O.T

Investor by profession, debater by passion and a Gooner for fun. Hates duplicity and self-anointed smarts.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@drDendere We should move away from Let's build smaller schools closer to people's homes instead of big ones, and rethink our city plans.

[O.T @tambo142253]

We do not need the House of Lords to rescue Zimbabwe. Our future will be determined by Zimbabweans themselves, not by appeals to foreign patronage. The sooner you grasp that reality, the better. You need to read more. Knowledge has a way of curing the illusion that foreign institutions are the answer to a nation's problems

[O.T @tambo142253]

Every question of national economic survival is subordinated to the project of punishing ZANU-PF, even at the expense of the very citizens whose interests you claim to represent. Where, precisely, have the IMF and World Bank ever performed the role you're assigning them? Name two member states free of corruption or with unimpeachable governance. These institutions are currently financing Egypt under Sisi, Pakistan through repeated constitutional crises, and the DRC amid well-documented state capture — countries whose governance metrics are no better, and often worse, than Zimbabwe's.

Yet Zimbabweans alone must remain locked out until our politics is punished into a form acceptable to Coltart. Stop outsourcing of a domestic political struggle to foreign creditors and dressing it up as concern for citizens, while they carry the cost of a quarter-century of isolation. It's as unpatriotic as it is unserious.

[O.T @tambo142253]

Those bits and barbs have little to no bearing on cross-jurisdiction property price differentials. Sum every climate cost you listed and it's a rounding error.

The more telling factor here is the capitalised value of the economic opportunity around it. That UK house is priced for what it gives access to: high-wage jobs within commuting distance, top schools, infrastructure, resilient economy, global sporting events etc. Wages, amenities, and productivity get absorbed into the land price beneath them. It's why (partly) an identical structure costs 10x more in Surrey than Sunderland - same bricks, same climate, different access to income. If build cost set prices, that gap couldn't exist either.

Run the comparison with our homeland. $200k in Belvedere buys access to an economy of mostly informal employment, currency instability, and load-shedding. The UK house buys access to £60-100k+ salaried income within a 40-minute commute, borrowable at 4-5x income over 25 years. The price difference is vastly compensating for the present value of that earning power.

Move the same house from Harare to Guildford and it 6x's overnight without a brick changing. The structure is never the asset. The location's economy is.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@thaslickpastor I was bummed you left Adelaide last tour. We'll be waiting for you here.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@KuraChihota @Savheya_Happie Yeah, I had the same fight around 2016 over the same issue. I couldn't win the fight. Those things were meant for Japanese Grey cars that had no or invisible reflectors. The police on the ground had their own interpretation.

[O.T @tambo142253]

Imagination's super underrated, and nobody cashes in on it like Musk. Tesla's "full self-driving" has been "a year away" for ten years. Now he's hawking data centers in orbit for $1.8 trillion.

The sad thing is, a lot of passive institutional and retail money will soon be stuck with this stock whether they like it or not, thanks to Nasdaq and Russell easing their entry rules. It'll get even worse when Anthropic and OpenAI jump in.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@joseph_kalimbwe I am sure he meant it as a joke.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@drjaytee87 Oh my God. This brings back memories. But I look at my daughter now and sometimes I feel lucky to have had this childhood.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@DavidColtart MPs represent their constituents, not themselves. Voting by conscience is undemocratic; we need to know their votes! 🗳️ transparency.

[O.T @tambo142253]

I concur with your assessment. However, do you believe that appealing to former colonial powers is the most effective strategy for disengaging ourselves from contemporary forms of colonization? African solutions reside within Africa, and it is imperative that we overcome our reliance on external entities to resolve our challenges.

[O.T @tambo142253]

1.
I think you are raising an important conversation.

People have lost money. Some families were sold dreams that never materialised. That deserves to be said plainly.

But I think the flaw in your argument is that you are judging the decision purely by the outcome.
Bad outcome = bad decision.

And tied into that is another assumption I find too narrow: that the success of a property investment is measured by whether the owner eventually lived in it. That's a measurement for a house not an asset.

The right question is not only whether the investment worked. But whether the rationale made sense at the time.

2.
So let’s start with the rationale.
For many Zimbabweans in the early 2000s, building back home was not irrational.

Zimbabwe was collapsing, yes. But very few people believed the collapse would become semi-permanent. Recovery within a decade still looked plausible.

At the same time, many migrants abroad had no guaranteed permanence. Short visas. Employer-tied permits. Limited access to mortgage markets. No certainty they would still be allowed to remain five years later.

So where do you place long-term capital under those conditions?

3.
You build where ownership is unquestioned.
Where no immigration policy can suddenly reinterpret your future.

Where your right to belong is not conditional.

That was not just sentimentality. It was a rational response to uncertainty.

4.
The common mistake made by most at the time was not necessarily investing back home.
The mistake was often building without an investment mindset.

Many people were not thinking like investors but occupiers.
And honestly, I still see that mindset even among people buying houses in the diaspora today.

People stretch themselves financially for property without asking the hard investment questions: yield, liquidity, concentration risk, opportunity cost, or whether the asset actually improves their financial position.

The capital becomes emotional before it becomes financial.

So people buy houses, not necessarily assets.
That is where the lesson sits.

5.
Every allocation of capital still has to be assessed as an investment.
Not just: Do I love the country?
But: Is the asset attractive? Is the price right? Is the yield adequate? Is the risk being compensated? Is there a path to liquidity or capital growth?

That is the mindset shift.
And the newer diaspora money going into Zimbabwe seems much smarter now.

Its comparing rental yields, using property managers, checking occupancy assumptions, and treating Zimbabwe as part of a broader portfolio not a home. If its not attractive then why are we seeing the influx of Chinese into the residential market? And by the way the Diaspora money is not necessarily flowing into property. Its spread across sectors.

Zimbabwe is also the market many of us understand best: the suburbs, rental demand, informal economy, politics, risks, and dysfunction.

That knowledge has value when paired with discipline.

Add to that the arbitrage pportunity: earn in stronger currencies, borrow where capital is cheaper, and invest where assets are distressed but yields remain attractive.

That does not remove the risk.

It simply makes the opportunity worth analysing properly.

6
My view is simple: dont be a prisoner of the recent past. The easiest mistake in distressed markets is linear thinking — assuming today’s conditions extend forever.

If the numbers stack up, there is nothing inherently wrong with investing in Zimbabwe.

For anyone who can look past the emotion, it is one of the most asymmetric opportunities available to diaspora capital.

The market is still formative. That means messy, risky, and inefficient.

But it also means mispriced assets, hard-currency cash flows, weak competition, and room for disciplined capital to compound.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@baba_nyenyedzi Is it a random facts Friday? Zambia is twice the size of Zim, and anyone who knows copper mining ops wouldn't even see this as a meaningful stat.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@DavidColtart How does changing names stop us from offering quality education. You're hardly a neutral voice here - those colonial names belong to your ancestors, who oppressed millions of ours.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@WendyMadzura Great job! We should really invest more in teaching farmers about the science of farming. If done right, farming can totally kickstart development in our rural areas.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@Savheya_Happie I'll comment in a year. I learned a vital lesson about Zvigananda's workmanship.

[O.T @tambo142253]

You're absolutely right. Most people don't appreciate how low we had fallen. It's the direction of travel that matters. Which is why I celebrate every kilometre of new road, every renovated hospital, every restored street light. A $1m factory launched. Lithium sulphate exported- even though its still an intermediate. Imperfect? Yes. Progress? Absolutely.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@advocatemahere Sad!

[O.T @tambo142253]

Not an African virus. A global disease. Orban did it. Erdogan did it. Putin built a whole constitutional architecture around it. Xi scrapped the two-term limit entirely. Lukashenko has been in power since 1994. The common denominator is weak institutions which produces incumbent culculus.

[O.T @tambo142253]

@Gareth_00m Chill out, boss, it's state-owned. Just Google how many things are named after Trump since he took office. This isn't a permanent portrait. It can be taken down once he's gone.