One of the concomitant pleasures that come with a looming general election is the opportunity to listen to representatives of parties contesting the election attempt to explain their policies in more detail.
This has been a bumper week for pre-election lunacy with various media organisations inviting would-be presidents to expand on their manifestos. I was tuned into a radio station earlier this week and heard some of our more extreme left political parties lay out their well-considered plans for seizing the means of production and distributing the land.
As far as the means of production (seizing thereof) is concerned it’s quite clear that we live in a country that has been taken over by something called “white monopoly capital” (WMC) which is, apparently, a bad thing. Prior to the existence of Bell Pottinger, we would never have known this, but WMC has crept into the common consciousness and, while many on the left find it hard to define, they know that it’s bad. Just so, so bad.
The problem with WMC is that it is exploitive. Alt-right white supremacists such as myself may argue that it creates jobs and allows people to better themselves and put food on the table but the left know better. They claim that the so-called jobs are exploitive and wages and salaries paid are far below what should be paid because the greedy bosses and business owners are keeping it all for themselves. Now if the companies were owned by the state this obviously wouldn’t happen because everybody would be paid the same and inequality would be instantly abolished. That “same” salary or wage would allow all employees to live with dignity and afford the finer things in life. Take mining for example. Up until now, the exploitive mining industry has sent people underground to work in dangerous and unpleasant conditions in order that a few immaculately attired people at ground level can afford big houses, game farms, yachts and young mistresses. The poor people underground are paid next to nothing and the greedy WMC lot claim this is all to do with operational costs or some such tosh. They claim that if it costs more money to dig the stuff out of the ground than you receive from selling it then the company will go bust and all the workers underground will lose their jobs.
The left (who now like to be known as “progressives”) know this is all a load of baloney and that all you need to do is to fix the price of the stuff dug out of the ground at higher than the digging cost. Simple. That way everybody benefits and the state-owned mining enterprise prospers. Just look at the Venezuelan oil industry if you don’t believe me.
There were also some interesting views on land. It’s now well known that all the land in South Africa was stolen by white people and has been passed on to white people’s descendants at next to no cost. What will happen under the new Utopia apparently is that the state will own all the land and lease it out to people. Those who don’t have land at the moment will be given it by a benevolent government. The exact location of the land to be handed over wasn’t made clear during the broadcast I was listening to but what was apparent was that land recipients would be expected to a) look grateful and b) make good use of the land. The good use could be setting up an organic garden to supply a newly nationalised Woolworths (to be renamed The People’s Food Emporium) with fresh produce or building a comfortable home with en suite bathrooms for all the four bedrooms. Fortunately there would be ample funds for this thanks to the nationalisation of strategic industries such as mining, banking and insurance. Just as there will be ample funds for free education, free health care and free everything. That, after all, is what smashing the exploitive capitalist model is all about.
But the best idea of the week came from the EFF C-in-C, his imperial oneness Julius Sello Malema, who has proposed that we do away with the country’s borders because they were imposed by colonialist powers. On the surface this would appear to allow illegal immigrants from less well off neighbouring states to wander into South Africa unhindered and take advantage of our hospitality. Fortunately, JuJu has a plan and if I understand him correctly from the snippet I heard on the car radio it works like this: You count up how many Zimbabweans are in our new country without borders, calculate what it is costing the economy and then you invoice Mr Mnangagwa’s government and simply wait for the cheque to arrive. The immense saving on border controls and the vast revenue from less enlightened neighbouring countries in return for hosting their citizens should keep the party elite in new Mercs and BMWs. Oh brave new world.
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Dr Phillip Dexter was quite correctly given the right of reply on The Daily Friend to my column about him last week. His eloquent and well reasoned response would, I feel sure, have reassured readers that my labelling of him as a “foul mouthed buffoon” was way over the top.
David Bullard is a columnist, author and celebrity public speaker known for his controversial satire.
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