How is this possible in a country like South Africa?
THE newspaper headline, "Hunger killed four children" is one you would have expected to accompany a story coming from a country ravaged by war.
It could be Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan or Iraq.
Not that it would be justifiable in these countries. But it would be understandable, given the hardships accompanying wars.
It is a headline that could easily be associated with mismanaged and damaged economies, known for their ability to feed only their excellencies, but not their children.
These could be the likes of Zimbabwe and Swaziland, where large sums are budgeted for the birthday bashes of their Big Men, while the little people fend for themselves.
Even in such countries these stories are not acceptable. But citizens in these countries have allowed the Big Men to (mis)manage matters of state as if these were their private estates.
Alas, the story, published in Sowetan last week, has its origins in South Africa - the biggest economy on the African continent.
Our country is not war-ravaged. It is a democracy where we are allowed to choose our leaders - however incompetent in many instances. (I must correct this: we choose leaders via the "middlemen" called political parties who then choose premiers and a president on our behalf. It is almost as if we would not know who to pick if we had a choice).
Of course, some of these leaders are preoccupied with diverting state money to kin and comrades in the same manner that Big Men do in many countries where public office is a vehicle for the accumulation of private wealth and the distribution of patronage.
But we are told that we have a functioning political system. So, how do our children die of hunger in a country with a functioning political system, boasting the largest economy in Africa?
Let's revisit the unforgivable death of the innocent children.
Last month the pregnant and unemployed 27-year-old Elizabeth Mmupele of Verdwaal in North West was so hungry she left her two children and two younger siblings in the family's RDP house to go and search for food.
Elizabeth went to look for her mother, Martha, who had gone to a piece-job for the day.
Elizabeth said she was hoping to find something for herself and the kids back home.
They had had no meal the previous day.
With Elizabeth having gone for a while the four children got worried. Olebogeng, 6, Oarabetswe, 2, Mmapule, 7 and their elder sister Sebengu, 9, began their long walk in search of their mother.
All four children were reported missing on October 24.
Thirsty and hungry, they apparently got lost on the way and died. Postmortem results showed hunger and dehydration had caused their death after they had walked for more than 10km.
Elizabeth faces charges of child negligence. No one in the family has a permanent job. Nor do they have identity documents, meaning the children could not access child support grants.
Back to the question: how could this tragedy have happened in the biggest economy in Africa?
Three factors, which generally characterise our society, appear to have ganged up to kill the four children.
Firstly, it is the economic system that produces centres of opulence and centres of poverty almost simultaneously. The North West is known for its resource endowment. It boasts some of the largest platinum deposits in the world. It is theoretically rich. But it is practically poor.
It also boasts huge farms that produce good harvests. Yet, the mining and agricultural activities were not enough to rescue the four children from deadly hunger.
I know that on reading such analysis, alleged communists would feel vindicated as they believe that a capitalist system is inherently incapable of allocating resources efficiently. And I know Julius Malema will also feel vindicated and argue that he wants the mines nationalised precisely because the profits they earn did not benefit South Africans like Elizabeth and the four children.
Though Malema and the alleged communists hate each other for reasons that have to do with political expediency, they actually have a similar solution to our economic problems.
They want the state, a far bigger state, to be given more power to run society as a whole.
Now, this brings me to the second factor. It is that we have an incompetent state. How the four children were born, crawled and learned how to walk - until they walked to death - without apparently having some form of identification that would have enabled them to access a social grant, is the result of an incompetent state that has failed in its job.
Part of the incompetence is the government's propensity for launching projects that never get implemented by the government.
A few years ago then president Thabo Mbeki launched an anti-poverty strategy. As part of the strategy the government was supposed to develop a database of all households that suffered from extreme poverty so it could intervene directly.
A "war room", managed by the deputy president, was established to drive the plan.
With extreme poverty and hunger having produced the body bags of four defenceless children in Verdwaal, we have to ask: has the war on extreme poverty and hunger been lost? Or has it been abandoned?
There are also question marks about why we have people like Elizabeth almost everywhere in this country. They seem to have very little, if any, education. They deliver and bring up children in unbearable circumstances, thereby worsening their condition.
In the process they help recycle the poverty, making it difficult for their children to escape it. Surely, the government's social, education and health policies are not geared to help someone like Elizabeth.
The third factor is the destruction of neighbourliness and a sense of community. The RDP homes built by the government do not seem to be contributing to a sense of community.
Had there been a modicum of neighbourliness in the area the neighbours would obviously have known that the Mmupeles had problems. They would have known that, as we say in SiSwati, Likati lilala etiko (when the cat sleeps in the fireplace, you know the people are so poor they have nothing to cook).
They would have helped.
Unless they, too, were powerless to help. Unless they too were not dissimilar to the war-beaten Congolese and Sudanese.
- Mkhabela is editor of Sowetan
Unforgivable death of innocent children
How is this possible in a country like South Africa?
THE newspaper headline, "Hunger killed four children" is one you would have expected to accompany a story coming from a country ravaged by war.
It could be Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan or Iraq.
Not that it would be justifiable in these countries. But it would be understandable, given the hardships accompanying wars.
It is a headline that could easily be associated with mismanaged and damaged economies, known for their ability to feed only their excellencies, but not their children.
These could be the likes of Zimbabwe and Swaziland, where large sums are budgeted for the birthday bashes of their Big Men, while the little people fend for themselves.
Even in such countries these stories are not acceptable. But citizens in these countries have allowed the Big Men to (mis)manage matters of state as if these were their private estates.
Alas, the story, published in Sowetan last week, has its origins in South Africa - the biggest economy on the African continent.
Our country is not war-ravaged. It is a democracy where we are allowed to choose our leaders - however incompetent in many instances. (I must correct this: we choose leaders via the "middlemen" called political parties who then choose premiers and a president on our behalf. It is almost as if we would not know who to pick if we had a choice).
Of course, some of these leaders are preoccupied with diverting state money to kin and comrades in the same manner that Big Men do in many countries where public office is a vehicle for the accumulation of private wealth and the distribution of patronage.
But we are told that we have a functioning political system. So, how do our children die of hunger in a country with a functioning political system, boasting the largest economy in Africa?
Let's revisit the unforgivable death of the innocent children.
Last month the pregnant and unemployed 27-year-old Elizabeth Mmupele of Verdwaal in North West was so hungry she left her two children and two younger siblings in the family's RDP house to go and search for food.
Elizabeth went to look for her mother, Martha, who had gone to a piece-job for the day.
Elizabeth said she was hoping to find something for herself and the kids back home.
They had had no meal the previous day.
With Elizabeth having gone for a while the four children got worried. Olebogeng, 6, Oarabetswe, 2, Mmapule, 7 and their elder sister Sebengu, 9, began their long walk in search of their mother.
All four children were reported missing on October 24.
Thirsty and hungry, they apparently got lost on the way and died. Postmortem results showed hunger and dehydration had caused their death after they had walked for more than 10km.
Elizabeth faces charges of child negligence. No one in the family has a permanent job. Nor do they have identity documents, meaning the children could not access child support grants.
Back to the question: how could this tragedy have happened in the biggest economy in Africa?
Three factors, which generally characterise our society, appear to have ganged up to kill the four children.
Firstly, it is the economic system that produces centres of opulence and centres of poverty almost simultaneously. The North West is known for its resource endowment. It boasts some of the largest platinum deposits in the world. It is theoretically rich. But it is practically poor.
It also boasts huge farms that produce good harvests. Yet, the mining and agricultural activities were not enough to rescue the four children from deadly hunger.
I know that on reading such analysis, alleged communists would feel vindicated as they believe that a capitalist system is inherently incapable of allocating resources efficiently. And I know Julius Malema will also feel vindicated and argue that he wants the mines nationalised precisely because the profits they earn did not benefit South Africans like Elizabeth and the four children.
Though Malema and the alleged communists hate each other for reasons that have to do with political expediency, they actually have a similar solution to our economic problems.
They want the state, a far bigger state, to be given more power to run society as a whole.
Now, this brings me to the second factor. It is that we have an incompetent state. How the four children were born, crawled and learned how to walk - until they walked to death - without apparently having some form of identification that would have enabled them to access a social grant, is the result of an incompetent state that has failed in its job.
Part of the incompetence is the government's propensity for launching projects that never get implemented by the government.
A few years ago then president Thabo Mbeki launched an anti-poverty strategy. As part of the strategy the government was supposed to develop a database of all households that suffered from extreme poverty so it could intervene directly.
A "war room", managed by the deputy president, was established to drive the plan.
With extreme poverty and hunger having produced the body bags of four defenceless children in Verdwaal, we have to ask: has the war on extreme poverty and hunger been lost? Or has it been abandoned?
There are also question marks about why we have people like Elizabeth almost everywhere in this country. They seem to have very little, if any, education. They deliver and bring up children in unbearable circumstances, thereby worsening their condition.
In the process they help recycle the poverty, making it difficult for their children to escape it. Surely, the government's social, education and health policies are not geared to help someone like Elizabeth.
The third factor is the destruction of neighbourliness and a sense of community. The RDP homes built by the government do not seem to be contributing to a sense of community.
Had there been a modicum of neighbourliness in the area the neighbours would obviously have known that the Mmupeles had problems. They would have known that, as we say in SiSwati, Likati lilala etiko (when the cat sleeps in the fireplace, you know the people are so poor they have nothing to cook).
They would have helped.
Unless they, too, were powerless to help. Unless they too were not dissimilar to the war-beaten Congolese and Sudanese.
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