Saturday is July Handicap day.  I have 3 runners on the day including one in the actual Durban July.  Master Sabina is only my second runner ever in the July – which illustrates how hard it is to have a runner in the race, let alone a winner.  It’s an honour to have a runner and given it is a handicap, he and all the horses in the race have an equal chance.  He has already won the Summer Cup and owes me nothing, having won 8 races in his career and R2,3 million already in stakes.  I would love him to be in the first 4 or 5 if he gets luck in running.  And at Greyville in Durban you need luck.  It’s a tight short track with lots of horses bumping each other and by the end of the race at least half of them won’t even have had a chance at a clear run through the traffic.

I have two other runners on the day.  In Race 11 I have Captain Swarovski.  That’s at 7:15pm on Saturday.  He has won a few times and is a good sort – but perhaps a place bet,  A race later, my last runner, in the last race of the day is Baritone.  That’s Race 12 off at 7:55pm.  Baritone is the 2nd best horse I have in training at the moment but this is a handicap and he will be carrying lots of weight.  In his last race he was close behind the favourite the July Handicap, Black Arthur.  Recently he has had breathing issues.  If they return he has no chance, if they don’t he is a good place bet.  I also have some runners in Gauteng at Turffontein on the day, but not at the July meeting in Durban where I will be.

Three years ago Do You Remember ran 3rd for me in the July and two years ago Master Sabina won a feature race on the day, but not the major race.  Obviously, like all owners I dream of winning the July.  If I can’t have that, then a winner in a small money race on the same day.  5th place in the July is worth more money than winning either of the other two races – and winning the July is worth R2,5 million with R800 000 for 2nd place.  For 2 minutes at 4:20pm on Saturday that’s what I will be dreaming of – but I know my chances are only 1 in 18.  The race will be live on SABC 3.

The title of this blog article is the latest book from Dr Mark Hyman.  He had a number of New York Times best selling books including The Blood Sugar Solution and I have referred to him in my blog previously.  He is another one of those that is joining the revolution that started long before Dr Tim Noakes, who wrote about it in South Africa, towards eating more fat.  

I enjoy skim reading these books, but I must say by the time I got through everything I cannot eat, I start struggling to find what I can still eat!  I understand that alcohol is not good for you, that natural sweeteners are bad, that artificial sweeteners are worse, that processed foods of any kind are not good for you, etc. We need to add to that that you should avoid refined vegetable oils, all dairy products other than grass-fed butter, beans which apparently have too much starch, all grains including quinoa and buckwheat, because these spike blood sugar and insulin, not to mention gluten, which is apparently hidden everywhere!  Oops, I see I left out all fruit because it is also a source of sugar.  

We pretty much get left eating grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, some poultry, shellfish, almond milk, nuts, some seeds and avocado.  They do say you can have dark chocolate as a treat at the end of 21 days.  The parts I liked are for their recommendations to take a sauna, get a massage and get plenty of sleep.   Truthfully, I don’t mind eating healthily, as long as it is all prepared for me and I guess if I could pop into Woolworths and buy one of these “perfect” meals, then I would probably be eating it.  Until then, I will continue to follow advice about having a bit of PGX every now and then, because that is a super fibre made of some root, together with seaweed fibres, which does have the effect of reducing one’s appetite if you take a glass of it before every meal.  Ideally, they say you should drink two glasses of water with it and I am not sure if your appetite is removed because of the PGX or just the effect of two glasses of water just before you try to eat!

I know I have written about their offices before, but now that they are completed and the staff moved in there, I have to say that it is always impressive to see how big a law firm can be!  These are major multi-national corporations, dealing in mega millions of fees and certainly they would have to charge a fortune just to cover the costs of those very impressive offices at 90 Rivonia Road.  It is just across the road from Sandton City and Sandton Square and it is very impressive.  They have assisted me with legal work previously and I am rather keen to have a look inside the offices.  

I have always felt, along with not expanding into other areas faster, that one of my big mistakes was not to move into bigger offices a long time ago.  The process of building my offices at 127 Jan Smuts Avenue was however so long and so slow that I guess I let it cloud the fact that by the time we moved into them, they were already too small.  We actually have not been in them for that long – it is about 5 or 6 years – although maybe some staff will correct me and tell me it is longer.  I could easily move to offices now of three times the 450 square metres or so that we have and if one was to redesign offices it gives one a lot more opportunity to add in more features such as a gym and more boardrooms, not to mention more space for staff to sit and much more rooms for files -  files in this particular field of work get very quickly very thick!

Today is an important day, in terms of horseracing.  The field for the R4 million July Handicap is announced and the draws are also made.  The draw is the gate from which the horse comes and the outside numbers really have much less chance, although the Snaiths, who trained some of my horses, also tell me that draws No 1 and 2 are very bad because those horses get trapped against the rail and don’t get a proper run.  So, it is firstly the pressure of making the field – and one must put in perspective that I’ve had racehorses winning races for me since 2003, that in all that time I only had one runner in the July Handicap, namely Do You Remember, who came third.  Just to get a runner in the July is very tough as 13 years of owning horses and only one runner shows.  It is certainly Durban’s event of the year with no other sport or social event coming close in KwaZulu-Natal and to have a runner would be a great honour. 

I expect that Master Sabina will make the field, despite one or two bad runs, because he is currently 7^th on the July log, and although they don’t issue a final log before the field is announced, I cannot see that he could have dropped more than 11 positions to outside the top 18, which ultimately comprise the final field.  At the time of dictating this blog he was considered quite an outsider at 28/1, but if he makes the field and gets a decent draw one would expect those odds to come in.  At the end of the day, it is a handicap, which means that although there will be one or two horses in the race who are probably better than their rating suggests, any horse in the race should have an equal opportunity because the better they are the more weight they are carrying, to put them at a disadvantage with the horses that are not as good as them!  A lot of people don’t like that, but it is unfortunately what makes the sport work because if the best horse in the race won the race every single time nobody would bet on any other horses and there would not be any people who would be prepared to take the bet.  The bet in turnover on the races, and the race operators take a percentage of that turnover, is what largely pays for horseracing in South Africa.  I should probably do an article on another occasion about how that is betting on the tote and not betting with the bookmakers, because the bookmakers don’t pay a fare share towards the costs of the industry and pay much less towards horseracing out of every R100 than the totes does.

The shooting in Orlando was a reminder, yet again, of the crazy world we live in.  We don’t seem to have world wars now, but every week in some country around the world, another lunatic commits a horrific act.  This time it was in Orlando, Florida – home to Universal studios, Disney and sadly as we discovered later in the week an estimated 1.3 million alligators.   Orlando, we read, is a city which has a surprising diversity, surprising because you normally associate diversity with bigger cities like New York or Miami and not a city of just 2 million people.  It’s an immigrant city in many respects filled with university students and only one third of the population can claim to have been there before Epcot opened in 1982.  In particular, it has a large South American population and many people from Puerto Rico.  Its diverse and not a conservative, closed society like many cities in many countries.  This is where terror struck this time but I don’t think it is clear cut terrorism all on its own.

I know the killer pledged allegiance to ISIS, but he also pledged allegiance to a rival group of ISIS, demonstrating his lack of knowledge of the group, so clearly the link is tenuous at best and most likely a cover up for a man struggling with his feelings about his own possible homosexuality.  To me this was first and foremost an attack on homosexuals and one could see that even in his father’s comments who while saying his son obviously had no reason to do this, went on to say, for no reason at all, that gay people will be judged by God.  In an instant you knew exactly where the homophobic problems had started in this house – with the father.  It’s too early to speculate now, but all the time spent on gay websites, going to gay clubs etc can’t all have just been research and we hear more and more of men who say he made “moves” on them.  This really appears to be man who struggled with his sexuality and had been brought up in a house by a father who believes clearly that God will punish all homosexuals.  One can imagine living in a house like that, with parents raging on about the issue, invoking God’s name and wrath all the time, while secretly having gay tendencies. 

This massacre in Pulse nightclub demonstrates more clearly than ever what happens when children are brought up to judge others on their race, sex or sexuality.  We in South Africa have many generations of white people, in families who swallowed the National Party apartheid propaganda, and which ultimately led to entire generations of our people being poorly educated, having nothing spent on their education and now struggling to enter the workforce.  We are, in many respects in South Africa, while our economy struggles and the crime rate is ridiculous, bearing the fruit that the parents and Grandparents of many white people planted, in terms of what they supported and who they voted for. 

Lastly, still I fail to understand why so many people, are such bored busybodies, that their sole concern in life is how other people get their sexual kicks and deciding what is “normal” and what is not and how others should conduct themselves in their private lives.  It’s such a small part of us, does it really matter what consenting adults choose to do in their private time as long as neither children nor animals are involved?  Must 49 people be executed on a night out just because some of those in the club are gay?

The Rand has weakened recently, especially after data on 29 March showed that unemployment had risen to its highest level in more than a decade.  It is sad to read things like that, but it is not as if I have not written about it a lot on my blog.  There are so many uncompetitive laws in South Africa that really make it very difficult for overseas companies to come in and do business in South Africa.  The more unemployment increases of course, the more the ills of unemployment will affect us all – not only a weak economy, but of course higher rates of crime, etc, because many of those who are not employed are going to resort to other options.  The Cabinet issued a statement saying that it is “taking measures to deal with” a high unemployment rate. I wonder what those measures are with official unemployment now at 26,7% in South Africa!  

Unofficial unemployment is of course far higher and it does not seem that any journalist is asking the right questions – let’s talk about the 6 million new jobs that the ANC promised its voters in the last election.  Where are those 6 million new jobs?  We now have unemployment at its highest level in a decade, so far from creating 6 million jobs, we now have less jobs than we had before and unfortunately neither the ANC nor the trade unions have yet started to learn their lessons.  We must hope it will not take them 20 or 30 years to learn, that you need to make conditions in South Africa conducive to business because only business will ultimately resolve the problems of unemployment.  The Government can’t employ everybody and we already have half of the country’s budget, if not more, already going on state employees’ salaries and benefits, and so if anything we need to retrench and fire government employees.  Somewhere along the line the ANC will have to abandon some of its philosophies when it comes to labour law, international companies and to move into the 21st century – it is after all 2016.  Arriving now would be better than never.

I have recently ordered some DNA tests from a DNA company called 23andMe.  I am looking forward to the reports, which apparently take about 7 to 8 weeks to come through.  These reports, as genetic testing costs are going down, are becoming more and more common, although there is a lot of information that they could advise you on, but they won’t because the health authorities don’t necessarily allow you to know the information.  I assume that would be similar, for example, to you only being able to do an HIV test once your have signed all sorts of forms about being offered counselling, etc.  

The basic test includes an ancestry composition, which tells you what percent of your DNA comes from a total of 31 populations around the world – in other words, are you from Eastern Asia, European, etc, but they then break it down between more than European such as British and Irish, French and German or Scandinavian, etc.  Most of us know that from our parents – although I guess for some people what their parents have told them is not necessarily accurate for a variety of reasons, but I am sure I will not be getting any surprises there!  More than 1 million people have done the test for 23andMe and they say they can also advise you of any people who have common DNA to you, meaning that they are relatives of yours who have also done the test that you may or may not know of.  I can see that causing a few problems as well!  

Apart from that, you can choose which reports you would like to see and which reports you don’t want to see and see your ancestry breakdown for each pair of chromosomes that you have.  A lot of the science is fairly complicated, going into the chromosomes and the X and Y chromosomes.  The rest is based on your saliva and it can tell you if you carry a mutation for 1 of 36 different conditions on any of your chromosomes that you have inherited from your parents – one copy of each for the chromosomes, a total of 46.  The tests are able to show whether you have a cystic fibrosis mutation, for example, a greater predisposition to cancer and on simple things like telling you how your DNA relates to your alcohol, caffeine and milk consumption as well as your muscle composition.  It will detail whether you are likely to be lactose intolerant or you are susceptible to alcohol, whether your muscles are capable of rapid explosive movements and you are better suited to be a sprinter or long distance runner, etc.  I am really looking forward to the results and I would certainly write about some of them in the future.

I enjoyed reading a recent article by the Press Ombudsman finding the Sunday Times guilty of the Code of Ethics and Conduct for South African Print and Online Media.  The Sunday Times was found to have made a serious breach of this code and ordered to print a correction article about an article they wrote about an attorney involved with Road Accident Fund cases.  They wrote about an Eastern Cape attorney, Zuko Nonxuva, on 17 January 2016 under the title “The tragic tale of a penniless SA millionaire”.  Unfortunately, from the attorney’s perspective they dealt with exactly the kind of case that one fears that it might – that of a client under curatorship.  

The client’s version was that when he questioned this attorney about the case, the attorney ran off, had a curator appointed and then delayed the payment to him.  There did appear to be other complaints about the fees charged in some matters, but that is not the focus of this article, apart from which I don’t have the details of those allegations.  The Sunday Times were criticised for failing to point out the existence of court orders that the money had to be paid to a curator, that the attorney had not rushed off to court as was suggested and that the delays in the payment of the client’s case were all as a result of various unsuccessful applications the client brought with other attorneys to try and set aside the curatorship.  I think the finding is an important one, because he is not going to be the last attorney who is going to face media criticism in a Trust or curator matter.  

The fact of the matter is when a client has been represented by a curator, it means they don’t have the capacity to litigate, and the Sunday Times did not put across in its article that the person whom they were interviewing and who was telling them the whole story had obviously, by implication, already been found by a court to lack the legal capacity to give instructions in his own case.  While that does not stop him telling his story to the media, if a finding has been made that you are legally insane, or lack the legal capacity to even determine what happens in your own court case, I really do believe that the media should be a little bit more circumspect before writing their story based on the version of somebody who has essentially been found by a court of law to not even understand the legal process.  

How do you rely on somebody who has been found to not understand the legal process to tell you a story, complaining about the legal process!  Any proper investigation, by any reporter in such a case, would obviously involve accessing the court file, which is after all open to the public, and reading the extracts relating to the client’s legal capacity.  I guess of course, and I have not seen the reports in this case, but I can imagine they say similar things to reports that we read in these cases from time to time, but that would not make a good story.  It is hard to lead another attack on attorneys when a medico legal report will contain lines such as, “Mr/Ms … struggled to grasp basic concepts, was argumentative and showed a clear lack of understanding as to the purpose of my examination as well as to the legal process in which he/she is involved.  I believe that this person is not capable of making informed decisions, meets the definition of a legally insane person and needs to be represented in litigation by a curator.”  That would pretty much ruin an article, wouldn’t it?  

What needs to happen is not just the complaint to a Press Ombudsman, but for an attorney in one of these types of matters to sue for damages.  We know that most attorneys, for a variety of different reasons, don’t want to do it, but sooner or later, the media will pick the wrong person and then they are going to pay a very heavy financial price for writing such completely misleading articles that do such a disservice to the profession and to the public by creating an impression that in a case where a curator or a Trust is involved, that the attorney has done it for some nefarious reason.  There is no mention, for example, and I don’t know what the facts of this case are, that in most of the cases where a curator is appointed the curator will also find that the fee agreement entered into with the client is also not valid, because the client did not have the capacity to enter into that agreement.  In many case it is ultimately substituted with an agreement that leads to the attorney earning less fees than he or she would have in terms of the original agreement, because the facts relating to the curatorship in some cases come up too late for example to allow a Contingency Fee Act agreement to be entered into.  It is grossly unfair to suggest that any attorney wants all the dramas, complaints and threats from clients that go along with curator appointments, not to mention the considerable difficulties of dealing either with the client, or in some sad cases money-grabbing family members, who all have a variety of reasons why they believe the money should be paid out directly to the injured person as he/she wants to buy a house for all of them to live in, etc, etc.  

I must say that the whole legalisation of marijuana issue, which is clearly a worldwide trend, and it will come to South Africa in due course, is a troubling one.  I don’t think it is clear-cut. When I was younger I would probably have said that it had to be legalised and I was very disappointed when Gareth Prince was denied by a one vote majority in the Constitutional Court of becoming an attorney because of his continued use of marijuana.  It was the narrowest of margins that he lost by, I think 6/5 if I recall, and I always felt terribly sorry for him.  

I think that it is inevitable that marijuana will be legalised around the world because more and more countries allow it on a “medical basis”.  The medical basis is however a farce because people forget that in most countries you can pick up a telephone, have your call outsourced to a doctor in India or Canada or who knows where and once you have explained that you are suffering from migraines, nervousness or some or other nonsense, you are going to get a script for medical marijuana.  Once you open the door to medical marijuana, you are basically legalising marijuana because one way or another, as some people know when they go to doctors for sick notes for work, you will get what you want.  

The problem is that dagga is not good for you, it is not good for your motivation and I really think it leads to demotivated people who sit and complain about the world. While some people may use it sparingly as a laugh, others don’t.  What do you do when you can no longer stop somebody using something because the substance they are using is now legalised?  Isn’t that exactly the situation with alcohol?  You cannot stop an alcoholic from drinking because there is no law against them drinking. All the power that one has to try and help those people who have an addictive personality and cannot limit their use of a substance which is bad for them, is gone once something is legalised.  I don’t think marijuana is the worst drug in the world – I think it is probably as bad or equal to alcohol but there are many people who just cannot control their use of either alcohol or marijuana.  

Legalising marijuana will of course prevent organised criminals from selling one of their biggest profitable drugs and may damage their sales of other drugs as well.  The problem with cannabis is that a minority of users do develop a dependency on it, and so you cannot really say they have, as an adult of free choice to smoke it or not, they just cannot help themselves.  On the other hand, we will never prevent people smoking dagga, but when this debate does come to South Africa I do hope that we find ways to control it, make sure that all advertising of it is absolutely banned and deal in some way, perhaps with the taxes on people who will be allowed to sell it and produce it, for catering for treatment for those who do become dependent on dagga.