On Carl Niehaus, coming clean and religion's role in society

Poverty jostles alongside wealth in Shanghai.

On one street corner I can buy a delicious takeaway omelette, a jidanbin (jidan: egg, bin: cake) with a choice of spices for about three RMB. I can add a sausage and it become four and a half RMB. Literally twenty steps away I can walk into a typical, Western-style coffee shop, The Coffee Bean&Tea Leaf, and an average cup of coffee will be about twenty five RMB. If I have a breakfast along with the coffee, I won’t be looking at less than fifty RMB for a meal probably less nutritious and not as tasty as the jidanbin. The only difference is that I scoff the jidanbin sitting in a bus shelter or sitting on a low wall while I watch the passersby, instead of the comfort of the blandly tasteful setting of a coffee shop.

A stone’s throw away from our small, one-bedroom apartment on the 22nd floor is one of the most luxurious hotels one could imagine, the Swiss Hotel. An evening buffet comes at the (relatively) reasonable price of nearly three hundred RMB, far beyond the average Shanghai worker’s means. Another stone’s throw back, just outside our apartment, Wang Hao runs a little shop no larger than a glorified telephone booth. Attached to it is another glorified, relatively private shack, also not much larger than a phone booth which is his dwelling. See the photo below, which I hope comes through. He does not have a care in the world, as far as I can see, as do many like him.

That conclusion I have often come to with regard to poor Chinese. The vast majority, by Western or Johannesburg northern-suburbs standards, have extremely little. Yet they are not disgruntled, and often seem so happy. I do not wish to romanticise poverty as I have said before in these blogs, it is just a conclusion I keep coming to as I interact with the Chinese. Or they are indifferent, even serene, about the little they have.

This is because the quest for more and more material things just does not promote happiness; they drain us of it.

Carl Niehaus’s recent confessions on the Mail & Guardian of fraud and the jaw-dropping fortunes he owes most singularly proves my common sense point. To quote from the very Bible that his faith uses, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:10).

I do not judge Carl Niehaus. I do shake my head, gobsmacked by how someone can need so much money to live, as well as support his former wife’s obscene spending habits. I find myself feeling such compassion for him. Why?

Well, to be honest, he came clean. It’s the people who do not come clean that I do not respect. I think I speak for most, if not all readers.

Carl Niehaus owned up; he is human. I am not a saint either. Though I have never committed fraud, I have had to lie sometimes to get by. For example, as said before in this blog, the Chinese cannot grasp that a person from South Africa can be a native English speaker. So, with regard to the new school I am about to start working at in the new semester, yet again they think I come from England. They cannot discern accents; I could say I come from Australia, America, or any of the English-speaking countries.

Once I failed to get a teaching post because the school directors said they did not want their children being exposed to an Irish accent. Oh yeah? I was dumbfounded. I have a standard northern Jo’burg accent and some can tell I lived for a number of years in Cape Town. But Irish? I suddenly realised I had emailed the school a copy of my Irish passport, which I am currently living on, to show my valid work visa. They just think I have an Irish accent, they simply cannot tell. So no more sending copies of my passports — my work agencies happily comply with the lie — I come from England.

So it’s not for me to judge.

But I think I speak for many of us when I say we just want to see our leaders come clean, show responsibility and step down if they have committed fraud.

And the problem with these political icons and struggle heroes of ours? They’re just as human as us and we forget that they must struggle with their status. We should not be the first to cast stones when they show they are really ordinary people who have had greatness thrust upon them.

My major concern is the role of Rhema Church in all of this. I am immensely suspicious of prosperity religion. I have “been there” and many, many years ago attended Rhema church in Randburg for a while. Rhema members are encouraged to part with at least 10% of their earnings because the Bible instructs them to. This is endorsed with the biblical promise that whatever you give, the more you will receive: “give and it shall be given” (Luke 6:38 ).

But Rhema handing over in excess of R700 000 to Carl Niehaus? I wonder if the leaders of Rhema in Randburg were happy with his confession and making public that loan. It immediately brings into question how socially responsible Rhema church is with its money. Surely, a sum of money of that size should be going into uplifting society, be it hospitals, education programmes for the poor and so forth, not lining one man’s pocket? It promotes the global crisis instead of contributing to overcoming that crisis.

My recent (common sense ) blog on censorship seems most timeous. The cans of worms are being opened.

Niehaus, in his interview with the Mail & Guardian, said “I never said no [to Linda]. I thought this is the way you keep love — you buy it. I should have been firm and said: ‘No more. We can’t live like this.’ I didn’t and I fell into the devastation of debt”.

I find his idea of buying love appallingly naïve. I have so much to grateful for. My wife, the Chook, needs so little to make her happy and we don’t have much, though the bank account is really fattening nicely. I can assure you if it had been otherwise, she would have left me long ago. We have had our fair share of financial woes in our globetrotting, not just wondering where the next meal was coming from, but where was the next country we could live in coming from, ha ha, I kid you not!

But my positive thoughts, even my prayers (yes, I still somehow believe in that and food tastes better after offering up a small prayer of thanks) go out to Carl Niehaus. Mr Niehaus, may the God of your understanding strengthen and comfort you in these times. But, more importantly, heed His instruction. Ask yourself, what do I learn from this?