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The poor are blamed for everything. They are blamed for crime, yet Oscar Pistorius – one of our most famous criminals – is not poor. The poor are always scapegoats. They’re even blamed for xenophobia.
There are no poor people in the boardrooms I go to, unless you count those who can’t pay for their cigars, whiskies and fast cars as poor, yet I hear the word ‘makwerekwere’ all the time.
Most African countries are poorer than South Africa, yet they are welcoming to foreigners. Our problem in South Africa is not poverty, but greed.
It is selfishness more than self-hate, and entitlement ahead of service. Our problem is not lack of leadership, but lack of fellowship.
Unlike manna, leaders do not fall from heaven. They come from grass roots, and if the roots are rotten, leadership cannot blossom.
Blaming the poor for all the country’s mishaps is absolving the middle classes and the rich of their bottomless gluttony.
If greed and poverty were to be measured on the same scale of wickedness, greed would be found to be far worse.
Without trying to glamorise poverty, poor people will share whatever they have, however little it is. Greedy people, on the other hand, will starve even an infant, and justify their cruelty by saying it is the efficiency of markets.
The crisis that nearly brought the world’s financial system to its knees was caused by greedy corporations, not the poor.
So we should never talk of a “war on poverty”, but about a “war on greed”, because often the former is extrapolated to mean a “war on the poor”.
Their lives are made harder by the police and private security companies. They get stopped and searched randomly simply because they are walking in a suburb – as if suburban by-laws make it mandatory to drive a car.
Public places are gated and locked, making it harder for domestic workers and gardeners to walk where they wish in their own country.
Demonising poverty has demonised the poor and brought back discrimination, particularly against Africans.
The poor are not in need of sympathy, but must be given the right to a decent life.
Recently, there has been a debate about what should be done about young beggars on street corners, most of whom look young enough to have been born in post-apartheid South Africa.
How did they miss the dividend of free education for the deserving and feeding schemes at primary schools?
There are free housing and government grants for the needy. What will happen to these children when they become adults? And when they have children of their own, how are they going to help them escape the pit of poverty?
What can be done before taxpayers feel that they are being leached out of existence?
Focusing on street children, who are the future of poverty, is not enough.
The truth is that the river of opportunity in South Africa has been contaminated by overzealous officials who have a tendency to overgovern.
We need to get to the soul of society and change its parameters of success.
If our government is serious about building small business as the employer of the future, then we have to change the measure of success as well as the incentives that drive it.
Businesses should be incentivised to employ more people rather than rake in gigantic profits alone. Tax rates must be reduced on a sliding scale depending on the number of people a company employs – so the more people it employs, the less tax it will pay.
Indirect taxes such as annual fees to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission should be abolished because they add no value to business or society. They are a form of government greed, and that too must stop.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive,an advertising agency
