Six spaza shops: and that's change?

Facing the grim facts of poverty

Only the right policies can change the wildly unequal path which South Africa finds itself treading

WHAT a crying shame that another Freedom Day has come and gone, and apart from the obligatory political speeches, has passed by with little fuss and fanfare.

BLACKS and coloured in South Africa are special groups. They don't have the same resources as whites and Indians (remember Pravin Gordhan) to protect or care for themselves, even 23 years after independence. That is partly why there is now the movement for radical social and economic transformation.

Though an average black or coloured person in South Africa may not be the worst in Africa, the disparity between the country's wealth and the conditions for most of the blacks and coloureds are unparalleled.

Sadly, the government has not lived up to its obligations. South Africa, with its cherished image of a "rainbow nation" after a miraculous political settlement, should be an inspiring example of fair and just treatment for all its people. Instead, is a beacon of failure - one that contributes to sluggishness on socio-economic rights in the region.  

Let's admit it. We have dishonoured Freedom Day and allowed it to be relegated to just another public holiday when the nation (read white minority) drinks beer and  braais boerewors. What can South Africans do to accord this day the recognition it truly deserves?

Have we got such sot memories? Ask any South African old enough to recall April 27, 1994 and they invariably wax lyrical about a day they will never forget. It was a day many had merely dreamed of while suffering the indignity and excesses of white minority rule and the equally vile and evil system of apartheid, enthusiastically embraced by the vast majority of the white minority.

The extremes to which poverty and inequality have grown in South Africa, and the manner in which these inequities arise undermine our economy. And so it is that too much of the wealth at the top of the ladder comes from exploitation, whether from the exercise of monopoly capitalist power and tendencies; from taking advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance laws, to diverting large amounts of revenues to further enrich shareholders (Maria Ramos, Christo Wiese, Whitey Basson et al), and form a finance sector devoted to market manipulation, aided and abetted by the like so Gordhan and his lackey, Jonas.

Too much of the poverty and inequality are due to economic discrimination and the failure to provide adequate education and jobs for the majority (read black) of the people in South Africa, most of them blacks and coloureds.