Unpacking the political economy of poverty
IN 1990, soon after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela, while visiting in the US, was asked by one African-American woman from Harlem what plans he had for a free South Africa since all newly independent African countries never seemed to have the ability to create and run viable economies.
Being a lawyer and having lived in Harlem all her life, this woman should have known better about the production relations obtaining in African countries at the time.
Mandela told her that only one company held 75 percent of all the value on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange explaining that this kind of monopoly, white monopoly, was what left Africans destitute in the land of their birth. He told her that kind of monopoly was responsible for the abject poverty of the Africans and entrenched the obscene opulence of the white man in South Africa. This is what had to be rectified in a free South Africa so that Africans could live normal lives in the country of their birth.
When the West smugly claims that democracy has failed in South Africa and cites the abject poverty in which many South Africans live, they conveniently ignore the socio-politico origins of this economic imbalance.
That democracy, that socio-politico construct they impose on us, never had a chance.
What is there to democratise when all the wealth is squarely in the hands of the white minority?
Only Jesus is said to have worked the miracle of feeding thousands out of five loaves of bread and two fish, with crumbs left over! Who owns the majority shares on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, if I may ask?
The South African constitution says no-one should go hungry but we say donors cannot o fulfil the dictates of the constitution of a sovereign country.
Firstly, it is anathema that South Africans should go without food, under any circumstances, let alone that they should assuage their hunger with crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.
If the constitution of South Africa says that no South African should go without food or education then the solution is that the State, which is the defender of the nation’s constitution, should acquire control of the nation’s resources in order to fulfil the dictates of its constitution.
Why should South Africans be fed crumbs from the white man’s table when it is rich in gold, platinum, diamonds, iron, copper and nickel!
Why should any South African go without a meal when the country is overflowing with riches.
Don’t tell us South Africans are hungry, don’t tell us they have no money to send their children to school, to afford good shelter and to pay hospital fees. This is not the truth of the matter.
What happened to their minerals, who stole them and why was that allowed to happen?
Is it even rational to talk of democracy under such circumstances!
It is a crime against humanity that a people so richly endowed should be so completely expropriated of, and alienated from their wealth to the extent many live in abject poverty.
Zimbabweans are equally rich, if not richer. Zimbabweans are the richest in the world per capita in terms of mineral wealth. The country is endowed with gold, diamonds, the platinum group of metals (PGM), iron ore lithium and others . . . So, by what logic do Zimbabweans go hungry, without shelter, without medical care or clothing? How is that possible!
When Musikavanhu endowed our country, Zimbabwe, with vast reserves of gold; when He gave us the second largest reserves of platinum in the world; the best quality chromium in the world; vast reserves of diamonds; lithium and mother minerals, He intended this for our subsistence. If we let others take it all away, leaving us with only small change then we are our own worst enemies.
Millions cannot subsist on small change.
Why give them 90 to 99 percent of what is ours and leave the children of Murenga to live on one to five percent? It is a travesty.
No number of economic forums,