Price Tag

If you need something now, it doesn't matter if you know a place where you can get it cheap. It matters where you can get it now. It matters if you can get it. As a Soutie (someone with one foot in England and one foot in South Africa), one of the harder things to wrap my head and heart around is Relative Poverty. In terms of Global Poverty Criteria, virtually no one in the UK lives on less than £4 a day. That is about R72 a day. 80% of South Africans live on less than R3800 a month. That is roughly R125 a day. Those numbers aren't that helpful, because they only talk about the ins. They don't talk about the outs. About 20% of the people in the UK live in poverty with measures looking at ability to eat, heat a home, and have a roof over your head. At the quality of schooling. At the life opportunities.

Money is smoke and mirrors. You can earn a lot more in London than you can anywhere in South Africa. If you want to feel poor though... go to London. Even if you think you are reasonably well off. In Langa, an area of Cape Town where 72% of families of three live on less than R3,200, there is still an awesome buzz. There is a cricket field and hockey pitch that has generated National Sports stars. Not to downplay the poverty challenges. The resilience and energy in these places despite permanent Great Depression Level unemployment is in equal parts heart-wrenching and inspiring.

Communities have price tags. Friendships have price tags. It is why as things stretch, it becomes harder and harder to make friends across income lines. It is genuinely not unusual to spend £50 a head in the UK on a dinner with friends. To maintain friendships, it can be hard/impossible to be 'one of the crowd' if you don't. That is R900. For one meal. One meal. One. Except it isn't. I couldn't buy a meal for Rands in the UK. 

The problem is... I could send that money to South Africa. In a Global world where Capital, Goods, and Services can flow freely... it is the flow of people that is more tricky. People are ultra-local. We aren't ones and zeros that can be swapped between places in a line of banking code.

This is more an observation than an answer. I find it difficult living on two sides of a salty pond. Yet on both sides of the pond, that same inequality is on display. South Africa's is more in your face. As a country gets richer, they get more adept at hiding their difficulties. The difficulties don't disappear. Get "richer" doesn't matter much if part of the reward is an increased price tag. That is the problem with goals being based on numbers.

We need to get better at looking through the noise. At the dance between what comes in, and what goes out. 

Strand/Somerset-West and Nomzamo/Lwandle
Photo: Johnny Miller