Be Aware Of Whom You Are Dealing With

During 2015, I hooked up with some guys in a venture which I thought  was a surefire means of making money,the money gurus always advise that  we have multiple streams of income in order to create wealth.

Be Aware Of You Are Dealing With

We used to go and buy anytime gift cards from South Africa for resale in Zimbabwe.One of the guys who was involved in the venture was a former student of mine ,so in my mind I was thinking what could go wrong right ?. I  Used my contacts to put  together some cash so that I could buy into the business.We hard a fruitful two or three months in  which we really worked very hard and the returns were quite pleasing. I never took the time to really investigate my partners.

The first signs of trouble was when the guy who ha d all the contacts and knew where the gift cards were bought in the Republic of South Africa went to buy cards and he came back having misused some of the proceeds to pay for his own expenses .We just verbally reprimanded him and proceeded to sell the cards that he had brought  with him.About two  months later the younger brother of my former student  ,who works and lives in South Africa came home and since we were planning to send someone down there to buy some more stock we thought it prudent to ask him to go and buy the stock for us then he would put it on one of the buses that ply the Joburg,Harare route.He never did what we asked for and holding him to account proved to be difficult as he changed his contact number and it was like money thrown down the drain.

Then in January 2016 ,the former student  indicated that was accompanying a friend of his who had come to Zimbabwe on business and he asked me for the three thousand rands which I was keeping ,this was a fresh injection of funds from my sister who wanted to buy into the card selling business .I had been keeping this money waiting for an opportunity to send one of the guys to go and buy some more stock.Two days after going to South Africa ,he came back without the  cards instead he had bought some stuff for a client of his and a water bottle to display water which had been purified in their water purification  plant.He promised that as soon as money from the water purification plant started coming in he would reimburse me the three thousand rands.

After having been sent from the pillar to the post several times  and finding out that the money was not forthcoming,  I finally resolved to approach the small claims court at Makoni  Magistrates’ court .I was not really sure how the case would pan out but I was convinced that the judiciary officer would be able to cut through the bull and get to the truth.I knew that I did not have to be a drama queen but just present my case as  emotionless as possible and be factual. Fortunately for  me the defendant ended up tripping himself up because he admitted that I had indeed given him the money but he had not misused it ,the clinker was when he asked for continuance of the matter so that he could produce customs declaration forms from home ,this was duly granted for the following week on the 30 th of November.Truth be told it was difficult for me to sleep on the night of the 29^th as my earlier bravado seemed to dissipate. On the morning of the case I woke up bathed and dressed,when I got to court I got some reassurance that the defendant was rattled since he could not come and greet me like the first time and he could not look me in the eye.We appeared before the court sometime before lunch and the matter was postponed for later in the day.We were asked to continue our case well after three pm,  after all the other  cases had been dealt with .Fortunately for me the defendant did not have any prove of having brought back any cards and I was able to pock holes in his defense when given a chance to do so by the magistrate.At the end he told us to come back the following Monday the 4^th of December for the judgement.When I went to the clerk of court’s office on the day there was no judgement,I had to endure two more trips to the court before   I got the judgement on the 12 th of December ,when I learnt that the defendant had been told to pay back the money including the costs of serving him the court papers.

What I ultimately learnt was that in business you cannot trust anyone .one has to do the background checks and any agreements have to be put down on paper and signatures appended. Things need to be above board.Also one needs to take matters up with the relevant authorities in case there are disputes.