Going back to Africa

[mbcijim]

I went to South Africa in August for the first time. Having read the articles for years, I never fully believed that "once you go, you'll want to go back again and again" crap. I pride myself on independent thinking. I wanted to form my own opinions. Now, I'm one of those guys. I did live in Alaska for two summers and had similar feelings. I had an offer to go back with my bachelor's degree, but turned it down knowing if I went, I would never return to my family's business in Pennsylvania.

So how the hell do you guys handle it? The PH offered to sell me his ranch. 9,000 Fenced in acres with a fair amount of plains game. I think about it every day. I dream about it. I could afford it. A month or two over there, the rest of the time here.

JJ - I know you do something similar, working there and here. Anyone else? What have your experience been? Is it hard to do? How do your significant others handle it? My wife may want a divorce...

 

[jjhack]

Why do you think he wants to sell it? He wants out of Africa probably to go to NZ, Aus, Canada, the USA anyplace but staying in RSA. The new government is not focused on making life fair, good, or functional for the people there especially the white land owners.

A couple thoughts come to mind right from the start. You are not likely bi, or tri lingual so getting help and knowing what's going on on this kind of property will be difficult. You will not really be looked at as an equal by other landowners. Learning to speak, hear, and read and write Afrikaans very well would be a minimum requirement to help you fit into the location better.

Next, you cannot get residency, or even temporary citizenship even as a land owner if you are white. So that would seem to be a very big hurdle. Without these you cannot attend the academy to get a PH license or an Outfitter license. Without those you cannot do the work to run a hunting camp but rather you must hire a complete staff to do this for you. Where's the profitability of this when you cannot get a work permit or any license as a non-resident. Even if you own the land!

Call the South African councilate in LA or DC they will tell this to you this straight up.

Next even if you own the land you must use a licensed professional hunter and and Outfitter to book the hunt for yourself and you must have accomadations to allow that. They probably exist already but it's just silly to think that you can hunt your own land just because you own it.

No deal.......... as a non-resident you cannot hunt without a Licensed PH PERIOD. No different in Canada actually.

So I would suggest you save that huge and extremely risky investment and just "waste" the money hunting. Either way you lose it but at least you have fun without the ownership stress as a visiting sport hunter.

Imagine that you spend the 110K USD for this place and in ten years then a family of blacks gets a lawyer in town claiming that that property was owned by his great great grandfather and was taken away by white Dutch settlers. The RSA government pays all his legal fees, but you have to pay your own. About three years later this is still dragging out and you have now totalled up about 50% of the land value in legal fees all the while this black family has not had to spend a dime of their own money. Now they value the land at 50K USD and the RSA government offers to buy you out for that amount. But you paid 110K and lived there for many years. If you say no deal they drag this out further, now you owe way more in legal fees and the new offer is 30K. You see a trend here? You cannot win this. It's not America!

Now what do you do? Move back to the states and start your life over again. And you wonder why that landowner wants to sell it and get out! South Africa is a beautiful country with a great infrastructure. However it's being run by a hidious out of control government that is destined for catastrophic failure. In 2010 you will begin to hear about the massive deaths from AIDS. The European Union has said the black breeding age population is about 80% HIV right now. I've lost 4 staff to HIV and AIDS in the last 3 years now. The Trucking industry is dying off faster then they can be replaced with skilled drivers.

When the soon to be new president (Zuma) is interviewd on the biggest TV news station after being found not guilty for raping the countries number one AIDS activest and says he will not get AIDS from her because he took a very hot shower the instant he was done with her. That's the level of education the leaders of this country have.

The current President Mbeke said on yet another live TV news show that nobody on earth has ever died from AIDS, it's just the white man trying to scare the black population from having babies.

By the way,...... Zuma was found not guilty because they found the woman was dressed in a way they claim she was "asking for it" So now Rape in RSA is out the window. Anyone accused of this can just say... she was dressed too sexy and was "asking for it"

Yep these are the leaders of this country, wanna invest? The funny thing is that although Zuma is a freak show, he does seem to have the best understanding of the white land ownership and the most optimistic view of the black leaders to leave us alone. What a nightmare this is going to be over the next ten years! When the black head of households are dying off from AIDS and the teenagers and children are left to fend for themselves the crime will be out of control and the country will be headed to a white on black civil war.

It's coming..... you wait and see!

 

[One Track]

That's one hell of an answer.

 

[Speckmisser]

Wow.

Amazing how much of this sounds like the politics Robert Ruark wrote about in Uhuru and Something of Value.

You'd think the leaders there might have gained a little bit of sophistication by now.

 

[SDHNTR]

Damn. That would sure keep me from buying land there!

 

[rusman66]

Wow thats a nice picture you paint. Is it even safe to hunt there?

 

[jjhack]

Hunting and visiting is fine. You will be wisked away from the city and under the control of a very experienced PH or Tour operator. You will never know about, or see the any of the bad places, except as you drive by them at 110 Klicks on the highway. .

You will only be involved with the places and areas that are absolutley perfect and make RSA one of the premier wildlife viewing and hunting destinations in the whole world.

While at a private hunting consession of 50 square miles or more the entire staff will look after your every need. You will be way to far from the inner city problems (4 plus hours drive) to ever see any of it.

 

[Duknutz]

Here's one of those spots at 110 klicks,thought we would get a little rememberence of the trip,besides the hunt.

 

[ramsey]

Helluvan answer jj. Having properly invested the capital, a man could hunt plains game quite few years in that part of the world instead of actually"owning the cow".

JJ - do y'all also shoot waterfowl and upland of big game only?

 

[jjhack]

It's a hella long way to hunt birds, but we can shoot what ever you like for the daily fee your paying.

We usually whack some birds when the big game is out of the way. Maybe a day and a half or so at the end. The reality is that most guys still really want to hunt for that one more super trophy before they leave so birds take a back seat on every hunt we do.

I have had a few guys shoot 200-300 shells on a driven dove hunt in one day, that was a hella good time!

 

[Warren123]

That is certainly quite an answer, hell if I agreed with it I would sell up and move myself. I imagine you will be selling your operation as well JJ based on your comments?
Why is tha farmer selling, hey why not ask him. he could have any of a 100 reasons to sell the game ranch. There are farms on sale all the time, same as there are houses on sale.they are certainly not all selling and running away. As for land claims I believe the time period for submission of claims has passed, claims were also only valid if the original removal occured after a certain date. So it is relatively simple to determine if there is any claim against the farm, if there is dont buy it.
I know of several game farms owned by "foreigners" who visit 2-4x per year, they have a manager who is the pH/outfitter and they hunt quite happily on their farms.
As for Zuma, yes he was found not guilty but I am pretty sure the reason was not "she was dressed provocatively so she was asking for it".there was more to it than that. In fact the point should be that he had a trial.how many african states do you know that would place their deputy president on trial?
Sure there are problems, many of them.AIds and crime surely topping the list, but farm values are climbing, land issues are being resolved.......so investigate further if you really are interested, there are good opportunities.