By Emma Louise Powell
He is sitting huddled up in a bundle with his knees drawn close for warmth, leaning listlessly against a cold concrete pillar while he exhales the last clouds of glueish haze encasing his lungs. His torn, brown rags resemble the hessian sacks that line the floors of agricultural warehouses. He looks up at me while I neurotically fumble with the heater switch of my recently bank-financed car as his dark and watery eyes cry out silently yet in a tone so high pitched that not even my iron-willed denial can subdue. The only way I could possibly describe the power of the negated silence that moves between him and me is that it is similar to the sound of chalk screeching down a blackboard.
I am at a stop street in downtown Sparkport, a bustling metropolis of trade that one could accurately euphemise as Little India. Olweto, as I have come to discover he was once incongruously named — meaning “Our Love” in Zulu, is an orphan. Olweto is not dissimilar to millions of other South African children who roam our streets with bare feet and empty stomachs in the cold night air while the rest of us settle in for a night of Grey’s Anatomy and Five Roses. Almost as if some sick air of sadism has gripped hold of humanity over the course of our societal evolution, most of us would dismissively shrug his small hands away from our windows as we rush to our next appointment, raging our way through the never-ending day, thinking about which the most convenient shop to stop past on our way home would be. And as fast as our minds begin to consider him, they are reconsidering dinner. Then as if the toil for our own survival is not overwhelming enough, there is always the accumulation of “payable” bills in our post boxes, yesterday’s emails we intend on returning today, missed calls, wall posts, chat shows and before we know it, oh look, the traffic light has turned green. This is why Olweto and his outstretched hands will probably spend the rest of their life being dismissed, while the only people with enough knowledge and economic opportunity to ever help his real rehabilitation into decent society will continue to spend their days driving past him in their middle-of-the-range motor vehicles.
Now, I expect no sudden revelations here given that to most South Africans this is a hugely ordinary sight. Instead what I envision to conjure is curiosity. Curiosity as to why the sight of this little chap prompted this rant. Because, let’s be honest here: reading about Olweto is probably entertaining enough to help the clock tick forward while we sip our first coffee of the day, but is any of it new or shocking or even borderline remarkable? My guess is no, but I’ll write it anyway because perhaps the next time I drive past my “little friend” I will feel less complacent knowing that although I did not directly change his unfortunate circumstances, I at least took the time to notice the injustice that prevails in a society of concentrated wealth and its failure to truthfully permeate the realm of the economically and socially disenfranchised masses.
Without going into a statistical analysis of the income disparity that exists in South Africa between the rich and poor, one thing is for certain: capitalism has never had a more apt setting within which to thrive. While in prevailing free market economies the misconceived ideology of socialism is demonised as a remnant of a bygone era, very little credence is paid to the benefits that a more economically egalitarian society would provide little boys like Olweto. On mere mention of the ghastly “left”, us “profane communists” are quickly chastised with reminders about the dismal economic failure of the eastern bloc during the Cold War and the region’s failure to innovate. Moreover, that is not what this is about. Despite the stockpiles of ideological essays I still have stored on my hard drive for easy access page-fillers, my departing from the raw science of political ideology is purposeful in its essence because this is about the human aspect of “politics” and its many transcendent faces.
Frankly, it’s great that I have been taught to memorise dates and recite the core pillars of a multitude of ideologies, but at what point does any of that really translate into being genuine meaningful? At what point will Olweto’s life be changed for the better because we have demonised redistribution and all the other “catch phrases” of a society that departed from the heralded Western ideal for a while and was unfortunate enough to succumb to the same evils such as cronyism and corruption that take place in indigenously capitalist societies like ours too? How many of us realise that the inequities and injustices we dismiss daily as an unfortunate by-product of a “tried and tested international economic system” are in fact personal to those who experience their might? How many of us are willing to admit that the gated communities we keep ourselves locked in after nightfall have in fact extended into our consciousness. The restrictions and limitations we have come to believe are part and parcel of the natural progression of human society are so fundamentally flawed that we no longer realise the depths of the injustice they perpetuate?
So what real options do we actually have once we realise that it is at base wrong, to allow the lives of innocent children to become collateral damage in our quest to drive a Land Rover and own a factory full of desperate men and women whom we will pay minimum wage for years under the auspices that “we too worked our way up” and then dismiss at the first sign of union-backed descent or even mere absenteeism? Should those of us who do not yet own the means of production but are near enough to their acquisition to be able to genuinely wield change do so or should we remain quiet and complacent until we do in fact own them and then endeavour to change the problem from the top down instead of the ground up?
I know enough to say for certain that mere and mortal “me” is not going to change the system we were born into. I also know enough to admit that the victor dictates both history’s successes and defeats and that when we view the world through the lens of contemporary society, the injustices experienced by the greater portion of our society pale into insignificance when we allow experience to be polarised against necessity. So with this in mind, and at risk of sounding tragic and nihilistic, the options we have available to those of us who care enough to want to affect real and drastic change for the greater good of society are few and far between — but we still have options. Those options most definitely do not include the regurgitation of the maxim that even in nature only the strong survive.
So what can we do when we become bothered enough by driving past 50-year-old gogos carrying firewood along the road to actually want to really change something? Firstly, we can ensure that the human aspect in any situation is prioritised above the acquisition aspect. Secondly, and obviously with the exception of a few self-made prodigies, the majority of us bourgeois South Africans, who were born with silver spoons in our mouths, must finally admit that we are not “special” or “exceptional” and that with our blessings come huge responsibilities. Those responsibilities extend beyond the pulpit and the odd car guard. Thirdly, when we head to the voting stations on May 18, we must cast our vote with caution, discretion and pride, remembering that had it not been for a handful of men and women who were willing to live their lives in stark defiance of accepted social mores, customs and ideologies passed off as God-endorsed systems, only an elite portion of our society would be standing at the very same voting pole so many of us take for granted. Lastly, even if the mental “dinner consideration” at the traffic light is complex enough to negate compassion long enough for the light to turn green, perhaps we could each add one more mouth to that consideration? Even if only for one night.
I can’t help but get the feeling our society is in desperate need of a shift beyond the complacent to the active, even if collective organisation around the problem is absent.
Emma Louise Powell has a postgrad degree in political science and has worked in the research department at national Parliament.
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