On ‘Spring’ day this year the pupils of Alexandra High School in Gauteng celebrated by throwing chairs about and spraying fire extinguishers all over the school.
The Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate in Nelson Mandela Bay reports that all the brass fittings on all the doors in the City Hall, the seat of local government, have been stolen, despite the building supposedly being guarded round the clock by security.
In Cape Town a violent protest by operators of sedan taxis known locally as ‘amaphelas’ led to attacks on commuter buses and other vehicles, and a clinic in Nyanga. Police officers were also reported to have been shot and wounded. The protest followed the authorities’ attempts to crack down on the taxis, demanding valid vehicle and drivers’ licences. The violence forced the closure of roads in and around the area, and stranded hundreds of commuters.
The city’s MMC for Safety and Security, JP Smith, is reported to have responded to the Nyanga violence with these words:
‘Let us just be clear. We did not start this battle. But we will finish it. To those taxi terrorists who are orchestrating the violence, remember it was you that brought this on.”
Strength to his arm. But even if he wins this battle many more are likely to flare again. The problem is not solved.
Battlefield
The hardline MMC’s stirring words could be lines uttered by a king on an ancient or mythical battlefield or by ‘Uhtred Ragnarson, Son of Uhtred ’ or one or other sword-slayer character from a television series such as The Last Kingdom, Game of Thrones, or the newly arrived prequel Throne of Dragons, with which I escape the relentless, daily litany of stupidity and crookery in the news.
But it would be foolish to stop one’s ears or put down one’s guard for much longer than the duration of a television episode if you are the owner of property in South Africa.
Because, while the reign of the lawless continues and spreads, the ANC is still intent, despite its “disunity,” at beavering away at laws in pursuit of its National Democratic Revolution. Laws such as those enabling expropriation without compensation.
Castle Clay is no palace on a hill, like many of those owned by our elite.
It is also not, to our knowledge, fingers crossed, on any tribal land. No NGO or indigenous group has to date notified us that this is the spot where tribal ancestors worshipped or were buried and no river known to be sacred runs through it.
It is our only home and it is paid for in full with money we earned over several decades.
Which is why the household of Castle Clay is taking seriously a possible scenario in which, according to Gabriel Crouse on the Daily Friend podcast of 29 August, would-be land invaders, by dint of the confluence and intersection of various laws and judicial rulings on Expropriation of Land, Trespass, and land rights, could decide to take their chance, armed with four pegs to place in the ground and a lean-to basic sheet of corrugated iron (and we know not what else) to make their home, uninvited, on our front lawn or vegetable garden on our particular corner of this troubled land.
Warning
Crouse warns that the laws that currently exist and those being contemplated and adjusted could lead to the undermining of property rights and could mean that, should land grabbers manage to establish a ‘dwelling’ on our erf in Johannesburg we would have almost no chance (barring good connections with the SAPS ) of legally getting rid of such land grabbers for a very long time – if ever. It seems their setting up a home of whatever sort on our property could even lead to the government having a reason to expropriate it.
I must give fair warning to anyone contemplating such a grab attempt. Unlike my friend Jeremy who wondered recently whether he should provide tea and biscuits to any future intruder, seeing that we are now all constrained from doing anything else, this lady of the manor is all for an Iron Throne-type response to land invaders, even if legally constrained from threatening them with weapons like guns, knives or presumably swords.
I am anticipating, as a result of empirical study, that the police will not come in time to rid me of these troublesome people; that the furious barking and vicious, snapping teeth of our house hounds will not have changed their plans and that our private security company responders will not be successful in persuading them to ‘vat their goed and trek.’
So, what’s a law abiding ‘peacenik’, with slight militaristic tendencies, fed on television depictions of ‘days of yore’, to do?
Encirclement
If they settle, it would probably be best to summon help (friends and family) or pay people currently on the streets looking for honest work, to encircle their ‘dwelling’ and besiege them, cutting off their supplies, their exit and entry.
If that has little effect, perhaps this fictional instruction by the King Edward character in The Last Kingdom, to his men laying siege to a city held by Danish invaders, could prove useful: If the wind is right, smoke them out by making fires smeared with excrement and sulphur.
I could perhaps also resort to modern siege torture as used by the US military and FBI and blast out at full volume, in a continuous 24/7 loop, some or other hellish playlist. Someone close to me, who was mistakenly made to watch the cartoon film of Watership Down in his early years, has suggested the death rattle of bunnies is very effective.
As you can tell, my heart is increasingly hardening against destructive protesters, the brainless scofflaws, the criminal syndicates that find devil’s work for idle and desperate people. It is hardening against those who steal, conspire to steal or justify immoral acts with past grievances, ideology or poverty.
Jonathan Katzenellenbogen, writing about two recent Social Research Foundation surveys which point to the despairing, hopeless feeling among a good portion of the country’s voters, says the situation in the country is likely to deteriorate if we don’t find ‘an aspirational leader’ committed to economic reform.
Because frustrated people will radicalize both to the left and the right.
I can feel that happening. I am anticipating a future in which more and more non-violent people simply turn a blind eye as their private security bludgeons land grabbers, house or building hijackers and runs them off the property. I do not wish to become a barbarian.
We know already that if the law is stacked unfairly against people, sooner or later, they will fight back.
The erosion of property rights must be stopped.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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