Over the moon, but …

Weekend postcard from Harare

Potential travellers to London are over the moon. The national airline has resumed direct flights there for the first time in 14 years.

A Spanish air carrier, charter specialists Plus Ultra, is providing an Airbus A330, pilots, flight and maintenance crews and insurance to bankrupt  Air Zimbabwe.

Optimists believe it will run smoothly for the next 12 months or so as laid out in the initial Spanish deal. Pessimists think it will all come down with a bump and moon-struck London goers might yet be disappointed. (left: the subtle new livery and the unsubtle old.)

It is to fly non-stop to London Gatwick and back three times a week. It will sidestep long standing bans from European airspace for non-payment of landing fees, equipment repairs and refuelling. The Brits impounded an Air Zim Boeing 767 in 2011.

The AZ livery on the Spanish Airbus has been toned down, nothing close to the usual vivid colours of the national flag carrier, presumably to make the London flights less less conspicuous to those who might remember the airline’s dismal history of decline.

But here lies the rub. Plus Ultra is embroiled in scandals of its own. It received a US$55 million rescue package from the Spanish government during the Covid pandemic. The payout was surrounded by accusations of money laundering and political influence peddling.

Corruption charges remain against a prominent Spanish politician, former prime minister Jose Zapatero, and his associates in aviation.

The state owned Air Zim has a lengthy record of mismanagement, corruption and sleaze. Birds of a feather flock together, some are saying.

Harare bigwigs were on the inaugural flight last week and there is plenty of back slapping and mutual congratulations going around. Passengers were given free Air Zim branded Panama-style hats.

The restored London link is priced competitively at US$495 one way, $900 return, assuming UK visas are granted under current international migration paranoia.

It has no in-flight entertainment for the 10-hour journey but passengers can log in to a limited airborne intranet service on personal phones and tablets. Another drawback is that Air Zim is responsible for the sales of tickets and problems have arisen with electronic bookings.  Apart from bigwig freebies, the 300-seat Airbus has travelled about half full.

For the last decade local travellers went circuitously and more expensively through Joburg, Dubai, Addis Ababa or Kigali in Rwanda to reach Europe.

As of now, Air Zim has seven aircraft, four are permanently grounded and two types – a twin prop ATR 42 and an aging Boeing 737 –  are used on erratic domestic and regional routes. At independence in 1980 it inherited 18 planes.

This whole saga is symptomatic of the deterioration in standards of governance and transparency across the board. Full details of the Spanish deal and its finances, like who gets their hands on the money, have not been made public.

(On a lighter note: In happier times the national airline was nicknamed Air Zimbaby because of the preponderance staff pregnancies and complaints that the enlarged hostesses’ hips were bumping into aisle-seated passengers’ elbows, spilling drinks and food into their laps.)

Intriguingly, the top political fat cats have private jets for their travels. Wicknell Chivayo has just acquired a US$35 million Gulfstream G550. Millionaire Chivayo, known for notorious wheeling and dealing, has invited self-exiled musician Thomas ‘Mukanya’ Mapfumo to perform at his 44th birthday party in Harare in November and has offered to pay him US$1.5 million for the gig.

Mapfumo, now 80, the icon of revolutionary ‘chimurenga’ songs on liberation from oppression, got himself  banned from state radio and left the country after composing songs such as this 1990 classic ‘Corruption’ that millions of fans loved but the government saw as unwelcome and threatening.

It remains to be seen whether Mukanya will return home for Chivayo, who is accused of being a symbol of the very corruption the song deplores. The state media and individual recipients of gifts from Chivayo of top-of-range cars and huge piles of cash describe him a kind-hearted philanthropist.