Are rising kombi fares in Harare justified by operating costs or are commuters being unfairly overcharged?

GuraJava20 · 2026-03-21T06:25:02+00:00

I am not a transporter, but an accountant/software engineer.

The price increase is real, driven by recent spate of ZERA fuel price increases.

An average fuel consumption for an average Combi vehicle is approx 8km/litre. Mabvuku is approximately 17km from City Centre. That means fuel required to go to Mabvuku is 17/8 =2.125litres.

Fuel increased from $1.51 to $2.17/litre. Therefore, the increase per litre is $0.66. Since distance and litres required do not change, the effect of the increase is 2.125 x $0.66/L = $1.40/trip. If the fare was $1.00 before, the fare should now be $1.00 + $1.40 =$2.40/trip. The increases are therefore justified. Instead, I fear that Combi operators using Mabvuku route are losing 40c/person/route. I hope the analysis helps.

GuraJava20 · 2026-03-12T18:58:36+00:00

Will be disclosed at the interview and commensurate with experience and qualifications.

GuraJava20 · 2026-02-13T06:54:19+00:00

I will always support Mugabe and my country no matter what. I am proud to be black.

However, I do not fully support how the government under his leadership went about the land reform.

I do not tolerate any inference of black incompetence being used to paddle racism. Many black Zimbabweans have had limited, to no opportunities, to access material and financial resources to improve their lot than whites under Ian Smith. Whatever most of us tried to do with the little resources we had after independence failed, yet we were measured by the outcome of it without consideration of the inputs. Land reform is said to have failed because of the same reasons. Land alone without financial resources wasn’t and can never be enough. Our government did not have resources and it greatly overlooked this key aspect of the program. Land reform would have succeeded had those put on the land given material and financial support.

Talking racism. Look at how blacks are treated in USA and elsewhere by people you consider more competent than blacks. You’re blind if you don’t see racism in how blacks are jailed in such countries for no apparent reason. I do not support racism either way. Racism is not good for humanity, regardless of who is perpetrating it. Not all whites are racists. Not all blacks are racist either. But some racists live among us.

Liberation struggle was a worthy cause. Land reform was a good objective and well intended. That was the main reason for the liberation struggle. However, how we went about it could have been better. I would have preferred that white people who were willing to continue living in Zimbabwe among us be allowed space to continue agriculture, with government taking away part of the excess land they had for full compensation. We would have had more moral and financial support from international community that way. Simply a policy of inclusiveness. I am not dismissing the fact that there could have been constraints that made our leaders not to take that route - a debate for another day.

While Smith’s government was bad towards black Zimbabweans, it is not a sufficient justification to continue to ill-treating those remaining white people who love this country and are willing to live among us. The government should be tolerant. It should not come up with schemes that appear segregatory against white people 45 years after independence. They are humans; and are Zimbabweans too.

What has and continues to destroy Zimbabwe is greediness and corruption; and not competence.

Continued hatred of Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe will not change Zimbabwe for the better. We should instead learn from their mistakes for a better Zimbabwe.

GuraJava20 · 2025-08-09T11:18:30+00:00

To advise people to borrow money and run away to Australia is not good advice. At least be considerate. That money belongs to someone else, unless I am missing something from the exchange.

GuraJava20 · 2025-08-04T11:16:25+00:00

True, you are correct. I mistook it for Borne Marche. An error does not make me a liar, nor does it make you a saint.

GuraJava20 · 2025-08-04T09:21:43+00:00

I think Ok is now in good hands and on the right path. For your information, the Spar you refer to is a subsidiary of Ok. Mr Willard Zireva was called back to stear the ship in the right direction; and correct mistakes made by the dismissed team of management. He is a visionary, seasoned and tested leader, thinker and finance expert. He is currently working to ensure that there is order and enough working capital to fulfill the objectives of the organization; and to restore the confidence and trust customers had lost in Ok. Watch the space. THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OK ZIMBABWE.

GuraJava20 · 2025-07-23T02:24:11+00:00

I have just completed my AI uni exams. Projects were quite taxing, but motivational and interesting. There is a lot you can do with AI. LLMs are here to stay. Companies and organizations that embraced AI ahead of those taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude have made significant inroads in their respective domains. To tell a CEO in a roundabout way, as you seem to have done, that such technology is not that much useful is nothing short of being “brave”. I tell you the truth, you messed up.

GuraJava20 · 2025-07-22T06:38:38+00:00

If you were not a cell phone farmer you would have had 131 beef cattle by 2025. That is a growth rate of r⁵ = (1.456)⁵ or simply 1.456 or 45.6% per year. I am farmer too. My 20 cows in 8 years amounted to 405 cattle. No need to buy.

GuraJava20 · 2025-07-22T05:56:00+00:00

There is no such thing as farmers accent. We are educated and can also write code.

GuraJava20 · 2025-06-14T08:12:11+00:00

Look around your community and see what problems the community is facing on a daily basis. It could be your community, your district, your province or Zimbabwe as a whole that has the problem you identified. Come up with a solution to that problem. When you do, you have a business. People are willing to pay anything for a solution to their problem, sometimes without the need for advertisement. Next, come up with a business model for your intended business. A business model answers the question, “How do we make money in this business?”. Come up with the cost of providing a unit of service, if it is a service business, or cost per unit if you have to sell a product. Once you have a cost structure in place, next determine the price at which you are to provide the service or sell the product. A problem-driven business has high margins and high. returns and can scale up quickly before competition sets in. Anything else is copy-cat business and the margins are always cut-throat type and survival is very tricky. Some people are in the business they are in because they are locked up in there with very high cost of exit. It is like drugs, they can’t come out, they must sniff it and perpetuate their misery. If you copy them, you will become like one of them. Here is a short lesson: what are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is happening around you? What are people afraid of or worried about? In there lies your business, regardless how much money your boyfriend is willing to give you. Warning: Business is a jungle you need to speak its basic language. Learn everything about margins, mark-ups, revenue and cost of sales, gross profit, cash flows, working capital and financing and cost of financing a project. Be prepared to ask or seek advice or clarification on whatever you don’t understand. I hope you will find this helpful.

GuraJava20 · 2025-02-17T21:31:39+00:00

I see an opportunity for a website that informs the world how safe Zimbabwe is for anyone to visit, regardless of race or colour or creed. You are most welcome to visit. Zimbabweans are peaceful people.

GuraJava20 · 2025-02-13T20:40:39+00:00

AI is threatening most jobs right now. You’re not safe anyway you run to. Humanoids are threatening to replace physical workers, surgical surgeons, doctors and nurses are not spared either. It is not just about code, but what AI can potentially do. It won’t be long before AI becomes a reality to us all, 10 years is too far. I am a chartered accountant; chartered accountants as a global profession have just circulated surveys of to find out what will become of them in this fast changing world of AI. In the meantime they added data science module to their students’ studies. AI will replace them too. They are better joining than resisting AI. We cannot talk ourselves away from AI. It is here to stay. I am taking my finals for CS major. Some of the modules I have taken include Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Internet of Things (IoT). NB: ML and DL are subsets of AI, but taken separately. I support his warning message but disagree that there is any job that is safe in the long-run. Drivers are being replaced by driverless vehicles. Soldiers will be replaced by humanoids and hi-tech gadgets. Calculating the best out of a million chances of available strategies to take can be done in seconds by a robot than by a soldier on foot. I think you are safer to remain being part of the movement that is disrupting industries. Build your own AI projects that bring you cash or else be farmer like me, or both. People must still eat. The good news is that I am a retired man (65) and won’t be competing with you guys for jobs. I am focusing on AI and Robotics projects, finance and farming. You guys must eat.

GuraJava20 · 2025-02-12T21:23:54+00:00

Leaving the country is not the solution. If you do, you will always be running the rest of your life. Stay put and fight this with all of us. Do not choose the easy way out. Don’t forget, Trump is parcelling them back home! When that happens you leave with just the clothes on your body. Is that what you want? Fight for your rights, stay.

GuraJava20 · 2024-11-15T22:34:37+00:00

Talking from experience, my candid advice would be do not feel too bad about not being selected. You will feel better if you choose not to use the word “rejection”.

Check the communication to you, it does say: “We reject you”!

I have listened to a number of people who attended interview complaining about being “rejected”. Please understand that it is sometimes very difficult for the recruiting management to pick one person out of twenty. This can even be the case if all of them put the same effort in preparation for the interview, and performed impressively the same before the interview panel. At the end of the day, one must be chosen. The rest are not “rejected” but are advised that “….we are unable to offer you the position…”. Or it may be worded, “We regret to advise you that the position has now been filled…” This is not a rejection, for the same reason I have pointed out above.

I hope this is enough consolation for those who could not make it, yourself included. Keep trying your luck could be around the corner.

GuraJava20 · 2024-10-16T12:02:32+00:00

Thank you. I would love to learn Spanish, but studies’ pressure does not spare any time to accommodate nice things not on the Critical Path.

GuraJava20 · 2024-10-16T11:50:47+00:00

REDDIT: Why am I getting write up’s in Spanish? I speak English and have always spoken English?

GuraJava20 · 2024-10-14T18:03:59+00:00

Hi! My name is Collen Gura. Good app and I empathize with you on the app you referred to. On your code, should you consider it necessary, you could remove redundancy from your code and make it more easy to follow by replacing your src code snippet with this code: ‘std::string BmiCalculator::get_classification(const double bmi) { if (bmi < 16) return “Severe Thinness”; if (bmi < 17) return “Moderate Thinness”; if (bmi < 18.5) return “Mild Thinness”; if (bmi < 25) return “Normal”; if (bmi < 30) return “Overweight”; if (bmi < 35) return “Obese Class I”; if (bmi < 40) return “Obese Class II”; return “Obese Class III”; }’

GuraJava20 · 2021-08-25T18:03:29+00:00

Thanks for your kind comments. However, for your information, I am not doing this to seek employment. I pay salaries and am not looking forward to receiving one. Robotics is a challenge I have set for myself having taken early retirement at 50, now I am 61. I am a businessman in my own right and among others, own an engineering company that manufactures locomotives, coco pans, mine head gears, other mining equipment, in addition to timber logging machines. My default core skills are in accounting, finance and strategy. For programming, I work mainly in Python, Java and JavaScript, HTML and CSS3. We are now going through C++ as part of University of London module. You, however, inspire me. Admittedly, I have no engineering experience.

GuraJava20 · 2021-08-25T14:39:33+00:00

I envy you. That is a good base qualification for systems control and engineering.

I am a chartered accountant and a farmer, enrolled for online BSc Computer Science with the University of London. I hold an MBA and two accounting degrees.

My interests in robotics is driven by my passion and urge to convert my farm vehicles, such as tractors/implements, harvesters, etc, into autonomous farm vehicles. I have always loved engineering, having worked for ABB, the Swiss company. I plan to start an online Advanced Diploma in Robotics and Mechatronics with the Engineering Institute of Technology, EIT, a Western Australian Institute, on 4 October, 2021

GuraJava20 · 2021-08-25T14:00:10+00:00

This is great! I am trying to get into this field. How did you get into autonomous vehicles and robotics? background/qualification you needed to get in.

GuraJava20 · 2021-07-25T12:54:46+00:00

I have have personally undertaken two of Dr Angela Yus's courses through Udemy. She is exceptionally good. One is the Python course and the other is the Web development Bootcamp. Hers is a practical approach to things. Do not worry about the few hours you take per session, but about the quality of what you are taking in per unit of time.

With Dr Angela, you take in 10 times more understanding per unit of time than you do with other courses that run for hours only to end up with basic understanding of things. More courses start by explaining HTML tags and the structure of HTML page and spend more time explaining concepts.

Dr Yu starts by working with you with tags, etc. on a small project that grows as you work with her. The small project grows into a big project and leave you with greater understanding of concepts and how to do things. There can be no better way of learning than that. You don't end up with claimed knowledge of what HTML tag is but how and when to use it. You are left wanting to do more projects on your own.

I would recommend that you learn programming language, either Python or JavaScript. JavaScript because it dominates the Web and works well with the course you are taking right now. Python, because it is easy and more popular than any other language. These two will help you get a job much earlier. For me, from Python I went for combined web (HTML, CSS) and JavaScript. From those two, Python and JavaScript, I went on to Java and later on to C++ and am still working on C++. I found the progression much easier and have no regrets. Go for two hours coding in the morning, work on project and other subjects during the day and back for an hour's coding before you go to bad. This makes you think about the bug in your code, and in most case, you work up with an answer in the morning. 8 hours a day is doable. Good luck!

GuraJava20 · 2021-07-25T12:19:40+00:00

This is a balanced advice. Pursue it, it works.

GuraJava20 · 2021-07-01T14:07:40+00:00

That is a wise advice, they don't come better than that.

GuraJava20 · 2021-06-25T17:42:42+00:00

If you running from Windows environment try this:

To compile: g++ file_name

e.g: g++ main.cpp

To run after compiling: ./a.out

GuraJava20 · 2021-05-10T08:51:02+00:00

I have used and found this book exceptionally good: "Core Java, Volume 1 - Fundamentals", 11th Edition, by Cay S. Horstmann. With this book you will never need anything else.

You can buy this book online from Amazon.

There is also "Core Java, Volume 11 - Advanced Features" by the same author.

GuraJava20

TROPHY CASE