Digging Panama Picture Credit: Getty Images
Farming in South Africa (SA) is extraordinarily difficult.
Australia
has 50, France over 18 but vast South Africa only 15 million hectares of arable land[1] and
of that 15, ‘High-potential arable land comprises only 22% …’[2]
On
that tiny field SA has done well for her people yet for all the food produced
‘one in four South Africans faces hunger’[3]. In
complying with the ANC/IMF export drive, even though SA exported … some thirty
five billion rand’s worth[4], ‘the number of children with severe stunting due to malnutrition has
increased …’
And
60% of the nation’s youth are unemployed – it’s a figure that should describe retirees!
Imagine
being at the age when you’re full of the biological drives to be successful, to
want a family but settling for depression.
The divide: Greed Capitalism and National Wealth
It is
common knowledge the ANC and BEE partners, in their role as controllers of
government have grown rich by hanging on the shirt-tails of the Corporates/Big
Business (BB).
BB works on
the premise it has a duty[5]
to maximise profits today no matter the damage it does to humanity or the
environment. There is no doubt that the Corporacy is the asteroid hitting the Earth and some governments
are helping.
It’s with that
narrow thinking BB considers productivity-improvement a continuing process of
lowering production costs[6].
It’s achieved by keeping competition for jobs high, mass education levels low
and replacing people with machines.
Anyone not
sitting pretty in the top levels of management is affected. In SA that means most.
When business
productivity-drives dispense with workers they become the dependents of the
country. And if you’re a taxpayer, they are your
dependents.
Growing with science
The world is
becoming more complex. Ever higher levels of intellect and/or specific training
is demanded – even to farm right. To fail, to be discarded and left out of the economy
has become a major problem for both individual and nation. Even
the most advanced economies show massive increases in poverty[7].
If it is ‘an issue’ in the developed - 1st World
it is catastrophic for SA, for Africa.
SA has to face up to the additional challenge of 50% of our
people having an IQ of 77 or less[8]
meaning it must immediately kick-start practices which acknowledge the problem
and moves to resolve it.
The US military have studied the issue of IQ and suitability
since World War I. They “indicated that if you had an IQ of 83 or less there wasn't
anything that you could be trained to do … that wasn't positively
counterproductive”[9] in
its sophisticated military.
Don’t confuse intelligence with human value
Intellect has nothing to do with the passion to get a job, the
desire to hold one’s head high as an independent wage earning person and the
willingness to be part of and be involved in society fully.
A casual review of the behaviour of so many leading
Corporate CEOs rubbishes any assertion that implies being more intelligent makes
for better person, or ‘nicer’ or filled with compassion person.
All people are different and come to the queue of life
offering different attributes and asking for different reward packages. And they
seek differing degrees of help.
What higher intelligence does do is it makes a person more
useful, more competent and more likely to succeed in complex cognitive
operations. SA needs as many of these smart people as she can get because research
and planning for action and thousands of leaders (at all levels) are needed to empower
the labour of the nation to fix so much non-complex basics to save SA, Africa
and the world we’ve abused.
The government is responsible
for employment[10]
Looking at SA
in conjunction with the realities of
·
Climate
Change,
·
Our
composite some in 1st and some 3rd world nation,
·
Our
at-street-level good commitment between the tribes, and
·
Overall
our unsophistication combined with our amazing tourist pullers – our climate
and bush
We can
either decide our downgraded economic situation is an unfolding horror story
OR
that we have a huge opportunity
to grasp growth now.
With a
determination to put the nation first our ‘failed’ status can be reversed
immediately. Millions are crying out to be productive. The nation needs them to
be.
I’m altered
to an FB post videoing China preparing 60,000 troops to march against
pollution. Why can’t we?
SA has so
many paid jobs waiting … planting millions of trees, digging a ditch from the
Zambezi to the Limpopo to the Free State, to repairing the damage of a 100
years of Homelands pasture mismanagement. You choose your project to manage.
SA has so
many entrepreneurial opportunities from domestic-science grads helping home-bake-cake-makers
to agricultural assistants advising market gardeners who’ve hired unused backyards
in our residential areas. You choose who to help.
The problem
isn’t the land. It’s the lack of educators, experienced demonstrators and trained
leaders and a will to roll up one’s sleeves and work at the not-so-glittery
side of life.
And a
redefinition of the ‘maximisation of profits’. Thinking ‘money’ alone has very-nearly
destroyed the world[11].
We’ve maybe two or three years to reverse the devastation.
Scientists, STEM
professionals, teachers and field leaders
It is the
government’s job to identify those who should go forward for fast-track
processing to becoming our next generation of scientists, Africa-useful idea
makers, engineers and teachers operating in classroom and field[12].
SA has very
few candidates to draw from. Illustrating with a standard Bell Curve
distribution[13] for
an estimated 48%[14] [1]
being the maximum economically active (men and women) population and applying an
average IQ score of around 80, only a handful will make scientists, and perhaps
·
0.5%
will make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals,
·
2%
teachers-middle managers-civil service officers, and
·
7%
lower level teachers, managers and,
·
17%
field leaders-supervisors.
In addition
to their specialties they’ll need a high degree of managerial skill. And, as
maligned as paternalism has fashionably become, SA needs that parental guidance-attitude
and compassion big-time to enable … to give a life to … the millions who
desperately need leaders to re-enter the economy. And to build it.
Why do the ANC see merit in making problems already boiling worse?
If this land transfer proposal is yet-another think-of-ANC-as-your-saviour-scheme
it will fail.
Even if the land is handed to professionals who’ve proved themselves
by greening planet Mars the nation will suffer because …
the basics must come first.
SA has very few scientists and top-academics. Far from applauding
them seldom do their proposals and warnings on our failing economics,
demographics, infrastructure, water security and mining pollution and the rest get listened to.
Luckily rioters are calling attention to the inexhaustible
problem-list we have to face up to. So too do activists like those of the
#TotalShutDown movement who are calling on government to bring down South
Africa’s shocking crime rate[15].
It seems they alone think of the future because SA’s
business and political elite display a total lack of imagination, an inability
to see what’s in our face.
Farming in South Africa is extraordinarily difficult.
As it is, about ‘53% of children under six live in poor
households’[16] so
to take even half productive land and plonk the disadvantaged on it only moves
our problem, solves nothing, grows the virus of stagnation in a new precinct.
Leaders are what’s needed … land we have and can share
… leaders to lead all of South Africa.
[2] www.gov.za/about-sa/agriculture
... Pocket guide to South Africa - Agriculture
[3] www.voanews.com/a/malnutrition...in-south-africa/
[4] http://www.nda.agric.za/doaDev/sideMenu/internationalTrade/docs/
[5]
The Corporation … Joel Bakan
[6] The
Productivity Myth
[7] Michael
Parenti
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OozeGZQwyBM
… Race & IQ - Demographic Effects on National High IQ and see https://iq-research.info/en/average-iq-by-country/za-south-africa
and see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmRW3netUiA
… Wits tests and see
[9] It
is “illegal to induct anyone into the (US) Armed Forces who had an IQ of less
than 83”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJUhDQKJcY … Dangerous debate Jordan
Peterson
[10] http://www.douglasschorr.com/2018/07/sas-government-responsible-for_15.html
[11] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html
[12] Science
says IQ may be the best predictor of your potential to excel at work — and no
one wants to hear it https://www.businessinsider.com/why-your-iq-strongly-influences-your-success-at-work-2017
[13] https://www.google.com/search?q=bell+curve+standard+deviation+for+races&rlz
[14] https://www.indexmundi.com/south_africa/demographics_profile.html
[15] https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/national/supernumbertotalshutdown-movement-calls-on-govt-to-bring-down-crime-rate/ar-BBLlhwF
[16]
http://theconversation.com/why-child-malnutrition-is-still-a-problem-in-south-africa-22-years-into-democracy-60224
