THE capitalist system is immoral and inhuman. This is the very system that condones the classification of human beings in accordance with the amount of material possessions that each individual possesses and accords human respect and significance as such. This manner of social stratification stinks to high heaven. This is feudalist barbarism reincarnated.
We have company chief executive officers and senior government technocrats earning huge salaries and packages while workers on the shop floor are given appallingly meagre salaries reminiscent of slave salaries.
How do we explain the salaries offered to doctors, the police and other employees who perform what is known as essential services?
On the other side of the equilibrium, company chief executive officers and their counterparts in government are living in luxury and opulence of the highest degree mainly because they earn millions at the expense of the poor taxpayer who remains marginalised.
The majority of poor working class South Africans are blacklisted by credit bureaus simply because they are unable to pay their debts with these poor salaries offered by government and the private sector.
THE STRUGGLE
As a result, poor families struggle to survive. They struggle to take their children to better schools to get better education. They also struggle to take these children to universities because higher education has become so expensive.
Some of these poor kids are forced to live like scavengers in the inner cities of South Africa after losing hope of furthering their studies. Others drop out early as a result of rife dysfunctional family livelihoods.
Most of them end up in jail because they join the criminal underworld as an escape route from the life of poverty. The number of working class people in our prisons attests to this assertion. People are being criminalised for being poor.
The capitalist system instils in society values of greed, egocentrism, individualism, hateful competitive professional jealousy, criminal self-enrichment, thuggery and all other forms of cannibalism inherent in present-day South Africa.
Even during the hard-hitting recession, chief executives and government fat cats will not take salary cuts.
Instead, they tell the workers to expect massive retrenchments as a way of massaging the crisis. We are still to hear them accepting salary cuts and retrenchments as a way of massaging a crisis.
CRUMBS
Chief executives and government aristocrats continue to be criminal beneficiaries of financial obesity irrespective of the performance of the economy. They continue to give themselves hefty bonuses while workers are forced to share the crumbs.
This socio-economic state of affairs is the root cause of all the economic problems facing humanity today. It must be overhauled and replaced with a more humane, people-centred and caring system.
lBenzi ka Soko is national spokesperson for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union.
Capitalism has failed the people
THE capitalist system is immoral and inhuman. This is the very system that condones the classification of human beings in accordance with the amount of material possessions that each individual possesses and accords human respect and significance as such. This manner of social stratification stinks to high heaven. This is feudalist barbarism reincarnated.
We have company chief executive officers and senior government technocrats earning huge salaries and packages while workers on the shop floor are given appallingly meagre salaries reminiscent of slave salaries.
How do we explain the salaries offered to doctors, the police and other employees who perform what is known as essential services?
On the other side of the equilibrium, company chief executive officers and their counterparts in government are living in luxury and opulence of the highest degree mainly because they earn millions at the expense of the poor taxpayer who remains marginalised.
The majority of poor working class South Africans are blacklisted by credit bureaus simply because they are unable to pay their debts with these poor salaries offered by government and the private sector.
THE STRUGGLE
As a result, poor families struggle to survive. They struggle to take their children to better schools to get better education. They also struggle to take these children to universities because higher education has become so expensive.
Some of these poor kids are forced to live like scavengers in the inner cities of South Africa after losing hope of furthering their studies. Others drop out early as a result of rife dysfunctional family livelihoods.
Most of them end up in jail because they join the criminal underworld as an escape route from the life of poverty. The number of working class people in our prisons attests to this assertion. People are being criminalised for being poor.
The capitalist system instils in society values of greed, egocentrism, individualism, hateful competitive professional jealousy, criminal self-enrichment, thuggery and all other forms of cannibalism inherent in present-day South Africa.
Even during the hard-hitting recession, chief executives and government fat cats will not take salary cuts.
Instead, they tell the workers to expect massive retrenchments as a way of massaging the crisis. We are still to hear them accepting salary cuts and retrenchments as a way of massaging a crisis.
CRUMBS
Chief executives and government aristocrats continue to be criminal beneficiaries of financial obesity irrespective of the performance of the economy. They continue to give themselves hefty bonuses while workers are forced to share the crumbs.
This socio-economic state of affairs is the root cause of all the economic problems facing humanity today. It must be overhauled and replaced with a more humane, people-centred and caring system.
lBenzi ka Soko is national spokesperson for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union.
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