Property prostitution must be stopped

When I heard that the ANC’s serpentine secretary-general was demanding quantitative easing, I shrugged off my hangover, put on my pants and went down to the pub to raise support. Not for him. For us. Why should the government get everything? I offered free drinks to everyone who joined me in the struggle. “Quantitative easing for all!” I shouted. The place was empty, what with it having just opened, but the bartender said he was firmly behind me and began pouring himself shots of top range filth.

“What’s this all about, then?” he said, handing me a glass of the cheap stuff. I began explaining quantitative easing but quickly realised I could do little more than pronounce it correctly, which is more than Ace Magashule could do. I took out the stupidest smart phone known to mankind, turned to Wikipedia for answers, and read it out aloud.

“A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield while simultaneously lowering short term interest rates which increases the money supply.”

The barman poured me another then went around the back, probably to have a little cry. I’m not ashamed to admit that my eyes welled up. When he returned, we spoke of the cricket. Like Ace, it wouldn’t matter how many times we read that definition, we would never be able to understand what it meant. And that’s quite sad. Fortunately we have alcohol, a proven depressant, to cheer us up.

Is it not enough that they are taxing us to death? Do they really need to force our banks to be their whores while using the fiscal equivalent of a penis pump to inflate the economy? Of course they do. This is as it should be. We, the common people, cannot be trusted with money. Wealth is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands.

We might begin thinking there is more to life than penury and servitude. We might even begin behaving as if we were the equals or, heaven forfend, the betters of those who earn R100,000 a month to sleep in parliament. Once we start believing we are more powerful than those who make the laws, we might be inclined to start making our own.

When it becomes apparent that the cornfed citizenry is earning money in ways that slip through the state-fabricated straitjackets of rates and tariffs, levies and fines, duties, tolls and tithes, the government must intervene.

Airbnb is a case in point. This fiendish scheme originated in San Francisco, the very city where an African green monkey had unprotected sex with a man in a bathhouse and gave the world Aids.

There are over 40,000 homes listed on Airbnb in South Africa. Half the hosts use it to help them pay their bills so they can afford to stay in their homes. The other half presumably use it to pay their dealers, shrinks and ex-wives. It doesn’t matter. This promiscuous making of money for doing nothing more than handing your front door key to a stranger for a few nights is unpatriotic.

Leading the charge to end this ungodly practice is the hotel industry. They have gone to the government wearing their very best sackcloth and ashes and complained that more and more people are choosing to stay in Airbnbs rather than their struggling establishments. And the government, which spends much of its time in hotels, is listening. Hotels, they say, don’t deserve to be treated like this. Hotels are wonderful places with restaurants and swimming pools and unlimited opportunities for extramarital affairs.

Anyone who chooses Airbnb over a hotel ought to be ashamed. Who do they think they are, these house whores wilfully renting out rooms and even entire homes without any government control whatsoever? Do they think they live in a free market economy regulated by nothing more than supply and demand? This is not Singapore, you know.

The war against wanton letting was declared when the head of the Federated Hospitality Association of SA, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa – a man whose name is best pronounced when drunk – described Airbnb as unfair competition and called on the government to stop fannying about and put on its jackboots.

A recent report forecast that hotel room revenue would reach R21.8 billion in 2022. Okay, but that’s 2022. Donald Trump might have killed us all by then. What about now? Our beleaguered hotels pulled in a meagre R17 billion last year. That’s barely enough to disinfect the Jacuzzis, sterilise the semen-stained sheets and launder the profits.

Luring customers away from hotels with the promise of cheap, safe and sanitary accommodation, Airbnb is no better than a terrorist group on a recruitment drive. They get their pound of flesh – a very reasonable 3% commission – from the 830 000 people who stayed in South Africa’s Airbnb properties last year.

On International Women’s Day, Airbnb announced that 60% of hosts in SA were women. They earned around R29 000 each last year. No wonder the government wants to regulate this sick business. It starts with renting out the spare room and ends with them standing shoulder to shoulder demanding all sorts of things. Give women an inch and they’ll take your yard, build a small yet cosy cottage, put it on Airbnb, use the money to buy weapons or learn something and the next thing you know, the patriarchy is lying bleeding in the gutter and that’s the end of that.

But it’s not just women taking advantage of this nefarious scheme. More people over sixty are getting involved. They are up to something, mark my words. If the elderly have money left over at the end of the month, there is no telling what they might do with it. They must be stopped.

Sound the trumpets, for here cometh the Tourism Amendment Bill to end this shameless middle-class making of easy money.

Occupancy and amounts to be earned shall be regulated by the tourism minister who is not Derek Hanekom. There is much talk of thresholds, a concept unfamiliar to me. Here’s a quote from someone in the tourism department, “If the guy in the Airbnb gets thirteen nights and the guy next door gets nothing, then he knows that he will get his chance when the Airbnb reaches its threshold.”

This is too namby-pamby for my liking. If we are to live in a heavily regulated society, let us at least do it properly. If the guy next door is getting nothing, he should be legally entitled to set fire to his neighbour’s premises so that the guests might move into his house, even if it is just to nurse their burns. At a special rate, obviously.

In conclusion, I would like it known that I have a lovely property available on Airbnb in Westbrook north of Durban for a very reasonable rate.

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