R6.2bn art purchase an obscenity

LEONARDO Da Vinci’s famous painting, Salvator Mundi, depicting Jesus Christ, which was auctioned and sold for $450 million (R6.2 billion) is not only a moral outrage, but financial insanity gone berserk.

According to Oxfam, an organisation dedicated to fighting poverty, the eighth richest people in the world have wealth equal to the poorest half of the world’s population.

One billion people in the world live in extreme poverty. Abject poverty haunts and taunts the masses. Affluent people and the mega rich will never understand that.

Poverty is the greatest moral, social and economic issue facing mankind.

It leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods, but to death. Global poverty today is a death sentence to millions of people around the world.

We must urgently seek to alleviate suffering, not eliminate sufferers. Half the world, or 3.5 billion people, live on R35 ($2.5) a day, 900 million people cannot read or write.

According to Unicef, 22 000 children die every day, 916 every hour or 15 every minute, due to poverty. They die quietly in the poorest villages on Earth, far removed from the security and conscience of the world.

Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.

For anyone to pay R6.2bn for a painting is an affront to the conscience of mankind, and that person will have to face Christ on Judgment Day. Farouk Araie