Political Ideologies and Constitutions Replaced by Political Bureaucratic Complexities of Questionable Laws and Accounting Practices.

Politicians, voters and the public's general lack of acknowledge and understanding of complex business practices and the fraudulent scams investments like GSE or mortgage backed securities shall not come to an end until we the public educate ourselves.

The transparent insanity and outright gambling with our taxpayer dollars, in a political roulette like game attempt to pick corporate winners and losers within the free market system of capitalism, by unelected bureaucrats and politicians alike, by using tax dollars in ponzi schemes for global bubble economics shall not fully be exposed until voters realize what are the implications of collateralized debt obligations, securitization and credit defaults swaps etc.  

For example a mortgage backed security is a questionable asset backed security supposedly secured by a collection of other questionable assets. And are the results of bureaucratic oversight and dizzy left wing meddling in nutty radical politics which in my opinion allowed a legal confidence game to enrich opportunistic financial institutions, lawyers and politicians alike.

These mortgages first must originate, of course, from a regulated financial institution and they then must be grouped into ratings as established by credit rating agencies, that are accredited of course, who then charge a fee to these same financial institutions for giving a worthy rating so the investments were then in the position to be legally sold to suckers born on a daily basis.

Whatever became of the buyer beware clause in the free market system?

Because these bundled or grouped assets were not at all determined by the free market place. They were however first procured by unelected bureaucrats and politicians.

The values and price of these assets of course were decided by the amount of political influence special interest groups, be they corporations, unions or investment banks, and not by what investors were willing to pay.  

This was a large part of the downfall of the US and the world economy which resulted in the bail out process by governments who supposedly regulated all these organizations in the first place.

However, another catch and the problem was that from the early 1990’s a political government policy being was political pushed through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Because elected politicians were being pushed by special interest groups within their constituencies and political parties to support socialized housing policies based on low mortgage rates.

Thus, the unelected bureaucrats at HUD desperately needed a way to expand home ownership, for citizens and especially the Constituents of elected politician’s, and even to such citizens that were not in the financial position to carry the cost of such ownership in the first place and which can be referred to as political expediency for votes.

To achieve these political vote getting schemes, unelected bureaucrats, were pressured from politicians and special interest groups to disregard lending and accounting principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market of financial institutions.

So bureaucrats came up with a political plan to provide funding to specific types of citizens having poor credit or insufficient income groups who of course would not qualify for conventional mortgage loans.

The U.S. Congress of course approved this idea of a marketable bond for financial institutions called Government Sponsored Enterprises or GSE Debt Securities.

You see as a government sponsored entity these GSE were able to attract lenders that offer lower rates because of the implied government guarantee rather than a real guarantee.

As such lenders were willing to lower the finance charges and interest rates to these risky and poor credit citizens, but investors are also able to yield higher returns as a result of this implied guarantee.

Now the politicians could campaign on their political social ideology that every American has the right to own a house regardless of the fact that they could not afford one in the first place.

A political policy similar in a way to that of CMHC, our Canadian Crown Corporation and largest mortgage insurer, is used by our politicians, as the driving force in the housing market throughout Canada with political policies that have inflated our own housing economic bubble.

To my knowledge as of this date Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has not been transparent to either the government or taxpayers about the stability of its portfolio and just what per cent of its portfolio represent a risk because of low or poor credit and arrears in payments?

Some have suggested it could be as high as 65% or as low as 45% but our government, like Fanny and Freddie in the U.S., and until it was too late, our government as yet has not forced CHMC to come clean and reveal this information to Canadians, even though thanks our government taxpayers are on the hook for any and all defaults in the mortgage portfolios held by CMHC and guaranteed by Canadians.  

It is my personal and strong believe that now and in the immediate future global politics and policies are no longer about political ideologies or a country’s constitution and laws but rather about the complexity of global economics based on complex laws and complex business financial practices.

Therefore those individuals, corporations, special interest groups and unions that currently have or with the willpower to recognize, understand and master these complexities shall be the ones who ultimately control and direct politics and the power that goes with it as we have already witnessed with mergers, the non bankruptcies of GM, Chrysler, bank bail outs and TARP to mention only a few. 

Warmest regards,

Peter Clarke The Little Guy.

Please watch this interview @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9639507.stm

 

Update Oct.24/11

The top 20 of the 147 super connected companies.

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC (holding company for Wal-Mart heirs)
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

Source Forbes

Public Info to Get you started………..

Interest Rate Swap

What Does Interest Rate Swap Mean?
An agreement between two parties (known as counterparties) where one stream of future interest payments is exchanged for another based on a specified principal amount. Interest rate swaps often exchange a fixed payment for a floating payment that is linked to an interest rate (most often the LIBOR). A company will typically use interest rate swaps to limit or manage exposure to fluctuations in interest rates, or to obtain a marginally lower interest rate than it would have been able to get without the swap.

Investopedia explains Interest Rate Swap
Interest rate swaps are simply the exchange of one set of cash flows (based on interest rate specifications) for another. Because they trade OTC, they are really just contracts set up between two or more parties, and thus can be customized in any number of ways.

Generally speaking, swaps are sought by firms that desire a type of interest rate structure that another firm can provide less expensively. For example, let's say Cory's Tequila Company (CTC) is seeking to loan funds at a fixed interest rate, but Tom's Sports Inc. (TSI) has access to marginally cheaper fixed-rate funds. Tom's Sports can issue debt to investors at its low fixed rate and then trade the fixed-rate cash flow obligations to CTC for floating-rate obligations issued by TSI. Even though TSI may have a higher floating rate than CTC, by swapping the interest structures they are best able to obtain, their combined costs are decreased - a benefit that can be shared by both parties.

Introduction to Securitization

by: Jason Kravitt, Mayer, Brown & Platt, 1998

"When you measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind . . . ." William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Popular Lectures and Addresses (1891--1894).

(i) The Nature of Securitization

Most attempts to define securitization make the same mistake; they focus on the process of securitization instead of on the substance, or meaning, of securitization. Hence, the most common definition of securitization is that it consists of the pooling of assets and the issuance of securities to finance the carrying of the pooled assets. Yet, surely, this reveals no more about securitization than seeing one's image reflected in a mirror reveals about one's inner character. In Lord Kelvin's terms, it is knowledge of "a meager and unsatisfactory kind."

Collateralized Debt Obligation - CDO

What Does Collateralized Debt Obligation - CDO Mean?
An investment-grade security backed by a pool of bonds, loans and other assets. CDOs do not specialize in one type of debt but are often non-mortgage loans or bonds.  

Investopedia explains Collateralized Debt Obligation - CDO
Similar in structure to a collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) or collateralized bond obligation (CBO), CDOs are unique in that they represent different types of debt and credit risk. In the case of CDOs, these different types of debt are often referred to as 'tranches' or 'slices'. Each slice has a different maturity and risk associated with it. The higher the risk, the more the CDO pays

Definition: CDO's, or Collateralized Debt Obligations, are sophisticated financial tools that repackage individual loans into a product that can be sold on the secondary market. These packages consist of auto loans, credit card debt, or corporate debt. They are called collateralized because they have some type of collateral behind them.

Credit Default Swap (CDS)

What Does Credit Default Swap (CDS) Mean?
A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.

Investopedia explains Credit Default Swap (CDS)
The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap.

For example, the buyer of a credit swap will be entitled to the par value of the bond by the seller of the swap, should the bond default in its coupon payments.

Occupying Main Street in the Name of What? Socialism, Maoism, Academia, Criminalism, Fascism and Freedoms?

Most left leaning academia like Hedges are left wing ideologists and hold the believe, that democracy of the free market system and capitalism is dysfunctional and has no proper competition with reasonable rules, but what are his alternative suggestions for proper completion and reasonable rules that are required under his ideals and theories of spiritual enlightenment for a Utopian collective community based on wealth distribution?

On a pragmatic and philosophical ground the important point is that the pursuit of happiness is on an individual basis, not a collective right, as my dreams are different from yours and someone else’s is completely different from both of ours.

For example, the political holy grail of progressive socialized liberalism and some feminists is that government should control and taxpayers should fund child care and day care. Others hold the opinion that it is not the children who require liberating from the family but perhaps the mother should be liberated from the child.

It is not only the fathers that are supposed to guide their youth but the mothers, fathers and grand parents of their own offspring’s who are directly responsible and for the youth of today.

The responsibility for sheltering, raising, feeding and clothing is the direct responsibility of those who decide to conceive or adopt a child.  

Government run hand out programs and mass social herding formula for housing, rent, child care and unsustainable subsidies or socialism/communism is not the answer as history has shown.

It is however a worldwide failure and has done nothing other than create ghettos of segregated warehouses of poor people living in misery.

For myself, I am of the opinion that, any fair minded individual would not dispute the political reality that today the core agenda of domestic social liberalism relates to the support for a welfare state, abortion and the racial identity politics of multiculturalism based redistribution of wealth through class warfare.

An unmanageable national debt aggravated by spending and borrowing for unsustainable entitlements and handouts have both caused and exacerbated the burden of an inequitable system of taxation whereby 10% of the US population pays 80% of all taxes and 43% of Americans account for 20% of paid federal taxes while 47% of the US population pay NO federal taxes?

Thus the so called wealthy in the US already pay the brunt of taxes while 47% pay no taxes. In Canada 33.4% of citizens pay less than $2 in federal taxes. Therefore 66.6% of Canadians are subsidizing 33.4% of the population.

A fair share, in Canada and the US should mean that all citizens pay an equal amount of taxes as opposed to paying NO federal taxes at all.

Any mischief, based on an excessive desire to acquire and possess more than what one needs or even deserves and especially with respect to material wealth, did not originate from nor is it limited to that of the Wall Street or Bay Street of the world.

It all began with the greed of Union leaders as well as their members be it teachers, hospital workers, police, bureaucrats etc. along with politicians and corporations and the shareholders of publicity traded companies.

Such firms and organizations also represent companies in the resource development sector for green energy solutions and other special interest groups publicly traded around the globe.

Because of our now excessive and numerous government regulations and attempts to micromanage the free enterprise system through government controls and outright nationalizations of industries or corporations combined with excess wage, benefit and pension demands by all guilty parties businesses go to China, India, South America and other countries around the world to find a less expensive workforce and less government.

Unfortunately the leaders today, be they politicians or union leaders, seem far more concerned with raising political donations or union dues through new members for their own re elections and play fast and furious with our money for their own personal success and prosperity at the expense of the those who actual pay taxes or union dues.

It is not only individuals like Hughes who feel they are entitled to receive hand outs from others or the wealthy.

It’s politicians, academia, artists, academics, students, bureaucrats, corporations, unions, special interest groups, it`s your neighbours and those that pay little or no federal income taxes all of whom fanatically believe they are entitled to their personal entitlements at other peoples expense.

This is not freedom or democracy but a resurgence of progressive totalitarian socialized liberalism. If anything occupying pressure groups protesting against the Wall Streets or Bay Streets of the world or individual achievements and wealth without any pronounced alternatives suggest anarchy.  

Perhaps as most academics preach they wish for a return Fascism, Maoism, Maoism, Communism or 21^st Century totalitarian socialism?

History has documented for us all that unexpected power by revolutions throughout the world are prone to arrogance, disrespectful, intrusive and short lived freedoms for the people at the expense of law and order, liberties and freedoms.

For example the French revolution, given the benefit of history, "it's difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of that revolution. It was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial and populist.

And it produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon. The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replace. Over fifty thousand people died in the terror of that revolution."

The Russian revolution and its later day revolutionary leaders were responsible for the deaths of more than 40 MILLION people in the name of that revolution.

The Chinese revolution and under Mao saw over 65 MILLION people killed in the name of that revolution. The Cuban revolution saw close to 50 thousand kicked, tortured, terrorized and thousands of political prisoners still remain in jail for daring to speak up against Castro and his brother.

And unfortunately today’s elected career politicians and bureaucrats within this the new world consist mostly of blame passers who never take responsibility or come to grips with their personal refusal stand up and be held accountable.

Money left in the hands of taxpayers is far more productive than putting it in the hands of career politicians, special interest groups and unelected bureaucrats.

Democracy yes, but anarchy, class warfare and revolutions tend to destroy freedom and liberties not build them.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/social-media-pummels-cbc-kevin-o-leary-nasty-185457737.html?

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/10/charles-krauthammer-changing-our-world-faster-than-light/

my comments to the agenda for the September 19, 2011 Executive Committee meeting on item 2011.EX10.1, Core Service Review� Final Report to Toronto's Executive Committee

On behalf of myself and along with the hundreds of thousands of residents who voted for and support the Mayor, his Executive Team members and those councilors who comprehend and realize that Our City should not have to pay, nor is it the responsibility of the Council to pay for goods and services that fall directly within the Constitutional and legal responsibility areas of the provincial and or federal government, for programs that involve income redistribution.

Most taxpayers acknowledge and agree that Toronto has a financial operating and capital budget crisis cause by spending, borrowing and deficits going back to 13 years after amalgamation. But at the same time,

City staff in 1998 has gone from 45,860 employees to over 53,000 in 2011 and increase of 16%.

As you all know the City budget has skyrocketed 184% from $5 Billion to $9.2 Billion while inflation for the same period increased 25.21% an annualized average of just 2.29208%.

The official census confirms that our population as of 2006 was 2,503,281 or an increase of just 1% from the 2001 census population of 2,481,494. The city’s official confirmed census for the population in 2011 will be known by all in 2012.   

We have outlined below some suggestion of accounting changes for budget preparations, expense reductions and staff and benefit changes for the committees consideration and perhaps it would be appropriate at some time for the members of the Executive and City council to openly and transparently inform the taxpayers of Toronto as to how, what and where the provincial government has provided the tools for our City to thrive in this current shaky and on going down turn in the global economy that has made our City of Toronto more fiscally sustainable during the past year and proceeding five years?

Along with an honest, transparent explanation and reasons why it is that the provincial government mandates services, programs and procedures that our City must administer does not get reimbursed at 100% of the total costs of these provincially mandated services?  

The following recommendations and suggestions are for the consideration by the Mayor, Executive and Council.

1.          A 1.7% City binding bylaw be introduced in 2012 that would forever restrict the combined total number for annual, full time, part time, seasonable, union and non union employees, employed by the City be annually no greater or exceed this 1.7% allowable number of employees to be employed by the City on a annual basis. The base figure for calculating the 1.7% would be the federal government’s population census for the City of Toronto only and as taken every five years.

2.           An immediate combined employee layoff of 8,500 employees through a combined program of, attrition, eligible buyout packages or actual permanent layoffs to take effect January 1, 2012 and link all and any merit pay to and individual employee’s annual performance.  

3.          As over 70% of the City’s budget is for public transportation within the city borders but continues to be used on a daily basis as a service by hundreds of thousands of non City residents or City taxpayers the City should consider the following options.

             A.  For 2012 a one fare for adults, seniors and students of $4.00 and a $2.00 child fare which would be $2.00 less than the $6.00 equivalent in dollar fare currently charged by the more over crowded, cleaner and efficient bus and subway system in the world class city of London..

             B.  An outright privatization of the operations, management and service of the TTC.

             C.  One transit authority for the GTHA which encompasses the needs of commuters from Oshawa to Hamilton incorporated and harmonized with the Go Train operations and operated and funded through run by Metrolinx with a Board consisting of elected members from the City of Toronto, Region, provincial and federal governments and out of the control of Metro council. Without a lasting and final political commitment from the province and federal government’s any transit system within the GTHA shall not succeed.

4.       Reverse the existing golden severance package deal for councilors that includes a one year paid salary and benefits for extended health and dental care, life insurance LTD and mileage benefits for one full year after a councilor has been defeated at the polls and voted out of office. Once they have been voted out of office it is impossible and unnecessary for them to perform their previous elected duties and the City would be exempt from paying at all under existing labour laws. All defeated councillors should be limited to a severance package of a maximum of 13 weeks of only a salary.

5.       The 2012 City budgeting process for all departments, agencies, commissions Boards etc. should be changed from the current outdated historical incremental budgeting system in which the new budget starts with the balance at least equal to the previous year’s total balance or estimate. A Zero base budgeting process commences with the budget development system in which all departments, services and programs within the budget start with a heading of zero and detects inflated budgets and has a greater political control over executives, managers, services and programs. It further assists in channelizing the City’s limited revenues from low priority to high priority areas.

6.      The City’s current mileage rate benefits for all employee should be reduced from its current rate to a maximum of .35 cents per km with the 2012 budget process  and implemented as a condition of continuing employment with the City for all employees, union, non union, seasonable, part time, full time, executive and managers alike. 

7.       The salaries of all senior and top bureaucrats should be frozen for the 2012 budget process and until they manage to come up with some meaningful and enlightened ways and means for the ensuring the long term financial ability for the City to meet its debt and operating and capital budgets obligation. If they cannot do this then the Mayor, his Executive team and Council must find the individuals who can.

8.       Redeploy 30 officers from the police mounted unit to other community policing duties when preparing the 2012 budget. This would leave the mounted unit with 13 officers and 18 horses from the current 43 officers and 28 horses without reducing the number of actual officers in the force. 

9.       Through attrition the civilian component of the police services should be reduced by 5 per cent each year for the next 4 years and then caped at that number.

10.    For the current and future capital needs and operating costs  of the City’s Toronto Hydro our City should consider that Toronto Hydro secure venture capital by forming a limited partnership, a joint venture, selling 45% of its shares through private placement, self underwriting and or a direct public stock offering to access capital, new management and operating funds.

11.    The Toronto Zoo another agency corporation of our City should also consider the possibilities of selling 45% of its shares through private placement, self underwriting etc. and or a direct public stock offering.

12.    The City’s retirement defined benefit pension plan must be changed and fully incorporated with the Canada Pension Plan and employee contributions equally matching contributions and not to exceed 4% of salary as a condition of continuing employment with the City for all employees, union, non union, seasonable, part time ,full time, executive and managers alike. 

13.    The City’s employee benefit package should be changed to be on a 50/50 co payment basis and the maternity leave top up benefit should be reduced to 50% of salary for 25 weeks and the on site subsidized daycare for preschool aged children should be on a maximum subsidization of 25% being paid by the City and 75% paid by employees and also as a condition of continuing employment with the City for all employees, union, non union, seasonable, part time, full time, executive and managers alike. 

14.      Mayor Ford’s suggestion for matching the 22 provincial constituency boundaries by reducing the current 44 City ward boundaries and the number of councillors from 44 to 22 should be implemented by the province prior to the next City election in 2014. In the meantime councilor’s and the Mayor’s annual salary should be reduced by 6% for the next 5 years commencing with the reduction in the 2012 budget process for same.

15.      Commencing with the 2012 budget process all City tenders and all bid requests for City contracts or work etc. should be open to all contractors and corporations be they employ union or non union employees and the union wage or far wage policy should be rescinded to stop the present discrimination against non unionized contractors and workers to ensure greater transparency, openness, fairness and cost efficiency.

16.     The council should ask the province to allow the City to amend the Property Tax Rebate Program for Vacant Commercial and Industrial Buildings to stop the current open ended period clause to a maximum lifetime tax relief for such properties of 2 year in total, unless the owner of the property has made an application or has an ongoing application before the proper City departments for a RE Zoning, Re Development or Extensive Renovations.

The City must put aside the dark dystopia of the feminist imagination found in such allegories as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and ensure that the 2012 City Library budget is reduced by at least 15% and that certain library operation where warranted are amalgamated with other library facilities and some closed and the properties offered to developers for the much needed social house units throughout the City. 

We all must remember that almost every public and high school, university and college within the City also have library facilities.  

With warmest regards and respectfully submitted, I remain,

PeterClarke

Toronto/North York/Willowdale

The Ongoing Attempted Destruction of God’s Teachings by the Party Politics of Totalitarianism for Social Justice within a Political New Religion of World Order.

The quest for ideal individualism shall always defeat any re-introduction of a new political world order for Social Justice which is just a guise of 21st Century Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Radical Islamic Jihadists Extremists or Dictatiorships.  

^{http://utile.autre.net/livre/biblekjvl.html}

^{A new article,The Ongoing Attempted Destruction of God's Teachings by Today's Political Party's, by Peter Clarke, is coming soon.}

South African White farmers 'being wiped out' by Dan McDougall in Ceres, Western Cape

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate.

Dan McDougall in Ceres, Western Cape

THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tires, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers.

Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room.

As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest.

In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying.

The attackers, who were drug addicts, simply disappeared into the night. Cillier’s murder, at Christmas, was barely reported in the local press. It was, after all, everyday news.

Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a campaign of intimidation that began in 2000 has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, but has left fewer than two dozen dead.

The vulnerability felt by South Africa’s 40,000 remaining white farmers intensified earlier this month when Julius Malema, head of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) youth league, opened a public rally by singing Dubula Ibhunu, or Shoot the Boer, an apartheid-era anthem, that was banned by the high court last week.

Malema’s timing could hardly have been worse. Last weekend in the remote farming community of Colenso, in KwaZulu-Natal, Nigel Ralfe, 71, a dairy farmer, and his wife Lynette, 64, were gunned down as they milked their cows. He was critically injured; she died.

That same day a 46-year-old Afrikaner was shot through his bedroom window as he slept at his farm near Potchefstroom. A few days later a 61-year-old was stabbed to death in his bed at a farm in Limpopo.

The resurrection of Dubula Ibhunu, defended by senior ANC officials as little more than a sentimental old struggle song, has been greeted with alarm by Tom Stokes, of the opposition Democratic Alliance. He said the ANC’s continued association with the call to kill Boers could not be justified.

“Any argument by the ANC that this song is merely a preservation of struggle literature rings hollow in the face of farming families who have lost wives, mothers and grandmothers,” he added.

He was supported by Anton Alberts of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party: “Malema’s comments are creating an atmosphere that is conducive to those who want to commit murder. He’s an accessory to the wiping out of farmers in South Africa.”

Rossouw Cillier, Pieter’s brother, bristled as he pointed to the bullet holes in the panelled kitchen of the farmhouse near Ceres in the Western Cape. “They shot him through the fridge from the back door — the bullets came straight through here, into his heart. He never had a chance,” he said.

A successful apple and pear grower, he believes his community is living on borrowed time: “More white farmers have been killed than British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, we are at war here.”

His brother’s farmhouse is now shuttered and empty. “I can’t spend time here. We’ll have to sell. This farm has been in our family for generations but it must go. Who’ll manage it? The children will never come back here. They held their own father as he died in front of them. Will they ever get over that?”

As we walked across the orchard, fruit destined for the shelves of Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the UK was still being picked. A tractor passed a 10ft cross erected in honour of the murdered farmer.

“It lights up at night,” Rossouw said. “My brother was a religious man. It’s all that’s left of him here.”

Across South Africa many farmers feel endangered. In Northern Province a tribute has been created beneath an enormous sign with the stark Afrikaans word “plaasmoorde” — farm killings. Thousands of white wooden crosses have been planted across a mountainside, one for each fallen farmer.

Recently the government’s department of rural development has been airing proposals to nationalize productive farmland as a “national asset”. Critics claim it is designed to deflect criticism from the ruling ANC’s failures.

“It’s a lot easier talking about nationalizing farms than building decent houses, making clean water come out of taps or honoring promises to redistribute farm plots to millions of landless poor,” said a spokesman for AgriSA, the farmers’ union.

On the outskirts of Ceres there are few groceries in the township store — tins of pilchards, baked beans, some dried biscuits. A group of teenage boys sit on the burnt-out remains of a Ford Escort. This is where Cillier’s killers gathered, in a shebeen, a drinking club, where they fortified themselves with cheap hooch before they set off to rob him. They escaped with nothing.

According to Rossouw Cillier the most telling detail is that his brother was unarmed when they attacked. “If we brandish a weapon, we’ll go to prison, not them. What did they gain from this murder? It was an act as pointless as their lives.”

Dan McDougall in Ceres, Western Cape as he reported