Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
News that Johannesburg criminal underworld boss Radovan Krejcir had set aside a R246 million fund to aid his attempt to escape from prison, and potentially from the country, blew my mind.
In Durban, yet another taxi war broke out because owners – some of whom have told the magistrate’s court hearing their bail applications that they make as much R400 000 a month from their vast fleet – wanted exclusive use of routes.
Elsewhere, a North West businessman, Wandile Bozwana, died in a hail of bullets after gunmen ambushed him and a friend in Pretoria. Bozwana was at the time embroiled in a bitter business tender controversy with the North West government.
A former ANC region official in the Northern Cape, Bozwana’s death came after one of his companies took on the North West government in the Constitutional Court.
The provincial government approached the court in a bid to stop Bozwana from attaching 44 government-owned vehicles and a state bank account with a balance of about R30 million.
Bozwana had previously publicly accused North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo of being “greedy” and said he was “out to enrich himself while taking away business from us”.
The escape bid, the taxi and Bozwana killings highlight just how violent a society we are and perhaps more importantly, the obsession with being wealthy.
Being wealthy has become so ingrained in our psyche that I suspect few ever ask themselves: “Why is it so important to be wealthy?”
It seems some have come to believe it is wealth or nothing.
These are the men and women who seem to believe that being wealthy is so essential that they will do anything, including the illegal and the despicable, to attain wealth.
They do not stop and ask themselves: “What if I was not wealthy?” Their fragile egos will of course not make them ask the question. They are people who have taken literally French novelist Honoré de Balzac’s famous words, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime”.
There is no doubt that many great fortunes have come about and have been maintained by committing great crimes, but surely there are some out there, even if they were a handful, whose wealth is out of honest endeavour or at worst good luck.
When people confuse their self-worth with their net worth, they inevitably end up believing that being wealthy is the only way they can make their mark in society.
They foolishly think that it is only by being wealthy that others will give them the respect they believe they deserve. When they realise that money will not fill their emptiness, they try power and while this gives them a sense of social respectability, their feeling of being unworthy continues because their worthlessness is intrinsic.
Let it be clear that this is not a rant against being wealthy nor a glorification of poverty.
The opposite of being wealthy is not being poor. It is simply not being wealthy.
Poverty is a scar on humankind’s conscience and must be eradicated. This eradication does not need to happen at the expense of wishing away the wealthy or the concept of compiling wealth, so long as it is not at the expense of the poor, the environment or even fair and ethical business processes.
Besides, it is not the poor who are ever willing to kill to be wealthy. It is those who are already wealthy as evidenced by their ability to fund their nefarious ways.
It is obvious that there is a distinction between being wealthy and being greedy. I reiterate, there is nothing wrong with being wealthy.
There are many wealthy people who have deployed their wealth for the betterment of society here and abroad. There are also many who, by any stretch of the imagination, cannot be considered wealthy – at least in material terms, but who have given of themselves to making the world a better place and are content. Think of Mother Teresa or Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, for example.
A society that makes being wealthy its defining character sows seeds of its own future instability and turns citizens into mere vampires needing to feed on the blood of others to survive.
Social inequality caused by historical and present-day political decisions, as well as the present powers not prioritising the right quality education for the historically marginalised, have brought us to this place where wealth is coveted, literally to death.
The other thing that must fall is the conspicuous consumption culture. It has done its bit to create the impression that life is only meaningful if you live in a house that could feature on Top Billing at any time, or drive a Ferrari or Rolls-Royce. The most important question I feel needs asking, especially by those caught up in the unbridled pursuit of wealth, is: Why is it necessary to be wealthy to be fully human?