance Crowe [00:47:37] Did that mean that basically everyone said we're starting over? Correct. I mean, 'cause you would have no savings, your banks would have no.

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:43] Or banks. Banks were leveled anyway. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:45] They

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:45] Couldn't,

Vance Crowe [00:47:46] They couldn't have been trading anything

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:47] Was zero anyway.

Vance Crowe [00:47:47] Were there banks there at

Lawrence Mattock [00:47:48] All? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Still doing their best to, to work with what they had to work with, which was incredibly difficult because you can imagine any foreign currency coming into the country was being hoarded because it was the only way to retain some value in what you had was by having US dollars

Vance Crowe [00:48:05] Or power. How do you go to the, because this would've been the time of credit cards. How do you go into the grocery store? How are you

Lawrence Mattock [00:48:11] Buying? Wouldn't have in, in, in, in my life until the time I moved to Safe, there was no such thing as a credit card. You couldn't get it, you couldn't get a credit card, you couldn't work it with the bank's money. So

Vance Crowe [00:48:23] If you went to the store,

Lawrence Mattock [00:48:24] You have a debit card.

Vance Crowe [00:48:25] Okay. But,

Lawrence Mattock [00:48:26] But never a credit card.

Vance Crowe [00:48:27] Okay.

Lawrence Mattock [00:48:28] So you could have a debit, debit card, but you would use your debit card. But as, as things accelerated, so they became more and more worthless. So it became worth not worth having.

Vance Crowe [00:48:38] How, how, how do you buy groceries in a, in an billion percent inflation world?

Lawrence Mattock [00:48:43] Remember you have, you have a bank note that's also quintillion or a quintillion dollar bank note. You carry them around in a box or in a rock sack, in a wheelbarrow and a, something

Vance Crowe [00:48:56] Genuinely, like you're not exaggerating, really are carrying them in wheelbarrows,

Lawrence Mattock [00:49:00] Not

Vance Crowe [00:49:01] At, and then these stores are just saying, we'll take, I mean, or do people start doing Well, you,

Lawrence Mattock [00:49:05] You'd scale it so you knew what, you'd know what, what a million dollars weighed for, for argument's sake. So you'd, you'd have a scale and you put the, you'd put the block of money onto the scale and that's how you'd know what the value of the money was. You wouldn't try and start counting out the notes.

Vance Crowe [00:49:22] How, I mean, I'm trying to put myself in this place. It would seem so hopeless. I I would imagine that that would

Lawrence Mattock [00:49:30] Absolutely hopeless. So at the, at the end of it, the end of when the, when the Zimbabwe dollar crashed at this quintillion two, one scenario, you would go into the, into the supermarkets, there would be no, no food in the supermarkets. The shelves would be empty, absolutely empty.

Vance Crowe [00:49:46] And, and that's in true for you too, the the manager of hotel.

Lawrence Mattock [00:49:51] Absolutely. So you'd have to, with a, with a hotel because you earning foreign currency from, from people coming to stay, you then you then have some foreign currency in your foreign currency account. So you, you'd bring in, you'd bring in essentials obviously with the foreign currency that you had, that you had managed to get, that government government had allowed, that you're able to then purchase various commodities for your, for your customers, for your guests.

Vance Crowe [00:50:15] And the people that didn't have that kind of access to foreign currency, were they bartering a lot? Were they figuring out new ways of doing the economy?

Lawrence Mattock [00:50:23] So all you, all you could do, because every, everyone traded. So what you'll do is, is with, with your Zim dollars, you'd buy us dollars. So you'd, you'd pay a premium for them at the time, knowing of course, in a week or two weeks or whatever, it would no longer be a premium. So you'd hold onto your US dollars as much as you possibly could, and then sell them on the black market. So you could then, you could then at least buy what you could buy or use, use your US dollars to buy what you couldn't buy anywhere else. So yeah, it, it just, it just became a, a

Vance Crowe [00:50:54] Game,

Lawrence Mattock [00:50:54] You know, but one, one survives, one kind of gets, gets through it and, and moves on to the next chapter. But,

Vance Crowe [00:51:00] So just a few weeks ago I had on an investment portfolio manager, and we were talking about how much money the US government has been printing, and I wish I would've had this conversation in my back pocket because I can only imagine inflation on a theoretical level. That's like what you're describing. And I'd never even, it never even crossed my mind. I mean, to be, to be weighing things like a million, I

Lawrence Mattock [00:51:27] Mean, you're

Vance Crowe [00:51:27] Essentially saying it's the, it's worth less than the paper. It's, it's

Lawrence Mattock [00:51:30] Far less than the paper's printed on.

Vance Crowe [00:51:33] Wow. Hmm. And you hear about this happening in, in Germany, you know, during the second World War. Right. But I'd never heard about this. Well

Lawrence Mattock [00:51:41] Con in, in comparison Zimbabwe, that the German scenario fades into insignificance.

Vance Crowe [00:51:48] Oh, it's worse.

Lawrence Mattock [00:51:49] Oh, far worse. Far worse. In the, in the German scenario. What, what, what would happen in Zimbabwe? You'd you'd throw away the money and you'd keep the wheelbarrow.

Vance Crowe [00:51:56] Huh?

Lawrence Mattock [00:51:57] I get rid of the money because they actually worthless. Yeah. The wheel, the wheelbarrow hass got some real worth. The money doesn't,

Vance Crowe [00:52:04] So when they pegged it to the dollar, was that something that the US was like, yeah, go ahead. Or, or,

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:11] Or

Vance Crowe [00:52:12] Did they actually just start using, they

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:14] Started using a dollar.

Vance Crowe [00:52:15] So that's just like Panama, the country of Panama does that, or these They did it when I was there.

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:20] Yeah. So that, that didn't just adopted the US dollar as a currency,

Vance Crowe [00:52:24] Which would then make US dollars even more valuable than they would be in the United States, which would make it very difficult to get into that game.

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:31] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:52:31] Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:32] But, but everyone did because what, what happened was they, there was, people had been hoarding. So what happened was it just became exposed.

Vance Crowe [00:52:40] So before, were you not allowed to, to use No,

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:43] We weren't allowed to have the US dollars.

Vance Crowe [00:52:45] How did you pay your taxes?

Lawrence Mattock [00:52:47] What taxes? I don't think, you know, I think it got to such a, such a stage, such a state where I, I'll give, in fact, I'll give you an example that might put the taxes into a bit of, bit of perspective. Like all of us, well, like most of us were working people. You would buy a home and you'd pay for the home over, over a 20 year period. If you can, if you can purchase it quicker than that, well, you're doing well. But most people will get to kind of their 20 years and, and have a home, or they'll borrow against their payments. So they'll have a second mortgage and they'll, they'll just carry on buying, which is, which is the normal way. So you can imagine now be, before this hyperinflation started, I, I would go to the bank and I would ask for a hundred thousand dollars loan to buy a house. Okay. And I'd start off paying, paying my mortgage, paying my bond, what, what, whatever the terminology is here. And I'd pay my $3,000 a month over the next 20 years. And so do it happen. Now, you can imagine once this hyperinflation started, I still only owed the same amount of money. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:53:51] As long as you didn't have a floating interest rate. That's right. You were good.

Lawrence Mattock [00:53:55] So what would happen is, is at the end of the day, I could pay my house off with one day's pay. Whoa.

Vance Crowe [00:54:02] Because

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:02] It was still only worth a hundred thousand.

Vance Crowe [00:54:04] So all the people holding debt were screwed.

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:08] Absolutely. Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:54:10] Because wow. You

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:11] Know, so you can, you can just imagine that couldn't, that couldn't increase the price of the house. The house was sold right

Vance Crowe [00:54:16] At

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:16] That amount of money. You already

Vance Crowe [00:54:17] Signed it. So as long as

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:18] You didn't have

Vance Crowe [00:54:18] A variable floating interest

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:20] Rate.

Vance Crowe [00:54:21] Wow. Yeah. So that would've meant the transfer of a huge amount of property from,

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:27] For, for next to nothing. Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:54:29] So who, who would've

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:30] Been buying that up? Obviously the banks would've been

Vance Crowe [00:54:32] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:33] The banks would've been buying up a lot, a lot of property knowing that the monies, the, the, the safest their money's gonna be is in, is in land.

Vance Crowe [00:54:41] Because you can't move it, you can't inflate it.

Lawrence Mattock [00:54:43] Exactly. Land and bricks and mortar. So that's, that's what, you know, people who could afford it, that's what they did.

Vance Crowe [00:54:50] Does this leave scars on you? I mean, as far as the way you think about money or the way you think about stability? Because I would just, how could you ever trust a, a paper bill? It's gotta look very different to you.

Lawrence Mattock [00:55:02] I think, I think what it, what it, what it does do it, it certainly makes you look at things in more detail before you, before you get involved in them. Because you, you certainly, you certainly have those scars. You certainly have learned a lot of lessons and you've certainly learned not to trust what's given to you on face value and to look to look deeper before you makes any form of commitment to any, any form of decision in your life. C certainly that that happens. Certainly that happens.

Vance Crowe [00:55:37] Is the US dollar still used in Zimbabwe?

Lawrence Mattock [00:55:41] Absolutely. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:41] And, and that is their currency then? No,

Lawrence Mattock [00:55:44] The the currency now is back to the Zimbabwean bond note. So that's, that's what they've reintroduced. Which, which is, which is, right. I think what, what what OG where the current president is trying to do is, is form a, a mini ESAP where he's tightening all the, all the apron strings tightening, tightening all the belts and, and trying to get very close to the spending while at the same time try and offer incentives to the farmers, to the miners, et cetera, et cetera. On, on their, on what they're able to bring back in and whatever they're able to bring back in, make sure that they looked after in terms of an, a foreign currency amount and being able to ex, ex expatriate that foreign currency amount. So yes, I, I, I actually as, as much as of negative press that Moog was getting, because he is like, like anyone who would

Vance Crowe [00:56:37] Be in his

Lawrence Mattock [00:56:38] Situation would be, I actually think that he is doing his, his very best

Vance Crowe [00:56:43] To,

Lawrence Mattock [00:56:43] To sort out 40 years of issues as quickly as he can. And I think, I think he's been power a year now. I don't think it's much longer than that. And in the, in that year, year's, a very, very short time to, to untangle all of these issues. But I, I do believe that he's, he is doing his best.

Vance Crowe [00:57:06] I, we don't have to stay on this topic the whole time, but I am interested

Lawrence Mattock [00:57:10] In

Vance Crowe [00:57:10] This a as I'm hearing you talk about, you know, 30 years of, of, or 40 years of, of really difficult times. A huge percentage of that with wild inflation. Yes. How did Mugabe stay in power all that time?

Lawrence Mattock [00:57:26] I, I said earlier that Mugabe is a very cl very intelligent man,

Vance Crowe [00:57:30] Which,

Lawrence Mattock [00:57:30] Which he is. And, and Mugabe surrounded himself with people who, who had taken advantage of the system as much as he had. So their pockets were also very well lined. So we had the, the head of the head, the head of a lot of the paramilitary were, were probably pretty much the same, but all, all the way down to under secretaries and junior secretaries and government, et cetera, who Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:58] I mean, dictators don't just get to be in charge because they're in charge. Yeah. They pay out patronage and Correct. As long as the money keeps flowing to those, they keep having it come back to

Lawrence Mattock [00:58:07] Them. So Exactly, exactly that situation. So he was, he was very well, he was very well in control of, of the military. And the military were very, very much behind Robert Mugabi. You know, at the end of the day he was, he started off as party secretary, but then became party chairman of, of Zand. And the forces were the biggest forces on the, on the freedom fighters side, you know, they, they were the biggest force. So those, those freedom fighters largely went then into, into normal structured army at the, at the end of the war. And they were then basically the army that, that he kept continued to control.

Vance Crowe [00:58:44] But how do you pay an army with no

Lawrence Mattock [00:58:47] Currency? They always paid.

Vance Crowe [00:58:48] Yeah. I mean, they are always paid. They

Lawrence Mattock [00:58:49] Were always paid, but

Vance Crowe [00:58:51] They were paid in, in denominate. I probably, they, they just keep printing money and just

Lawrence Mattock [00:58:55] Keep doing, just keep going around.

Vance Crowe [00:58:56] And in a way, I guess once you have wild currency inflation, then it becomes a matter of relative wealth. Right. It's, do you have three pounds of, of, of notes versus somebody that has two? The person with three still has a, a third more than the other

Lawrence Mattock [00:59:14] One. Yeah. Third more than you do. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:15] But

Lawrence Mattock [00:59:15] Also, also remember, remember, you know, that they have, they had weapons and the weapons always had ammunition. And, and the, a big thing in, in a lot, in a lot of, a lot of these countries where there's an uprising if you like, there'll be a lot of weapons, but there won't be a lot of ammunition.

Vance Crowe [00:59:32] Oh, I didn't know this well,

Lawrence Mattock [00:59:34] That the ammunition's far more difficult to acquire than the weapon is.

Vance Crowe [00:59:37] Yeah. You only need one weapon. You need as many rounds as you need to do the fighting.

Lawrence Mattock [00:59:42] Absolutely. So if you don't have, if you don't have ammunition, you've got a club that's really all you've got is a big stick. So although you, you may find that people who now are trying to revolutionize, whether it was Zimbabwe in those days, or whether it's another country in the world, if they're re if they're revolutionizing people so that they're, they're now arming the peasants. It's gotta be, there's gotta be continuation to it. 'cause otherwise the army will then just eradicate whoever, whoever comes up against them. And so that was exactly the same in Zimbabwe. The army always had ammunition.

Vance Crowe [01:00:20] It never crossed my mind that if you had a scenario of inflation, as long as you control the army and keep them going, that's who you've

Lawrence Mattock [01:00:30] Done.

Vance Crowe [01:00:30] You've, you've effectively created a situation where the mountain is too slippery for anybody else to get up to

Lawrence Mattock [01:00:36] Climb up. Yep. So, you know, so it, it didn't, it didn't matter if, if there were pockets here and pockets there because they would just be squashed.

Vance Crowe [01:00:45] And as this is all going on, did you have the ability to move from Zimbabwe to other places? I mean, you've built an international career. Yeah, so

Lawrence Mattock [01:00:54] We, when we, I got married to, to

Vance Crowe [01:00:57] My wife, and

Lawrence Mattock [01:00:58] We had two children, Alex, who, you

Vance Crowe [01:00:59] Know,

Lawrence Mattock [01:01:00] And, and Alex has a sister who's 16 months older than him. And we, we looked at what, what was in front of us. We looked at where I was in my career, looked at where, where my wife was in her career. And we decided that as long as the education system in Zimbabwe, which has always been exceptionally high, as long as, as long as that was working for our children, we would stay where we are and we would, we would endure what was in front of us, which, which is what we did. And our children subsequently finished, finished very well at school.

Vance Crowe [01:01:34] Those

Lawrence Mattock [01:01:35] Self-same schools today are still running exceptionally well.

Vance Crowe [01:01:39] What do you attribute that to?

Lawrence Mattock [01:01:41] Well, the educational system and, and people who have a belief in teaching and in, in terms of, in terms of passing on the correct skills for, for children in their lives going forward. So that we have a, we, we, we learn that the English, we are under the English system of schooling. So we do O levels and A levels, and then those

Vance Crowe [01:02:04] Are exams to tell you which direction you should go in.

Lawrence Mattock [01:02:06] So we don't do SATs, for example, but you know, to get into university here, as you all know, you, you write your SATs and de depending on your result, you're either accepted or not, not accepted. Whereas there what happens, you write your, your A level examinations. So you, you would have four different subjects, or three or two or six, whatever you believe that you were going, you were good enough to write, and you then wrote your exams and that then be sent to the UK to be marked and then, then come back to you.

Vance Crowe [01:02:34] No kidding. Yeah. So

Lawrence Mattock [01:02:35] It's, and they, they hold, they hold a lot of, a lot of merit. So if you have a levels in, in an English schooling system, it's, it's the, it's the advanced level. It's, it's as high as you can go in terms of your schooling system.

Vance Crowe [01:02:48] So while you had financial inflation, you didn't have grade inflation. Yeah. So, so the students were able to move on and move up. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so you were,

Lawrence Mattock [01:02:56] So there's no reason for staying.

Vance Crowe [01:02:57] So you stayed and then traveled to build this hospitality career? Or you did it mostly in Zimbabwe?

Lawrence Mattock [01:03:04] I did it mostly in Zimbabwe. However, once, once 2000, 2007 came along and I could no longer afford to, I could no longer afford to work because savings had obviously gone into children's schooling and all, all the things that, that needed to be done. I then, I then left formal, formal employment and I started teaching, I started consulting in different countries in south South Africa, for example. And in Ethiopia, in Tanzania and Kenya, you know, various countries in Botswana, Namibia. Because what I could do is

Vance Crowe [01:03:41] I could earn

Lawrence Mattock [01:03:42] Hard currency and, and use a hard currency to, to go back to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe by that stage, in terms of the hospitality side of things, was, was hitting rock bottom because,

Vance Crowe [01:03:56] And not a lot of people wanting to visit Yeah. With Mugabe and power

Lawrence Mattock [01:03:58] 'cause of what was, what was what was going happening in the country. So, you know, in, in terms of staying, staying in Zimbabwe, it, it, it would be fine in my position, but my position would be coming would be less and less viable in terms of what, what what I was controlling.

Vance Crowe [01:04:15] Right

Lawrence Mattock [01:04:15] Now, the gen the general managers could, could far easy would be far easier for them just to run their units. They wouldn't, they really wouldn't need me in place. And on top of that, so, you know, it was a case of getting out and consulting

Vance Crowe [01:04:28] And now you have this kind of Pan-African career. You, you live part of your time in South Africa, is that right?

Lawrence Mattock [01:04:36] I live most of my time in South Africa. So what, what I did with the, there's always a silver lining and Vance, what I did was I, through all of these travels, I started observing the poor people in, in each of these countries. And I, I visited Eritrea, I did some work in Djibouti. I visited Southern, Southern Sudan, Northern Somalia, the D Southern part of D of the DRC Lui. Those

Vance Crowe [01:05:00] Are pretty rough areas.

Lawrence Mattock [01:05:01] Tough areas. Yeah. And what a lot of, a lot of malcho malnourished people. And through, through, through all of this, I, I started pondering what, what would be a way of delivering to people a a highly nutritious meal that had a shelf life where you didn't need to have a refrigerator, you're able to consume it without having to have a stove or a microwave or a, a gas top or a, but you could just have a, a pot of boiling water on a, on top of a fire or just eat it as it was. So I, I had these, I had these thoughts going through my head in terms of how do I develop a product I spent from the age of 15, I did my chef, my chefs city and girls's chefs diploma, you know, I did, I I'm a qualified baker in, in, in hotels. Really? Absolutely. So Bakery patisserie was a, a kitchen craft that I had in, in hospitality. And I thought with, with these skills that I have, and with the, with the people that I've seen and with, with the background that I have, I must be able to come up with something. And it's, it was in my head for a long time and it was in my head for, for selfish reasons. And as much as I wanted to make sure I could patent the product before I, before I expose the product, obviously with a, with a, with a, an insight that I was obviously out there to make a little bit of money for myself as well.

Vance Crowe [01:06:25] Hey, I'm, I'm total believer in capitalism. That's how you make better ideas, right? So

Lawrence Mattock [01:06:31] Once my children had both been through university and both completed university, I then thought it was time to expose us and get, get a patent on it. So South Africa would be the, the most natural place to do it because South Africa has the highest disposable income of, of any African country in

Vance Crowe [01:06:48] Africa.

Lawrence Mattock [01:06:49] And it's, it is that the province that I moved to, which was, is called ing. And the, the two major cities in that province are Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Vance Crowe [01:07:00] Johannesburg

Lawrence Mattock [01:07:01] I think is probably more well known than Pretoria, but Pretoria is one of the capitals of South Africa, along with Cape Town. But Johannesburg's, the, the biggest, the biggest city and also has the most wealth. So I exposed my product to, to a couple of guys, friends of mine who also ex Zimbabwean. One was, one had become a patent lawyer and the other one had become a fairly successful businessman. And they felt that the product was, was worth investigating and worth pursuing. So to that end, we developed a product that we called in, in South Africa, we called a sud stick. Or a pubs stick or in, in Kenya would be called, eh,

Vance Crowe [01:07:41] I don't know what,

Lawrence Mattock [01:07:42] What's the name for Maze meal for

Vance Crowe [01:07:43] Oh yeah, Mindy Choma.

Lawrence Mattock [01:07:45] Like,

Vance Crowe [01:07:46] Well that, no, that's more, oh, the ugali is what, what you're talking about. So it

Lawrence Mattock [01:07:48] Would be an Ali stick

Vance Crowe [01:07:49] Ugali. Yeah, yeah,

Lawrence Mattock [01:07:50] Yeah. So it, and what what it is, is we, we cook, we cook corn into, into stiff parts, which is

Vance Crowe [01:07:58] Just to clarify, when people in the US corn meal is something that's very rare. People don't have it very often anymore. It's a, the, the maze in Africa would be, it's really kind of hard. And then you have to boil it and then add,

Lawrence Mattock [01:08:13] Okay. Alright. So, so what what hap what happens in, in Africa in 90% of Africa that eat maize or eat corn, is the ma the maize is harvested and, and it, and it's dried.

Vance Crowe [01:08:24] It's, I guess the only thing I'm trying to describe, 'cause people won't know, is that in the US when you eat corn, you eat sweet corn. Whereas in, in Africa you're eating a different, it's corn, but it's different. It's a grain. Yes. It's almost like eating like a,

Lawrence Mattock [01:08:39] Like eating rice.

Vance Crowe [01:08:39] Like eating rice. Yes. That's right. Yes.

Lawrence Mattock [01:08:41] So what, so what we do with this, with this maze, with this corn, is we mill it. So we, we mill it down, so it's like a powder and it, but it's a white powder. 'cause 90% of the maize that we, that we grow is white maize. The, the indigenous population does not like eating yellow maize. They like eating white maize. So we, we, when it's dry, we, and it's, it, it becomes a grain as you correctly say. And we then mill the grain like, like you can mill rice or you can

Vance Crowe [01:09:08] Flour Yeah. Mill.

Lawrence Mattock [01:09:09] Any, any of those things. We, we mill them. Yeah. Wheat, wheat is probably the easiest example here because milled, milled corn looks very much like flour with that milled corn, we then, we then cook it on the stove with water and a little bit of salt and we cook it into a stiff porridge. Okay. That product is then called sza, or called pup. And it's, it's, that's then eaten with, with your hands and you eat it, you, you take, you take it in your hand and you then put some relish on it and you'd eat the relish and the, and the maze meal together. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:09:46] And, and my experience with Ugali is one time I was doing, I was with the Peace corps. Yeah. And we would eat ugali with every meal. Yes. Because the people oftentimes don't have enough food to be able to go to bed feeling full at night. So they eat this paste and it doesn't, I mean, it has some calories in it, but it's not, it's not a lot. But they would eat it right before they went to bed so they could feel full. Yeah. And there was one time we were putting on a fancy dinner where we had goat and we had avocados and we had all these things. Yeah. And we get done with the meal and everyone is looking around saying, yeah, but where's the ugali? Yeah. Because it's so central to their diet.

Lawrence Mattock [01:10:25] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:10:25] That they don't think of it as like a, it is a core part of their culture.

Lawrence Mattock [01:10:31] So in, in, in terms, you, you're a hundred percent right in, in term in terms of the, the nutritious, the nutritional side of, of maize meal. It's your carbohydrate source, it's your complex carbohydrate source.

Vance Crowe [01:10:42] And

Lawrence Mattock [01:10:42] As a complex carbohydrate source, depending on how refined it is, like, like anything that we eat, depending on how refined it is, will depend on how empty those calories are or how nutritionally dense those calories become. If it's less refined, obviously through the fiber and through through the, the lack of the lack of processing, the carbohydrate has more value to it. The more refined it gets, the less, the less nutritional value it'll

Vance Crowe [01:11:08] Have.

Lawrence Mattock [01:11:08] So yes, it could, that could then be very empty calories as, as you were saying earlier.

Vance Crowe [01:11:12] Right?

Lawrence Mattock [01:11:13] So we, we would, we would, what we, what we do is we, we take the maize meal that's popular for the area. So if, what, what would happen in a, in a holistic scheme, so try and we try and look at this holistically. We would locate a factory near a growth point. So the growth point would be where there's a community that's growing because there are some, there are some indigenous farmers in the area. They would grow the maize, they'd bring the maze to me. I would then mu a maze for them. I'd go give them back what they wanted in terms of milled for their

Vance Crowe [01:11:48] Own use. For their

Lawrence Mattock [01:11:49] Own use. Right. Their own. Then I would, I would then take maize meal and I would, I would then have a relish recipe that I would then make the relish recipe. I would extrude the maize, the cooked maize meal and the cooked relish into a, into a tube, into a six centimeter diameter tube. And I'll seal the tube at both ends. Now this tube is food, has food, food, grade, plastic, it has anti UV rays and obviously no oxygen gets in. So by doing that, I then increase the shelf life and I, sorry. And I pasteurize it. So having, having these these things in place reduces the amount of, of preservative or emulsifier that I have in there. And I get a two months unrefrigerated shelf life on a product that they are very, very non

Vance Crowe [01:12:42] It, it's already cooked. It's

Lawrence Mattock [01:12:43] Already cooked. This

Vance Crowe [01:12:44] Is unbel. This is amazing. It's a very good idea. And it follows along with an argument that I've tried to make here in the us, which is, most people here have no concept of how much time it takes to make food. Because if you are making ugali, it's not like you get to go turn on the stove. No. You draw up water maybe from a, well, if you're rich, but likely from a river somewhere far away, you bring that back, two, four falls away. Yeah. Then you've gotta put this cold water on a, on a pot. And it's not like you have some great high quality grade pot that you then put on a fire or maybe a gco. Maybe you have a little bit of charcoal that somebody in your neighborhood makes you boil that water. And then you put the ugali in it and it takes a while and you, that takes

Lawrence Mattock [01:13:28] Another, another half an hour.

Vance Crowe [01:13:29] That's right. And then that's only your carbohydrate, right. If you've got beans, yeah. You've gotta sit there and hand pick

Lawrence Mattock [01:13:35] Them. Any form of relish. You've now gotta start processing the vegetables, cooking the vegetables, giving the vegetables a little bit of taste, getting a chili, processing the chili, putting a bit of chili in with a tomato and onion for example.

Vance Crowe [01:13:46] And you get no benefit of, I'm gonna open up the refrigerator 'cause I cut up too much onion yesterday. None of it's there. None

Lawrence Mattock [01:13:52] Of it's there. There's, there's no fridge there.

Vance Crowe [01:13:54] If you've spent the day working, which I, I was in an unusual, I stayed with a Kenyon family for about 10 weeks before I moved out into the countryside. Both the mother and the father worked.

Lawrence Mattock [01:14:04] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:14:04] So that did not start until after sunset. And it's, you, you're like, in my home that I was living in, they had a single light bulb and they could maybe have a lantern. But if you're doing this inside, you're now sitting with charcoal smoke going around in your house. One light.

Lawrence Mattock [01:14:20] Yep.

Vance Crowe [01:14:21] It is difficult. I mean, they get along fine. Yeah. I don't, I don't wanna say they're sitting there, you know, just waiting for somebody to save them. However, if you were to offer them a product that they could have access to those calories without having to cook them, you would be giving them back years of their life. Yep. Literally

Lawrence Mattock [01:14:40] Abs. Absolutely. And, and it, it was with, with all of the sinking in, in place. So for example, the guy, if he's a miner, if he's working all down the mine, which, which is what a lot of you got,

Vance Crowe [01:14:50] You

Lawrence Mattock [01:14:50] Go to south Southern DRC where Lumbo is, and you've got the big cobalt mines, you've got 40,000 people working those mines. Each of those mines no food.

Vance Crowe [01:15:01] Right. And if you're not married, the best you're gonna do is somebody happens to sit outside of where you're at and they're making the, the ugali themselves

Lawrence Mattock [01:15:10] Or you're eating something on the way home.

Vance Crowe [01:15:11] Wow. Like

Lawrence Mattock [01:15:12] A piece of fruit or,

Vance Crowe [01:15:13] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [01:15:13] Okay. So so what, through, through all of these experiences,

Vance Crowe [01:15:17] I had no idea this is what you did. This is, this is very, very interest. This is my,

Lawrence Mattock [01:15:20] My my retirement project. But so with with, with all of these various experiences I had, I had obviously, so this, this, it had to, it had to be something that I produced that ticked all the boxes for a, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna use the word low level employee because that that's really what, what what it was in my, in my mind. Someone who couldn't afford either, whether it regard to time or whether it was money on purchasing, purchasing Western products at, at three, four times the price of what he could possibly afford or not having the time when he finished work. And he then had to walk 10 Ks home and then start going through the process that you, that you've described. So there's that, there's that section to it. There's the other section to it where you now have people who have lost everything as, as we see in Africa many times, and they don't have any food and, and for them to get a meal and there's

Vance Crowe [01:16:17] Nobody coming to save them. There's no, there's nobody that's just gonna drop in enough food for them to live on for.

Lawrence Mattock [01:16:22] Absolutely. Yeah. And, and when you do get feeding programs, what generally happens, and I'm, I'm, I am generalizing here. I'm sure there's some that have been modernized slightly, but what happens is, is sacks of maize meal will be delivered to a school or a clinic and 20 kgs of tomatoes and 20 kgs of onions and you know, five kgs of garlic and whatever else they can, they can kind of get together. And then what happens is the parents will then try and cook this, this maize meal into, into the product we, we spoke about on a fire in a big pot or on a, on a gas burner in a big pot. And some of, some of the other, the other mothers will be now cutting up onions and tomatoes and the rest of it rape, et cetera. And the unfortunate side with, with all of that, you can imagine how much puled there is because people just don't have, right. So sax maze meal will be disappearing the when you cook, when you cook maize meal because it's, because it's such a stiff product to cook, you get a lot of crustacean at the bottom. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:17:25] Yeah. Burning at the bottom. So

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:26] You end up throwing probably about 20% of what you're cooking, you throw 20% away. And

Vance Crowe [01:17:31] If you're a Peace Corps volunteer, it's about 50%. 'cause you don't have any idea

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:34] What you're doing. Exactly.

Vance Crowe [01:17:35] So I burn that stuff onto the pan all

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:37] The time. And you, you then can't get rid of it. So when it cools down, you then chip it out and you throw away this crust

Vance Crowe [01:17:41] And you are describing Yeah, a lot of my time.

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:44] And it happens. It happens. I

Vance Crowe [01:17:46] Thought it was just me. So No,

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:47] No, it happens with, with everybody,

Vance Crowe [01:17:48] Because they don't have stainless steel, they don't have aluminum, they don't, they maybe have butter every

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:53] Once

Vance Crowe [01:17:54] In a while. Blue band is what they had in Kenya. Okay.

Lawrence Mattock [01:17:56] Yeah. In in in in Zi I think butter was probably very much a luxury, which

Vance Crowe [01:18:00] Was

Lawrence Mattock [01:18:01] Probably be margarine that would then be supping. That's

Vance Crowe [01:18:03] What it was. Margarine. That blue band margarine. Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [01:18:06] But, so it had to check the boxes of, if I, if I was able to offer a nutritional alternative, it had to be something that was cooked. Something that had a, a non-refrigerated shelf life. Something that could be o open and eaten on the go. So whether it was too work or home from work, it had to be something that, that there was no modern appliance needed to be applied. Okay. But they could have a cooked nutritious meal. The o the other thing that, that obviously could be done was in the relish section, the center section, I, I'll show you a couple of pictures just now. And the center section is where you would then fortify the product.

Vance Crowe [01:18:46] Ah,

Lawrence Mattock [01:18:46] So the fortification would, comes in an area where there's a, there's taste already. So you're not, you're not tainting the product of the starch. You're putting, you're putting the nutritional additive, if you like, the enhancement, the fortification, you're putting that into the relish where the taste is masked a lot. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:19:05] Because

Lawrence Mattock [01:19:06] I dunno if you've ever had where you, where you see these

Vance Crowe [01:19:08] Drums

Lawrence Mattock [01:19:09] Of, of vitamins and minerals waiting to be added to, to a recipe.

Vance Crowe [01:19:12] I don't know that ever seen that recipe. Yeah, no. And

Lawrence Mattock [01:19:14] You taste it a taste absolutely disgusting.

Vance Crowe [01:19:17] So what are the types of, when you say relish, what is it, what is it gonna be made out of? Or I mean local, depending on where you're at, does it change? Yes. So, so let's talk about the places you're familiar with.

Lawrence Mattock [01:19:27] So we, we do, at the moment, we do, we do four, four different relishes and two, two different starches. We do a tomato and onion relish, which is as a, as a, the description is we then do what's called the chaka relish, which is very much like the tomato and onion, but it has more vegetables and it has the pr, the predominant vegetable in there is carrot. So it takes on a, on a carrot, tomato, onion, garlic, mustard, that, that type of

Vance Crowe [01:19:58] Flavors.

Lawrence Mattock [01:19:59] And then we, we have one that's a, that's a chili soyer beef. So although it's soyer it's it, now it tastes incredibly like, just like beef mins really,

Vance Crowe [01:20:09] But

Lawrence Mattock [01:20:09] With a, with a slightly chili. With a slightly chili. So it adds, adds, enhances the flavor slightly chili flavored with it. And then we do what's called what, a non savory one, a peanut butter syrup. So I dunno if you've ever had peanut butter syrup sandwiches when you're a kid.

Vance Crowe [01:20:26] Yeah, of course.

Lawrence Mattock [01:20:27] Yes, exactly. Exactly the same thing. So the starch of the maize meal is the bread basically. And then the, the peanut butter and syrup is, is the center

Vance Crowe [01:20:36] Peanut butter is, it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was a luxury there, but it was, it was a nicer thing. But people loved it. Love peanut butter. Absolutely love it. Because all you need is mashed peanuts and, and salt and you have something.

Lawrence Mattock [01:20:50] Absolutely. So you can,

Vance Crowe [01:20:51] I can still taste the African peanut butter now

Lawrence Mattock [01:20:53] And it's still absolutely delicious.

Vance Crowe [01:20:55] Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [01:20:55] So you, you can imagine that now for school children. So what, what you're trying to now do is you, you would then fortify the peanut butter and syrup with, with vitamins and minerals. Okay. And that they wouldn't ta they wouldn't taste.

Vance Crowe [01:21:07] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [01:21:08] The, the vitamins and minerals at all, you'd be getting Yes. There would be sugar in it because of the syrup. Absolutely. And there would be oil in it because of the peanut butter. But you are getting the nutrition from the peanuts, from the peanut butter. Obviously people who can't eat peanuts that they can't eat, eat that particular product. But it tastes absolutely, absolutely delicious. And it's ideal for schoolchildren getting some nutrition into their stomachs, either on the way to

Vance Crowe [01:21:33] School

Lawrence Mattock [01:21:34] Or at break time or on the way home where they may not get nutrition when they get home.

Vance Crowe [01:21:39] Yeah. The thing that they had now was hunks of sugarcane was about the best that they could get. And b

Lawrence Mattock [01:21:45] Bark and you

Vance Crowe [01:21:46] Tear

Lawrence Mattock [01:21:46] It.

Vance Crowe [01:21:46] Yeah. Yeah. So how, what level of production is this at right now?

Lawrence Mattock [01:21:50] We've, we've had to go through obviously as with as with all food products, we've had to go through a process of certification. So we've, we've gone for, for the highest certification that there is out there, which is F-F-F-S-C 22,000, which is, which is the top end of food production certification in terms of hygiene, safety, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [01:22:13] Me. And then what would that allow you to do that a lower certification wouldn't let you do?

Lawrence Mattock [01:22:16] Well then you could sell it into anybody, anybody, anywhere in the world. Oh. That now dealt with any humanitarian issues or normal issues in terms of, in terms of retail or wholesale, et cetera, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [01:22:30] And are there other products like this on the market right now? No. And because I never saw a precooked Ali is amazing.

Lawrence Mattock [01:22:35] So, so, so what there, what there is is there, there is precooked, precooked pup and, and a, a piece of sausage that you'd find on a styrofoam tray in a supermarket.

Vance Crowe [01:22:45] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [01:22:45] That, that for sure you'd see. So are we the first people to sell cooked? Amazing. No,

Vance Crowe [01:22:50] No, but I mean, but packaged, but in

Lawrence Mattock [01:22:52] Terms of the way that we are doing it, no, there's no one else.

Vance Crowe [01:22:55] So you, you eat these now you, you have them, you, you, you've, you've been eating.

Lawrence Mattock [01:23:00] Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm, I'm, I'm tired of eating them. But yeah, they, they, they've very well received. The, the positive, the couple of positive things are, first of all, anyone who's tasted them, you know, by saying it could have more salt or less salt, which I think was, is is everyone's preference. Right? But by that, everyone has been incredibly excited about them and everyone looking at it from a business perspective is have, have just said, you know, how do we get involved?

Vance Crowe [01:23:32] So how long until you get the certification you need? And then we can, well, 30th, 30th of August was the first,

Lawrence Mattock [01:23:39] Was the first audit by, by the auditors for the, for the FSSC

Vance Crowe [01:23:47] Certification.

Lawrence Mattock [01:23:48] So they, they have a, they have a follow up audit in a month, end of September, and then that certification will be done. Obviously if

Vance Crowe [01:23:56] You know everything

Lawrence Mattock [01:23:57] Going well, which it should do, there's no reason it shouldn't, it's, you know, the doc, the documentation is, is always a difficult step. Fortunately, the the factory's fine, the factory's passed, it's just making sure the documentation is where it should be and then yeah, then it's ready to launch into every construction site, every mine, every feeding scheme.

Vance Crowe [01:24:17] And how quickly can you get to that scale? I mean, you're talking even one mine with 40,000 people would be an huge unimaginable amount of,

Lawrence Mattock [01:24:25] You see, what, what would, what will the, the natural thing that would happen is if, if, for example, let's call it, let's use an easy example for, for this. If we had World Food Program who said, listen, we, we like the product, we need, we need 50,000, 50,000 of these sticks a day. Okay, well, obviously we couldn't produce 50,006 a day. We could probably probably produce half a million a month. What we, what we would then do to, to raise finance to expand the factory would then be a simple process. We know how to put the factory together and, you know, to raising the finance of on the back of an order, like a world food program, for example, would be a fairly simple thing to do to expand the factory. So very, very quickly you would, you would come up to that specification even if you couldn't initially.

Vance Crowe [01:25:13] Right.

Lawrence Mattock [01:25:14] So within a month you could, you could certainly be providing them two thirds and within a quarter you'd be able to provide them and another customer, for example.

Vance Crowe [01:25:25] And you have an imagination that this will be scaled to a lot of locations because that would

Lawrence Mattock [01:25:31] Bring their own,

Vance Crowe [01:25:32] Their own maze and then figure out the relish for the right area. Indeed. That's for the indigenous

Lawrence Mattock [01:25:38] Abs. That's exactly correct. So in, instead of, instead of producing a product in Johannesburg and putting it on trucks and, and sending it to two different locations, it makes far more sense putting factories in those locations. So you, you'd set up factories hopefully where there, where there's a more holistic solution. So you'd put it as, as mentioned before in a, in a growth point area, where you then bring, you then bring the, bring the factory in, we put it in into stainless steel containers or stainer containers that have been, have been fitted out with, with stainless steel walls and floors and ceiling, et cetera. And then you would have the one, the one area at the beginning of the, of the, the production cycle that would be where your mills, so you, you'd taken stock from the local farmers, you then add value to it in the factory by putting it into, into these tubes. And then you'd sell it to the community on the other side. So you'd, you'd be able or sell it to, to neighboring growth centers or neighboring towns, et cetera. So that way you'd, you'd be incorporating all facets of the community. So the farmer would be involved, employment would be involved, sales would be involved. You'd have different people having different businesses.

Vance Crowe [01:26:47] I mean, this is why capitalism is what it is, right? It's, it's, it's not just the person that came up with the idea that gets a benefit. If you start selling something people want there, it just grows and grows and grows Absolutely. The number of people that can benefit and, and be in a better position because of it. Yeah.

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:03] So that's, so that's, that's what we're doing. But yeah, it is like anything, it's, it's been a long road. Right? One never expected it to, to take as long as it has because it's the r and d.

Vance Crowe [01:27:11] How long have you been working on this? About

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:13] Two years.

Vance Crowe [01:27:13] Wow.

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:14] But our r and d is a, is a, is a something. How do you measure it? You know, you just, you've got, you've gotta carry on going till it's right.

Vance Crowe [01:27:21] Yeah, that's right.

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:22] Initially I did this in, in with mechanical gears, which would be the, the most common sensical way of doing it. But as, as a maze meal cools and it stiffens to get it through the tubes is very, very difficult. So we, we, we, all we did was destroy, destroy. I mean, it would be like trying to

Vance Crowe [01:27:41] Get sand to wet, sand to move through through it too,

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:45] As a like, concrete.

Vance Crowe [01:27:46] I hadn't even thought about that. That is engineering challenge. So did you have engineers that you worked with to do this? Or was it you?

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:52] Oh, no, we, we did, we did for sure. But initially we had foot 45 degree turns Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:27:57] In

Lawrence Mattock [01:27:57] The stainless steel tubing because it, you know, that's how you kind of buy the tubes and then you fit them together and, you know, because you're obviously trying to do this as, as

Vance Crowe [01:28:04] Much standardized as you can.

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:06] Absolutely. 'cause you, you don't have this never ending budget. And at 45 all week, the sprockets were just she teeth,

Vance Crowe [01:28:14] You

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:14] Know, literally was,

Vance Crowe [01:28:15] It was that

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:15] Bad. So we took the angles as many of the angles out as we could. So we reduced the 45 degree angles to more like 30 degree angles. So just it, it extended it slightly, but it was just the, the angles were softer. And then in, in the bottom of the, of the pots that fed the tube, fed the pipe at the bottom, sorry, this might not sound too clear, but fed the pipe at the bottom, we put

Vance Crowe [01:28:37] A, if you have a funnel and there's a cone at the bottom of it,

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:39] We put, we put a cone in there. So it wasn't a, a flat surface.

Vance Crowe [01:28:42] We

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:43] Put a cone down to just to try and angle the angle the, anyway, all, all of these things worked and we changed it from a, from a mechanical system to a pneumatic system. That's why when you heard the, the factory working, all you could hear was

Vance Crowe [01:28:54] A clipping

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:55] Machine. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:28:55] That's right. Yes. You

Lawrence Mattock [01:28:56] Could hear no other, other noise in the background. So with a pneumatic system or basically working on air, the, the, the pistons that are pushing the, the two ingredients down the relish and the, and the, and the starch that are pushing them down are now working on, on air pressure through the, through the softer bends, which then, which then alleviated the problem. But a long process not, there's not something that happens in five minutes. For sure.

Vance Crowe [01:29:21] And have you had, is this your first, like,

Lawrence Mattock [01:29:24] Full

Vance Crowe [01:29:24] Business started from the ground on,

Lawrence Mattock [01:29:26] On your own? Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:29:28] Wow.

Lawrence Mattock [01:29:28] Yeah. Yeah. I mean it, because it was, it was a product that was in my head. The machine, the product, the specifications, all the things that had had to achieve have been in my head for all of these years. Wow. So it was me regurgitating this and getting other people to try and see what, what i, what I'm seeing. And

Vance Crowe [01:29:47] You,

Lawrence Mattock [01:29:47] You also expect that everyone is gonna see the product the way you see it the first time, which of course doesn't happen. So, you know, you come up, you come up with, with, with hurdles that you never thought that you'd come up with. But listen, it's worth it. And, and everyone kind of learns, you know, well, I

Vance Crowe [01:30:06] Guarantee you, if you run into a Peace Corps volunteer that has ever lived in Kenya

Lawrence Mattock [01:30:11] Or

Vance Crowe [01:30:11] Tanzania or Uganda, they would all agree with me that this is a very interesting and exciting idea. Thank you. Because they could all see it. We, if you've, if you've lived in the countryside, you know, I, I mean I am stunned at how great, well, that's gonna do it for this week's interview. Thank you so much to Lawrence Mattock for stopping by. The way that I met Lawrence was through my good friend and former colleague, Val Bayes. Val and I have worked together for several years and become very close friends. You might recognize her name from another guest that I had on maybe 10 weeks ago. Her father is Bob Bayes, the St. Louis County police detective. That was one of the first breakout episodes that the podcast ever had. So I'm very excited because she's Maring marrying Lawrence's son, and I'm very happy for her. If you wanna see somebody that's pretty interesting on Twitter, you can do no better than v Bayes.

Vance Crowe [01:31:45] And I hope you do head over to follow her. That's V-B-A-Y-E-S. Check her out on Twitter and let her know that you caught her name on the Vance Crow podcast. That's gonna do it for me this week. Make sure you tune in on Friday for one of those bonus episodes where we talk about communication skills that can help you become a tangibly better communicator. Thanks so much for stopping by and we'll see you next week.