I have become another statistic. As twilight set a burglar stealthily entered our house and stole my 18-caret solid gold omega watch, camera and other bits of valuables lying around. At first one is so grateful to be alive and then the value and sentimentality of the stolen items induces a sense of material loss. My watch given to me by my husband on the occasion of the birth of my second child and which I proudly sported for over 20 years had almost taken on some of my characteristics. Now another person who may be totally unaware of its sentimental value and origins will wear it. Procured from a second hand dealer or some jeweller my watch should now fetch a handsome profit to its rogue owner. My camera filled with unprocessed family pictures taken on my grandchild’s second birthday, are now lost to its new owner. I saved to buy that camera.

Parallel feelings of invasion of privacy, strike home soon after and one agitates over how and when this happened and who this person could be. One begins to chastise oneself for one’s careless ways and old parental injunctions surface. I can almost hear my father saying:  “Devi why do you always leave your valuables lying around and my father in law saying” Lock up lock up”. Both of them have passed on now and one wonders why their spirits didn’t warn us to take care.

Life in South Africa is an interesting but not an easy one.

One is constantly forced to review and assess the situation from all angles.

In another vignette of a typical South African day, I watched with amazement the antics of the human hawk a 21st century phenomenon. Footed with designer sneakers equipped for speed, his nimble feet seemed to rise above the ground and pick up momentum as his eyes focused keenly on the object of his desire. With one swift jab he shattered a hole through the passenger seat window and thrust his nimble hand through it. The object was gone and the victim sat stunned in the middle of peak time traffic. Not everyone noticed the silent and swift stealth but the conqueror soon would be plying through his spoils and planning yet another swoop. The hungry and the starving have to go human hunting for their survival. It has little to do with morality for these are values that we inculcate amongst ourselves as members of the privileged class. If we have to develop a ‘hierocracy’ of values alongside Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we will soon discover that the self-actualised can afford to own lofty values while the starving masses are doomed to adopt crime as a viable alternative to survival.

At this point in my column my housekeeper shakes her head vehemently. “No no she says it’s not the poor who steal it’s the criminals. Poverty is no excuse for crime. Let me finish Linda I implore…

In this context the moving French drama Les Miserable has applicability here. Who could blame the poor man for stealing bread for his family? There is an interesting test given to students studying the social sciences in which they are asked to judge the morality of a person who steals medicines for his dying wife as opposed to the person who will not steal to save his wife. Who is the better person, the one who steals to save his wife or the one who allows his wife to die because he simply will not compromise his values? This is a difficult dilemma that many educators face. In SA there are so many thefts around cell phones and computers and if we had to unpack these practices we may find that the dispossessed are trying desperately to make a place for themselves in the world of technology. They are trying to get into the vocational mainstream. Similarly if someone steals a book to study how do we condemn this activity when the outcome is a positive one, namely a hunger for learning.

Then there are the beggars who stand at our intersections pleading for a little of what we have. Our thought processes vacillate between pity and annoyance. We view the lesser endowed as lazy and wily in their attempts to seek monetary gain sans work. You’re a young man said I to one with an outstretched hand: “why don’t you work. There is no work said he. But of course there is plenty of informal work in homes, in shops, on the streets and in gardens. But the indigent cannot have access to work on account of the invisible insurmountable barrier between the haves and the have-nots. It has become a simple matter of trust. One half is afraid of the other and social deprivation breeds as a result of this chasm.

The challenge of our times is for us to fight the malaise of social degradation, which is essentially about the eradication of morality. If we as a nation perpetuate the notion that crime and corruption are comfortable bedfellows of social justice we are doomed. But this means that we have to address poverty, create jobs and educate the masses to uplift themselves to take their rightful places in society.  In order to do this we have to take action against transgressors and to be seen to adopt a zero tolerance for all forms of crime at various levels. We should raise our displeasure at every opportunity, starting with the jewellers and second hand dealers who sell stolen goods and the procurer who buys these goods, the police who overlook crimes, and the politicians who role model corruption as a higher order behaviour. For me a disturbing aspect of national government is its total lack of concern for the poor. Milk and bread the staple diet of the masses is unaffordable. Pie sellers with their fatty diabetic inducing pastries have replaced the half a loaf of brown bread and the nation is already suffering from poor health. Education from secondary to tertiary levels are too expensive and unlike other poorer countries like India and China and some first world countries like Germany where higher education varies from being highly subsidised to free, our country is disingenuous about alleviating poverty and uplifting the masses. In telling pictures published in the weekend papers, it is not surprising that Zuma and Malema looked shocked and moved by the stories that they heard first hand about grinding poverty in Mpumalanga. Many of the residents had not registered to vote as they felt that nothing had changed for them in the last 15 years. A graphic image of 4 and 5 families having to use a single toilet in stark contrast to the sheer luxury and opulence of the ruling class was a telling indictment of ‘fat cats and hungry rats’. During election time the former tends to prey on the latter. And in the aftermath you and I are the natural fodder for the hopeless masses.

Dr Devi Rajab writes in her personal capacity. Email address rajab@cybertek.co.za