Oxfam puts inequality in the spotlight
CHARITY organisation Oxfam South Africa says it will take its latest report to Parliament and the ministry of finance as they want its recommendations to have an impact in the country.
Yesterday, the organisation released the Reward Work, Not Wealth report as world leaders and politicians, including Team South Africa led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, gather in Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) starting today in Switzerland.
The annual report shines the spotlight on extreme inequality and the world’s super rich, who make up a small percentage of the global population, but whose wealth could help obliterate extreme poverty seven times over.
Oxfam South Africa executive director Siphokazi Mthathi said the annual report, for the past five years, has been deliberately released to coincide with the WEF.
She said this was aimed at ensuring there was no one narrative on the world story and what needs to be done to address the world’s problems.
Mthathi, who admitted that the South African economy was in a shambles, said the report was relevant to South Africa as the country topped the list of unequal societies in the world. “We have to rethink the rules of the economy.”
According to the report, 2017 saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history at an alarming rate of “one more every two days”.
“Billionaires saw their wealth increase by $762 billion in 12 months. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over, as 82 percent of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1 percent, while the bottom 50 percent saw no increase at all,” the report lamented.
Mthathi said African billionaires increased to 25 last year, accounting for a whop- ping $80.3bn, while 50 percent of the the African population lived in dire poverty. There are more than 1.216 billion people in Africa.
Oxfam head of economic justice Thembinkosi Dlamini lamented the fact that the inequality crisis has run “out of control”, noting that in the global superpower that is the US, a chief executive took a day to make what an ordinary worker earned in a year.
The report recommended, among others, that corruption and vanity projects such as the “nuclear deal” be dealt with; and that workers should earn a decent minimum wage.
Mthathi hoped some action would be taken by powers that be, arising from the report, saying they hoped for a meeting between Oxfam and Team South Africa at the WEF.
“We will take the report to parliament and the ministry of finance. We release reports not to create talk, but for them to have an impact,” she said.
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