Let them eat cake

Diepsloot and Dainfern, Alexandra and Sandton, Silver Lakes and Mshenguville, and Thatchfield and Olievenhoutbosch - these are the dichotomies of our country.

People talk about the "huge gap" between the "haves" and the "have-nots". What gap? There is no gap. Your neighbour's wealth is in your face, and your poverty is in your neighbour's face.

The divide between those who have the money to lead a comfortable life and those who do not is minuscule. In some areas, it is a road that divides the two groups of people, in others it is a 3m wall and an electric fence. In other areas, only a few metres of nothingness segregate a squatter camp from a bonded new development for low-income earners.

For those of us who traverse these worlds regularly, it is impossible to be relaxed and comfortable. And there are many of us: from the live-in domestic worker exposed to a life of opulence while she raises the private-schooled, armoured-BMW-transported children of our ministers while her own children are cared for by an elderly aunt, to the "madams", black and white, who educate their helpers' children, with the hope that the cycle of poverty might be broken in that family. There are the young black professionals who have moved to the suburbs and still support their extended families in the township - but, no matter what they do, there is no way they can change the fate of some of their family members.

I'm talking about you, who donates to charities, volunteers time to give extra lessons in the townships and has adopted a child, a family or a school.

I'm talking about the many of us who are disgusted at the dissonance of widespread poverty and the spending of some of our politicians.

Reports about the waste of money by our government, which make headlines day in and day out, make me sick. A couple of hundred of thousand here for a chartered plane, R10-million there for house renovations, R100-million there, billions somewhere else.

You would think the uneasiness you and I feel when we see children walking long distances to school in the rain, only to sit at wobbly desks and under leaky roofs, would lead to modest spending by our ministers on houses and cars.

Those of us who have one leg in Sandton and the other in Soweto, those of us who have a relative in Alex and another in a squatter camp named after a struggle hero, those of us who know someone who has been waiting for an RDP house for 12 years, we cannot help but be nauseated when more than R11-million is spent on renovations to the Gauteng premier's house, a house that cost the taxpayer R11.5- million when it was bought in 2004.

Those of us who have friends and neighbours who die of diseases that have long stopped killing anyone in other countries that have high-speed trains believe it is an injustice that there is money to waste but not enough to provide antiretrovirals and other drugs to the sick.

In a country in which children are taught under trees, is it not perverted for ministers to spend money on private planes because they refuse to have their luggage checked at a foreign airport?

In a country in which people relieve themselves in open toilets, how can the government spend millions building lodges, and cultural and youth centres that stand empty?

It is an uneasy life, for me and you. It is impossible to be comfortable when surrounded by such poverty. How do our public officials do it?