From the patio of the hotel closest to the Victoria Falls, the spray seems just over there, a short walk it seems, providing gin and tonic in the sun have not turned one’s head.
It is a gorgeous site, and the Herbert Baker-designed Victoria Falls Hotel is doing well for the Meikles brand as tourists return to Zimbabwe post the inclusive government in 2009.
It’s one of Africa’s top hotels, its shoe polish and crisp linen redolent of the colonial era. But the aura of the good life and of rebirth in Vic Falls is not as vibrant in the capital for Meikles.
There was shock, and then “whisperings” in Harare’s small business community when Lionel Dyck, a controversial former Rhodesian and Zimbabwe soldier, did his master’s bidding and sacked Bisset Chimhini, head of operations at Zimbabwe’s largest supermarket group, TM, part of the Meikles group.
Pick n Pay has a 49 percent shareholding in TM which has more than 50 supermarkets all over the country, and has four supermarkets of its own.
Few knew that Dyck, whose name is linked to several controversial post-independence military engagements, had returned to Zimbabwe from Cape Town where he was living for several years.
He was given a top job by his old friend, Meikles executive chairman John Moxon, who lives much of each year in Cape Town.
Dyck has contacts in the Zimbabwe security sector and was awarded a Silver Cross by the ruling Zanu-PF military post independence.
Dyck, who founded the successful de-mining company, Mine Tech, moved in at Moxon’s bidding and also sacked long-serving TM executive David Mills, who had declined to carry out Moxon’s orders to fire Chimhini.
He then also sacked two other executives on Moxon’s orders. Two months later Dyck sacked another executive, an accountant.
By this time, the coffee shop chatter went into overdrive as the Meikles brand is still so huge, even if its blue chip status is just a memory.
Pick n Pay has sent at least three senior managers to Harare to run the supermarket division for its partner, TM.
Chimhini’s case is before the labour court at present and may be finalised this week.
Moxon and his family, descendants of Scots settlers, Thomas Meikle, are the largest shareholders in Meikles with Old Mutual not far behind.
But there is more about the group which disturbs smaller shareholders and analysts.
The fate of more than R200 million that Meikles transferred to South Africa during Zimbabwe’s 2008 meltdown, purportedly for investment, is still unexplained.
Insiders say the Meikles cash was hit by currency fluctuations and poor investment.
FinX, a subscription-only investment publication in Zimbabwe, says that Moxon has also not paid back more than R100m he personally admits he owes Meikles. It says that some of this amount is blurred by what he claims the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), has owed the group for 18 years.
Moxon claims the sum owed by RBZ is approaching R1 billion. Others say he has allegedly doubled the amount owed to cover some other company funds no longer in Zimbabwe.
The RBZ has, according to Moxon, agreed to pay back the money it borrowed via so-called treasury bills.
But the central bank has no cash, its treasury bills are without value, and Zimbabwe cannot pay any of its foreign debts.
Professor Tony Hawkins, who was on the board of Zimbabwe’s central bank until earlier this year, said yesterday: “There is no market in those treasury bills at present.”
He said no banks would exchange RBZ treasury bills for cash, but suggested that at some time in the future, if the economy improved for example, they might have a value or some may want to buy them at a discounted rate.
A senior banking source in Harare said yesterday: “At present the treasury bills handed out by the RBZ are bits of paper.”
But Meikles’s treasury bills were deemed to earn interest at 2 percent, and would mature in two years.
The central bank owes various Zimbabwe companies and individuals $1.3bn (R14.3bn) and has no cash to pay its debt. The Zimbabwe (Debt Assumption) Bill, was tabled in parliament on June 13, 2014 so that the government could take over that debt.
But Zimbabwe has been unable to pay its foreign debt for more than a decade and is racking up further short-term loans monthly to pay civil service wages, according to insiders in the banking sector.
The Movement for Democratic Change MP, Eddie Cross, showed up at the Meikles AGM last Friday and warned shareholders they would never get value back for the cash owed by the central bank.
One financial columnist said anyone who believed that the treasury bills would hold any real value was living in “La La Land”.
Meikles shareholders are regularly told that the group benefits significantly from its Cape Grace hotel in Cape Town, but it was sold to a holding South African company (allegedly at below real value) in which Meikles has no shares but the directors are Moxon’s associates.
“The Cape Grace still dominates the website as a trophy Meikles business and the perception is that it is still controlled by Meikles. Nowhere does it state that Meikles does not own the Cape Grace,” sources told FnX last week.
Moxon is apparently directly involved in its day-to-day operations and boasts about its performance.
But it makes no difference to Meikles’s shareholders unless they are among the descendants of the Meikles founder who have shares in the shelf company which owns much of the hotel.
Insiders also say it has been impossible for any company to operate normally and openly as Zanu-PF wrecked the economy after 2000 and unprecedented hyper-inflation destroyed not only the currency but every company’s financial assets.
Zim dollar bank accounts were zeroed in February 2009. And Gideon Gono, the governor of the RBankZ, had withdrawn foreign currency earned from exports from many Zimbabwean companies, and even from individuals.
So at the time Moxon and his Meikles colleagues, along with other companies, would also say some of their actions were in defence against the onslaught of the Zanu-PF administration which had driven the country to the brink.
Moxon declined to comment about Meikles outside of the AGM and Dyck did not respond to an e-mail sent to him.
Meanwhile Meikles says it plans to raise about R250m from potential investors from Europe to finance its new gold operations in Matabeleland. - Independent Foreign Service