Victor Kgomoeswana says its time to stop fretting about litter on beaches, and instead focus on the poverty of the people for whom visiting them are a luxury.
The past three weeks in South Africa brought to mind a Kiswahili proverb: mwenye njaa hakandiki nyumba. This sort of means that it is hard to ask a hungry person to decorate or plaster a house, because they would be fixated with filling their tummies first.
Albert Einstein put it differently: “an empty stomach is not a good political adviser”. The late Chris Hani once told a mass rally on his return to the country: “People do not eat slogans, comrades!”
Yet, we – South Africans – have been hurling slogans at each other since the “monkeys-on-the-beach” vitriol. We are happy to argue about how racist or not-racist the other is, even suing the culprits; fair enough. In doing so, we are downplaying that our economy is leaving way too many South Africans marginalised.
I have even seen group chats calling for progressive South Africans to “defend the revolution”. How? Via WhatsApp chats? True economic transformation takes action and is implosive when left unattended. There are signs of this happening, but let us not call it racism – it is economic injustice to the majority.
If we analysed the #FeesMustFall campaign in an action-oriented way, the Marikana massacre or even the day-to-day petty crime such as shoplifting or smash-and-grab incidents, we would have acted with more vigour to address the root cause; more vigour than the venom that we spew at the bigots among us because of what they posted on Facebook or on Twitter. What is startling, though, is how many more racially charged tweets and social media updates kept on surfacing after Penny Sparrow was forced into exile.
Conclusion? Bias is an intrinsic human trait. All of us have it in one form or another, though some prejudices are more inflammatory than others. Urban people call rural people country bumpkins. Homophobic straight people abound, elderly people doubt the young and vice versa.
The “monkeys-on-the-beach” splash was ostensibly about dirt, which we all ought to loathe. However, the racial slur of the post shifted the focus from cleanliness to a divided South Africa – not between black and white, but between rich and poor.
Poverty in South Africa has been institutionally racialised, but black people with a holiday home in La Lucia detest rubbish on their private beaches. Their white neighbours do not call them monkeys on Facebook. They worry about losing their sports cars together, fret over burglary or the loss of their wine collection. As a result, they spend a fortune insuring possessions they do not need and rarely ever use.
They are anxious about getting hijacked in their driveways or about their children being kidnapped. They occasionally pay tens of thousands annually on medical aid for their pampered Maltese poodles or Siamese cats. Most of them take tablets to stimulate or suppress their appetite, libido, sleep; things they should be able to do naturally.
Do South Africans who can afford these basics realise what a tiny minority they are? Do those among us – black and white – who can holiday in the Bahamas or Phuket appreciate how inured we have become to the hardships of more than 75 percent of our compatriots, fellow humans?
Do we care that while we are worried about our beach being too filthy or crowded once a year, when there are too many poor (black) holiday-makers, these supposed pests have to toil to breathe every day?
No, we don’t! Unsurprisingly, when #FeesMustFall happens or Marikana erupts, we glibly tweet and move on. We “share” someone else’s post (without much thought) on Facebook, while switching our investment from gold to industrials.
That is why all we have done about the “monkeys-on-the-beach” has not gone past verbalising our infuriation. Meanwhile, the real victims of racialised economic segregation are back slogging in the sun with no sunscreen, sweeping our streets with no face masks, guarding our houses with no disability cover, while our parrots are sitting pretty in our wills.
So, beyond our social media rants and video sharing, let our new year’s resolutions include treating our own workers as humans. Let us help educate their children, or give them learnership opportunities. If we are in government, let us deliver textbooks on time and buy from black-owned enterprises. If in the private sector, let us quash corruption in our business dealings, implement true BEE and snub fronting.
At the heart of all we do, let us care for one another as people, because the poor among us will not eat our status updates without our good deeds.
* Victor Kgomoeswana is author of Africa is Open for Business and anchor of Power Hour, which is broadcast on Monday to Thursday on Power FM. He writes weekly columns for The Sunday Independent and African Independent.
Twitter Handle: @VictorAfrica
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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