Asinakutyeba sonke, ngubani oyakushiyeka etshayela?, (“We can’t all be rich, who will sweep the floors?”) I heard this statement all too often growing up.It seems a relatively accurate, even innocent statement.
Yet, it is an example of the thinking behind the blatant robbing of rural folk and struggling municipalities, who put their money in the now looted and collapsed VBS bank.
One of the backward inferences of my introductory phrase, is its approval of inequality. Through saying that people can’t all be rich, but not offer any possible reasons for this perception, it leaves open to misconception that some of us must be left or made to “sweep the floors”.
It is a perverse motivation for the most blatant of crimes against humanity, in that it assumes some of us are inherently better than others.
Neither does it suggest why some people are rich and others not. Is it because some of the wealthy received an inheritance, a great education, access to land, machinery and business experience or perhaps got themselves involved in industries which were experiencing an upswing at the time?
As a result, this kind of thinking seems to support the notion of inequality, perhaps one of the most heinous crimes we as a society commit in complete ignorance.
Another subtle thought carried by this statement, is that being rich or not is a measure of the worth of a person.
The failure to interrogate the reasons behind the wealth obtained by a person at any point in time, results in a skewed perception that whoever is rich today will always be rich.
It does not ask whether such persons gained wealth in an ethical manner or not, whether they have robbed some gogos and mkhulus in Limpopo, or whether they will go to jail anytime soon for any misdeeds. That introductory statement does not ask how many people had to die or how many wars were fought to accumulate such wealth.
At the centre of this horrible thought is that, a man who is rich, is worth more than a man who possesses none of the riches, which can be measured in accepted currency.
The contradiction is very clear when you listen to what we say and what we do. We talk about man and woman being equal before the law, yet secretly mumble that being “connected” determines one’s fate.
We talk about the invaluable worth of every human yet we practically kneel to the rich, the powerful and the famous.
We harbour in our own minds – and possibly hearts – views which oppose our public convictions.
Unfortunately, the results follow our actions, not our words and so we find ourselves still living in a world engulfed in misunderstanding, where money seems to trump everything.
Don’t we so easily say: “Money makes the world go round!” and peddle this blatant lie in front of our children?
Meanwhile, SA’s greedy political elites go on looting sprees and shamelessly emulate their “colonial masters”, and use discord to distract us.
There are no words for the heartless bank executives, political elites and business people who looted – and destroyed – VBS.
They deserve to rot in jail. But we must take this further and ask ourselves how deep the thinking that “we can’t all be rich” and “money makes the world go round”, is ingrained in our mind-set.
How many seemingly innocent utterances, thoughts and beliefs float around our heads unchecked, sometimes even resistant to change, simply because we cannot make the connection between them and the results we all too often see on the ground?
The VBS scandal may be embedded in the sphere of political greed and disregard for the electorate, but it also requires serious introspection.
The clients of VBS were clearly made to “sweep the floors” here. But, little mercy must be shown to those who have taken bread from struggling rural families who put their hard-earned savings into a bank which became little more than a looting machine for the connected elite. South Africans must, as a matter of survival, insist on putting ethics and morality above everything else. The political parties implicated in VBS must feel the pain in 2019, they have shown their true colours...