Most mornings, I drive past our local post office on my way to some meeting or event. The queues outside it have been one consistent stream of human bodies for months now. People from every hue and age are standing in line waiting to receive a Sassa payment or the Emergency Relief Grant.
The 3rd Quarter Labour Force Survey told us what we were expecting; we are in an unemployment crisis.
Our world-class regulations make it hard for people to generate an income, especially those who cannot enter the formal labour market due to a lack of qualifications.
The hard face of poverty is the 45-year-old adult, who was 18 in 1994, and in 2021 has never been formally employed in South Africa. They will face an incredibly difficult retirement, relying entirely on the state to house and feed them. There are 2 million of them, and it could well be the case that over 70% of of them have no revenue stream other than what the state will provide.
My daily drive-by poverty experience and social media tell me that we do not have an urgent narrative that focuses the mind and girds the attention of our leaders on how bad the situation is.
The poor are living in a state of war, worsened by a pandemic that has destroyed the jobs they do at the bottom end of the economic pyramid. Fuel and food prices have changed their diet from pap and meat to just pap or bread.
Unemployment and food poverty fuel violence – across society. Approximately 29 million people live below the upper-bound poverty line of a R1 335 monthly income.
Some 13 million South Africans live below the Food Poverty Line of earning R624 a month. And then there are those who only live on the Emergency Relief Grant of R350.
This hardship that 29 million poor people are experiencing is now also part of the lives of hordes of middle-class people, with unemployment culling middle and senior management jobs.
Much of South Africa’s problems are caused by the fact that we have become a representative hierarchical democracy with feudal tendencies instead of a deliberative democracy where we build solutions from local and national conversations about living standards issues to inform policies and practices.
At the party level, the same exists. The ACDP only listens to Kenneth Meshoe’s voice. The DA only listens to Helen Zille’s voice. The ANC is a two-headed organisation, led by a resurgent Jacob Zuma and a plethora of voices on the other head, including a much-weakened Cyril Ramaphosa.
Gone are the voices of ordinary people. This is not nation-building leadership – it is all about political party survival. Conversational engagements with ordinary people as fundamental to a robust deliberative democracy is no longer practised. Unless a political party’s executive leadership gives the nod, citizens’ inputs are not an encouraged form of dialogue.
The most visible experience of deliberative democracy was the Congress of the People held on June 25-26,1955 in Kliptown, which produced the Freedom Charter. It was a gathering of diverse national and regional formations coming together to express the people's will during a time of crisis.
From that Kliptown moment to Lusaka to Groote Schuur to Kempton Park and on to Parliament, we have seen a growing gulf between people and government.
The people who are queuing for R350 are dying of hunger. On a recent research visit to rural towns, an elderly resident told me that she had voted for several parties over the years, hoping for change.
But, she says, she’s been sorely disappointed because “politicians only want our votes, not our voices”.
The conversation about a respectful, safe, just, inclusive, equitable and prosperous South Africa is dying. Survival violence is taking its place. Mr President, throw your iPad away and talk to us. Please.
* Lorenzo A Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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