Statistics South Africa stated in 2012 that South Africa has three poverty lines, which represent the different degrees of poverty among its population.
In 2017, these poverty lines were recalculated using the latest data. These poverty lines are the official thresholds by which those who live below it are considered to be poor.
The first of the poverty lines is defined as the Food Poverty Line. People living below this poverty line live in extreme poverty, as they cannot afford to pay for basic physical needs.
Put another way, they cannot afford shelter, transport, education or electricity. They can only afford very basic foods, often below UN nutritional requirements of 2100 calories per person per day.
People earning R531 per month or less are categorised as living below the Food Poverty Line. The current population count at this level is 13.8million people.
The second poverty band is the Lower Bound Poverty Line. Some 9million people who live below this poverty line earn a mere R758 per month and can only afford food and either shelter, transport or electricity but not all three.
The third poverty band is the Upper Bound Poverty Line and the 10million people who live at this level earn R1138 per month. They earn a wage that can afford food, and then a choice of having to pay for shelter, electricity or transport but cannot afford all four.
Of the 31million people stuck in these three-tier poverty bands, none can afford the education they deserve. This 31million-population group represents more than 55% of our population.
As a country struggling to untangle itself from historical and racially induced inequalities, the data still shows that just over 1% of white people live under the upper-bound poverty line while more than 60% of black people live under the same poverty line.
In response to the three levels of poverty, our leaders’ best response has been to gorge themselves on three levels of wealth: The nauseating features of wealth associated with politicians, the nauseating wealth of our corporate elites and sadly, the growing wealth emanating from corruption.
A new consciousness must be born that will lead us away from our obsessions with power and money and regain our solidarity with a “justice for all” narrative.
For the past five years, I have been challenging the government and development narratives that talk about poverty relief and poverty reduction and poverty eradication. I have discovered that most people have no idea when poor people will achieve these states of nirvana.
Imagine being a father who wakes up every day, categorised under the Food Poverty Level and all his government, company and civil society want for him is to move to the next level of poverty, the Lower Bound Poverty Level.
If he reaches that level, the statisticians boldly report that poverty is diminishing.
Imagine that father looking at his children and saying “my children, our family is no longer categorised under the Food Poverty Level. We have improved, we have now moved higher up to the Lower Bound Poverty Level”. And all his children still go to bed hungry and without education.
Here is my take: if all we have to offer poor people are poverty elimination, poverty eradication and poverty reduction talks, we must be honest and admit that we have lost the plot. Whenever I sit in on these talks, I ask: show me what a “poverty reduced person” looks like?
I then follow up with: why is it so hard for us to talk about wealth creation for poor people?
Wealth-creation strategies for poor people must dominate our Parliament and boardrooms. If we do not change the poverty narrative to a wealth-creation narrative with the urgency of a “code red trauma unit” urgency, we will soon see our democracy challenged by an angry, tired poor.
* Lorenzo A Davids is chief executive of the Community Chest.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.