LAY A FOUNDATION FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

THE SAD predicament of Johan Bloom in your article (“Story behind a sign of the times”), warrants a response. It was Eli Khamarov who wrote: “Poverty is like punishment for a crime you did not commit.” The prevalence of poverty and misery in South Africa is a paradox. We should by no means be a poor nation, despite being a stupendously wealthy country. Sadly, we wallow in abject poverty. Poverty has assumed unprecedented and unacceptable levels, poverty-induced agitation and violent conflicts pose increasing threats to our nascent democracy.

Human suffering, hardships and endemic unemployment have reached critical levels.

A serious threat to our future and security. There is no gainsaying that poverty and democracy have a high degree of correlation and they affect each other in profound ways.

Indeed the high rate of poverty has created public apathy in the democratic process.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.

For building peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.

As we seek to strengthen the fabric of the nation, there needs to be a concentrated focus on the root causes of instability, con- flict and confrontation everywhere.

The danger signals are unmistakably clear. The co-existence of a world of wealth and prosperity and a world of poverty and misery is too profound a contradiction to be ignored. It lies at the heart of an emerging crisis.

More than a million people are still condemned to abject poverty.

The despair and frustration which form their daily experience breed tension and trigger instability that are bound to erupt from time to time.

Whatever cloud of uncertainty may hang over the future, we must not fail to lay the foundation of a more stable and equitable order which fosters greater hope and wider opportunities for mankind.

Farouk Araie