Piracy has a whole host of problems attached to it, but one of the biggest in my book is that of the strangled capability of coalition vessels operating in the area. From the rules of engagement which require captains to radio back to their home country for permission to board a suspected vessel, through to the frustratingly short-sighted SOP of leaving captured ships alone lest the crew be ‘endangered’ (as if being surrounded by AK47-wielding Somalis isn’t endangering), the actual nuts and bolts of counter-piracy is ridiculously compounded by a lack of overarching strategy. Sure, pirates to date have not intentionally killed a single hostage, but what happens when they do? Given the relatively short, two year surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden, it’s not unreasonable to think that pirates will adapt and become more aggressive. Perhaps the coalition navies will then adapt in kind, but at present it would appear that it’s the former who are evolving quicker. The parallels to fighting insurgents in Iraq are starting to emerge.

Ross Kemp aired a fascinating mini-documentary on counter-piracy operations a week or so ago. The frustration of the sailors and Marines aboard the HMS Northumberland is pretty damned obvious; circling a pirated vessel and told to back off lest the crew get hurt, unable to do anything more than shoot up the pirates’ now-vacated skiff and so on. I suspect that, much like counter-insurgency warfare, count-piracy operations could rank as one of the most tactically and strategically frustrating fields to operate in.

But let me offer some background for those who might be new to the story. Late at night on February 2nd, twelve Matric students roused fourteen Standard 9s from their beds in the hostel and sneaked them out to a quiet part of the school where they carried out a traditional initiation practice to supposedly welcome them as boarding seniors. During this, the Standard 9s had to strip naked and apply Deep Heat to their genitalia. They also had to run a gauntlet made up of the twelve Matric students, each one wielding a bat or hockey stick, who hit them one by one on the rear as they passed. Once through this gauntlet, the Std. 9s were considered to have ‘graduated’ as seniors of the boarding house and were permitted the privileges that seniors enjoy such as having their own toasters and kettles in their rooms.

Needless to say, the whole thing was unnecessary and stupid, and falling back on the excuse that it’s a tradition that has always been done this way is insufficient justification. Times have changed and what used to be acceptable is no longer so. But does it meet the severity of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, the crime for which the boys have been charged? I don’t think so. There was clearly no intent to cause lasting harm, with all the Matrics having been through the same process in their Std. 9 year and evidently believing they had suffered no adverse side-effects. And from what I’ve heard from those involved, the process was voluntary with an option to sit it out. By all indications, this was not some malicious attempt to bully younger students, but rather the sort of silly over-the-top taken-too-far after-hours nonsense that pretty much all boys-only boarding schools get up to. Trust me I know; I went to one. This seems to be borne out by the fact that the rest of the Std. 9s who were initiated have refused to testify against the Matric students and are all apparently overwhelmingly supportive of them.

But the key thing to remember here is that once the school found out what had happened, through a parent informing the deputy headmaster, it did the right thing. The Headmaster ordered an immediate investigation and disciplinary process to uncover what had happened and punish those responsible, as the school has long had a formal ban on initiations. They discovered that no teachers had been involved, but the twelve Matrics readily admitted culpability and went through a round of disciplinary proceedings, many losing privileges in the process and were sent through rehabilitation programs. The Department of Education was involved too at some point, unfortunately placing a gag order on the Parktown Headmaster in the process, but evidently waking away happy that justice had been served and that sufficient steps had been taken to prevent a re-occurrence of the event. The first of these steps occurred before Pene Kimber, the mother of the boy who complained, took her story to the press and caused a media uproar.

It was after this stage that this should have ended. Justice had been served, the school had forcefully re-iterated its policy against initiation and done what it could to prevent it from happening again. To take this further, and charge these boys with a severe crime in a move that seems motivated entirely out of a desire for revenge seems to me to be a step too far and distinctly unfair on those involved. Not only are they a week from their prelims and a mere couple of months from writing their finals, but the consequences of this for their future lives and careers could be disastrous. Even if their sentences are relatively light, the criminal record would disallow them from being able to pursue certain careers in law and accounting, would count against them in any other employment scenario and would prevent them from being able to apply for visas to travel to countries like the US and UK. Further, even if they are acquitted of all charges, their names and faces will almost certainly be printed on Friday and will forever come up in Google searches by future employers. These are enormously serious charges, and I honestly wonder if Pene Kimber is fully aware of the harm she is causing here.

I’m glad the initiation practices have come to an end, but I can’t support what these twelve young men are now being put through. I hope they are acquitted of all charges.

It would seem an almost simple problem to solve. Shoot the pirates or detain them, bomb the pirate ports and then hand out the medals. Except Somalia is one of the world’s most failed states, and the semi-autonomous region of Puntland contains thousands of potential pirates to fill any small gap counter-piracy operations will create, and there are already hundreds of captive crewmembers from previously-captured ships. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that those captives will likely wind up headless on YouTube.

There are two overarching obstacles to actually eliminating piracy in the GOA. Firstly, the above-mentioned chaos in Somalia has ensured that piracy will always be a viable alternative to crippling poverty on land, or trying to compete with the hordes of illegal European and Chinese poachers exploiting the coastline. Being a failed state means that there is precious little preventative action which the exiled government can take to overcome the warlords (I suppose now ‘pirate lords’), nor can the international community realistically mount land operations in any major capacity without a far greater commitment to eliminating a problem which ultimately only affects some 1% of international shipping transiting through the GOA.

Secondly, state navies operating and in the GOA providing essentially defensive operations such as escort duties and response actions are crippled by both a lack of clear and defined international laws on naval combat or counter-piracy operations as well as the inevitable and condemning pressure of international human rights organizations who might foam at the mouth at the mere suggestion that offensive and proactive operations be taken lest innocent fishermen become collateral damage. Defensive operations generally don’t offend anyone but the most rabid of pacifists, but it’s a wholly unrealistic approach to meaningful containment or disincentivisation of piracy, let alone a decent contribution to eliminating piracy at all in the long run. Gone are the days of yore where pirates were killed or captured on site, their ships burned, and the culprits hanged at the nearest friendly port. Pirates nowadays are often dropped off in Kenya and tried for minor offenses such as kidnapping, hijacking and so on, spending a fraction of the time in jail than justice would perhaps demand. The converse of that, of course, is that trying pirates like the days of Barbary would have human rights organizations squealing like stuck pigs, and is admittedly archaic by most legal norms these days. Thus the vacuum is made quite clear; the status quo is ineffective, the precedent too harsh, and the necessary measures of progress are currently lacking both in terms of political will and legal clarity. Pirates often quite literally get away with murder.

This is of course discounting the problems of expensive operational costs of navies engaging in what is effectively asymmetrical naval warfare with one’s hands tied behind one’s back due to a legal vacuum. That’s right folks, for once, a lack of international law on piracy in the GOA has resulted in strategic meekness amongst a fragmented and leaderless naval environment.

Using navy SEAL snipers to shoot pirates holding hostages only works in very specific cases under very clear mandates and guidelines, but will not prove as consistently successful as a SOP. The GOA is thus a basket of legal an strategic obstacles which need to be overcome, together with some manner of development portfolio for Somalia that is both feasible and upheld. Containment can work, to a degree, but a long-term solution is far off.

So why would I, who was bearish on residential property previously, suddenly change his mind? The truth is that that change hasn’t been sudden and I’m finally seeing realistic prices returning to the residential market. Especially since I now believe one doesn’t have to pay a kings ransom to otherwise buy the equivalent of rats hole in the middle of nowhere.

I also believe that the rates of decline reported are understating the extent at which prices are falling, while ignoring how a strong buyer can negotiate a discount onto a seller. In particular consider that since 70% of home loan applications are being rejected by banks currently there are therefore fewer buyers in the market and that per Economics 101 a decline in market demand causes market prices to fall. Couple that with how if you can obtain a pre-approved mortgage bond you can enjoy considerable negotiating power, enough to possibly tear a troubled seller down by perhaps 20% judging by some anecdotal claims I’ve heard.

Another reason is because for the first time I actually like the thinking of other individual buyers I speak to who are also entering the market. Gone is all the frothy bubble talk of how much capital appreciation yesterday’s buyers were looking forward to getting for their property in x years, how they repeated the mantra property can only go up, up and how you’d better get in now or you’ll miss out and be cursed to forever wander the earth landless for all time. Instead the logic for individuals now buying is, wait for it folks this is a shocker… people want to buy a place to enjoy living in it. And get this, if they’re going to buy a property as an investment they’re after those increasingly juicy rental yields, which is far stronger justification for investing than hedging everything on impossible rates of capital gain that belonged in the land of the unicorns.

True, the property prices declines of 10% a year still seem tame when compared against the huge 40% increases in previous years and many still feel shut out. However those 10% declines are actually closer to 20% in real terms when adjusting for inflation and the appreciations are similarly closer to 30% when adjusting by the same yardstick. I’d also caution those forwarding the argument that since The Economist newspaper’s house price index recorded that South Africa’s house prices appreciated by 300% in the same period the United States’ appreciated by ‘only’ 130% South Africa’s house prices have a lot further to fall to remain in parity. Let’s be honest, I don’t believe a 50% wipeout in local prices is likely as I suspect the index itself included the effect of the Rand’s recovery against the dollar from the more than R12 to $1 crash in late 2001 and it similarly overlooks the role that local inflation, especially in the construction industry itself, may have played in the price increases.

It’s admittedly hard to judge just when the market will bottom out, let alone return to positive growth: especially seeing how the economists who were closest to calling the market correctly were actually those who didn’t try call it at all. So declines and below-inflation growth may be the norm for years to come, but despite that I am increasingly committed to buying and the justification goes back to the reason why as individuals one would buy a property in the first place – namely to live in it for a time horizon of four to five years, if not more. And remember too that the strength buyers enjoy now will also not last forever.

Yes, property itself remains a good investment in the long term for individuals even if they are only buying their personal place of residence but that’s provided it’s in the right location, they’re not buying at the peak of a bubble and they’re not leveraging themselves to the limit on a property they can’t afford without any cushion against potential financial shocks. Many did just that and there are some still hoping for the prices to quickly return to what they paid at the peak. That may take a while longer than they’d like unless there is the injection of some considerably unpleasant inflation into the economy, which would ultimately be unpleasant for everyone.