The poverty that haunts the country

While we attack each other on social media and in the letters columns of newspapers – over everything from Donald Trump to racism and B-BBEE – the reality is that we are, by our very access to these media, a privileged part of South African society regardless of our colour.

But, we don’t go to bed hungry every night, like a shocking one in four of our compatriots do.

Statistics for last year show that 22.2% of households considered their access to food inadequate or severely inadequate, with the worst food access problems in the Northern Cape (34.3%), the Eastern Cape (31.3%), Mpumalanga (30.4%), and KwaZulu-Natal (23.9%).

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Those figures – along with the proportion of individuals receiving social grants – are a stark illustration of the poverty that haunts South Africa and of the huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

The proportion of the population relying on government handouts increased from 12.8% in 2003 to 30.9% in 2019 and surged to 40.1% last year, due to the introduction of the special Covid social relief of distress grant.

Many of the poorest households are headed by women, a group in our country likely to be less educated and employable, not to mention being disproportionately high numbers of crime victims. It would be easy for the heartless capitalists to say “get a job!”, when this is simply not possible for many.

So that is why it is essential that the government continue to operate this social safety net. Those same capitalists should know that hungry people are angry people and that when they have nothing to lose, violence will mean nothing to them.

ALSO READ: World Bank: 2% growth won’t ease SA’s poverty, unemployment

We need to get our economy to grow and create more jobs to close the poverty gap. But we need to stop taxpayers’ money, which could save lives, from being looted.