For South Africa’s poor, humanity falls through the cracks

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu is quoted as having said: “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.” I fear that in South Africa we are in danger of accepting that not all deserve “the full menu” of our human rights.

Most who have been following my column will note that the thread that runs through my musings seeks to remind us all of our humanity and how we should safeguard it. This humanity is underpinned by human rights, which, as stated by the United Nations, are “rights we have simply because we exist as human beings – they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language or any other status.”

The UN goes on to say these human rights are indivisible and interdependent, meaning that in order to live fully one cannot only enjoy one set of rights while being denied other human rights. For example, it is not enough just to have the right to life; that right to life is further enhanced by the right to equality.

Now in South Africa we have a globally recognised problem of being the most unequal country in the world. This is a result of people’s socioeconomic rights being limited through structural inequality. We see this through the massive economic divide in which 10% of our population owns 80% of our country’s wealth.

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This, in effect, renders invisible the plight of those who do not have access to this wealth and are left to make do with the scraps.

The normalisation of poverty in our country means that it is acceptable to be poor with little to no opportunity to determine the life you want. It means people’s humanity falls through the cracks and they merely live a survivalist life as opposed to thriving because they do not enjoy their full human rights.

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As Professor Sandy Africa said in an interview with Daily Maverick: “We ought to be more than just about survival and a baseline existence… People should be able to choose the kind of lives they would like to live. We barely talk about the things that make for a full human life because we are constantly in a state of anxiety.”

One such glaring example is the Enyobeni Tavern tragedy in which 21 children died on 22 June. In September their parents still do not know what happened; neither do they have autopsy reports. One can only infer that the lives of these children and the resultant grief of their parents have been relegated to unimportance by virtue of being black, working class and without the requisite social capital and recognition of humanity that would have resulted in a national outcry. This would have mobilised resources and put pressure on state officials to get to the bottom of the tragedy.

If poor people live with the constant anxiety of just making it to the next day, what space can they ever have to thrive and not merely exist? That these children’s rights to life, dignity and family are not recognised even in death begs the question: “Do we really all recognise the humanity in each other?” DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.