Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Banishing poverty is simple, but not easy. It is a spiritual problem, not merely economic, when prosperous South Africa allows half its population to live in desperate need. No human being should be forced to endure constant hunger, live in a crowded, leaking shack, dice with disease and death as a daily routine and be compelled to be ignorant. The muggings and break-ins of today are the skeletal hand of the hungry clutching at our sleeve to remind us that people turn to crime when there is no legitimate way to feed their families. All moral people agree that poverty must go. There is plenty of wealth to do the job. Our resources are vast. The gross national product, the multibillion turnover of our companies and the government budget tell us the figures.
Take a drive round the new areas of our great cities and towns, glance through the adverts in our media or jostle with the crowds pressing through our shopping malls in a lush world of houses, cars, clothing, schools, books, gadgets, health, pastimes and holi- days. These are the outward signs of the wealth in our land. The simple solution to poverty is to redistribute these riches, but how? The wealth is controlled by two sectors: the capitalists and the government. The poverty is experienced within a third sector: the mass of civil society. Ten percent from the affluent is 100% to the impoverished, but how can that transfer happen? For centuries, wages have been the method for transferring wealth. People are paid to work by those who possess the wealth and thus it is redistributed. However, the process has never been very effective – perhaps because the wage system deliberately left major sectors of society without means of survival – and now it no longer works at all. Machinery and information technology produce more wealth than ever but also employ less people than ever. Factories, farms and offices operate with a fraction of the staff they used to require. Talk of “job creation” and “full employment” is a nonsense as out of date as ox wagons or indulgences. Neither business nor the government will ever generate enough jobs to redistribute wealth to everyone through the wages system. The economic process will go on using machines and shedding jobs, until it reaches the most efficient equation to run the world which may require us to work a three- or four-day week from 25 to 45 years and have the rest of the time for other enjoyment. But if wealth production requires fewer people to work, how else can wealth be shared? The government can use the clout of the state to lead development, campaign for job creation, lead the economic empowerment of the poor, promote cooperative and collective ventures and produce policies to change the ruling patterns of both the market and civil society. But such a revolution needs a different drive and this is where the insights of African spirituality begin to tread on the heels of Western economic cynicism. Africa had a different approach to wealth. Although nominally owned by the chief-king, both wealth and land belonged to the community. The holistic communal approach to possessions avoided the divisive dilemma of Western individualism. The extended family network – which still shares joy, grief and pensions, the ubuntu philosophy and countless local practices – epitomise a sense of communal care which is at the heart of redistributing wealth.
People with this viewpoint observe the growth of maternity grants, child grants, free education, welfare grants, medical aid, hospitalisation plans, disability grants and old-age pensions and see them as tentative juvenile steps towards the adult acceptance of a basic income grant for everyone. The national priority will be to provide an allowance to support our people, not a priority to support globalised companies. Schools will focus on education for culture and enjoyment, and the rediscovery of voluntary work will transform NGOs, community-based organisations and the local government. There are plenty of good and caring people in South Africa. It is not beyond the ingenuity, compassion and generosity of our government, business and civil society to work out how the pool of national wealth and work can be utilised in an African way, rather than continuing our enslavement to the West. To do so, Africa needs to believe it can stand on its own feet, which is the great new fact of the 21st century. The suffering, disease and crime induced by poverty will continue while people follow the grab-for-yourself colonial way of life. Acolytes of the dictators of capital need to be told there are better ways of doing things south of the Mediterranean. The applause in the background comes from simple, straightforward, caring people like Amos, Jesus, the Prophet, and the Sages of the East. They didn’t find it easy either.