To: Helgo & Margaret, Cape Town, South Africa
I was about to tell you about our month in Europe - trade union marchers in Barcelona, The Weekly Standard cruise, myrmidons of yellow-turbaned Sikhs pullulating out of Hyde Park brandishing toy swords and angry foreign words on placards, parading through Piccadilly Circus with screeching loudhailers startling shoppers native and tourist alike, chanting raucous unintelligible rants in Sikh or Hindi or whatever - but all that must wait. A 21 June 2011 Wall Street Journal WORLD NEWS headline distracted my attention:
How refreshing! Finally, an honest statesman – a politician who says what he means – he wants your farm! He’s tired of waiting; he wants it now! And he is not going to pay you for it. That’s him, the chap who forgot his tie, Julius Malema, ANC Youth League President, and he is right pissed off at your government’s current model of land redistribution based on “willing buyer, willing seller.” I mean, what’s this “Rule of Law” nonsense?
Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ certainly doesn’t want to be judgmental - can’t have the paper appear to be racist – nothing at all, of course, racist here. Now what was it those other upstanding citizens – those porky thugs in dinky little caps tightly chin-strapped under double chins, armpit-stained, beer-belly button-busted brown shirts, mismatched khaki shorts, black (not red!) ties – what was it they called themselves? Sturm Abteilung? Something like that. They too followed a leader who said what he meant. And by God he wore his tie, a stubbly little black number just like his S.A. But that was long ago in another country, and, besides, the wench is dead.
Good idea, though, for the WSJ to balance a story which a few reactionary readers might misguidedly perceive to be just a tad depressing by following immediately with heartwarming news about a white South African farmer who voluntarily gave away half of his land. And, just for fun, toss in a picante dash of whimsical animal interest.
Orchard Venture Taps Baboons’ Secret
I was so relieved to learn that a neighbor of yours, Gerrit van der Merwe, who lives in Citrusdal, has already given 50% of his fruit farm to his Blackfellows, hoping, I assumed, to placate ANC Youth Sturmtruppen. Now, at least, they can only confiscate half of the orange orchard from him without compensation. Very savvy of Gerrit, nicht wahr?
No. Unfortunately it turns out that van der Merwe’s act of sharing dates, not from current alarm at Young Julius and his AK-47 toting patriots, but from a discovery made a dozen years ago by one of v.d.M’s workers, Mister Fickster. Mister Fickster was employed to protect v.d.M’s orange groves from rapacious baboons, not vindictive ANC Youth. Or do I repeat myself?
While on baboon deterrent duty, Mister Fickster noticed that baboons ate only the fruit from a single tree. Sampling the baboon fruit, Mister Fickster was astounded; baboons have exceedingly discriminating orange eating tastes.
The baboon orange tree was protectively caged post haste, seeds and cuttings from it were planted, and a vast new baboon orange orchard has come into being. This is the land v.d.M shared with Mister Fickster and his fellow workers. These Baboons’ Choice Oranges are so unusually delicious that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp., two of our largest retailers, have signed contracts to import them.
Part of America’s sanctimonious busy-body anti-apartheid crusade was to cancel duties on South African oranges. Not only do stupendous profits loom for Mister Fickster and his square-shooting partner, good old Gerrit, but you can safely bet the farm that Julie and the Boys will want somebody’s piece of the action.
But I ask you - in these thrilling days of Social Justice, of Fairness, of Hope, of Change - what about the baboons! How many generations of baboon ancestors must have peacefully supped at that fruit tree before the clan was brutally dislodged from their perches by a Mister Fickster inspired act of colonial apartheid? Does not even the lowly baboon deserve at least a tiny stool at the Social Justice table? Where does Young Julius stand on this? Where are the protesters, the marchers, the rioters, the civil dissidents? Where are the Sikhs from Hyde Park, the public sector union malcontents from Greece? Or Barcelona, for that matter?
*Bowdlerized to avoid offending Uncle Wa's daughters.
