In a horseshoe bend on the Keiskamma River, half a century ago there lay a successful citrus export farm. Its packing shed was designed and built by hand from the ground up by a man I knew as Willie. I never knew him well enough to know whether he had been to school. The first day I met him, he repaired a tractor, then drove off on it, wearing his then main hat as a tractor driver. Much later than that, he donned other hats, like engineer, architect, designer, builder, electrician, mechanic, fencer and maybe more.
The farm prospered. Willie’s value was reflected in his wage. He was paid more than the less skilled workers he lived and worked among. As far as the paymaster knew, it was understood and accepted that he earned more. For years, the farmer drove home from the packing shed at knock-off time on payday, past a gathering of the entire farm’s workforce, outside the packing shed. It was some fifty or sixty workers, but a calm enough sight that he normally just noted it and drove on.
After about two decades, his curiosity got the better of him. He parked his car, approached the gathering, and asked if he might stay and observe. He and his family were fluent in isiXhosa. Any Xhosa first language speaker hearing any of his family talking out of sight behind a wall, would be dumbstruck turning a corner discovering pale skins. The farmer was allowed to attend, but there may have been conditions. I don’t recall. I imagine that a condition would be silence, or at least that he could not interfere. My mother was doing a stint on the farm as a packing shed administrator for a time, and the farmer, her brother, shared the story with her. Siblings often feel safe to share things perhaps less credible to others.
It turned out that all those years, this gathering had taken the same simple form: all wage packets were opened, emptied into a disc ploughshare, and then totalled. Once totalled, a quick calculation was done and checked. Thereafter it was divided up and every single person in the gathering, the entire workforce of the farm, received the exact same wage. Willie, engineer and master of many trades, got the same as the youngest, inexperienced teenage fruit picker. I still wonder if this was a male only workforce. After all, girls and women getting equal pay in the first world is a stretch even in 2024, so that would be all the more remarkable.
The farmer said he drove home in some shock. This was a man who spent years of his young life “running away from Rommel” as he recalled his time early in WWII near Tobruk in Libya. He then, along with about ten thousand other South Africans, spent much more of it in Italian and German POW camps. I can’t believe he was easily astonished. He explained that it was not so much the outcome of the meeting that silenced him. His surprise was that he had never had the slightest notion, in all those decades, what the meeting was about. A worker explained to him: “The fruit picker works, the foreman works. We all work. Work is just work. So we all get the same”.
Sharing money equally among all is not especially surprising among musicians. It was once common practice: not so much any more, but this account of it on a farm is the first I’d ever come across outside of music. Anyone who has hours to waste can simply google ‘equal pay’ to see how much ink is spent (wasted?) on the notion of equal pay, and here I am adding to the pile.
With the recent news that SA born Elon Musk earns more than our entire GDP, it is tempting to look at another ‘fact’. US Senator Bernie Sanders points out that the “bottom half of the American population earns less than the top one percent”. That is disturbing enough, but it is actually far worse than that.
The notion of ‘percent’ was hard for my workers to grasp when I was farming. It took me time to realise that its meaning is built-in to English, from Latin. English speakers can easily guess that a Roman ‘centurion’ commanded a century, meaning one hundred soldiers. With one percent simply meaning ‘one in a hundred’ we can be forgiven for thinking that one in a hundred Americans are billionaires, but that is not true. It’s about the wealth they totally own, not how many there are of them. In fact it’s not even close to one person in every hundred that is a billionaire. They are rarer than that. Out of 330 million people in the US, 801 are billionaires. That is closer to one in a hundred thousand people. This doesn’t make me feel better, because SA has 7 billionaires in our 60 million. That is close to one in 10 thousand. We have more than we should, compared to the US. We are worse at sharing (not to say greedy) than the US. That’s a shock. Look at the thing in plain sight. 99 people out of a hundred, wearing my farmer hat, makes we the 99 a monoculture. That is dangerous: monocultures seed their own destruction and die. So, are we, the 99 percent, doomed? I doubt it. Without us, who is going to buy stuff?
Do you think you have seen a strike? You ain’t seen nothing yet! Once we realise we 99% are the working class, there will be the mutha of all strikes. I am talking about professional and skills workers striking. I mean everybody. Everything will change, but we will still be needed. Our replacement Optimus robots don’t eat, but CEOs do. They will absolutely not grow, slaughter or prepare it themselves.
I once mentioned ‘millionaire’ to an engine driver in my steam days. He stood, raised his hand high above his head, saying:“Miljoenêr? Jislaaik. Dis ‘n ontsaglike groot hoop kontant”So, this is an ontsaglike groot ding waiting to hit the fan. Regardless of what brings about change, I feel really sorry for billionaires. They have a lot, but a lot of it is dead and doing nothing, and It follows that they also have that lot to lose. You may think they can afford to lose a lot of what they own, and come out unscathed, but it doesn’t always work that way. Every businessman I’ve met says “there is no standing still’. You are either going somewhere, or you are standing still: the monetary equivalent of standing still is ‘belly up’”. }
When Alexandra Occasio-Cortez was challenged to find the money for the “green new deal”, she famously said “We are paying for it already”. Recession lawyers and accountants will be two a penny. Billionaires are soon to discover a host of things that they cannot afford NOT to do. In a recent BizNews clip, a wealthy business activist sang the virtues of capitalism. To date, not he nor anybody has cited a capitalist system anywhere that adequately looks after the sick and old, but he personally came across as kindly, boyish, charming. I hope he hangs onto all his money. If not, he can comfort himself with the words of that poetic Keiskammahoek worker:
The fruit picker works, The foreman works. We all work. Work is just work. We all get the same.