Woes facing SA pensioners, the State and our responsibility

“Please, Rod, make sure you and Marion stick away enough money for when you are older. Promise your old mother. Believe you me, no matter how much you save, it just isn’t enough for when you are older.”

In Shanghai I listen to my mother’s youthful, imploring voice on the phone half a world away in Fish Hoek, just outside Cape Town. Her words tremble like feathers, fluttering back and forth over the same ideas of saving money, health, weather, her feeble legs and how is Marion? whom she has never met. (“Roddy, I would give anything to have strong legs so I can walk to the shops again”. I am investigating Chinese traditional medicine for arthritis to send her but fear the fricken SA Post Office stealing again.)

My mother is turning 84 this year and her pension ran out a few years ago. Nedbank had invested quite a bit of her capital and made some mistakes in the investments. My mother gets to pay for those mistakes, not Nedbank.

She is one of countless millions throughout the world (I will not point a finger at just SA) who worked their entire lives, paid taxes on her salary and paid still more taxes on most items she bought. She never sponged off the state.

But the state, after raking it in off my mother for fifty years, offers her and all those like her so little in return. My mother worked full-time from the age of seventeen to the age of 67. She gets the state pension: about R750 a month. Correct me if I am wrong; perhaps someone out there knows she should be getting more. Out of this amount she pays a rent of about R200 for a bed-sitter with kitchenette right near the beach in Fish Hoek.

My mother lives in a small block of flats designated only for the retired and elderly. My cousins and I – her two nephews – send her money regularly.

Don’t get me wrong; I know my mother is on the whole quite happy, having learned the lesson of simplicity. She can go for short beach walks every day (short because of her legs). She has several buddies in the block of flats with which she has a regular schedule of get-togethers for tea, Scrabble and card games. She loves to talk about the cricket; she can sit and watch Test matches all day, hollering encouragement. She goes to church and prayer meetings, which are deeply meaningful to her and are part of a very healthy social network. (I am going to look at social networks later in this blog.)

I am more than happy to provide for her. I have no religious affiliation, but I do believe in Jesus’ words: “Give, and it shall be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap”. What goes around comes around. What I sow, I reap.

But God knows where my mother would be were it not for the family. What has the state really done for our elderly?*

I hear her fears. She never says so when she implores Marion and me to save but I know she is also trying to say, at the risk of losing her pride, “don’t forget your mother, my only son”. I won’t.

I regularly come across articles about the fat-cat lifestyle of our political players in SA. Be it members of COSATU flying to Cape Town first class or the obscene lifestyle of some of our leaders, or the sheer costs of corruption cases ranging from Zuma to Selebi. All that legislative money could be going into funds far better than protecting our wishy-washy leaders. Our elderly are grossly neglected. I think a society can be judged by the way its senior citizens are treated.

Fear. Many people simply live in fear of the future. One reason is because the state, to which they surrender a sizable part of their income every month and to which they further contribute through sales on purchased products, deserts them once they are too old to continue feeding the wolf. Magnus Heystek, among many other financial advisers, tells us that about 95% of people simply cannot afford to retire at the age of 65. Life then becomes an awful race between poverty (including loss of dignity) and death.

All too often it is also our own fault. People live way beyond their means. When living in SA I ran a small business and was a credit card merchant. When customers’ credit cards were declined I had a way of finding out what was available on their credit card accounts. Often I was told of the debt people owed. It was staggering. Some people owed the equivalent of a small house mortgage of bad debt, with hefty, compounding interest. They will never be able to retire; they just service the debt level; the bank’s shareholders further feather their already well-feathered nests.

Here in China we are trying to live the life of simplicity. The Chinese have taught us that. By and large, especially the older generation**, they just do not spend money. They do not have debt. The banks are nationalised; very little lending is allowed. Good. This protects the people from themselves, prevents impulse buying of non-necessities.

But … every month we order a box of yummy steak pies from an Australian bakery in Shanghai, www.kookapies.com (check it out). Each pie costs about 24 RMB and more steak and gravy could not be loaded into the fragrant packet of flaky pastry. They are far better than any SA pies I have ever tasted. Our young Chinese friend Andy Yao, who earns a decent salary, had popping eyes when we told him how much they cost. “So expensive!” he exclaims. We don’t think so – as a “treat”. An average meal for Andy costs 5 RMB, or even less. We only order in a dozen or so of those pies or sausage rolls once a month as a “treat”, to use the favourite Western excuse … but that’s how we justify it.

But we have got a lot better with spending and usually stick away one income and live on the other. If we do that for another ten years all will be well. And we have no debt.

We would not be in that position right now in the other countries we have lived in: SA, England and New Zealand. All three countries have a cult of over-spending and bending credit cards. We have family in New Zealand who will be sponsoring us out later this year. They are in IT, highly sought after in New Zealand and earn extremely good salaries. Yet they still live in credit card debt as if it were simply a way of life. Why? This is because of the culture and the social circles they live in. Why do Chookie and I have no debt, nothing, zip, nada? Because of the culture and social circles we live in. Why do we still spend too much money (pies, pubs, restaurants, expensive foods)? Because of the culture we come out of and some of the social circles we keep.

Sarah Britten wrote a very thought-provoking article on social contagion, referring to an article by Michael Bond (for the reference, see her article). In essence it states that our moods and habits are the result of not only the company we keep; our moods and habits are a result of our social circle’s friends, whom we may not have met, but their virus of happiness or unhappiness is transmitted to us via their friends whom we know or may not know. Even at a distance, our friends affect us: “If a good friend living within a couple of kilometres suddenly becomes happy, the chances of your happiness increase by more than 60%”.

This may sound like baloney to some. I agree with the findings; they do not surprise me at all. The phenomenon of our interconnectedness, indeed the universe’s profound interconnectedness, is well documented now in the fields of science, particularly, of course, quantum physics. Any event that affects one quantum object affects all events. Here is an example of the various famous scientific experiments conducted. Two photons were fired at the same time, but 180 degrees apart. Photons travel at the speed of light. Nothing (apparently) can go faster than the speed of light, so it was “impossible” for one photon to inform the other of its unannounced, sudden and rather rapid movement. However, the new polarisation of one photon directly effected the polarisation of the other photon. How the hell could the one photon possibly have the time to inform the other? Why did it have to inform the other? Astonishing!

On a social level, this explains why people like my wife and I in Shanghai, China, have largely changed our spending habits. We somehow no longer have debt, unlike a typical consumerist Westerner. We usually live on one income, which is awesome for serene living. No fear of the post, opening window envelopes or the phone ringing!

I was bad at one stage with credit cards in SA. “See it? Like it? Buy it!” Whip out one of several dreadful pieces of plastic I had and no longer have. Debt is also a disease transmitted on a semantic level. The bank or creditor will say, “we can extend your credit”, which sounds so much more comforting than “we can help increase your debt burden”. You will never hear a financial institution saying the latter sentence.

In China, families treat the elderly with dignity. The government does not provide for the elderly. I am not happy with this, but the elderly, unless they are very poor, need not fear. They belong and often live in the same household as their adult children. The grandparents bring up the children while the parents go to work. Our apartment is 26 walking steps in length, and smaller in width. We are perfectly happy with this. Next door in a similar apartment the parents and grandparents happily live together in the same space and the baby is due in a week or so at this time of writing. The elderly and their offspring, the working people, are interconnected and so often seem so happy, content.

After four years in China I am still observing this phenomenon of happiness and contentedness among a people who have precious little by Western standards. I try to challenge my own simple, perhaps simplistic conclusions but the conclusions remain unchanged: Simplicity nurtures happiness. Less is more. The Buddhist noble truths still hold: there is suffering. Suffering is the result of grasping, attachment (read unhappiness and identity based on having “stuff”). Happiness is non-attachment. Don’t worry, I am still learning these lessons.

Happiness also includes not automatically blaming the state for one’s personal financial state of affairs*** and, indeed, one’s level of happiness or serenity. Overcoming blame shifting, even when it seems merited, is extremely freeing.

*The medical aid my mother receives seems to be excellent in SA. She pays about R17 a month and gets her various medical products for not a penny more. There I will definitely give the SA government credit. But not the parlous pension.

** The spending habits of some in the younger generation in Shanghai are worrying. Some young teachers I know earn about 3 000 RMB a month and think nothing of splashing out on a technical gizmo like a smart digital camera or ipod or expensive jewellry costing half their monthly take home. Their parents would never do this.

*** Obviously Zimbabwe is an exception. But then that “country” has no real government in the way the world understands government.