A reflection of reality?

Long ago, I became very tired of reality shows on TV. But I’ve found myself watching a few episodes of the latest series of Survivor .

If you don’t know Survivor, it works like this: a group of people are dumped in the middle of nowhere, with almost nothing, and they have to try to survive while scheming and plotting against one another. The contestants are divided into two teams, or ‘tribes’, and they compete against one another in a series of challenges. The losing tribe each week has to vote one of their number off. When there are only a few people left they start competing as individuals, until the last person left wins a million US dollars.

I normally find these types of show very irritating. First of all, they’re fake. The group of people are not all alone on a desert island or in the jungle — there’s a whole team of camera people and producers and even medics there, though the viewer just doesn’t see them. I think they’re also a cop-out. Why bother trying to create an interesting drama, a clever and thought-provoking script, and paying top actors, when you can just get a few people to eat live bugs and gain a huge audience? It’s TV scraping the bottom of the barrel.

A few series ago it got even worse when the producers tried to spice things up by dividing up the tribes racially — whites in one, and blacks in the other. They came under a lot of criticism for that, understandably.

But I’ve found this latest series of Survivor rather intriguing. This time round, they’re conducting another social experiment. One tribe has been given everything they need — furniture, food, shelter and fire. The other has nothing. And guess what — the tribe with all the advantages has been winning all of the challenges, week after week. And each time they win, they get more food, and more luxuries. The ‘have-nots’ go home each time with nothing.

It’s a fascinating parallel of life in the real world. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And it’s all too clear why. The ‘have-not’ tribe is hungry and weak. They don’t even win the challenges that require more brain than brawn — after all, how can you think clearly when you’re starving? Because they keep losing, they get depressed, lose their confidence, and fight amongst themselves. It’s a vicious circle.

In the real world, all too often, the poor (countries and people) get blamed for their predicament. They’re told they’re lazy, inherently inferior, and so on and so forth. What’s interesting about the Survivor set-up is to see how arbitrary it all is. Both tribes have a mix of people from different ethnic and educational backgrounds, and with a good gender balance. Yet because of a random selection according to the rules of this particular game, one group was set up for success, and the other for failure.

In its own rather silly way, Survivor reinforces the findings of Jared Diamond, who in his book Guns Germs and Steel, set out to investigate why some societies in history managed to advance technologically and materially, so much more than others. His conclusion was that it has nothing to do with inherent biological differences but can be traced back to the natural resources available in different parts of the world. Societies which had access to plants and animals suitable for domestication (and good climates and fewer natural diseases), tended to advance much more quickly.

Survivor turned up another fascinating insight into human nature last week, when the winning tribe were faced with a predicament. As usual they won the challenge, but were given a choice. They could either keep their comfort (their camp with all its luxuries), or could choose to retain immunity and not have to vote off one of their members. But they couldn’t have both.

They chose to keep their comfort, and sacrifice a team member. The harmony and unity they seemed to possess through their successive wins just crumbled at this first hurdle. So much for team spirit. Material comfort won over solidarity. I wonder if the remaining members had any trouble sleeping in their comfortable beds, after that. Sadly, I don’t think so.

First posted on Citizen Journalism in Africa on August 30th.

Wild cat poo

Last week I wrote about a report that the number of dollar millionaires in Africa has grown quite rapidly — and the number of those worth over 30 million US dollars has grown even faster.

I wondered how much money one person needs — when you have 10 or 20 or 25 million US dollars, why would you need more? How many meals can you eat, or beds can you sleep in, however luxurious?

Well, this week I found the answer to that question. It came in the form of an article about the world’s most expensive cup of coffee.

You thought you had it bad, with the price of rice and petrol rising in leaps and bounds. Spare a thought for the super-rich, who of course have to have only the best, in keeping with their social status. The best doesn’t come cheap.

The world’s most expensive cup of coffee costs 50 British pounds, for a single espresso. Yes, that is about 97 US dollars, 750 SA rands, just under 340 000 Zambian kwacha,  and I don’t know how many Tanzanian shillings for a teensy weensy itsy bitsy cup of coffee — about two mouthfuls.

This coffee is so expensive because it is a blend of two rare beans. One bean comes from a hard-to-reach mountain top. The other bean is even harder to find. In Indonesia, civet cats like to eat the best ripe coffee beans. They then  digest the fleshy fruit part, and excrete the bean. Workers are then employed to hunt down civet dung, and wash it to reveal the coffee beans. These are then ground up and form part of the fore-mentioned 50-pound espresso.

The poor super-rich. Because of course it’s not just the coffee they have to shell out for. There’s the whole meal that comes before it. And with the world’s most expensive salad on special at 600 British pounds, you can begin to imagine how it all adds up (I won’t mention the main course of prime Japanese beef from cows which have been hand-massaged their entire lives by specially trained masseurs).

So let’s not be angry or resentful or jealous. As you stand at the grocery store till wondering if you have enough money for rice AND chicken, just spare a thought for the ultra-rich, who are paying out small fortunes to drink wild cat poo.

(This first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on the 14th of July 2008: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

The rich get richer…

Newspaper headlines in South Africa these days report on spiraling inflation, and warn that interest rates could be raised yet again. I’ve lost count of the number of times our Reserve Bank has hiked interest rates, and it’s beginning to take its toll. There are also reports of record numbers of South Africans defaulting on house, car and other payments. Even the banks have started changing their tune — for example, First National Bank has launched a major advertising campaign offering tips on saving money, and explaining that they’re getting tougher on granting credit.

But it’s not bad for everybody. Yesterday’s Business Times lead with the following headline: “SA’s dollar-millionaire club gets bigger, faster”. The story explains that the growth in the number of South Africans with wealth of over a million US dollars was greater than the global average. In South Africa there are now almost 14% more dollar millionaires than there were this time last year. The global average was a 6% increase in dollar millionaires.

In fact the biggest growth in dollar millionaires was in the Middle East, and there are significantly more millionaires in South America too. And lest you think our continent is being left out, South African millionaires weren’t the only ones doing well.  This year there are 10% more dollar millionaires in Africa than there were last year.

That might all be wonderful news, except for the fact that in Africa, unlike almost everywhere else in the world, poverty is increasing, and intensifying. In an era where governments and international organisations have set the goal of halving poverty by 2015, that is shocking. It’s shocking that between 1990 and 2004, the number of Africans living on less than 1 US dollar a day increased by 20%. But it’s worse than that. The number living on less than 50 US cents a day rose by a third during the same period. That means that in sub-Saharan Africa there are now over 121 million people trying to survive on less than 50 US cents a day. At the current exchange rate, that’s the equivalent of about 4 South African rands a day.

Now all this is happening while economies are growing. The rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer. Economies are growing, but unemployment is increasing. Clearly something is very wrong.

I’m not an economist and don’t have easy answers, but surely we have to question the political and economic leadership of our countries and continent. We also have to look to ourselves. How have we allowed this to happen? In South Africa, are those of us in the middle classes so caught up in the pursuit of material wealth, the latest clothes, and the flashiest cars, that we have been prepared to ignore the increasing misery of our fellow citizens? What can and should we be doing to turn this around?

To give a picture of just how insane this is, the Sunday Times article also mentions that among the ultra-rich — those worth more than 30-million US dollars, the biggest increase was in Latin America, followed by Africa.

Now let’s get real. How much money does any one person need? Let’s say, it’s fine and acceptable to do well and be comfortable, and let’s be very accommodating and say it’s not excessive to have $1 million US dollars. But over $30 million? What do you do with money like that? You can only sleep in 1 bed at night, eat so many meals, drink so much fine wine. What do you do with the rest? What is the point?

Especially when your fellow citizens are spending every waking hour trying to scrape together enough money for just one daily meal.

(This was first posted on the Citizen Journalism in Africa site on June 30th, 2008: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)

Effectively fighting poverty

This week, if you were browsing AllAfrica.com (http://allafrica.com/stories/200804240734.html), or if one of your local newspapers happened to carry the news, you may have noticed an article about a meeting in Kampala this week of governments and civil society organisations from eastern and southern Africa. The aim of the meeting was to discuss programmes and policies on social protection.

The chances are that you didn’t notice, though, as the meeting did not receive much media coverage (at least it didn’t here, in SA). But in fact this meeting is part of a continent-wide process that has huge potential in fighting poverty.

Well, you may ask, what is social protection and why is it so significant? In a nutshell, social protection refers to policies aimed at providing regular, long-term assistance to those living in poverty, or vulnerable and in danger of falling into poverty. The idea is to move away from short-term emergency-based responses to poverty and hunger, and to put in place long-term, reliable and coherent policies to assist the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Old age pensions, child support grants and disability grants are good examples of social protection measures.

These policies have been pretty controversial. For example in 2004, Lesotho’s government decided to introduce an old-age pension, and was strongly advised against it by donors and the likes of the IMF (they went ahead anyway and now it’s seen as a big success).

While social protection is pretty much taken for granted in developed nations, for some reason many governments and even international donors have opposed putting in place such measures in Africa. But there is clear and growing evidence that social protection policies and programmes have huge impact in reducing poverty. For example, in South Africa, which has a pretty good and well-developed system of social protection, research has found that children in households that received a pension, were on average taller than children in households without a pension. That kind of measurable difference is hard to argue against! (If you’re interested in looking into this, there’s loads of research and updates available online at www.wahenga.net).

Anyhow, in March 2006, senior government representatives from 13 African countries gathered in Livingstone, Zambia, and signed what’s known as the Livingstone Declaration. The Livingstone Declaration recognised social protection as a human right, and it called on African governments to put together social protection plans within 2-3 years. The declaration was subsequently adopted by the African Union.

So now, in 2008, the AU is spearheading what’s known as Livingstone II. The meeting in Kampala this week is the first of 3 regional gatherings (the others will be in Cairo for north Africa, and Dakar for west Africa), leading up to the first ever African Union Conference of Ministers of Social Development, in October. The aim is to assess progress since 2006, discuss challenges in implementing and funding national social protection programmes, and map the way forward.

As I say, so far it’s not getting the media coverage it deserves — perhaps because journalists are always sceptical of so-called ‘talk-shops’ — where a lot gets said, and very little gets done afterwards. And to be honest, that is always a danger – but that’s why it’s important that we pay attention to this process. Civil society organisations and ordinary citizens across the continent should be watching the Livingstone II process, and making a noise in their own countries to ensure their governments make clear commitments to social protection, and then follow up with practical implementation.

This process really has the potential to transform the lives of millions of Africans — it’s up to all of us to make sure that this potential becomes a reality.

(This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal – www.citizenjournalismafrica.org)