Bond is back!

Sean Connery is James Bond. End of story. Moore was suave and witty and rates as my second best. Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan were just Heathcliffe and Remington Steele trying to reprise their former glory without changing character!

I have seen pictures and interviews with the new guy, but couldn't see him reviving my flailed interest in James Bond movies - especially with no Ian Flemming stories to back him up. [Okay, so it was based on a Flemming book - my bad]

Tonight my kids made me watch Casino Royal and I begrudgingly sat down and prepared for disappointment...

Well hello Mr Bond!!!

The opening scenes were fast paced and you could see this guy meant business. I was worried about the love scenes, but he pulled those off too. I was very pleasantly surprised. He is uber masculine and I love the fact that he works for a woman. This Bond needs a mother to clean up after him, not a man to order him around. Its good to finally have a bonkable James Bond again.

My kids also made me watch 300. Lots of to-die-for hunky bodies, men in skirts (so sexy) and Gerard Butler with his Scottish accent! Once my son had explained the comic book connection, I could really appreciate it. And the hot bodies didn't hurt either. I enjoyed it so much that I also watched all the special features. The storyline isn't mindblowing (the whole Spartan thing), but the way the movie was made, and the collaboration between the writer of the original comic book and the director make for some brilliant viewing. (Long sentence!)

I watched two really good movies this weekend thanks to my kids! I should listen to them more often...

Fear and Desperation

“… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Franklin D Roosevelt (1933)

Some of my fears:

My daughter’s safety living in the city and driving on the roads
My son’s future – what are his interests and what will he do after school?
Will he ever pass Afrikaans?
My mother’s death

Land claims
The mines taking our farm
The diesel price
The fertilizer price
Fertilizer, seed, chemical availability
Hail and frost
The future of farming

Zimbabwe’s future
South Africa’s future
The world’s future
Thabo Mbeki’s ineptitude

Alzheimers
Cancer
Snakes
My exams next month

That firing our biggest client last week is going to be a tough one to survive.

Henry David Thoreau said: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation...." (1854)

Fear leads to desperation. Its what we do with that desperation that determines the mark of the man.

Carpe Diem

It was a bad week, last week. I allowed myself to become really glum about life in South Africa.

The doom and gloom about electricity had reached a crescendo; a local man was shot (3 times!) and killed in his home for a measly cell phone; the media was consumed with black outs and violent crime; Kenya had let us all down. Even young, black South Africans were talking about leaving the continent, even if only for awhile.

I was scared for the first time in my country, scared about the future and scared about the present. I was pissed off at the gloating expats, with their smug “I told you so” comments. I was pissed off with the government for its inefficiency, and with all South Africans – black and white - for their continued racism, even after I had voted for its abolishment in 1992.

I don’t hold a foreign passport, nor do I have any right to one, so moving to greener pastures was not an option. But who wants to stay where they are, just because they have no option?

But there are always options.

I decided to focus on reasons to stay in South Africa, rather on ways to leave. This remains my birth place, and I know I would rather die as an African in Africa than live as a stranger in a foreign land.

So here are my ten reasons to stay in South Africa:
(I intend adding to them with time.)

1. The climate is unbeatable.
2. The country is magnificent: the bush, the flora & fauna, the mountains, the coast…
3. The people are wonderful. Its true. The man on the street (if he isn’t holding a gun) is always friendly.
4. We have a great sense of humour.
5. We are vibrant, colourful and creative.
6. We have to live for the day.
7. The ganja is cheap and good.
8. We don’t have oil, so there’s no chance of George Bush invading us.
9. We are multi-cultural.
10.We are survivors.

I heard an economist on TV berating us for accepting our current situation as ‘normal’. But who’s normal are we talking about? Most of [his] ‘normal’ countries are centuries old; ours is not even 14 years old yet. We’re still ironing out the kinks. Do you think our forefathers had it easy when they came down south? Both black and white settlers gave their lives to live in this country, and at the first sign of difficulty our instinct is to run away?

Of course its scary, that’s because its worth it. We don’t want to lose the lives we have. And a very large chunk of my life means being South African.

Deepest, darkest Africa

Did anyone watch Carte Blanche this evening? Learn a little more about our beloved electricity supplier? I learnt a lot.

The most shocking thing I learnt had less to do with electricity than it had to do with BEE. Allow me to explain: A few years ago Eskom cancelled its coal transporting contracts with its existing transporters in favour of awarding said contracts to BEE transporters. Now I have no problem with that. But where they were paying their previous transporters 43 cents per ton per kilometer, they paid their BEE transporters a mere 40 cents. Three cents may not sound a lot, but it sure adds up. These guys soon went out of business and now there is a major shortage of coal to burn at the power plants.

Please explain to me what part of BEE I don’t understand? I thought BEE was meant to share the existing wealth and business, not to be a racist attempt to fleece the people they are supposed to be empowering! Have we just gone from white industry exploiting black people to black industry doing the same?

Back to empowerment shortfalls of a different kind: did you know that Eskom supplied over 5000 megawatts of electricity to neighbouring countries on Friday, the day of SA’s worst blackout in history? Their CEO had stated on Monday that all electricity exports had been stopped, and yet the smelting plant in Maputo ran at full capacity on Friday with our power – while our mines were forced to shut down, and flat lined the economy.

The weedy little white man (Dr Steve Lennon) that Eskom used as a scapegoat to face Derrick Watts tried valiantly to explain that Eskom only supplied our neighbours when we had an excess. On Friday we had the worst shortfall ever – and yet they exported 5000 megawatts. On January 5th 2008 Eskom signed a new 5 year contract to supply Botswana with electricity.

Over the past 15 years Eskom has halved its workforce and drastically reduced its production. White men were not to be hired or promoted, and many skills and skilled people were lost as a result. Now Mr. weedy white man is claiming that Eskom is importing the people it needs to correct the current situation. Is this the desired effect of BEE, to import skills rather than to share skills and employ residents of this country?

And speaking of employment – would anyone like to hazard a guess at the unemployment figures due to mines and industry closing? Can you imagine how the crime rate is going to escalate if there are millions more starving people out on the streets?

This is not something that can be palmed off on the old government, this is a current government fuck-up, and it’s a biggy! Its going to be interesting to see how they resolve this. I have a feeling China is just waiting to swoop in and ‘rescue’ us.

PS: On a personal note I am hoping this means no new mines for the foreseeable future – which means our farming area could be saved from open cast platinum mines for at least awhile.

Hope & Opportunity

2007 was a tough year all around, it would seem. For us on the farm, we faced land claims, mining claims, unions and severe weather. On top of that, the supermarket chains we supply all had major staff changes, wiping out the 23 year history and relationships we had built up with these institutions. (And they call this progress?)

Fortunately the land claims were not legitimate, the quality of minerals found on the farms were sub standard and the unions did not bring the anarchy we are always led to believe they will bring.

The weather is the one element I don’t ever resent. Nature must do what nature must do. Unfortunately, Mother nature had a bad case of PMS this year and we bore the brunt of it, but it could always have been worse. We lost 22 hectares of green beans to black frost (the night before they were due to be harvested!), and a month later we had 4 hail storms in one day – the first storm bringing stones the size of tennis balls! Somehow the crops escaped relatively unscathed, but the buildings and vehicles took a pounding.

Farming is no longer the cushy life it was once perceived to be. Many young men have inherited their father’s farms and their farming methods – and this just doesn’t cut it anymore. Gone are the days of plentiful and cheap labour, government subsidies and price control. Today, farming is a business like any other. God alone knows how the government expects subsistence farmers (of all races) to survive.

As farmers, we are bombarded on the one side by the racist views of the agricultural unions, with their fear tactics and panic mongering, and on the other by an agricultural minister who has no knowledge or apparent interest in the plight of the farmers and their workers. We hear ministers saying that farmers are no longer needed since food can be imported; we have mining laws that flaunt environmental concerns and allow mines to destroy arable land; we have mines using and polluting our water; we have an agricultural minister who encourages farm murders.

But in spite of all this, in spite of the opposition from the very people who should be helping and supporting us, in spite of the uncertainties and the dangers, in spite of the vagaries of the weather, I wouldn’t choose to live any other life.

We live in paradise – no smog, no traffic, no anonymous masses. There are just over 300 of us living and working together on this farm, a tight unit built up over 30 years. We look out for each other and we respect each other. We win together and sometimes we lose together, but we are always here for each other. As one of our guys is fond of saying: “You can’t wash one hand without the other.”

My family may own the actual land, but without the people who work with us, it would just be a piece of land. And without this piece of land, we would not be the community we are, nor would we have touched each other’s lives and been so much the richer for it.

At the start of 2007 I just knew it was going to be a ‘good year’. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I am through making predictions for the years ahead. I hope 2008 is a calmer year, I hope the weather is kinder and the politics less. And I really hope that crime is controlled.

My wish for South Africa in 2008 is that we may all live with hope and a sense of potential and not feel restricted because of our race, sex, age, culture or creed.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Why are laptops so slow?
Why is everyone so afraid of Jacob Zuma?
Why does the country have to deteriorate so much?
Why does everyone have to be so greedy?

It seems the more threatened we feel, the more the sense to hoard and accumulate. Maybe its realizing how much you have to lose that makes you want so much more.

Why is life all about learning to let go?

Evolution & Confusion

I hadn't intended for this blog to become some sort of socio-political venting session, it just did. And I'm not even that interested in politics. But I enjoy watching things evolve, and South Africa is evolving fast. We're all trying to find where we fit in, and its a struggle to stay on our feet. And watching people go through this is really, really interesting; watching myself go through it, even better!

I so desperately look for change in attitudes. And because I'm looking for the good, I only see the good. But every now and then you can't ignore a bad attitude - it punches you in the gut and bursts your happy bubble.

And its so disappointing.

But I don't believe its a reality check. Its just some idiot (black or white) who is too stupid to know that the war is over.

This week I heard of a black farmer who isn't being paid the same as the white farmers for his fruit, simply because he is black.

My initial reaction is disbelief, then puzzlement, then anger. I instantly hate the racist white bastards at the co-op who are stuffing up our country with their depraved refusal to give up their fight. What are they fighting for? No one wants to go back to apartheid, no one with half a brain!

Then I start to wonder why a black man, who bought his own farms and farms well, can't stand up to the co-ops? Why isn't he going to the papers, or standing in the manager's office screaming "RACISM!"?

So is this just a bullshit story, or is it true? And if its true, do I get pissed off with the racist white co-op, or do I get pissed off at the black man who isn't standing up for himself? Or both? Or is someone just misconstruing the facts?

When will people realise that the old South Africa is gone?

I get really confused.