Gauteng Smallholder Gauteng Smallholder August 2017 | Page 3

GAUTENG COMMENT, by Pete Bower MAGAZINE HOW TO MAKE YOUR PLOT PROFITABLE Vol 18 No 8 August 2017 PUBLISHED BY Bowford Publications (Pty) Ltd Established 1985 (Reg No 2004/019727/07) PO Box 14648, Bredell 1623 Tel: [phone] or 076 176-7392 Fax: [phone] website: www.sasmallholder.co.za facebook.com/gautengsmallholder PUBLISHER & EDITOR Pete Bower email: [email protected] RESEARCH EDITOR Vanessa Bower email: [email protected] GRAPHIC DESIGNER Mark Hageman email: [email protected] ADVERTISEMENT SALES Pete Bower email: [email protected] ADVERTISING RATES ( All Rates Full C o l ou r , incl VAT ) Full Page - R7480 Half Page - R 4 620 Quarter P - R2570 1/8 page - R1360 Smaller sizes: R 104 per col cm (Minimum size - 4 col cm) ( Black only: colour rate less 2 0% ) Booking discounts Payment lumpsum in advance. Not applicable to SuperSmalls. 3 insertions - less 10% 6 insertions - less 15% (other payment and discount options are available) Circulation More than 1 9 000 copies * distributed free through outlets in the Agricultural Smallholding settlements of Gauteng and adjoining provinces. * excluding on-line readers. By Mail To receive the Smallholder by mail subscribe for only R210 per year. See coupon in this edition. Online http://www.sasmallholder.co.za Copyright Title and contents protected by copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher. Disclaimer While every care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the information in this journal, neither the Editor nor the Publisher can be held responsible for damages or consequences of any errors or omissions. The Publisher does not stand warranty for the performance of any article or service mentioned in this journal, whether in an advertisement or elsewhere. FRONT COVER An overload of cuteness: Inquisitive Colebrooke (Afr: Kolbroek) piglet bred by Sally Giebelmann of Zenzele Farm, Hartbeespoort Recipe for failure H ere's a recipe for failure: place a large mixing bowl on your kitchen table. Now line up your family and give each one ingredient for a cake. You take the flour, your spouse takes the eggs, a child the baking powder, another child the sugar, and so on. Now without showing them a recipe, tell them to add as much or as little of their ingredient as they think will be necessary. Then mix the ingredients well, and bake as normal. And then throw away the resultant blob or feed it to your chickens, because it sure as hell won't be fit for consumption. That's the problem with an unco-ordinated plan. If the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is up to, or if the two aren't working in a co-ordinated fashion, the result will never succeed. This should be as obvious as it is easy to remedy. Simply sit everybody down and tell them what you hope to achieve, and then encourage each participant to agree with the others what his or her role and function should be to achieve the goal. And so it should be in government. You want a better standard of living for your citizens? Or the ending of inequality? Or proper housing? Or decent education? Simply sit the relevant “role players” down and lay out the requirements for the solution and then work up a plan to achieve the solution. It is (or was) called “manage- ment by objective”. Of course applying scientific management principles to government ~ especially in present-day South Africa where the government's focus has become … errm … distracted by the Saxonwold Shebeen ~ is a bit like spreading Brylcreem on your morning toast: illogical and counterproductive. Because co-ordination of plans towards a common, satisfactory end-result is not the current government's strong point. Take the numbers involved in the food crisis (which we’re calling #SAFoodCrisis, outlined on page 12 of this edition). In a nutshell, it is impossible for a family of two low-paid workers and two children to feed itself a nutritionally-balanced and sustain- able diet, quite apart from being unable to pay rent, school fees, transport, medical costs etc. And that's quite apart from the fact that more than a quarter (and how much more is open to debate) of the labour force is idle, sitting on beer crates or curbstones, unemployed. So we live in a country where, if things continue as they are, the most vulnerable and marginalised members of our society are not able to feed themselves properly, quite apart from the fact that they will NEVER be able to lift themselves out of the poverty trap. But there's more: The government's solution (and cynics would say it's a vote buying scam) is to pump R10 billion a month down to these 17 million vulnerable and marginalised individuals in the form of small cash handouts called Social Grants. Cash, incidentally, that the government doesn't have, as a consequence of which the country's borrowings are increasing monthly to cover the shortfall. The equivalent would be you having to increase your overdraft each month to pay your kids' pocket money. Eventually your bank manager is going to put a stop to it. To be fair, the injection of R10 billion a month in cash into the economy has done a lot to cushion the effects of the recession as that money, with little exception, will be spent almost immediately on the necessities of life. And now there's still more: In an attempt to come up with an idea on land reform and redistribution which will be palatable and workable the Dept of Rural Development & Land Reform has devised the “One Household, One Hectare” policy proposal (“1HH1H”, as catchy a phrase as “White Monopoly Capital”). Under it, landless households are to be given one hectare each, on which to live and, presumably, grow the necessities of life. Contrary to how it may seem, I am sympathetic to the desire of previously dispos- sessed people regaining access to, and ownership of, land, but the 1HH1H idea will do nothing positive in this regard, however the land is acquired or distributed. In my Comment in the February edition this year I laid bare the ongoing devastating effects on displaced black communities, relegated to rural backwaters under the Bantustan policy of the Nationalist government. The 1HH1H idea is much the same, if not in conception, then at least in outcome. The more things change, the more they stay the same. SAY YOU SAW IT IN THE GAUTENG SMALLHOLDER