I am scared

I don’t know whether I should publish this, since it is probably controversial and definitely political – but I am scared. For the first time since Apartheid has been abolished – I am truly scared.

Yesterday the National Assembly voted in favour of the motion allowing expropriation of land WITHOUT compensation. This is the second major action taken by our new president to ‘solve’ the past failure of our government. First: the tax coffers were empty since all incoming funds leaked out through corruption. Instead of plugging the leaks, taking action against the cause of the problem – he increases VAT and the petrol price! He is increasing the flow of income into a leaking barrel! As a result, everyone currently struggling to make ends meet will no longer be able to survive! The cost of everything – bread, milk, rice, maize, everything – will go up.

Now, with this motion – which is deliberately vague – nobody is safe in any home anymore! The lazy thinker may assume that this motion applies only to farmland, and only to the land itself – in reality, however, it applies to ALL land! Residential, Industrial, Agricultural – all land. And many people will interpret it to mean they can now occupy any ‘land’ they desire and get it.

The constitution will be amended. It will become unjust. Again, rather than taking action against the problem, he simply removed ‘compensation’ from the process.

All he is doing is to ‘refill’ the state coffers for his administration to fill their pockets.

Plus, with this second action, he has surely regained the faith of the majority of ex-ANC voters, he will surely get an even higher majority vote in the next election – allowing the ANC to change laws on a whim. And, as I expected all along, Julius Malema has brought his party back to the ANC.

The impact on agriculture and therefore the economy are self-evident: The Rand has already weakened and will continue to fall. Even more agricultural land will be occupied by unskilled people – who either have no intention or no ability to grow even enough food to sustain themselves, let alone a surplus to sell. All this in the middle of a drought, when only the most skilled farmers even manage to survive. Most have had to take loans – with the land serving as collateral … with one stroke that debt is unpayable. Nobody will be able to use their land as collateral for a loan again – no business, no home-owner. Nobody.

And then, of course, sooner or later the country will run out of food.

Nobody wants to farm anymore. Everybody wants a white-collar high-income low-effort job. In South Africa, farming is already THE most dangerous way to make a living. It is hard work. Now, if everyone who has spent generations making land arable is set to loose all that work and input – with this motion passed, not one farmer will want to add any ‘value’ to existing land.

Simple example: my own little garden. I have spent hours and hours removing parasitic weeds and poured a ton of compost, fertilizer and good soil into my beds and the lawn. All of that is not considered compensable. It is considered part of the ‘natural land’ – to be expropriated at will.

And so: I am scared. I’ve had nightmares all night long, weird dreams about a stole thread showing the future, about cats returning to ancestral land, Shadow taking over Rose’s home … weirdly frightening scenarios.

But what to do? Leave South Africa? And go where? Europe is coming apart like everywhere else – although the worst impact will probably be stayed for another decade, perhaps two. America? Donald Trump – need I say more? A country, where a school child is receiving death threats for speaking his mind after surviving a school shooting? The mental and physical decay of our civilization is world-wide. Laws no longer relate to justice – money rules. Human lives no longer hold value. I would bet that most people would much rather hang an innocent man than risk a guilty one go free.

At least, that is my opinion. But I am only a simple secretary – I am neither politician, nor financier nor philosopher.

Sounds depressing, I know. I’m trying to find a positive note to lift this post – but right now, I can not.