The poor South Africa

Fri 7 Oct – Thurs 20 Oct 2011
Sun in Libra; Mercury in Libra/Scorpio 13^th; Venus in Libra/Scorpio 9^th; Mars in Leo

With Saturn in Libra all year already, the Sun’s transit through that cardinal air sign this month will accentuate the need as well as capacity for tact and diplomacy in our relationships. Coupled with that is the need for justice and fairness in both business and personal partnerships. Even social justice, the equality and fairness required throughout the entire social spectrum, may need to be considered and addressed now. And the unequal proportion of all race groups represented in our national rugby team, the Springboks, is just a part of that debate now highlighted by the World Cup tournament. More importantly, our national disaster of one of the highest unemployment rates in the world highlights even more the inequality that abounds in our divided country. Historically that inequality has been cultivated along racial lines, but since the revolution of the Rainbow Nation in 1994 that leveled the playing field in the law books and judicial system, we should have seen the evolution of a sense of fairness and balance within our socio-political system. However, the proportion of people still living below our unofficial poverty line of $2 a day has only really improved by 5%, from 53% to 48% in the past 16 years. This is clearly a high level of poverty for a middle-income economy and indicates the sheer lack of fairness and justice in our system that, on paper, should be a social ideal. I mean what is half the country doing living in poverty when there are plenty of resources to go round? Of course social grants supplied by our somewhat socialist democratic government may have been the largest contributing factor to alleviating poverty, but at the same time the distribution of income between the richest and poorest sectors of society remained the same. The poorest 20% of the population earns about 2.3% of national income, while the richest 20% earns about 70% of the income. And although inequality still seems to be divided along racial lines, that is not solely the case, for the proportion of black Africans in the top 20% of income earners increased from 39%in 1995 to 48% in 2009. So in fact inequality within the black African population has actually increased sharply. Therefore whether we are black or white, pink or brown in this Rainbow Nation, if we are able to access the abundance of resources available (regardless of the fact that you did it on your own steam or by your own strength), it behooves us to cultivate an open and compassionate heart, to lend a hand to those less fortunate, to show the Libran qualities of considering the other as of equal importance as the self, and to ultimately birth the dream of the Rainbow Planet. Although God knows how we will hold a Rugby World Cup tournament again. The bottom line is that we are not alone in this life, we are social creatures, and we are all responsible for ourselves, our planet and each other. No longer can we close our eyes, our ears or our hearts to the blatant injustice, inequality and total disregard for the plight of our human family that has plagued this fledgling democratic state.