By Andrew Matjila
AS a matter of fact it is neither of the two. The human race has known poverty since time immemorial. Due to various factors, people have been poor even before recorded history. Many inhabited the poor areas of the planet, where there was a scarcity of vegetation, wildlife, or even water. It goes without saying that desert dwellers were by far badly off than perhaps their forest dwelling counterparts in obtaining food. Recorded history shows that most early dwellers of our planet populated river basins and lakes for obvious reasons. People in Africa live along the rivers for survival, yet many of them live in abject poverty. What compound abject poverty in Africa is the superstition that still prevails even today in many parts of Africa, especially among the poor:
Witchcraft: For some reason known only to their relatives, some people must go through life destitute and wallowing in misery. “You are poor because you are bewitched,” it is often heard in the villages.
Forsaken by the ancestors: “You must slaughter a white goat to appease the ancestors before the scourge of poverty can leave you.”
Having married in the wrong family: “You have married into the wrong family. Divorce that woman and everything will be alright with you again.”
Laziness is rarely ever mentioned as perhaps being part of the cause of poverty. But a more frightening and ominous spectacle that has reared its head in Africa in the post-colonial era is greed. Greed! greed! greed! Millionaires are becoming billionaires at the expense of the poor. At one stage, the Lord Jesus Christ was asked whether a man who was born blind and a beggar owed it to his sinful parents or to his own sin, the Lord replied, “No! Neither he nor his parents have sinned. He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him.”
A rewind of the centuries to as far as the time of the Lord Jesus walking on this earth, will show that there were poor people then, very poor people, and extremely poor people. We have poor people today, very poor people, and extremely poor people. During the colonial and apartheid years, many poor people became poorer when their land was seized and they could not produce the little food they were used to before. Settlers from overseas found extensive land, which they just took over and made their own on the basis of might is right. But, land grabbing or not, many white people themselves were poor amidst their well-to-do white neighbours. White land-owners had poor whites living on their land who were called ‘bywoners’.
Poverty during
colonialism brought about by confiscated
land in Africa
In his book “The white tribe of Africa,” David Harrison refers to various periods during the colonial days of South Africa, when black people lost their land. Dr Malan described the plight of poor Afrikaners after the South African War in 1916 as ‘Naked as kaffirs in Congoland’. At least for the poor whites of that time, a Commission of Inquiry into the whole white poverty situation, headed by Dr Ernie Malherbe, was launched in 1929, after a visit to South Africa by the President and Secretary of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Carnegie Corporation sponsored the investigation. At that time, it was estimated that 17.5 percent of all white families who had children at school were ‘very poor’. For the poor blacks, there was no such investigation.
To date, the black governments of southern Africa that have taken over have never carried out any investigation into the causes of black poverty. A ‘tenderpreneur’ still has to emerge to undertake such a task. Meanwhile, black people will remain poor for reasons that have never been looked into scientifically, and which could perhaps be reversed, addressed as some like to say, or even eradicated completely. Poverty, hunger and the diseases of malnutrition have been a way of life for thousands of South African and Namibian families for generations.
In fact, to this writer it would have made sense if Namibia and South Africa became so united in spirit back in 1994, that they opened the border between them, to allow their people free access to universities and markets. Why? They have shared, and still do, the same hardships for generations. Looked at from whatever angle, poverty among black people was brought about by colonialism. In 1900 during the so-called Anglo-Boer War now called the ‘South African War’, the British High Command ordered a scotched earth policy. Troops were ordered to raze crops and homesteads to deny Boer guerrillas sustenance. They created a devastation that no amount of reparation could put right. Not only were the Boers devastated, but the blacks were worse off, and have never recovered since then. The 1913 Land Act of South Africa was the final nail in the coffin of poverty for millions of black people in South Africa. But a similar scenario played itself out in Namibia during German colonial rule, when an all-out annihilation strategy was carried out from 1904 to 1907. In both countries, South Africa and Namibia, the main issue was the total confiscation of the land, a move which was of course opposed by the indigenous people. But unfortunately, they could not defend themselves with the same kind of weapons, which the intruders possessed.
What then, is poverty?
Poverty is by definition the condition that is said to exist when people lack the means to satisfy their basic needs. In the context of basic needs, the identification of poor people, first and foremost, requires us to determine what constitutes basic needs. Narrowly defined, these are “those necessary for survival” or as broadly as those reflecting “the prevailing standard of living in the community.” From a social point of view, the first criterion would cover only those near the borderline of starvation or death from exposure. The second criterion would extend to people whose nutrition, housing and clothing, though adequate to preserve life, do not measure up to those of the population as a whole. The immediate and apparent differences between the living standards of the poor of the past and the poor of today’s underdeveloped nations on the one hand, and the poor of modern industrial societies on the other, who may actually own cars, washing machines, television sets, laptops, etc, have led some authorities to suggest that it is not correct to call the latter group ‘poor’. However, whatever definition one uses and whatever correlates one adds to one’s definition, humanity in general and commonly assumes that the effects of poverty are harmful both to individuals, as well as to society. Poverty determines the life expectancy of individuals. In rich countries life expectancy can be anything up to 80, while in poor countries it can come down to 35, or even lower.