Numbers hide the heartache

Lies, damned lies, and statistics… Driving home from Pretoria on Tuesday, I suddenly realised just how broken our country is. The lies are everywhere. The Chinese communist dictatorship has lied about the Sars CoV-2 virus. The World Health Organisation blatantly echoed their misinformation (“There’s no evidence of human-to-human transmission”). The “Orange Goon” in the White House has lied about a lot of things. Coronavirus denialists lie about microchips and G5. Our government lies…

But anyone who trusts politician and governments and organisations to be truthful when it doesn’t suit them, is a moron.

What bothers me, is the damn statistics. They’re reducing us all to numbers.

One-third of the adults in our wonderful country are jobless. People try to look clever by quoting numbers, but behind every one of those figures are real people who can’t feed their children.

My heart bleeds for them. As it does for every soul who has to suffer injustice every day because of the colour of their skin.

Black lives matter. Yet we refuse to let it matter where it makes a difference: around us. Instead, we believe we show compassion by declaring our support for BLM on social media.

We count the Covid-19 fatalities, but conveniently forget the sorrow each death represents. We look at the value of the rand, we follow the JSE’s All-Share Index, but ignore the hunger pains those numbers represent.

We note the figures of farm murders, but then we join the campaign of tacit approval. We’d rather save our objections for the rising food inflation.

Why do we obsess with numbers, but remain immune to the ruining of real lives?

“Men are trash,” Snapdragon said one evening.

“Nonsense,” I replied. “Not all men are trash. I agree that most men are idiots. Most women too. As are a lot of people who are not men or women. Most of the people around us are idiots.”

Even my beloved Snapdragon is a damned idiot. As a matter of fact, even I, a beacon of intelligence and rationality, tend to show a hint of moronity.

And our idiotic obsession with cold numbers had me in tears this week. It’s just wrong. Wait, let me count them…