Blog Action Day 2008 - Do we really want to see the end of poverty?

I have shown in my previous two posts some of the aspects of poverty and wealth discrepancy that challenge us as a species. And now I want, with the input of D, to pose some further questions. Let me state at the outset that any attempt to tackle the subject of poverty in a single blog post is impossible – it is too big and complex a subject. What I propose to do here is take a broad overview, which might at least stimulate some thinking and debate, by raising, and perhaps answering, a part of the issue.

Let’s start by trying to get a grip on what poverty is. The internationally accepted definition of poverty is having less income than is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living. But here’s the rub: this definition differs from nation to nation. The poor in the US, for example, are not remotely comparable to the poor in Cambodia. So, perhaps we need to look at it differently and say that poverty means having less income than is needed to meet the lowest level of Maslowian needs, namely, food, water and shelter. You might think of this as absolute poverty – it’s a self limiting condition; people who suffer from it, die.

Now there’s a simple reality that strikes me when I consider the question of poverty: while there are millions who live in poverty, there are also a small number who live with vast wealth and others who live with relative wealth. To get an idea of the ratio, I suggest you look at the global Gini coefficients. Considering this discrepancy between rich and poor, I’m inclined to a view which says the rich would appear to be rich at the cost of the poor (the story of South Africa’s gold mines highlights this perfectly). And the truth is, poverty will remain with us until the imbalance and injustice is redressed.

I’m not talking about handouts or communism as solutions here. Neither is the answer as history has already shown. Instead what is needed is a multi-pronged approach, which starts with a fundamental change of mindset and an improvement in education. I say this with one caveat: there appears to be a level of inequality that is natural. I hasten to add that this inequality is not exclusively a human phenomenon. Look at the natural world and you’ll see it at work there too. The strongest survive, the rest get eaten or beaten (you may recall my posts on the Kruger National Park). That said though, I would hope, given our human intelligence and compassion – our basic humanity - we can go beyond the “wilder” response. Unless that is too much for us as a species?

Let’s postulate for a moment. Could it perhaps be that the rich nations need the poor nations to be just that – poor? What might happen to the economy of Europe or the US, for example, if Africa were magically transformed overnight into the largest economy on earth? Given that the US consumes 25% of the world’s energy resources and has only 5% of its population, it depends on other countries to underconsume resources in relation to their population, because when those poorer nations start to consume at higher levels – as, for example, China has been doing – then the cost of those resources rises massively. And increased costs mean rich countries can no longer sustain extravagant consumption. And that’s not a comfortable prospect when you’ve been used to having it all.

Let’s look at the problem from a different angle: Why is it that the poor don’t die? After all, if being poor means having less income than is needed to survive, you’d expect the poor to disappear quite quickly.

But here’s the thing: they are dying - all the time. Between 25,000 and 50,000 people starve to death each day – an exceptionally awful way to die. Yet the world produces more than enough food to feed them. The food thrown away each year in the UK alone would probably sustain these hapless people. The $720 million spent each day on the war in Iraq – that is, between $14,400 and $28,800 for each person who starves to death on a given day – would certainly make a big difference if it were applied to poverty relief. Surely this is one of the easier problems to fix? So why then aren’t we fixing it, really fixing it?

Yes, of course, we believe we are, we’d like to think we are but… let’s go back to the first point – do the rich economies really want the problem to be fixed?

Let’s assume for one moment that they did. What might they do?

Two things would make an enormous difference. First, the dismantling of agricultural subsidies that make poor countries’ products uncompetitive would allow them to compete fairly. Second, a meaningful effort to tackle the scourges of poverty - fundamental infrastructural deficits (water, sewage, road and rail transport, electricity) and preventable disease – would massively boost productivity levels and allow education levels to rise. Access to credit without structural adjustment burdens would be a good start.

But here’s the rub: Aid at current levels won’t fix these problems – it’s too little – almost all rich nations constantly fail to meet their target aid obligations - and its purposes are generally skewed. To see what I mean consider the observations of Pekka Hirvonen of the Global Policy Forum:

Development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases,
· Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
· Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
· Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
· Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
· All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

To my mind these failures leaves us with one fundamental question which must be answered if we are to ever truly tackle poverty and create improved global equality: Are rich nations truly willing to allow the poor to join them at the banquet table? Until the answer is an unequivocal and unbiased “yes”, poverty will remain with us.

© October 2008. No part of this article may be reproduced or otherwise used without prior written permission from the authors.

Local poverty haunts suburban restaurants

Hout Bay on a summer's day

Blog Action Day is looming – 15th of October for those of you not yet in the know. As a result, the question of poverty is very much in the forefront of my mind – and I’m seeing it more clearly than usual – all around me. I imagine some may find this post a little hard to handle. For that I make no apology. I write what I see, what I feel, what I wonder about. I write with the eyes of a writer and a storyteller…

Hout Bay beach

As I sat today, at a streetside trattoria in a seaside suburb, I pondered two things – one, the ostentatious wealth and two, the abject poverty – which sat side by side.

Luigi’s Trattoria, one of my favourite places for a lazy Sunday nibble, is a laidback place – friendly, convivial and with good, hearty Italian fare. The gelateria next door does the most sublime Italian ice-cream. The nicest tables at Luigi’s are those that spill out onto the sunny pavement - but that means that the less wealthy inhabitants of Hout Bay (the suburb) walk on by and either gaze covetously at, or harass the diners. Hout Bay, you see, is the strangest of places, where wealth sits cheek by jowl with wretched poverty.

Luxury homes in Hout Bay

A shanty town, very like the one in Hout Bay, only these people don't have sea and mountain views

Because I’m a writer, stories fling themselves at me as I sit there. Every aspect of life in South African society tears at my soul. I see the thing as a four handed monster. On the one hand, sublime landscapes that tear at your soul with their evocative beauty, on the other, the unbelievable displays of wealth played out by those living in wedding cake houses and driving Jaguars, Bentleys and BMW SUVs that make you retch with their insensitivity and crassness. On the one hand the beautiful weather, the balmy spring days that warm body and soul, on the other, the dismal poverty of those who have nothing, who have been promised everything yet who remain in tin and wood shanties that flood in winter and reek all year round.

This is the nature of Hout Bay, which is, in effect, a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Hout Bay seaside home

Tin shack dwellings

As I sit there sipping my Sauvignon Blanc, nibbling on my antipasto misto, a series of “characters” invades my own personal story.

The first is black guy, drunk and is masturbating as he shambles past the restaurant. He’s muttering to himself, his fly undone and is so far gone he’s largely oblivious to the world. One seeks, I guess, pleasure in any corner…

The second are a group of street urchins, their clothes torn, ready to harass the whiteys dining out, singing, dancing and berating, in the hope that if they keep it up for long enough a tourist will give them a buck or two.

The third is a guy of mixed race, sporting a faux American accent (you must remember that even in the “new” South Africa, race remains a fundamental part of the mix) . He’s already harassed Luigi and friend, rebuking them liberally before passing on to us, and saying “Yeah, if I was a whitey like you, I’d complain about the service.” Had I had the wit in that moment, I’d have asked for his story – but I was still reeling from the first guy.

The fourth are two children, mixed race, with a homemade petition pleading for money for their school. “Agh, please, merrem, marster,” they whine, “give us money for our school.” Because we know longer know where reality ends and trickery begins, we just say, “Sorry.” It seems a paltry response under any circumstances. You feel screwed whatever you do.

The fifth, another black man, is so drunk he can barely stand up straight. He slurs and staggers, mumbling incomprehensibly. The manager of the restaurant tells him to “go away”, but this doesn’t deter him, he just rants a bit more. “Go away! Go!” bellows the manager and the drunk staggers off, heading who knows where, to drown more of who knows what.

It’s not, I have to tell you, good for the digestion. For someone with an over-active imagination it’s not particularly uplifting either. I see stories in the eyes of these passerbys, just as I see stories in the eyes of those sitting around me – like the little toddler with blonde hair who is soaked in tomato sauce and relishing her meal with greedy gusto, the three Muslim guys who drip gold and treat the black waitress as though she is some servile beast, to the five tourists, who admire the weather, marvel at the locals, and think… what, one wonders…

I wondered, as I sat there, how many of you are faced with real poverty on a day to day basis? I wondered, how often you drove past people who sleep on the ground, sheltering under freeway bridges and in bushes, or who live in tin shanties that leak, that have neither plumbing nor electricity? I wonder, how often people beg from you, people who are destitute and without hope, people who look at you with eyes that are either blank or filled with dark resentment? I wonder how often you stare into the eyes of children and see, beyond the blankness, a glimmer of demons? I wonder how often you face real poverty, see it as a norm, as a daily fact of life, intertwined with crime and violence and drug abuse and… And I wonder how you feel about it, how it touches you, whether it tears at your soul – or whether, perhaps, it’s simply not part of your world, but something “out there”?

Wealth vs poverty

Two posts in one - Announcing Blog Action Day

Sabie River Dawn

I have, I realise, gone completely bush mad. There’s a nice, but very rude expression for it in Afrikaans, but aware of bloggy sensibilities, I won’t use it here – it’s translatable enough for anyone to understand!

However, I’m that bushmad that I’m trying to get back to the bush. And what I’m wondering is, why has it taken me so long, and literally on the eve of our leaving SA for the Wet and Soggy Place, for me to discover the bush. Perhaps it’s because South Africans just take the bush for granted. We know it’s there, so you know, no big deal. But it is a big deal. It’s an awesome deal – that sheer magic of being out in wild nature is just irreplaceable. I would wish for every single one of you to experience it. And by experiencing it, I mean going out and actually walking in the bush - the real bush, where the lions and elephants and impala live.

As for getting back into the bush, I considered an African swansong – Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwean/Zambian border (staying in Zambia) and Chobe Game Reserve in Botswana. But the thing that really grabbed me by the throat (and totally out-budgeted me) was the cost. Hideously expensive. I’m utterly staggered at the price of safari holidays, at how much private lodges and hotel chains charge for accommodation per night – never mind the airfares and airport taxes, park fees, activity charges etc. There are some people who are making a lot of money out of all this.

And here’s the rub. While hotel chains and private lodges are creaming it, the people who work for them and the people who live in the immediate environment remain horribly poor – often living below, on or just above the poverty line. It’s no small wonder that service in Africa is berated as being awful. How, after all, would you like to work for some fatcat serving “wealthy” tourists, when you don’t even earn enough to put food on the table. At the Victoria Falls curio markets, stallholders will barter goods – clothing, children’s clothing in particular, shoes and pens are all gratefully accepted as currency – because they are so unaffordable and so unavailable.

Township realities and tin shanties (near Johannesburg)

And this brings me to the next element of this post. Blog Action Day. It’s on the 15th of October this year and the topic is Poverty. I think I’m pretty well placed to write about poverty given it’s all around me. I’m hoping to rope D in to co-write with me, as an ex academic (socio-political theory) and well-published in his own right, he will bring extra depth to anything I might have to say.

Do go and check out the Blog Action site and sign up to participate. If you feel you’d have nothing to say, and I find that hard to believe! the site gives a host of ideas and suggestions for post topics on the day.