I have always been astounded at the amount of attention given to the evils of being rich, given the number of poor people on the planet.
In the media we make a song and dance about what some call the WaBenzi class (a thinly disguised slur showing discomfort and disdain for wealthy blacks) and forget about the masses who cling to open train doors just so they can make it to their poorly paying jobs on time.
We write tomes about conspicuous consumption, yet we treat the conspicuous non-consumption we see in women with children on their backs begging at traffic lights at every corner as if it were a natural occurrence.
And then we wonder why the newly wealthy are happy to flaunt their wealth in the ways they do.
It is always surprising how people who could not be bothered by how the poor cope are suddenly experts in how they should live once they have turned the corner.
We readily condemn what, in the grand scheme of things, are insignificant signs of leading a better life than previously led, such as having a credit card or driving a car.
From where I sit the problem is with being poor rather than with being rich.
Two of the Catholic Church’s new deadly sins squarely address poverty. Now ”creating poverty” or contributing to the widening of a gap between rich and poor could cause believers to spend eternity in hell.
Stretched to a possible implication one could argue that the other ”new sin”, excessive wealth, also says something about poverty because generally (but not necessarily), the quest for obscene wealth is at the cost of the poor or the environment — and often both.
Poverty is by far the sin of all sins. It is the basis of many others on the ”new” list of sins, such as polluting the environment and drug abuse.
We wonder why talk about a hole in one of the layers that covers the Earth fails to excite the majority to action, or why some ”ignorant” people seem happy to cut down precious trees to make firewood. In both instances the answer is that the poor have more pressing and immediate concerns than to bother about a future they might not live to see. For them the needs of the babies on their backs are more important than what kind of Earth they will leave for their children’s children. And when they cannot find any real respite for their earthly needs, such as food, shelter and dignity, some resort to the world of make believe that only drugs can offer.
Atheists might have a different name for it, but even they would accept that the church is spot-on in declaring poverty a stain in the moral fibre of society.
It is poverty that often leads the desperate into the hands of the charlatans springing up everywhere, peddling cash for ”salvation-while-you-wait” creeds, whereby ministers of religion promise instant results — health cures, reversals of misfortune — promising heaven to those whose only duty appears to be to help the cult leader live in earthly comfort.
For a change, believers and non-believers can find common cause.
If faith is the opiate of the people, it would be found on the same shelf as those kill-me-quick concoctions preferred by the communities that live around the Cape Town mountains.
Perhaps the reason Europe is, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, able to do without God is that it has done away with poverty.
Regardless of what one may think of matters of faith, poverty affects us all in the here and now. It has a bearing on how your taxes are spent and it causes the rich to think and rethink their security systems.
Instead of expending energy theorising about the consumption styles of the newly rich blacks or the old-money whites, we’d better come up with plans for how to deal with poverty.
As Mail & Guardian columnist Richard Calland wrote last year, poverty is more than a theological or a philosophical question. It strikes right at the heart of the denialist society we are.
Wrote Calland: ”The relationship between greed and socio-economic justice is something that modern South Africa appears unwilling to acknowledge. Recent University of Oslo research conducted by Professor Kalle Moene claims that South Africa is the stingiest society in the world — based on the factual assertion that of all countries it could most easily eradicate poverty by redistributing income from the wealthiest to the poorest.”
In other words, eliminating poverty is a collective effort and no amount of antipathy to the WaBenzi in a vain attempt to pretend that’s where the problem is will reduce it.
Envy, hatred and anger over the moneyed classes have not and will not make us a better, more caring society.
We need to commit ourselves to a total onslaught on poverty, declare war on it and unleash all our collective might against this evil.
If nothing else, helping eradicate poverty might improve our chances of living in eternal bliss in case there is indeed a heaven.