The heart is the core of our being from which our desires, thoughts and judgments come. A hardened heart will cause a person to indulge in evil deeds.
To restrict our capacity for evil, we have to recognise it so that we can recognise the red flags and make wiser choices. It is also important that we show others empathy and not be overly judgmental.
Focusing too much on the evil of others will blind us from our own poor choices. Furthermore, we need to have people in our lives who can ground us and keep us on the straight and narrow, someone who can say no.
Equally important is that we need to correct mistakes quickly. It is important to recognise our bad choices and make them right as soon as possible. By shining a light on our poor choices, we can nip them in the bud. It is clear that evil is undesirable as it violates almost the entire spectrum of the 10 commandments.
The intersection between evil and poverty is captured in the words of Irish playwright and critic, George Bernard Shaw, who argued, “the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty”.
Poverty destroys lives, nullifies freedoms, stifles happiness and destroys creativity. Had the two women not faced poverty, their lives could have been spared and they certainly would not have died under such undignified circumstances.
Writing a foreword to the book From Poverty to Power, by Duncan Green, Francis Wilson, emeritus Professor of Economics at UCT, notes, “in order to tackle poverty effectively there has to be a critical combination of a well-organised state with an energetic and demanding civil society”.
Active citizenship and capable and effective states are therefore desirable in fighting and triumphing over the dehumanising scourge of poverty.
Religion has a crucial role in championing active citizenship by shaping attitudes and beliefs.
Among these beliefs, which representatives who attended a World Faiths and Development Conference in 1998 agreed on, are the beliefs that everyone is of equal worth, and the whole world belongs to God.
Humans have no right to act in a harmful way towards other creatures. Essentially, such beliefs are captured by the Golden Rule, which permeates all religions. Within the Christian faith, the rule is to “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
The Golden Rule can serve as a blueprint to eradicate the evil we witness.
NATHANIEL LEE | Poverty often receives no sympathy when it matters most
Case of two Limpopo women shows evil deeds track the poor
Image: NPA
What drives people to sometimes commit unspeakable atrocities on fellow human beings?
This question has preoccupied my mind since the latest incident where a farmer shot and killed two women who had allegedly trespassed on his farm in search of food meant for pigs. With the assistance of his two helpers, he then threw the bodies of the two women into a pigsty for his pigs to feed on.
Zacharia Olivier, Adrian de Wet and Zimbabwean William Musora stand accused of murdering Mariah Makgatho and Lucia Ndlovu and defeating the ends of justice by throwing their bodies into a pigsty.
They are also accused of attempted murder in the shooting of Ndlovu’s husband Mabutho Ncube, who was in the company of the two women, and who managed to escape after being shot. Such depravity is beyond comprehension, and it is hard even to imagine that two lives were lost for expired pig food.
Lamenting the loss of his mother, Ranti Makgatho blamed poverty for his mother’s death, stating that, “Her love, smile, advice and warmth are gone. We are on our own because of poverty.”
This incident is eerily reminiscent of the equally macabre incident of Mark Scott Crossley who in 2004 assaulted Nelson Chisale and then threw him into a lion’s enclosure to be savaged by lions. Crossley was handed a life sentence, which was set aside in 2007 and replaced with a five-year prison sentence.
The reason was that the state had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Chisale was still alive when thrown into the enclosure. After he was paroled in 2008, Crossley returned to his farm.
He has failed to stay out of trouble as he was in 2023 sentenced to eight years in prison for attempted murder and malicious damage to property following an incident in 2016 when he ran over a farmworker, Silence Mabunda, with his vehicle. It can easily be surmised that Crossley is one nasty piece of work, to put it lightly.
On Olivier, it is reported that the farmer knew that people were feeding themselves from the food on the farm. As to what triggered him that day to shoot the poor people, only hell knows. The fact that he allowed the practice to continue in the first place, shows his heartlessness.
Limpopo trio accused of killing women, throwing bodies into pigsty remain in custody for now
The heart is the core of our being from which our desires, thoughts and judgments come. A hardened heart will cause a person to indulge in evil deeds.
To restrict our capacity for evil, we have to recognise it so that we can recognise the red flags and make wiser choices. It is also important that we show others empathy and not be overly judgmental.
Focusing too much on the evil of others will blind us from our own poor choices. Furthermore, we need to have people in our lives who can ground us and keep us on the straight and narrow, someone who can say no.
Equally important is that we need to correct mistakes quickly. It is important to recognise our bad choices and make them right as soon as possible. By shining a light on our poor choices, we can nip them in the bud. It is clear that evil is undesirable as it violates almost the entire spectrum of the 10 commandments.
The intersection between evil and poverty is captured in the words of Irish playwright and critic, George Bernard Shaw, who argued, “the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty”.
Poverty destroys lives, nullifies freedoms, stifles happiness and destroys creativity. Had the two women not faced poverty, their lives could have been spared and they certainly would not have died under such undignified circumstances.
Writing a foreword to the book From Poverty to Power, by Duncan Green, Francis Wilson, emeritus Professor of Economics at UCT, notes, “in order to tackle poverty effectively there has to be a critical combination of a well-organised state with an energetic and demanding civil society”.
Active citizenship and capable and effective states are therefore desirable in fighting and triumphing over the dehumanising scourge of poverty.
Religion has a crucial role in championing active citizenship by shaping attitudes and beliefs.
Among these beliefs, which representatives who attended a World Faiths and Development Conference in 1998 agreed on, are the beliefs that everyone is of equal worth, and the whole world belongs to God.
Humans have no right to act in a harmful way towards other creatures. Essentially, such beliefs are captured by the Golden Rule, which permeates all religions. Within the Christian faith, the rule is to “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).
The Golden Rule can serve as a blueprint to eradicate the evil we witness.
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