Why land expropriation panic is ridiculous

If you genuinely fear you’re going to wake up one morning and find panga-wielding mobs marching through your rundown suburb to take your shitty little house and toss you and your unpalatable family into the potholed street, you should just set fire to it right now and emigrate.

Go and splash about in the shallow end of Australia’s gene pool. We have enough stupid people. Have you even read the expropriation Bill? Of course not. Nor have I. But I’m almost certain it doesn’t provide for the wholesale snatching of family homes in Sandhurst, Camps Bay or Durban North.

The seizing of houses is a difficult matter. It isn’t just one of your holiday games. It’s hot and heavy work. Have you seen what white people’s garages look like? Years of accumulated junk that is of no use to anyone. You couldn’t even donate it to the SPCA. And you’d have to be even more unhinged to want to expropriate farmland. Cash-in-transit heists are easier than farming.

And way more lucrative. I wouldn’t want to be a farmer if you gave me free land. I could probably work out how to drive a tractor but I wouldn’t use it for much more than going down to the bottle store on a Friday.

I know nothing about farming because I don’t move in crop circles or have any truck with livestock, but I suspect a farmer’s life isn’t easy. The waking up before midday alone would kill me. And there’s always something about to give birth, usually the wife. On the plus side, you can play your music as loud as you like and have as many dogs and guns as you want.

Wanting to learn more about what makes farmers tick without actually having to talk to one, I once bought a copy of Farmer’s Weekly. I found it under my bed last week.

ALSO READ: Will the Expropriation Act destroy the GNU?

There are two cows on the cover with yellow tags clipped to their ears. Something indecipherable is written on the tags. Probably their names. If I was a farmer I’d give all my animals names. How else would they know when to come for supper? And when they get up on the furniture, you’d need a name to shout at them.

The headline on the cover screams, “BEEF PRODUCTION”. The subhead reads, “Get to know your profit drivers!” I don’t know what this means but it left me feeling disinclined to become a farmer.

“Get to know your cows!” would have been better. Of course, the story would then have to be about getting to know them on a personal level. Their likes and dislikes. What turns them on (probably not the milking machine). Their hopes and dreams. Where they see themselves in the next five minutes (cows don’t understand the concept of years).

Another teaser reads, “Expropriation Without Compensation”.

It’s a pity there wasn’t a subhead saying: “I’ll give you my land when you take it from my cold, dead hooves.” This wouldn’t really make sense because those cover cows, as glamorous as they might be, are quite likely by now less than the sum of their shrink-wrapped parts. I don’t eat much red meat so I can look them in the eye and say: “It wasn’t me, girls.”

Inside, there’s a workshop on offer on how to start a poultry business. Beyond getting some chickens, I don’t know what else you’d need to know. I’d be interested in the Growing Mushrooms at Home workshop. Where I live there’s a small but very vocal market for liberty cap mushrooms. Well, they’re vocal until the psilocybin kicks in. Then they’re just a happy, smiley pain in the arse.

ALSO READ: Expropriation Bill strains ANC and DA’s GNU alliance

There’s a “From Our Archives” page featuring a nostalgic journey into the distant past – 1990 – that starts: “The common housefly remains a significant problem in South Africa …” It wasn’t long after that when flies were ousted from their position by the common housebreaker.

There’s a piece on South Africa being slow to expand avocado orchards despite global demand outstripping supply. Apparently it’s due to a lack of breeding stock. The avos are shagging? It warned that “consumer resistance would be encountered” if prices became too high. They already have.

It’s time to join the Avocado Resistance Movement. We march on Woolworths at the next full moon.

A game farmer recommends paying up to R5 million for a 48- inch buffalo bull “to service the hunting market”. If I had R5 million I’d sooner buy a house than a buffalo, no matter how many hunters he services with that four-foot willy of his.

On the social page there’s a picture of four white men from Monsanto South Africa holding long-service awards. One of them is the Roundup product manager. Roundup is the brand name for a yummy chemical called glyphosate. Police helicopters in the Eastern Cape regularly spray it on marijuana plants and anyone who might be near one. The World Health Organisation has labelled it a “probable carcinogen”.

An article sponsored by the red meat industry says: “The increase in the value of livestock due to the drought means that it is now more profitable than ever to be a stock thief.” My first thought was, “Get in now!”

ALSO READ: ‘They can take all property’: SA divided over new Expropriation Bill

It’s a mistake to tell South Africans about things that have never been more profitable. It just makes us want to finish up our beer and go out and do it. Or better still, pay someone else to do it.

And there’s a feature titled: “When alcohol disrupts the working day.” Farmers work hard and drink hard. It goes with the turf. But apparently it’s a problem when you can’t get out of bed and hundreds of pregnant sheep are outside your door waiting for you to declare the lambing season open.

There’s a subheading that says: “How to act when an employee is under the influence.” Personally, I’d perform a Monty Python sketch. If you have a drunk worker, it’s better to entertain than antagonise him. Maybe even keep him drunk. It’s hard to do a farm murder if you’re legless and laughing.

I came across a snippet called: “Points to consider when selecting a bull.”

They are almost identical to the points a woman should consider when selecting a man. Right, that’s enough about farming.