‘Economy, SA lacks standards and value’

SOUTH Africans should have the courage to say that the economic trajectory the country had chosen was a dangerous delusion towards a market-oriented oblivion, Professor Barney Pityana said yesterday.

“More determined steps are needed to change the way in which this society and its economy are arranged or organised. This economy of exclusion and privilege for the few must be challenged,” Pityana said at a pubic lecture in Durban.

The lecture titled “Ecumenical Witness for Social Justice: Rev Dr Beyers Naudé and Archbishop Denis Hurley for our times”, was held in partnership with the Diakonia Council of Churches and the Ujamaa Centre UKZN.

He said there was a need for a more compassionate and moral ethic that did not sacrifice the lives of ordinary citizens at the altar of capital and greed.

“I believe that we can have no gospel to proclaim unless and until we ourselves in the church live the gospel we proclaim. That is what our two centenarians bequeathed to us, our church and our society.”

Pityana said he feared to- day’s society was characterised by a culture of compromise with evil, failure to challenge wrongdoing and fear to let voices be heard.

He also noted with concern that South Africans lived in a very difficult time for church and society.

“For one thing we are in a season of discontent wherever one turns,” he said referring to a culture of protest by communities and the social malaise that engulfed society.

Pityana said the prevalent culture of South Africans nowadays was one of demand, violence and shouting.

“South Africans no longer speak the language of dialogue, listening or hearing, or appreciating one another’s points of view. The predominant theme is one of suspicion and rejection,” he said.

“The inability to form community, or unwillingness to find a neighbour in the other or a refusal to express ubuntu in our daily dealings with others, is a matter of deep-seated contradiction to what we purport to believe.”

He added that the country had reached a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose.