‘The poor’ and ‘the rich’. Two terms, which,
apparently, denote human beings according to their material property.
I recall teaching youths as well as adults in Soweto during the 1980s and early 90s. They were a relatively small élite, in that they were given the chance of receiving high quality education every Saturday, while their peers were watching tv, doing chores, laughing, squabbling or, worse, fighting in the streets.
A couple of years later I taught at a private college, which had sprung into existence to support young people who had not achieved university exemption, but whose parents wanted them to get some form of tertiary qualification. Many of them managed to register through UNISA, and not a few lacked the discipline and motivation to knuckle down and obtain their degrees. We, the teachers, were employed to serve this ‘clientèle’ by wrestling them, somehow, into passing.
What disturbed me at that time was the strong sense of the disadvantagedness of these ‘rich kids’. In hindsight, I guess it was the cadaverous fragrance of decadence that hung about them. Against all political correctness, I felt, strongly, the privilege of those select township children, who were loved and pampered by the education support programmes and really given the best in the allocated hours. By contrast, I felt sorry for and disturbed by the ‘rich kids’, who were paid for, but whose hearts and minds were all too often nigh impermeable. As human beings I judged more than a few of them to be quite stunted in their development.
It remains a horribly unquestioned perception that material wealth equals advantage. It is a skewed perception, however, because it is grossly superficial. The most advantaged kids I have seen in the last ten years were a group of grade 7s at a tiny school called Crabbush, in Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. They came to the local library once a week for supplementary tuition in English. They were considered disadvantaged because they could barely speak that language. However, they struck me as basically happy, healthy children, who recited new vocabulary in sing-song, and then strolled between free-roaming cattle from the library back to their school each Thursday. It disturbed me that such children should be saddled with so negative a label; just as it continues to disturb me that youngsters, who are fluent in English and who have private rooms in city dwellings, should be seen as ‘advantaged’ when too many of them are, in fact, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually dangerously neglected, in some cases even abused.
I cannot not mention the rich élite in the present government, who also demonstrate the potential 'disadvantage' of excessive material wealth when it comes to being a decent human being. The rich are helplessly entangled just like the poor in an outdated system and mindset, which is a system and mindset that prioritises the material identity of an individual at the cost of all that makes us truly human. The 'poor' who steal and lie and commit murder are not a jot better than the 'rich' who steal and lie and commit murder. BOTH classes are dehumanised.
I am trying to question, indeed, I would like completely to get rid of the mindset that says it's ok to steal and lie and even murder just because you are materially poor. THAT is one of the most HARMFUL attitudes, which robs the poor of their humanity and encourages material greed. That limiting mindset has rotted our civilisation through and through and stoked frightening hatred towards the rich, many of whom are, likewise, not in control of themselves – indeed, there are individuals in the South African government who are perfectly happy to demonstrate that it’s ok to steal and lie and cause the misery and death of others, just because they themselves are rich.
It is time that real human needs – for love, care, intellectual stimulation, manual as well as mental skills, as well as spiritual sustenance – are ranked equally alongside the need for food, drink, clothes and shelter. Nobody can enjoy the satisfaction of one need at the cost of excluding the other needs. The rich are just as human as the poor, and both are just as human as the middle classes (where, arguably, the greatest chance for a balanced lifestyle exists). Neither group benefits from being labelled, as these labels merely serve as blindfolds for the living hearts and minds inside the individuals branded so. The choice to honour your humanity exists for EACH ONE OF US – no matter whether you wear diamond-studded stilettoes or go barefoot.
