Verbal battle to lay claim to bottom of poverty pile

WHO exactly lies at the very bottom of the poverty pile? For years, the “poorest of the poor” held this unfortunate position, but they are now being challenged to see if they really are still the most unfortunate of the unfortunate.

A Kimberley protester, aggrieved about the sale of title deeds for council houses (in SA, even poor people own houses), recently talked of the “poor of the poorest” being ripped off, as the Insider reported at the time.

And Economic Freedom Fighters commander-in-chief Julius Malema, addressing miners’ families in Marikana this past Saturday, was reported to have told the crowd he wanted to teach the African National Congress how to take care of the “poor of the poorer”.

Being a Saturday, that observation was almost certainly a misquote — the worst-written stories on the news wires are invariably to be found on Saturdays; these become even worse on Saturdays after paydays, when the poorest of the poorest stories make their monthly appearance.

Exactly who is the worst off of these different groups of desperate people is not clear, but it is widely believed that the richest of the rich, people who like expensive watches and booze, don’t care a dime anyway. PAP has ‘papsak’ syndrome IF THE issuing of press releases is any indication of how much or little an organisation is doing, then the Pan-African Parliament, based at Gallagher Estate in Midrand and going by the unfortunate acronym of PAP, is not exactly a hive of amazing (maybe amaizing?) activity.

Its last press statement was on April 7 under the heading “Declaration of the EP-PAP Parliamentary Summit to the IVth Africa-EU Summit”. Its previous one went out on March 20 under the heading “Moving forward 2014 and beyond”. The PAP has gone a bit soft on moving beyond 2014, at least in its press-release department, which remains about four months behind the rest of the year.

If the PAP is really doing nothing deserving of a few sentences every week or so, then it appears to be suffering from “papsak” syndrome — people who knock back wine from these cellophane bags generally forget that they even exist. Wise words “LONELINESS and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” Mother Teresa, Indian Roman Catholic religious sister and missionary (1910-1997). More wise words “GO TO the doctor, get a check-up, and get Pap smears regularly.” Mandy Moore singer-songwriter and actress (born 1984).