IT IS not that easy to go fishing in South Africa and that is how it should be, within reason. It is the job of the member (of the Upper Jukskei Fly-fishing Collective) to decide what is reasonable, as the more difficult it is to fish, the greater the chances that the member will not encounter other wannabes on the water.
What is unreasonable, however, is what agriculturists concerned about household food security call the cost of transactions. Take your average subsistence farmer, who grows her patch of maize in the back country, where the member likes to fish. When she finally gets her crop off the field and threshed, she has to ship to the nearest roller mill on the back of someone else’s blue bakkie.
There, her return is subject to the spot price for maize, which, at harvest time, is at its lowest. Then, with a handful of small bills tucked into her brassiere, she must buy maize meal from a retailer, who sources the supply, ultimately, from Randfontein in Gauteng. In between, there are vast distances and huge costs. The upshot is that the value added to her produce before it gets to the table is disproportionate to the cost. Most of this is transport cost. The panacea, of course, lies in infrastructure development. So roads are being built and Transnet alleges it is reviving the freight-rail system. The question is whether it is the right kind of infrastructure, not just the type that favours large state tenders.
Fly-fishers face similar problems. The cost of diesel to fuel the member’s fish-mobile does not sit well with his bean counter, for one thing. Another is the encroachment of coal mining on the best fishing spots in Mpumalanga. But now there is hope with the news that the state’s sugar-beet biofuel plant at Cradock in the Eastern Cape is proceeding apace. Apparently, outside of slashing the member’s fuel bill, it will also create about 20,000 jobs.
Or will it? You have to wonder why, if it was such a good idea, South Africa’s vast sugar surplus (about 50% of the yield) is not already being turned into biofuel. And what about the existing electricity co-generation capacity at the sugar mills that power their own production? You have to wonder, too, if the demand for maize increases with a demand for biofuel feedstock whether the transaction costs for existing maize production will not fall considerably.
The government obviously has other ideas. That means fly-fishers and subsistence farmers have to look to themselves to solve their problem. According to the internet, almost anyone can build a biodiesel plant using just about anything as feedstock, so the member thinks that if the collective provides a little capital for small biodiesel plants in places that coincide with the best fishing spots, maize growers could make diesel right there for the exclusive use of fly-fishers.
That way we can cut out the bureaucrats and tenderpreneurs and sundry parasites, who raise the cost of transactions beyond what fly-fishers and other poor rural folk should endure. And keep away the riffraff.
Standard Bank’s building, reminiscent of a massive fish tank, stands atop a ridge and is bordered by Baker Street, Bolton and Oxford Roads, and Cradock Avenue in Rosebank.