Maravi

Widening gap between the poor and the rich

Widening gap between the poor and the rich
By The Post
Mon 29 Nov. 2010, 04:00 CAT

THIS country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.

Our country is too poor to give all our people great material wealth, but it can give them a sense of equality, of human dignity. The existence of large numbers of hungry and undernourished people in our country constitutes an affront to all of us. A stable, permanent solution must be found to this serious problem.

Hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, unemployment, lack of opportunity, insecurity, inequality, hopelessness are the terms that could well define living conditions of the great majority of our people. This is an affront to our collective conscience.

And there's a growing gap between the affluent of our society and the great majority of our people who are poor. It is an imperative need of our times to be aware of these realities, because of what a situation affecting the great majority of our people entails in terms of human suffering and the squandering of life and intelligence. What has been said by Patrick Mucheleka, the executive director of Civil Society for Poverty Reduction about the widening gap between the rich and the poor in our country expresses the enormous evident inequalities existing in our country not fully reflected in the overall statistical indicators.

The state of the great majority of our children is frightening. And whatever efforts are made today to protect them, to prevent their death and illness, to provide them with food, housing, medicine, clothing, education, will shape the basic human qualities of the decisive percentage of the future population of our country. And yet, in view of the present trends, what sort of country will we hand over to those children? What sort of life lies ahead for them? What will their quality of life be like?

The uneven income distribution that Mucheleka is talking about indicates the need for deep essential changes in our political and social structures which will guarantee the broad masses of our people's access to the benefits of development policies.

Squalor, disease and lack of health care characterise the dramatic social situation in our country. And as long as health fails to be considered a fundamental right of every citizen and a duty of the community; as long as the responsibility of the state and of society with regard to health care fails to be recognised; as long as inequalities in the distribution of health resources fail to disappear; as long as poverty, hunger, ignorance and squalor fail to be directly fought against, little will be achieved in improving human health for the great majority of our poor people.

And all these things - hunger, poverty, inequality - are first and foremost, political facts. A comprehensive approach is therefore required to fight this situation and to struggle for diminishing and eradicating such inequalities. The solutions to these problems are not solely or even mainly physical but social. It is a question of improving the quality of life, not only fighting the serious shortages in every sphere, but acting on them where the development of our country is concerned, which is not necessarily economic growth. You can't develop a country without developing its people. Development where the great majority of people don't benefit anything cannot be said to be development.

The things Mucheleka is talking about which serve as the basis for the sombre immediate outlook for our country are the most obvious expressions of the injustice and inequality still prevailing and deepening in our country. But they are not necessarily inexorable. We can, if we really want, act to change that increasingly unjust future for one that is bright and equitable.
We can't speak of meaningful democracy in a country where there are terrible inequalities, and where people are not guaranteed even their human condition. Ours is a strange democracy. We have invented a democracy in which the majority - who happen to be poor - don't count for anything, don't even exist politically within society. We speak to them about democracy. In that situation of democracy, their child could die of hunger before the unconcerned glance of the government. Their child could be left without learning to read or write a single letter. We have invented a democracy in which the majority neither govern nor count for anything. They are not taken into account. But we know that meaningful democracy is where the majority governs. Democracy is that form of government in which the majority is taken into account. Democracy is that form of government in which the interest of the majority are defended.

Democracy is that form of government that guarantees to the citizen not just the right to think freely but the right to know how to think. Democracy guarantees to the citizens the right to be taken into account within society.
Looking at things this way, what we have in this country is far from being called democracy. You can't say this is democracy when what matters are the interests of the small clique of people in power, are the interests of a few investors who take care of them, who fund them and contribute to their election campaign budgets.

But we know, and they know, that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in. This is a reality underlying the fact that we are all citizens of one country, that we are all passengers on the same vessel - this country in which we all live. But passengers on this vessel are travelling in very different conditions. A trifling minority is travelling in luxurious cabins furnished with all the luxuries one can think of. They enjoy a nutritional, abundant and balanced diet as well as clean water supply, they drink well-purified bottled water. They have access to sophisticated medical care in private clinics, in the fee-paying wings of public hospitals and the state pays for them to be evacuated to Johannesburg's Morningside Clinic. And some now go to India. The overwhelming and suffering majority is travelling in conditions that resemble the slave trade. That is, 70 per cent of the passengers of this vessel are crowded together in its dirty hold, suffering hunger, disease and helplessness.

Obviously, as Mucheleka correctly observed, this vessel is carrying too much injustice to remain stable, to be at peace and afloat, pursuing such an irrational and senseless route. It is our collective duty to take our right place at the helm and ensure that all passengers can travel in conditions of solidarity, equity and justice. In a word, what we are trying to say is that when a system ceases to promote the common good and favours special interests, the interests of the small group of people, we must not only denounce injustice but also break with the evil system. We must be prepared to work with another system that is more just and more suited to the needs of the day. Today they world insistently calls for recognition of man's full dignity and for social equality. All persons of goodwill cannot but go along with this demand, even if it means that they must give up their privileges and their personal fortunes for more equitable distribution in the social community. In this regard, we recall the words of Saints John and Ambrose respectively: "If a man who was rich enough in this world's goods saw one of his brothers in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him?" (I John 3:17); "The earth belongs to everyone, not just to the rich."

In his homily against greed, St Basil presents this dialogue with a miser: "Share the crop you have harvested with your fellow men, tomorrow it will have rotted. What abominable avarice to let it rot before giving it to the needy!"
"How do I do injury to others," asks the miser, "By not giving them what is mine?"

"What goods belong to you? Where did you get them from? You are like the man at the theatre who wants to keep others from a performance, who wants to derive exclusive enjoyment from a performance that everyone has the right to see. That is how the rich are. They say that they are the rightful owners of goods that belong to all, goods that they have expropriated for themselves simply because they were the first to lay their hands on them. If each person kept only what was necessary for day-to-day needs and gave the rest to the needy, there would be no more poverty or extravagant luxury. The food that you hoard belongs to the hungry. The clothes in your wardrobe belong to the naked. The shoes that are growing old in your house belong to those who have none. The money you have buried belongs to the poor. You are oppressing people whom you could help. It is not your avarice but your unwillingness to share that condemns you."

The poor in our country know from experience that they must count on themselves and their own initiatives more than on the help of their plunderers. To be sure, some affluent people in our country do provide appreciable assistance to our people. But it would be a delusion to wait passively for a change of heart in those who "will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

It is primarily up to the poor of our country to effect their own betterment. They must regain confidence in themselves. They must educate themselves and overcome their ignorance. They must work zealously to fashion their own destiny. They must open their ears to those who can awaken and shape the conscious awareness of the masses. Changes must be made; present conditions must be improved. It is high time that the poor defended their right to live.

Labels: PATRICK MUCHELEKA, POVERTY

posted by MrK @ 9:52 PM