Viva Contentment, Gratitude and Moderation!

There was a time when these three qualities were extolled as virtues.  Today other forces are displacing them – like entitlement, consumerism and over-exuberance.  So we hear of “lifestyle audits” and even spending ceilings to keep leaders from setting a bad example.  In Canada, when Tommy Douglas was premier, he drove a Dodge – not a Cadillac.  In Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara made the Renault 5 the official car of cabinet ministers, to reduce expenditure on Mercedes limos.  In the past year, Pope Francis has stated that leaders should drive “humble cars”.  He has declined to move into the Vatican Palace and is leading by example.  Actions speak louder than words.

On my recent trip to Canada, the Premier of Alberta had to resign for making extravagant plans for a penthouse suite at the top of a government building.  The planning did not follow normal channels.  In South Africa, this is exactly what happened at Nkandla.  Yet here the President’s party did not ditch him, as hers did in Alberta, in spite of very clear outcomes of an investigation done by the ombudsman known as the Public Protector.

Contentment

Consumerism is the more modern, North American version of Capitalism.  It is quite different from the older European version, in which wealth accumulated tended to be re-invested rather than spent.  In fact, Consumerism was resisted in Europe at first, in the post-war years.  It was regarded as gauche.  But it prevailed.  In this version, people are encouraged to be spenders not savers.  The medium for this is called Marketing.  How can Marketing work where there is contentment, gratitude and moderation?

The chickens have come home to roost.  According to Sampie Terreblanche, it was high levels of consumer debt and government deficits led to the global economic slow-down that he calls the Great Recession (from 2008).  He links this to both bail-outs of companies that were “too large to fail” and to an increase in corruption and corporate criminality.  Again on my recent trip to Canada, I found that scandals in politics are not just a South African phenomenon! 

Terreblanche writes: “The ideologies of neoliberal globalism and market fundamentalism that were sold so triumphantly – and arrogantly – to South Africa by the Americans in the early 1990s now stand thoroughly discredited.” (p 35, Lost in Transformation).

I am a missionary not an economist.  But on both sides of the Atlantic, I would like to see more redistribution of wealth – poor people living with more and rich people living with less.  In South Africa, the legacy of neoliberalism is inequality.  Some people have become fabulously wealthy, while most people have not felt an improvement in their lifestyle.  This imbalance needs to be corrected… there is just no question about it.

Gratitude

The gospel of neoliberalism, brought to you by Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, said that lowering taxes would stimulate economic growth.  Business would experience that “my cup runneth over” – and that would cause plenty of “trickle-down”.  This is where the nonprofit sector comes into Democracy.  It is there to carry social benefits on through what in South Africa is called CSI (Corporate Social Investment).  In this way companies express their gratitude to society by having a double bottom line – financial and social.  They fund registered NGOs to provide care to the marginalized – those who fall through the cracks of the economy - like the unemployed and the destitute.

Pope Francis pointed out that the problem with this approach is that they keep making the cup bigger!  His metaphor is instructive.  Neither do I see it as only governments that do this, slowing the trickle-down effect.  Certainly governments in the North rarely meet their pledges for development assistance, and public servants live on a gravy train where ever you go.

Sharing wealth with others is but a way of expressing thanks for what you have received.  A good example is the Giving Pledge, but it is for millionaires, not for ordinary people.  Do we give enough, as families and individuals? Or is our generosity diminished by the environment of Marketing, that drives people away from the values of contentment, gratitude and moderation?  I have a sense that in the context of Consumerism, there has been a lot of drift from those virtues, and that each of us has a role in making the cup bigger, and thus reducing the trickle-down.  This applies to prosperous South Africans living in a country where disparity is phenomenal – and to those overseas in “the West” whose lifestyles may become an issue to the Great Shepherd when he returns to separate the sheep from the goats.

Moderation

The ancient Stoics espoused this virtue.  It was not Pope Francis who thought it up.  The Lausanne covenant promotes the slogan: Live simply so that others can simply live. 

C4L has scaled down for its own reasons – not so much there is less trickle-down, but because it recognized that it was living beyond its means.  This caused it to go chasing after funding not so much to carry out its mission as to keep the wheels turning.

Some people may see this as slowdown or even failure.  We don’t.  We see it as a sign of the times.  How can we point the finger at government “fat cats” in our Advocacy programming when we ourselves are not ready to redistribute our wealth, especially for the cause that we champion – youth unemployment?

There is a difference between your income and your wealth.  One is your personal Profit and Loss Statement for a month or a year.  The other is your personal Balance Sheet.  Most people gauge their giving by their income - for example, by tithing ten percent of it.  But if you earn 100 000 per year, live on 50 000 and tithe 10 000, then you “store” 40 000 away in investments.  You accumulate wealth by doing this year after year.  What about deploying ten percent of your wealth for development, as well as ten percent of your income?  That would make the cup smaller, and increase the trickle-down.  We all need to do more, because the gap is getting wider as the trickle-down dries up.

Affluence Extremism

I coined the phrase “affluence extremism” for the title of the last C4L bulletin.  It was a counter-balance to the allegation that Pope Francis must be a Marxist for using terms like, “unfettered capitalism”, and “a new tyranny” and “the new idolatry of money”.

Since then I went to see a movie called The Wolf of Wall Street.  Without suggesting that all rich people live in that kind of depravity, he lived very extravagantly.  He extended the roof of his personal yacht to make it a helicopter pad.  To smuggle cash out of the country he literally taped it like football pads around the arms and legs of his “mules” before they headed through Customs at the airport.  He mocked his investigators because their salaries were so low they had to travel by subway to meet him. 

Reviews of the film raise questions about its excesses.  Director Scorcose contends that this was done to expose “affluence extremism” not to condone it.  But like the “conversion films” of earlier generations, most of the entertainment focuses on the story before they say the prayer of repentance, not after.  Then suddenly… they live happily ever after.

Now I am looking forward to seeing another move – Twelve Years a Slave.  Although it takes place in another era (the 1850s instead of the 1990s) it is once again about a depraved system.  A wealthy free black man gets captured in the USA and sold into slavery in another state.  His brutal master, who is evil personified, resists social change.  No doubt if he were alive today he would call Pope Francis a Marxist!

What I have recognized is that today’s economic imbalances between rich and poor, North and South, even still men and women, and in South Africa whites and blacks - are systemic like Slavery was.  Change agents are needed, like the Abolitionists and later the Suffragettes.  Calling them “Marxists” says more about yourself than about them!

Saying No to both Socialism and Capitalism?

As both Left and Right crowd around the Centre, the question is whether “welfare capitalism” and “market socialism” are the only two options?  Market socialism brought New Labour and Tony Blair to the fore, and welfare capitalism brought you George Bush and his PEPFAR – said to be the biggest gift ever given (to fight HIV/AIDS).

Radical centrism

I am getting to the age where I can start quoting myself… here is something I wrote in 1988 in my book Thinking Communally, Acting Personally (page 136):  “One new agenda - communitarianism - is gaining momentum. According to one advocate, Amitai Etzioni, “radical individualists confuse the right to be free from government intrusion with a nonexistent right to be free from the moral scrutiny of one’s peer and community...  Communitarians, in other words, differ from classical liberals (known confusingly in America as conservatives) by challenging the idea that individual self-interest is a decent basis for a society. But they differ from socialists in championing small social units: the family, neighborhoods, school, churches...”  

But “ideological communitarianism” is still centrist, because it combines leftism on economic issues with moralism or conservatism on social issues.

In the book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam observed that nearly every form of civic organization has undergone drops in membership exemplified by the fact that, while more people are bowling than in the 1950s, there are fewer bowling leagues.  This results in a decline in “social capital”, described by Putnam as “the collective value of all ‘social networks’ and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other”. According to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy.  So Communitarians seek to bolster social capital and the institutions of the third sector or Civil Society.

The Occupy Movement (Indignados)

Also called the 99 Percent Movement, this was sparked in 2011 by Occupy Wall Street in response to what I call “affluence extremism”.  Its manifesto started as follows:

“As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.”

Marxist scholar John Holloway asserted that you can “change the world without taking power”. However, many in the new generation of activists have become painfully aware that in order to achieve real change you also need to take power; that in order to really scare the 1%, you also need to occupy the state.  So some veterans of the Occupy Movement are considering a turn towards electoral politics. This change of direction reflects an increasing awareness that there is a limit to what you can do out of Civil Society.

Zapatistas

Fighter Andile Mngxitama wrote: “The indigenous people of Mexico declared a different path and very boldly told the world: “We are going to rise up to overthrow the supreme governments, to overthrow corrupt officials, to throw the rich and powerful out of this country and begin building a new Mexico with humble, simple people.”

“The Zapatistas refused to choose between two bad systems: they proclaimed dissidence to both Capitalism and Stalinism. They denounced the party and the cult of the leader, and even state power.  John Holloway's book Changing the World Without Taking Power can be read as the Zapatista manifesto.

“The Zapatistas, consistent with their new ideology against money and power, refused to participate in the mainstream political process to try to take power.  Instead, they formed their own autonomous governments, which get no assistance from the Mexico state.  This experience is not without weakness and hardships; the indigenous people have gained visibility but not economic or cultural freedom.  Twenty years later, they remain under attack and are all but quarantined in their territories.”

Economic Freedom Fighters

The front page story in today’s Saturday Star is about Wiekus Kotze, an Afrikaner who was so impressed by Nelson Mandela that 20 years ago he joined the ANC and has voted for them in 3 elections.  But he has just switched allegiances - to the party of Julius Malema.  He is now wearing a read beret.  Why?  He feels that the ANC is not closing the gap between rich and poor, largely because of all the self-enrichment going on.  He sees Malema as a visionary like Mandela who is talking sense and has the courage to challenge the status quo.

Papal Bull or Affluence Extremism?

In a recent article called Radical Pope, Traditional Values, Robert Colderisi quotes the Pope’s assurances in responses to being called a Marxist by Rush Limbaugh:

“Marxist ideology is wrong,” he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended. There is nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social doctrine of the church.”

Colderisi goes on: Francis’ economic opinions may appear naïve to those more worried about productivity trends and price-earnings ratios than the 10,000 children who die every day from hunger. But his passion and purpose are timely. Last year, the World Bank reported that the number of extreme poor (those making less than $1.25 a day) had dropped in every region of the world, including Africa, but that the number of those living on less than $2 per day — 2.5 billion people, or 43 percent of the population of the developing world — had hardly budged in 30 years. In other words, improvements in public welfare have barely kept pace with population growth, and there is still much to be done to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

I have often heard that the padres in Mozambique quoted as saying: “Do as I say, not as I do.”  So I am impressed to note that Pope Francis declined to live alone in the Vatican palace.  He opted to live in a simple apartment with 2 others.  His predecessor also did the unthinkable – he retired.  No one is saying so, but this could set a precedent as well.  Actions speak louder than words.  This is not being radical, just pragmatic.

By the way, C4L is following suit.  In our case, we are calling it “co-habitation”.  We have devised a way to stay on the same campus while scaling down.  This converts assets from one kind to another in a way that makes C4L more sustainable.  “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

It has been a tough year all round, not just for C4L.  Even Warren Buffet is poised to report that Berkshire Hathaway, his $292 billion company,  failed to increase net worth more rapidly that the S&P 500 index during the past 5 years.  This will be the first time in 44 years that he falls short of the mark since his 1965 takeover of the firm.

Was Warren Buffet called a Marxist when he endorsed the Giving Pledge?  I like Colderisi’s notion that you can still take radical actions while conserving traditional values.  Some years ago I quoted a film called The Blind Side in a previous C4L Bulletin.  A white wealthy Southern family took in a black street kid.  In one of the most poignant scenes in the film, the family invites “Big Mike” to stay with them permanently, after he has been sleeping on the couch for awhile:

Leigh Anne Touhy: Find some time to figure out another bedroom for you.
Michael Oher: This is mine?
Leigh Anne Touhy: Yes, sir.
Michael Oher: I never had one before.
Leigh Anne Touhy: What, a room to yourself?
Michael Oher: A bed.

I have to admit to choking up at this point.   Two Bible verses came to mind: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” and “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”  This is not Marxism, this is generosity.  Do you have a blind side to this?

Greatest Hits

Initially, from 1998, C4L Updates - like this one - served as progress reports.  This is part of C4L’s Advancement and they often takes the form of exhortation.

Then in 2006, these updates began to be interspersed with thematic bulletins.  Most of these were on the theme of Childermas – transforming leadership, so that children are safe.

From 2010, the two aspects of Childermas began to diverge.  Transforming leadership has become the dominant theme; in the past year its focus has narrowed – to Triumphalism vs. Constitutionalism.  As for the second aspect - C4L’s focus has shifted from “child protection” to livelihood security for youth.

Quite a collection of challenging reading materials has emerged!  We now invite you to visit our Drop Box… https://www.dropbox.com/sh/49c1ksy7iw66gs9/StBtCrJvPQ?m

Click on Public Engagement, to find these segregated by theme:

• Altruism, koinonia and philanthropy
• Childermas
• Transforming leadership
• Youth rights

Colerisi wrote: The educational role of the church in the developing world has been powerful and often controversial. “All we want is a labor force,” a colonial governor lamented to missionaries in Madagascar a century ago, “and you’re turning them into human beings.”

To blog or not to blog, that is the question?

Unambiguously Pro-poor

An article called Mission Schools Opened World to Africans, but Left an Ambiguous Legacy by Samuel G Freedman was published in the New York Times on December 27, 2013.  Here are a few clips:

The accomplishments of mission schools were both intentional and not. Their founders and faculties clearly parted ways with colonial leaders by believing in the educability of black Africans…

“I’m not making missionaries heroes,” said Richard H. Elphick, a historian at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the author of The Equality of Believers, a book about Protestant missionaries in South Africa. “Missionaries and other white Christians were alarmed by the idea that the equality of all people before God means they should be equal in public life. But the equality of believers is an idea they dropped into South Africa. And it was constantly reinforced in the schools. And that made it a dangerous idea.”

Olufemi Taiwo offered a similarly nuanced endorsement, and he did so from two perspectives: as the product of a mission education in his native Nigeria and as a Cornell University professor with expertise in African studies.

“Under colonialism, there’s a tension between the missions and the colonial authorities,” said Dr. Taiwo, author of the 2010 book How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa. “There was a missionary idea that black people could be modern. And most churches cannot come out and say some people are not human. So you might have a patronizing attitude, but if you don’t think Africans can benefit from education, why would you set up schools?”

Certainly, the model of mission education was not unique to Africa. White American missionaries played a similarly complicated role as emblems of both modernity and noblesse oblige in China before the Communist revolution. Many mission colleges in South Africa modeled their practical courses in industry and agriculture — a curriculum known as differentiated education or adapted education — on those of black schools in the United States such as Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute.

Unique South African Paradigm

Just as that Chinese Church, planted by missionaries, survived on its own and has emerged as a force in that setting, one cannot lump South Africa together with most other countries in one respect.  The Union of South Africa emerged early in the 20^th century by amalgamating some of the Boer Republics with some of the British Colonies.  Other than Ethiopia, which was never colonized, South Africa was really the first state to become recognized as independent.  (Although internally, as we know, it was ruled by a repressive minority, and thus the last to be free.)

But its missiology is unique.  In many Catholic settings – in Latin America or in Quebec – the development paradigm was to build a church in a strategic location – for a town would grow up around it.  Even Europe evolved similarly, with once deep rural monasteries becoming the hub of trade and thus of urbanization in their vicinity.

Afrikanerdom evolved similarly, with the Boer communities building churches with high steeples visible from afar.  Each and every church supported two clergy – the Pastor and the Missionary.  The Boers (Afrikans for “farmers”) in the church’s catchment area were visited regularly by the Pastor.  An aside is than many farmhouses had a “parson’s lounge” that was only used on such occasions; the rest of the time the family would socialize in either the kitchen or a “family room”.

On these visits, the Missionary would also come along.  But his ministry was to “the blacks”.  So while the Pastor met the white family, the Missionary ministered to the farm workers – evangelizing, teaching and counseling.  This is why all South African cultures have become so thoroughly saturated with the Gospel.  Even more so than in the better known paradigm of a Mission school in a deep rural part of Africa – like Fort Hare where Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Robert Sobukwe and Robert Mugabe all studied.  That more familiar paradigm provided some access to education for selected Africans who eventually became part of the elite.  Whereas the Dutch Reformed church basically had much broader coverage – on a farm to farm basis.  South Africa was thus deeply Christianized, even while deeply divided racially.

The Equality of Believers

Once more the chickens are coming home to roost - on the theme of Disparity or Inequity.  And once again, there is a dialectic… for example, Pope Francis I has spoken out about this issue globally; there is too much Disparity between rich and poor, generally.  Surely there is significance in his choice of name – honouring St Francis of Assisi. 

But in South Africa, the peculiarity is that this tends to line up along the usual fault lines of race.  Not entirely, though, as a black middle class is growing.  You often hear references to “black diamonds” or to “Buppies” (black urban professionals).  Some say that this suggests that apartheid is being replaced by a class system – black diamonds on top, then Buppies in the upper middle class, then the middle class, then the working class (represented largely by COSATU), with an underclass of the unemployed.

Once more, white Christians in South Africa are in an enclave.  Whether that will some day become a white ghetto that they cannot escape depends on whether and how they can cease to be patronizing and rather promote wealth generation projects – particularly among the unemployed.

The Indian community has been present in South Africa for much longer than whites.  It somehow manages to both remain distinct and engaged.  Under apartheid Indians were “non-whites” so they now enjoy some of the advantages of affirmative action (BEE).  But on the whole they too remain advantaged - generally wealthier and better educated.

Putting the right foot forward

My basic proposition is this: reducing economic disparity leads to social peace.  Yet so often in South Africa, the fight for social justice has eclipsed the struggle for economic freedom.  Given the history of racism not to mention sexism, one can understand why.  But still, that is like coming in the back door.

Like the above mentioned “curriculum known as differentiated education or adapted education — on those of black schools in the United States… practical courses in industry and agriculture” should be the priority.  Job creation, entrepreneurship, wealth generation, enterprise development, poverty eradication, micro-loans, business mentoring, incubation (call it what you will) are the new focus of Christian Outreach.  And “the haves” should be investing generously and unambiguously in “the have-nots”.  Or the church will become irrelevant…

Selflessness

What is it like for a person to be "selfless"?

Marya Sklodowska was born in Poland in 1867.  Like Nelson Mandela, she was born in one century, and died in the next - in a new and different era.  That change in their respective settings and centuries could be attributed largely to the influence each of them exerted in their sphere

Like Mandela, Marya came from a disadvantaged background.  She too was a single orphan, she lost her mother as a child, whereas Mandela lost his father.  But compared to Mandela - who enjoyed the limelight - Marya cherished privacy.  Later in life, when she won her second Nobel prize, her husband stated that the media attention that this attracted was the worst thing that had ever happened to them!

Mandela’s life took a turn when he moved to the big city of Johannesburg.  In Marya’s case, the sea change came when she got to Paris.  Both of them spent their first few years completing their studies and struggling to get established in their respective professions – he as a lawyer and she as a scientist.  In their cities, they each got married – Nelson to Evelyn and Marya to Pierre Curie.  So she became better known by her francophone name Marie and her married name Curie.  She has come to be known, in fact, as Madame Curie.  Yet I have never known of a person who was more selfless:

• After finishing high school she put her own education on hold and worked to put her older sister through college.  After graduating from medical school, her sister reciprocated

• She practiced an austerity that verged on self-denial.  She rented small rooms that were so sparsely furnished that she didn’t even hang pictures on the wall!

• With a wedding gift she received, she bought two bicycles that she and her groom used for the honeymoon – pedaling through the countryside of France

• She worked in abysmal conditions, far beyond the limits of normal working hours - all for the sake of her passion for scientific research

• She declined to patent any of her discoveries or inventions, leaving them instead to posterity for the advancement of science

• She shared much of her prize money with others in need, in part to establish two radium research institutes – in Paris and Warsaw

• She worked behind the front lines of battle in World War I training 150 X-ray technicians to use this new diagnostic tool that she had developed to locate bullets and shrapnel for removal from wounded soldiers

• She exposed herself to radioactivity levels that shortened her life.  She died of leukemia induced by overexposure, before her time

She was the first women ever to be awarded a PhD in France.  And the first woman ever to win a Nobel prize.  And the first person ever to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences – Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911).

In this respect, the parallel to Nelson Mandela refers.  At Marie Curie’s time in France, it was unthinkable for a woman to even be nominated for a Nobel laureate.  In fact, she wasn’t – her husband and another scientist (Henri Becquerel) were.  But in more liberal Sweden, the Nobel committee awarded her the prize nevertheless, realizing that she was being discriminated against.  Who could have dreamed that after 3 decades of incarceration, Mandela would become President?  Both scenarios were breathtaking – and rooted in selflessness.  Justice and “the beauty of science” were paramount to them.

One irony is that Alfred Nobel himself had made his personal fortune from discovering and patenting dynamite.  Upon his death, he bequeathed that fortune to fund the Nobel prizes.  Either one of Marie Curie’s discoveries could have been patented far beyond the value of dynamite – Xray and radioactivity.  (It was she, in fact, who coined that word “radioactivity” to describe what she had discovered.)  Yet she declined to register patents for the sake of “pure science” for its own sake.  Excellence is its own reward.

“True grit” is part of selflessness as well.  Mandela toughed it out in prison for 27 years for the cause he championed.  He did hard labour in the lime quarry on Robben Island.  Like Marie Curie, his own health was affected by his exposure – in his case, to the fine dust, that damaged his tear ducts.

As for Marie, it is almost inconceivable just how much physical work she did!  Processing uranium ore (pitchblende) to refine polonium and later radium is painstaking, time-consuming hard labour.  In this, she was her own prisoner.  The final product turned out to be one-millionth the volume that you start with (compared to one litre of maple syrup which is boiled down from 30 litres of tree sap!)  Imagine – one million to one… processed by one person working by herself for about 4 years.  It was back breaking work.  Marie’s resolve is epitomized in this quote… she said: “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” 

She was also very loyal – for example, naming Polonium after her beloved homeland. 

Albert Einstein said: “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.”  In this, her selflessness is also similar to Mandela’s – whose movement became horribly corrupt after his voluntary retirement.

Which makes me wonder…

Have we lost an appreciation for virtues like selflessness, zealous resolve, prudence, and tenacious loyalty?

Have these been corrupted into attitudes like self-preservation, cynicism, a preoccupation with credentials and track records, and fashion crazes?

At the root of Corruption are bad attitudes.  Let us adopt role-models that serve as mirrors.

Prayer Letter: Straight Talk

I have been encouraged by the "apostolic exhortation" recently sent out by Pope Francis I.  Without getting into its content, I just sense that he is speaking out about economic issues (global and personal) more when church-goers are more accustomed to hearing a "social gospel".  An economic gospel?!  Well it's about time.  Not enough can be said about "exclusion and inequality" - the two themes that he addresses.  Here are two samplers, in case you haven't read it:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.

That enough!  I only want to say "Amen!" to a Pope talking about such issues.  It is not inappropriate.

By doing so, he helps me to ask you to bear with my own diatribes about rampant fraud, corruption and Triumphalism.  Sometimes you may wonder, am I a missionary or a journalist?  Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.

The most recent example is at the heart of the Nkandla-gate scandal here in South Africa.  President Zuma hired an architect to work on the security upgrading to his homestead, which was initially budgeted at R30 million.  Then later he appointed the same person to oversee the whole upgrading, and there were cost overruns that have already reached R210 million, and rising.  Well that is Triumphalism - runaway exhuberance to spend money inebriated by power without any restraints because you have been "turned loose" by the Big Boss to get a job done.  Without impunity.  Eish.

My prayer for you is to remember the Lausanne slogan: Live simply so that others may simply live.

This involves self-sacrifice.  In South Africa, the virtue of self-sacrifice has been replaced with Triumphalism.  Some call it greed.  When Pope Francis uses phrases like "a new tyranny" and "the idolatry of money", I can only thank him for not mincing his words. 

Pray for me, that I will not lose my audience by speaking out, by saying what a lot of people really don't want to hear.

Inequality is getting worse, not better.  In today's news, the 10 richest South Africans got richer over the past year.  But the gap is widening and resentment is rising.  Economist Emmanuel Saez found that the incomes of the top 1% in the USA grew by 31.4% in the three years after the financial crisis, while the majority of people struggled with a disappointing economy. The other 99% of the population grew their incomes 0.4% during the same period. Globally, the gap between rich and poor is not closing.  This week 500,000 youth are finishing high school in South Africa.  But jobs are hard to find.

Exclusion is the name of the game for Triumphalists.  Even when their exhuberance is for a noble cause, even social service delivery, the end does not justify the means.  "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."  In a constitutional democracy, you should be playing by the rules.  Pray that the minorities in South Africa will still be heard, in a context where affirmative action favours the majority.

Sorry if this became more of an exhortation than a prayer letter.  But I am in good company!  God bless Francis I.

Deep Reflections on Recovery

The unemployment figures in South Africa are grim.  The economic indicators suggest that the economy is slowing down – the past quarter had the slowest growth rate in 4 year (0.7%).

C4L itself has been running on empty for 6 months, imposing austerity measures and looking for ways to scale down.  This is typical of many nonprofits.

Eighty years ago, the world was in the grip of the Great Depression.  1933 was the deepest dip in a decade of hardship and deprivation for many.  A new president was inaugurated that year.  He spoke the following phrases in his Inaugural Address, which point the way for another constitutional Democracy, on another continent, in another century:

• We face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things

• Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence

• Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men

• They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision

• The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.  These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men

• Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit

• We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike

Oh, wow!  There has not been a dramatic stock market crash, no single moment of panic causing paranoia in our case.  But we do share the problem of unscrupulous profiteers and of a system that does not even out disparities fast enough.

Two great concerns are highlighted:

1. FDR summoned a moral fibre in these phrases that was embedded in his people, although it had been submerged below that “evanescent” post-war generation of tinsel-town self-gratification.

He made work the core determinant of success, not profiteering with other people’s money.

The old and precious moral values FDR mentions are based on the Golden Rule of doing to others what you would like them to do to you.  Or even better – sacrificially.

Can top leadership in South Africa credibly make such a call as this?  Yes there were moral leaders in the Struggle like Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo.  But are there now?  A recent article in the Times (“State gravy train unstoppable for now”) concludes that there are still not enough checks and balances in place.  Just as was the case in the Roaring Twenties, in the run-up to the stock market crash.

The out-going Auditor-General says that R28.7 billion was wasted by the State in the last fiscal year.  “It is a matter of the legislation being too loose” he says, “The offender has got the upper hand over government because the legislation is not watertight enough to hold people accountable.”

2. FDR called on national unity - that is on non-partisanship.

Whereas in South Africa there seems to be political fragmentation.  Mamphela Ramphele has started a political party espousing the values of the Black Consciousness Movement.  Malema has started a leftist party espousing more government intervention in the economy.  And NUMSA is mulling over departing from COSATU and the ruling alliance to form another party – probably led by Vavi.

Can anyone at this stage muster national unity at the depth that will be required to overcome “our common difficulties”?

We would like to see a “Non-regression Pact” signed by all opposition parties.  Yes they will each chip away at the ruling party’s huge majority.  But if the congress should ever slip below the 50% mark, it will still hold the biggest vote.  What will happen if it then selects but one party - like Malema’s - to form a coalition with?  In the absence of a united opposition, we need these smaller parties to assure voters that they will coalesce with one another in that eventuality.  Not just become a power broker that can charge the ANC whatever it demands for its rubber-stamp.

In another context, Archbishop Tutu and 80 other prominent South Africans recently signed a declaration warning of an “assault on democracy”.  But two relevant excerpts follow:

“Constructive engagement on the best way forward is possible and desirable, without resort to violence, and without fomenting hate or disrespect.” 
“The lack of serious leadership and authority in disciplining this form of anti-democratic behaviour carries serious risks and encourages a spirit of hate which, once unleashed, may take many years to overcome with drastic consequences for our economy.”
Moral leadership is at the core.  Disabled FDR embodied the fighting spirit of recovery.  Who can South Africa look to as its economy falters, bleeding from corruption and graft?