Let's Recap

Information overload...let's slow down for a second. There was collusion with bread prices right? And with milk? And with medicine now? Clothing from China is also being shown to the door so that local industries can make extra bucks. Guys, all of this adds to less money in our pockets. I'm not saying more money = good, I am simply saying it's getting harder to make ends meet if you're not really really rich.

So if you're a streetsweeper your lot is or has been artificially expensive bread and milk, and thanks to the government's tax on fuel, food and everything else - including electricity - is becoming less and less affordable. The water in the Vaal is supposed to have an E.Coli count of 113 parts per 100ml. That's a UN standard. We're told it's now over a million. And our water supply is facing radioactive and effluent contamination on a big scale.

Now I don't know if you know, or care about these details, but if you're poor (and something like 40% of South Africa's population is unemployed (the government fudges these figures, including people selling things on pavements, car-guards etc)you're in trouble. Water is poisoned and you can't afford to buy bottled. You are in a desperate situation. In the last decade the number of people living on less than a dollar a day in SA has doubled.

Is it any wonder that crime is as violent as it is? It is a reflection of a cold, heartless, money-grubbing soviety that lives behind tall walls and is in too many instances corrupt to the bone. From your politician in his sports blazer to the mafioso in his sparkling BMW flashing his lights at you on the M1 - these people are only in it for themselves.

If you were hungry, and your small change was no longer good enough for a Disprin, a half loaf of bread, and a small carton of milk for your coffee - wouldn't you become restless, and then - seeing a pretty blonde cruise by, a perpetrator, in airconditioned comfort, chatting on their cellphone, sipping a latte - wouldn't you be enraged? You would be if you felt people could'nt care less. Well, do we?

Failure to take care of the poor is a dereliction of our duty, and in the end, our sins as South Africans - black and white - will come back to haunt us en masse.