All of us playing a part in perpetuating the inequality crisis

REFERRING to the article by the ANC spokesperson in the Western Cape, Yonela Diko. It is clear that the ANC engages in earnest, discussing a lot of important issues, but I would like to react to the specific statement that the world is now safer and more prosperous than any time since World War II, and secondly, the dire warning about the extent of inequality.

Firstly, in cosmic context, I find no relative peace in the view that the world is a somewhat better place than before. I protest, with the cringing of my soul, on behalf of every suffering person who exists: at the end of every day, month, year, unseen masses, yes, masses still suffer as outcasts all on their own in shacks, on streets and in dead-end alleys.

Diko then, subtly, leads us to the real culprit: inequality; the fact that 1% of the world’s citizens have gathered sickening riches in disregard of the rest. Yonela, yes, I get nauseated too, but I get even more disillusioned when I see how we not only honour base people with base ways, but how we get involved with that “Holy Grail” the moment materialistic opportunities start opening up within own circles.

Most of the riches in shrewdly constructed international banking structures are there on the back of feeble consideration of humanitarian and moral obligations. You beg to disagree?

What about an international legal team going with a moral legal philosophy and an ethical comb through all dealings and its consequences? I do think that’s the uneasy way that cookies crumble. When we neglect poor, hopeless, clueless people; when we make mere conciliatory remarks and continue to buy ourselves bigger cars, houses, branded clothing and designer sunglasses that could feed people bread, going on extravagant holidays, we get involved in prostitution, perhaps not directly so, but for sure we passively, unknowingly, assist a young woman on her first anxious walk towards a gleaming car that would eventually fart a few notes as it leaves for a next variation of gratification and narcissism.

When we continue to accumulate money, banking surpluses beyond human balance and financial planning, and keep driving past hopeless men on the sides of roads, hopeless men that will eventually decide to cross that painful river to become a criminal so that his people can eat, then we are amnesiac in the way we are prostituting our human souls.

When an employee sits behind a desk of a municipal department and accepts a few notes to speed an anxious property developer’s application up and passively ignores another developer who just can’t get himself to become a criminal to get his concern actively going, even if it is so that workers will have to wait to do jobs that could put food on tables, such an employee has become a willing prostitute.

When a traffic inspector is in cahoots with a driving instructor to organise a lucrative little business on the side to render easy licences, he becomes a prostitute. When we drive past druggies on a daily basis to tend to well-oiled church structures and holy feelings and leave those fading people to sink away into death or prostitution, we have become technically co-partners in the dealings we deem sin, or evil or whatever concept your soul values. We can go on and on, getting to personal quarters, but we all participate in the sickening spread of human inequality and its ghastly consequences.

Therefore, Yonela Diko, please send my regards to the ANC, and ask them to look at your own leader corps, your structures, cadres, deals made, deals in process and then tear also into all the other political parties because we are all prostituting humanity in so many subtle ways. It is really time we start to redeem ourselves big time. It is time to value people dearly more than mere materialistic and survivalist orgasms. Wim van der Walt Bellville