Reflections on poverty in South Africa 
by Rev. Kalie Thomas August

I greet you today as a fellow Christian from South African who has just recently entered, together with my other +- 42million fellow citizens, the second face of the youngest democracy on earth. But the excitement and pride are dampened by the stark realities of crime, violence, unemployment and poverty. Our newly inaugurated president, Thabo Mbeki, has pledged his commitment to the upliftrnent of the poor and the creation of more employment opportunities for the 6-8 million unemployed people in our country.

According to a research report 'Poverty 96' by Andrew Whiteford, 56.9% South Africans are living since 1996 in poverty. This already represented 23 million people in 1996. This number could have increased, given the financial crisis of the past year and the fact that more than 300 000-employment opportunities were lost in the formal sector during the period between the population census of 1996 and the end of last year. The Minimum Living Level (N4LL) for a family of four is R948, 55. This means that all households with four members that earn less than R948, 55 per month are classified as poor. This is abject poverty. These statistics also provide the reason for the high crime-rate in our country.

How do unemployed people really feel? The following are a few testimonies:

'My husband lost his job - that was 5 months ago. It was a big shock but we thought we could cope, because I was earning a reasonably good wage. Then two months ago I lost my job. Now they've cut off the electricity and we're two months in arrears with rent. They're going to evict us I'm sure, we just can't pay though.' 'My husband left for Johannesburg two months ago, but I haven't heard from him since. Sometimes the children lie awake at night crying of hunger. I feel like feeding them Rattex (rat poison) because their hunger-cries break my heart. It will be better if they were dead. When I feel things like that I feel worse. It's terrible when a mother wants to kill her own children. But what can I do. I'm not a mother worth having. You el can pray to God that He will keep you from killing your children.'

 'You really feel sick when you haven't got a job. It's there in the bottom of your stomach. You think that something is eating you. The days are so long. I don't know what to do with myself anymore.' 

'The countryside is pushing you into the cities to survive, the cities are pushing you t@ into the countryside to die.' 

These testimonies of unemployed people reveal something of the immense pain and hopelessness caused by unemployment. In addition to the negative effect on human relations, its most destructive effect is perhaps that it makes people disbelieve in themselves. And anything that robs people of hope is demonic, because it strangles the life out of people created in the image of God. 

Many employed people do not hear this cry of the unemployed or else deliberately walk by on the other side, pretending not to notice. Others justify the situation by saying there is nothing that can be done about it because the problem is too large: "These are simply the workings of the international market; there is nothing we can do." By adopting such cynical, fatalistic or indifferent attitudes, we contribute directly to the suffering of other human beings. By saying there is no alternative we are betraying people. We are abandoning them to their desperate lot. We are denying God's power of CD deliverance and salvation.

In terms of the Christian faith, such an attitude goes against the very nature of the Kingdom of God. For under God's eschatological reign there is compassion, there is justice, there is concern for humanity, and there is hope for deliverance from all forms of bondage, injustice and dehumanized structures and systems. The Cross demonstrates God's free sovereign act of having everything demonic crucified in Jesus Christ that render humankind hopeless, useless and despicable. On the cross God in his anguish demonstrated his anger with the forces of darkness. The cross is God's clearest NO to human suffering, pain and misery and in the Resurrection He affirms his undying and liberating love for humanity on the Cross. The Resurrection creates hope. It unleashes in history a movement of people who refuse to give up hope and who say: There must be an alternative! There is an alternative - God's alternative within his realized future. 

The Christian faith is the faith of people belonging to the kingdom of God who, like their God, are concerned about people not 'being hired'. The Christian Faith empowers us to make a difference to unemployment and to the lives of unemployed people. The well-known North African Theologian, Augustine of Hippo said: 'Hope is like a mother who has two daughters. Their names are ANGER and COURAGE: anger at the way things are; and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are'. This world- transforming hope is what we need to rediscover as we face the virtually hopeless situation of unemployment in South Africa. Susan Thistlewaite, a North American Theologian, identifies a third daughter of Hope, called JOY. The joy of being blessed by God, the joy of recognizing that God is with us in our struggle against suffering; that God is on our side in our attempts to build an economy of caring and sharing, in which people are more important than machines, exchange rates or prices on the Stock Exchange. The joy of celebrating the deliverance of the people in the developing countries from the slavery of the debt-crisis that suffocates the economies of the developing countries and render people undignified. 

The Church should inform itself about the workings of the global economy, about its mechanisms of exclusion and exploitation, so that it can launch informed and meaningful projects in countering the destructive aspects of Globalization. As the South African Church, we need to empower ourselves for action, not only by deepening our Christian spirituality of hope, but also by understanding very clearly how the international market operates and how it affects each one of us in South Africa and in the world. If we are to encourage unemployed people to break their own chains, we need to be thoroughly equipped for this titanic battle. If we are to engage the powers of First World material, greed, we have to 'put on the whole armour of God.' 'For it is not only (own insertion) against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world, the spirits of evil in the heavens.' (Ephe.6: 11-12). Our struggle against unemployment, with all its causes and effects, is a spiritual one. And the Global market is also a spiritual entity, with a definite (destructive) spirituality of its own. In reaction to this destructive spirituality our deliberate quest should be for alternative employment and support systems. For God's economy is one where the earth's resources are being managed in such a way that all people are encouraged to be productive, where people and resources are developed in a people-centered way for the commonwealth of the globe. It is a careful, responsible and accountable thrifty use of all the worlds' assets for the common good of humanity by this generation for generations to come. Ecce Homo, see the human being standing desperately dehumanized, because no one has hired her/him. It is a sin against humanity; it is a sin against God the Creator, Sustainer and Deliverer. God is concerned - are we? 

Kalie Thomas August is Programme Director for Theology and Community Development at the Moravian Theological Seminary at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. The above text was shared as part of the preparatory dialogue for the Colloquium on Faith and the Economy in Germany in June 2000.