From Zimbabwe terror to Radisson success in Birmingham for Rolando Moura

Nov 6 2009 Business Profile, Birmingham Post

Tom Fleming talks to a businessman who braved some terrifying conditions in Zimbabwe as a youth before moving to Birmingham to make a success of himself.

The most terrifying moment of Rolando Moura’s life came when his open-top jeep was surrounded by a braying mob. Barely out of school, Rolando was on his way to work at his father’s car dealership business in downtown Harare when he drove into a full-scale riot.

He escaped only by driving at top speed through the missile-throwing marauders as they closed in on all sides.

The harrowing experience convinced Rolando it was time to leave his homeland of Zimbabwe to seek a better – and safer – future in the UK.

Little more than a decade later, the 30-year-old has just landed his first financial controller’s post with an international hotel chain. He took up the position at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Birmingham, at the beginning of September.

“When I was working for my dad, I was caught up in a couple of riots,” he recalls. “This particular day, my father phoned me at home to tell me not to come into work because there was rioting on the streets, but I went anyway. I drove along streets that were deserted, but at an intersection I saw a bus on fire. I panicked and turned left, but then I saw a mob blocking the road and throwing stones.

"I swung the jeep around only to be confronted by another mob coming towards me from the opposite direction. There was no time to think – these things happen so quickly – but I knew that if I stopped I’d be dead. So I kept my foot on the accelerator and drove through the rioters. The jeep sustained some damage, though.

“My father’s business was targeted, too. He had boarded up the windows to stop people getting in, but the building was damaged. At least we survived. But you can’t let your life stop and it was then that I decided I wasn’t going to stay in Zimbabwe.”

The riot – prompted by lack of food and pay – brought to a violent end the rosy, privileged lifestyle Rolando had enjoyed as a child. Born to a Portuguese father and Zimbabwean mother, he grew up in a country that was still relatively peaceful, despite Robert Mugabe’s despotic rule.

“I had a fantastic life growing up,” he remembers. “I had a great education at a multi-national, co-ed school; I was very sporty and quite academic. Things started to get bad – and very quickly – in Zimbabwe when I was about 15 and doing my GCSEs. The Zimbabwean dollar started losing value and it became harder to get basic commodities.

"We had power cuts every week, then water cuts and then no fuel: sometimes we would go for two days without any running water and weeks without fuel. There came a point where I learned that you have to do everything in your power to maintain a normal life, such as buying devices to help save electricity, saving water when it was running and queuing every weekend for petrol. That has instilled into me a survival instinct.”

The political upheaval in Zimbabwe opened Rolando’s eyes to the fact that there was a life outside Africa – and that it was a life he wanted.

“Growing up in Zimbabwe, I didn’t know anything about the outside world; I thought Africa was the world.”

So, at the age of 19, he packed his bags and headed for Heathrow.

“My father had built up his car dealership business from scratch and it was quite successful,” he says. “He wanted me to take over the business, but I didn’t think I’d earned the position of director. I’d been to the UK a year before I came here permanently and I could see the opportunity to prove to myself and my dad that I could make it my way rather than being fed a silver spoon.

"When I left Zimbabwe, I didn’t ask for anything: I arrived in England with the clothes I was wearing and £110 I’d saved up through working for my dad. It was a massive shock to the system to move to the UK, yet there was a sense of aiming for the top, which my upbringing had taught me. It’s taken me a long time but what I’ve done has been on my own merit.”

Once in England, Rolando decided he had two choices, based on his A-Level results – to become an accountant or an architect.