"That ain't workin'..."
"...as long as injustice and inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest." ... "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will overcome it."
Poverty is, as President Thabo Mbeki has so frequently observed, our country's gravest problem. Poverty and our skewed economy underpin all social ills. We could have reversed it, but we sold out our solution in 1996, swapping the RDP for GEAR. Will we indeed overcome poverty, Madiba? I doubt it. Should you believe otherwise, a day at the beach might change your mind. These people don't give a shit that our kids are raped at seven, are on meta-amphetamines at ten, have no education, homes, or health care, and are dead of gunshot wounds at 17.
Whatever...it doesn't matter. I'm chucking in the towel. For now. As my kids grow up and move off to Ireland, I become more inclined to follow them.
Faced daily with the world's greatest income disparity and unable to sustain a family on an income based more on global greed than any policy of the company for which I work or the skilled work I do, I cannot see my personal fortunes changing. While many of us work for others and struggle to put food on the table, overt opulence continues to flaunt itself in the face of abject poverty. I cannot believe that it will not continue to do so for generations to come. It has become the way of the world, the way we do business around here. Forget the church and state. It has always been about business and, after decades of not-so-covert manipulation, the money moguls have bought the future and are now riding us into the ground.
"That's the way you do it..."
"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will."
The rich are rapacious, rampant, and insatiable. The poor have no power and their future looks grim. Grinding poverty and short-term gain, Madiba — these things kill. Be it by AIDS, TB, crime, violence, social dysfunction, imploding value systems, the collapse of the family, or what have you, they squeeze the blood from our veins and the life from our country. Until we find ourselves a Castro, a Chavez, a Machel, or a young Mandela, it will always be so.
I'm not alone in feeling this way. Over the past ten years, I've seen hundreds of South Africans leave as economic refugees. My view is limited. Several million are earning a living overseas. Many faithful South Africans live and blog there, as homesick as all hell. Yeah, the English, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh; they are Africans too. Social problems do not phase us — they are to be expected and perhaps even serve as signs that we are coming of age as a developing nation. We've been through too much over the past fifty years to be upset by minor irritants such as repression and revolution.
Thank God, over the past century and as President Mbeki pays statesmanlike tribute to the late Great Krokodil, we've had people of stature and integrity to guide us past possible futures every bit as horrendous as those faced by Sudan, the DRC, Iraq, Palestine, Angola, Chechnya and so many other countries. We've the Reagans, Thatchers, Bothas, Bushes, Blairs, Vorsters and countless others to thank for such grotesque failures of the human spirit. For every blood diamond on the world market and for every limbless landmine victim, there's a Mercedes, BMW or Audi being delivered to a sought-after address.
"Money for nothin' and your chicks for free..."
"Yet in this new century millions of people remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. Massive poverty and inequality are terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world also boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom."
Nelson Mandela
Ultimately, our ability to sustain our dream boils down to the price of a loaf of bread and, perhaps because even buying a loaf of bread is a political act, I'm addressing this entry to you. I can no longer afford bread and I do not accept such a situation as a sacrifice in nation building. For as long as a minority live high on the hog, spending blood money taken from a majority forced to eat dirt, our dream will remain our illusion and the rich man's reality. And you will be flogging both like a dead horse, stating that which we know, mouthing truisms that hold no substance and offer no future.
By the way, I won't be buggering off just yet; I owe Trevor some money and the rest to the company store. But I will say this much. I'm on my way out of here and will probably end up in some corner of County Mayo, the land that gave voice to my grandfather and our President's favourite poet. Look at it this way, Madiba. In our wired world, a plane ride is several hours and another country. Distances have dropped and miles have diminished to minutes. So, Irish I may be, but I remain as much an African as you.
Note: Pictures taken Sunday while looking for a place in the sun.
